Ep. 396 - The Media's Anti-Gun Narrative Collapses
We start the new decade talking about the collapse of the media's anti-gun narrative. Also, Pope Francis viciously assaults a woman. At least that's how people on Twitter are framing it. And we discuss one of the great mysteries of our time: why do people stand out in the cold for 10 hours just to see a shiny ball descend down a pole?
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Happy new decade, unless you're one of those pedantic jerks that likes to claim that the new decade doesn't really start until 2021, which is really rude and outrageous, by the way.
If you're one of those people going around saying that, oh, we're not in the new decade yet.
It's like when I was celebrating my birthday in October and my wife said to me, but your birthday isn't until June.
And I said, so what?
What difference does that make?
I'll celebrate my birthday whenever I damn well please.
And we will celebrate the new decade whenever we damn well please.
We might celebrate the new millennium next year.
We might celebrate the year 3000 next year, if we feel like it.
Because time is relative, man.
But anyway, I don't even see how the pedantic jerks And I say this as a pedantic jerk myself, unapologetically, but I don't think that it's correct in this case, because if the year 2021 is the actual start of the next decade, that means that this year, 2020, is a part of the teens, or whatever we call the previous decade.
But if 2020 is part of the teens, then for instance 1980 is part of the 70s,
but how would you react if someone said, oh I was born in the 70s and you said
And they said 1980.
That doesn't make any sense.
In what universe is 80 part of 70s?
It's not.
So we begin.
So this is the new decade.
I just want to put that put that threat.
And we begin the new decade talking about What happened this past weekend, as I hadn't done a show until Thursday, so I haven't had a chance to talk about it.
Not a fun topic to start things off with, but it is important.
As you may have noticed, after the anti-Semitic attack in New York on Saturday, and then the church shooting in Texas on Sunday, this argument has been ignited again about whether houses of worship Places where people of faith congregate should have armed security and armed congregants.
I think as this debates happened over the last few days, it is very oddly timed to say the least.
Because of course the attack in Texas was neutralized within seconds by an armed volunteer security guard named Jack Wilson.
So you think what is there to discuss?
If he hadn't been there, Many more people would have died.
He was, so they didn't.
And the math seems pretty straightforward.
Now, of course, you could argue, and we'll get more into this in a second, but you could argue that if the heroic Jack Wilson wasn't there, the assailant might have still been taken down by any of the other, I think it was five or six, armed worshipers who got up and also drew their weapons.
And that can be seen on video, but their presence deals another blow to the standard anti-gun talking points that you always hear surrounding these situations, because we're often told that the problem with the good guy with a gun strategy is that all of those gun-toting good guys would turn a mass shooting into a Wild West, you know, shootout, and there would just be bullets flying everywhere.
Now, even if that were true, Even if it were true that having good guys with guns would turn it into a Wild West shootout and there would be bullets flying everywhere, wouldn't that be better than bullets flying only in the direction of innocent bystanders?
Because that's usually how this goes.
There's a bunch of bullets flying, but they're only going in one direction, and that is in the direction of the innocent people.
So, I don't think anybody wants church to turn into a gunfight at OK Corral, but I would rather have that than just an all-out slaughter.
I would rather have that than the massacre at Sutherland Springs, where if you recall last year, or two years ago, 26 people were shot and killed at church.
Now, this is a false choice anyway, because in the case in Texas over the weekend, There was no gunfight.
There was no Wild West shootout.
There was no massacre on the level of Sutherland Springs, although three people were killed.
And that's because a good guy returned fire, killed the bad guy immediately, and the other good guys with guns refrained from spraying bullets all over the place.
They didn't need to fire their weapons, and so they didn't.
And that was the end of it.
Now, you compare that with the attack at a rabbi's home in New York on Saturday, where this scumbag was able to stab five people with a machete before fleeing the scene unharmed.
And without guns to protect themselves, the people in the home, they were, you know, reports tell us they were throwing tables and furniture at the assailant.
And then they took down his license plate as he rode away.
Now, you know, they weren't armed.
That's all they could do.
And they responded correctly, given the situation.
But can any rational person or any reasonable person argue that victims are better off defending themselves with furniture?
And with a notepad to write down the guy's information when he leaves?
Is it better that they defend themselves that way than with a firearm?
No, well, I mean, no reasonable or rational person can argue that, but there are a lot of irrational and unreasonable people who like to have their voice heard, especially on this topic.
It seems to me that these are indisputable facts.
And the events of this week can prove it.
Here are the facts.
Houses of worship or places where faithful congregate should be protected with guns.
Members of minority groups that are often the target of violent attacks should protect themselves with guns.
Buildings that house our children for eight hours a day should be protected with guns.
Now, I agree with the anti-gun crowd that these kinds of measures should not be necessary.
Okay?
Society should be safer.
Just as I agree with the feminists who, when we talk about women protecting themselves, and feminists will say, well, women shouldn't have to protect themselves from raping men because men shouldn't be raping in the first place.
I agree.
They shouldn't be.
I agree that many things happen in our world that should not happen.
And our world should be different from how it is.
And if there were any reliable way, any feasible way, to preempt all of these bad things without using guns, I'd be in favor of that.
But there isn't.
So I'm not.
All of these shoulds and shouldn'ts Just don't amount to anything when the bad guy who shouldn't be bad shows up in the place where he shouldn't be to actually do the bad thing that he shouldn't be doing with the gun that he shouldn't have.
There are times like that where a whole lot of shouldn'ts are happening.
And when that happens, you're not going to stop the bullet that's flying towards you.
You're not going to stop it by talking about what should and shouldn't be.
Because when shouldn't becomes is, which it so often does in this fallen world of ours, the only thing you can do is respond to the reality of the situation.
Yes, shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't.
That's true.
But it is.
It is happening.
You know, should and shouldn't, these are good topics for campaign speeches and John Lennon lyrics, but they're useless when the lead is actually flying.
Now, this is just about responding to what's actually happening.
And that's when you need a guy, a very practical guy like Jack Wilson, and you need him to have a very practical tool like a gun.
And that's just the way it is, whether we like it or not.
And that should sort of be the end of the conversation.
All these, yes, all these bad things should not happen, but they do.
And they will always happen until the end of time.
And so we need to be prepared to respond.
That should be it, but it isn't. The media is predictably determined to find a negative spin
for the Jack Wilson story because it's just, it's a story that's so devastating to their
narrative for all the reasons I've already described. And they're going to absurd lengths
to find this negative spin. For example, USA Today published an editorial yesterday talking
about the truly terrifying aspect of the church shooting.
Now, you would think that the truly terrifying thing is that a bad guy went into a church to
shoot it up. That's the terrifying thing.
But not according to USA Today.
What's terrifying to them is that so many parishioners had the means to defend themselves.
That's what's terrifying.
And we'll get into that op-ed in a minute.
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All right, so USA Today, reading now from the article by Elvia Diaz.
This is what it says.
Jack Wilson is a hero, alright.
It took him only six seconds to kill a gunman at a Texas church, saving countless lives.
Unfortunately, that kind of split-second heroism has been turned into a PR tool by gun advocates.
The reality of Wilson's heroism is a lot more complex.
He wasn't just an ordinary parishioner, as gun advocates may want you to believe.
The church's volunteer security team member is a firearms instructor, gun range owner and former reserve deputy, with a local sheriff's department, according to a New York Times detailed account.
In other words, he's exactly the kind of man you want around with a firearm.
But we know nothing about the at least six other parishioners who also appeared to draw their handguns at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas.
And that's terrifying.
Goes on a little bit later.
But have we really reached a point when each of us need to carry a firearm anywhere we go?
Gun advocates certainly think so.
They point to Wilson and the new Texas law that allows him and others to carry firearms inside the church.
President Donald Trump said as much on Twitter Monday, yada, yada, yada, so on and so forth.
So this is exactly what I'm talking about.
The focus here is on should and shouldn't rather than the reality.
The author says, have we really reached a point where these churchgoers need to bring a gun to church?
Yes, apparently we have.
Apparently we have reached that point.
They needed to have a gun, and they did.
And if you want to say that's terrifying, then fine, I agree.
If you want to say it's terrifying and terrible that people have to be armed wherever they go, and that you need to even think about this when you go to church, If you're saying that's terrifying, then yeah, I agree, it kind of is.
You could make it less terrifying for yourself by equipping yourself with the means to defend yourself should the necessity arise, but it is kind of a terrifying situation.
But to say that it's terrifying that people who needed to be armed to protect themselves were armed to protect themselves, that makes no sense.
Would it have been better Would it have been less terrifying if the gunman was the only guy with a gun in that church?
What if you were in the church?
Okay?
If you were there, the gunman is there, would you prefer that some of your fellow parishioners have a gun, or maybe even that you have one?
Or not?
If you were all unarmed, Would you look around while you're huddled under the pew, you know, just hoping that he doesn't come to your aisle?
Would you look around and say, thank God nobody else has a gun here?
Of course not.
See, the problem, and this is what the media is doing, that what they've always told us, what they've promised, what they, it seems like, have hoped, is that You know, in a situation where a gunman shows up to a church in a place like Texas, and there are six or seven people there carrying guns, and they all pull them out.
What the media has always told us is that it's going to turn into a Wild West shootout, bullets flying everywhere.
And now they're writing articles and op-eds about it as if that's actually what happened.
But it isn't!
Those other gun owners were responsible.
They pulled their firearms, didn't fire them, and that was it.
What's terrifying about it?
No, in fact, if you were worried about that happening, this should make you less terrified.
Because you see that, you know, if somebody is a law-abiding gun owner, and they're carrying a gun legally, they probably aren't treating it like a toy.
They probably know how to use it.
You know, they're probably responsible people.
Because people who are irresponsible, don't know anything about guns, don't know how to use them, don't know how to respond in situations like this.
Most of those people aren't aren't legally carrying guns.
All right, let's move on to Pope Francis.
Pope Francis viciously assaulting a woman, as the media has framed it anyway.
I think it's appropriate that we start the new year and the new decade, which it is a new decade.
With a controversy like this.
I think it really got things off on, maybe not a good foot, but an appropriate one, given how incredibly stupid I expect this year to be.
So we get a very stupid controversy to start things.
So here's the footage that went viral yesterday, if you didn't see it.
Prompting lots of people to lash out at the Pope and talk about how the Pope assaulted somebody.
But this is Pope Francis greeting a bunch of people, I think on New Year's Eve.
And then this happened.
Watch.
So there you go.
First of all, I admit I have been tempted so many times as a Catholic to respond exactly that way.
During the Catholics, we have the weird sign of peace thing we do during church.
And that's why, if you've never been to a Catholic Mass, it's right before Communion.
Everyone, the first time going to a Catholic Mass, you're always taken off guard by this, because in the middle of the Mass, just seemingly out of nowhere, right before Communion, everyone turns and starts shaking hands.
Now, a lot of us, you know, you go to a lot of different, I've been to many Protestant churches, and oftentimes, they'll do a greeting thing before church starts, And I have to say, as a Catholic, I like, I think that approach makes a lot more sense.
If you're going to do the greeting and if you're going to do the thing, turn to your neighbor and say hello.
I'm not a fan of it in general.
I'm not a fan of forced greetings where somebody tells me to turn to the person next to me and say hi to them.
If I want to say hi to them, I will.
I don't need you.
I'm not a child.
I don't need you ordering me around.
But if you're going to do that, it makes sense to do it before the service starts.
To do it, not even midway through, but like two-thirds of the way through, by the way, hi, hello, it doesn't, I'm not a fan of it, I don't like it.
But, you know, my strategy during the sign of the peace, as an antisocial person, and also as a germaphobe, I don't really want to touch the clammy hands of the person next to me.
So, you know, I stand there stoically during the sign of the peace.
And I don't turn around at people behind me to shake their hand, because that's my right, okay?
Bodily autonomy!
But then, oftentimes somebody will, you know, if you don't turn around to shake the hand of the person behind you, they'll tap on your shoulder.
And then you kind of turn around and say, peace be with you.
And they're trying to shove their sweaty hand into yours.
And so many times I've wanted to, get away!
I've wanted to do that exact thing that the Pope did.
And I feel like this now gives me the license to do it.
Because if the Pope does something, then that means we can as Catholics.
At least that's what every non-Catholic assumes.
Everything the Pope does is infallible.
And so just by the Pope doing that, that means we all can slap whoever we want as Catholics.
That's not really how it works, but I wish in this case it did work that way.
Anyway.
The way the media has reported this, they make it sound like Pope Francis like dropkicked the woman.
They're framing it, which would have been a sight to behold, we have to admit.
The New York Times headline, this is a New York Times headline, says, Pope Francis apologizes after slapping away a clinging pilgrim.
Slapping away a clinging pilgrim.
Now, you hear that headline.
You're imagining, based on that headline, maybe a young child in tattered rags, dusty and dirty from the long journey on the Holy Pilgrimage, running up to hug the Pope, and the Pope just kicks him away.
Ew, yuck, get off me!
You dirty peasant!
But that's not quite what you actually see.
What you do see, what Francis does here, and this is honestly, I'm not a big Pope Francis fan myself, to put it mildly.
And I don't support most of the things that he's, or many of the things that he's said and done.
This might be the first thing that he's done that I support.
This right here.
I have a strange new respect for Pope Francis.
I'm totally on Teen Pope on this one.
Because this was not a violent assault.
This was the Pope turning to leave after greeting probably hundreds of people.
He was going down the line.
It's got to end somewhere.
If there's 50,000 people, he's not going to shake every single person's hand.
So he's turning to leave.
The woman reaches out.
Can you imagine doing this to the Pope?
Or to anyone, even if it wasn't the Pope?
Reaches out, grabs him, yanks him back.
And then this is really important.
He tries to pull his hand back three times.
He doesn't immediately slap her.
And it's not like he slaps her in the face.
It's not like she pulls him and he turns around.
Bop.
That doesn't happen.
No.
He tries three times to get his hand free.
And she won't let go.
And then finally he's, you know, it's not hard.
It's just a little, a little, it's like if you're, if your kid's reaching for the hot stove, you might just do a quick little slap on the wrist.
What do you expect?
Keep in mind, this is an 83 year old man.
Likely has arthritis, arthritis, arthritis.
Likely has arthritis.
You could tell that he was in pain.
I mean, in all honesty, you watch the video, if you freeze-frame it right at the moment where he's yanked in, you can see a visible grimace.
And also, I mean, if you've ever shook the hand of an 83-year-old person before, you know that they don't often have the firmest grasp because their bones are, you know, Not as strong as they used to be, and it's very common at that age to have arthritis, and so it's gonna be painful.
So it looks to me like he's in pain, and he's just reacting instinctively, trying to pull his hand away, and she won't let go.
Yet, amazingly, or maybe not so amazingly, most people have taken the woman's side on this, which I find mind-boggling.
So often these days, putting politics aside, because it doesn't seem like there's a left-right divide here, But so often these days, it seems like 95% of people are reacting to a certain thing in a certain way.
And I look at that reaction and it boggles my mind.
I don't understand it.
How could you see that video and take the woman's side?
Again, I think this would be inappropriate to do to anybody.
It's not okay to try to get somebody's attention by yanking them towards you.
But imagine doing it to the Pope.
Imagine doing it to the President.
What do you think would happen?
What do you think would happen if the President was walking by, and you reached out and grabbed him, and pulled him towards you, and wouldn't let go?
Do you think, I mean, you wouldn't get, there wouldn't be any tug-of-war back and forth like there was in this case, and I'm kind of wondering, where was the Pope's security?
They're just sort of standing there, not doing anything.
But with the President, you couldn't make it that far.
As soon as your hand made contact with his wrist, You're going to be on the ground in a dog pile, bum-rushed by Secret Service.
That's the way that's going to go.
And I don't think anyone would feel sorry for you, because everybody would say, what are you doing grabbing the president?
What do you think is going to happen?
But, as I said, Pope or not Pope, you just, you don't do that.
And if you do that, you grab somebody and yank them towards you, you deserve to get your hand slapped away.
I don't care, man, woman, doesn't matter.
Because you have no right to do that.
What is this woman, entitled to the Pope's attention?
Somebody told me yesterday, I was talking about this on Twitter, and somebody said, well, she was being ignored by the Pope.
You mean ignored by the Pope?
She's one face among 50,000 people, and so if she doesn't get that one-on-one time, she herself is being personally ignored?
Yeah, I'm ignored by the Pope, too.
He's never said hi to me.
I mean, I've been ignored by almost everybody on Earth.
By that standard.
So that's what we're saying now.
She's entitled.
If the Pope walks by, you are entitled to the Pope's attention.
And if he doesn't give it to you, you can grab him and yank him towards you.
And if he gets away from your grab, you could tackle him.
Pick him up like a fireman's carry.
Bring him back to your dining room and force him to have dinner with you.
I mean, he's a human being.
He doesn't have to accept being grabbed by whoever decides to grab him.
All right.
So don't go grabbing the Pope.
That's the lesson here.
I like, by the way, also all these people saying, well, this, you know, other Popes would never do this.
This is unprecedented for a Pope to do this.
You know, there have been, I think there have probably been a lot of popes who would do that, actually.
Or worse, if you grab them.
JP too, maybe not.
Benedict, I could see it with Benedict.
I think Benedict never striked me as the kind of man that you want to just grab and, you know.
But there have, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that if this was the Middle Ages, and you just, and you did that to a pope, I think a slap on the wrist would be about the best case scenario for you in that situation.
All right.
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All right, before we get to emails, Mayor Bill de Blasio is coming after Domino's, criticizing them for hiking the prices on their pizzas on New Year's Eve in New York.
There was a headline that says, Domino's sells $30 pizzas to Times Square ball drop revelers on New Year's Eve.
And the mayor saw this and tweeted, jacking up your prices on people trying to celebrate the holidays?
Classy, Domino's.
To the thousands who came to Times Square last night to ring in 2020, I'm sorry this corporate trade chain exploited you.
Stick it to them by patronizing one of our fantastic local pizzerias.
You know, Bill de Blasio can never forfeit an opportunity to embarrass himself or to do the class warfare shtick.
And so he's trying to do it here.
The problem is, this is absurd on a number of levels.
Number one, this was a decision made by the local franchise, not by corporate Domino's headquarters.
Number two, everything in New York is expensive.
It's like the mayor just noticed That when you go to Times Square, things are a lot more expensive than they are if you're not in Times Square.
And number three, maybe it's just me, but $30 for a pizza isn't even that bad.
I mean, it's bad.
It's more than I would pay, especially for a Domino's pizza.
But if you had told me that a large pizza in Times Square on New Year's Eve costs $50, I would not have been surprised.
But number four, here's my primary point.
Anybody dumb enough To stand in the freezing cold in Times Square for 11 hours, shoulder-to-shoulder with drunk strangers, with no bathroom in sight, just to see a glowing orb descend slightly down a pole for 10 seconds, deserves to be exploited in this way.
I mean, you deserve it.
That's the main thing.
I think about this every year when we watch the ball drop in my house.
We turn it on at like 11.58 and we watch for two minutes and then we turn it off.
But I always think, why in God's name do all of these maniacs show up there just to stand for hours on end in the cold with drunk people peeing their pants all around you?
And the big payoff is that the shiny thing on the building I still remember, I remember my disappointment the first time that I watched the ball drop when I was a kid.
Because for years, you know, before my parents let me stay up till midnight to watch it, that was when I was maybe like eight or nine or something.
But for the years leading up to that, I'd always heard about the ball drop, and I'd always wondered what it was.
I'd heard about this mystical ball drop, and everybody stays up to watch it, and they go, and millions of people.
I didn't know exactly what I was expecting.
I guess I thought the ball would be 300 feet in circumference, and it would descend from the clouds, and it would explode, and leprechauns riding unicorns would And so that's the real outrage here.
Not the pizza.
It's how pathetic and anti-climactic the ball drop is.
It's the year 2020, for God's sakes.
is this pathetic little shiny thing just ever so slightly adjust its position on the pole.
And so that's the real outrage here, not the pizza.
It's how pathetic and anti-climactic the ball drop is. It's the year 2020 for God's sakes.
It's the 20s for goodness sake. We could do better than that.
All right, let's go to emails.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Julie says, please, please address one of the things that bothers me the most.
When people say new years, it's new year, a singular noun, naming the day we celebrate a new year, not the new years.
That would signify multiple years.
Do we say happy birthdays?
Merry Christmases?
Nope.
Just simply Happy New Year.
When people say, what are you doing for New Year's?
They're really and apparently not aware that they're trying to say, what are you doing for New Year's Eve?
It drives me mad.
P.S.
Happy New Year.
Yeah, Julie, see, I said that I'm a pedantic jerk myself.
And this is now this is a thing that I'm pedantic about as well.
And I agree with you that it's just it's it makes you sound illiterate.
When you say New Year's.
Moving on to Carl says, from Carl says, Hi Matt, I saw you defending the Pope on Twitter for beating the woman who tried to talk to him.
For beating the woman who tried to talk to him.
Honest question.
WWJD.
Jesus never responded that way to people.
Isn't that enough to settle the argument?
Okay, Carl, first of all, I think you know that your characterization here is a little bit ridiculous.
You didn't beat anyone.
You didn't beat a woman for trying to talk to him.
But before we get to WWJD, what about WWCD?
What would Carl do?
Think about that.
What would you do?
How would you react if you were walking down the street and a stranger grabbed you, yanked you towards them, wouldn't let go as you tried to release yourself from their grasp three times?
Wouldn't you be well within your rights to slap them away?
Or would you just sit there obediently for as long as they want to hold on to you?
Now, I'm not saying WWCD, what would Carl do or what would I do?
That's not...
That's not, that doesn't always justify, just because someone's done something and you say, well, I would do the same thing, doesn't mean that it's okay.
But I am saying that before we pass judgment on somebody, we should think, would I react the same way?
As for Jesus, first of all, you know, you can't really say that he never responded that way to people.
Somebody made this point on Twitter yesterday, and I think it's important.
It's a good point.
We actually have no idea what Jesus did or what he said for 99.9% of his life.
For 99.9% of the time that he spent on earth, we really don't know what he did or said.
He died at 33, we think.
And the Gospels tell us a little bit about his birth, and then nothing at all, except for one brief story when he was an adolescent.
But then other than that, nothing until he gets to be about 30 or so.
And even then, all of the Gospels put together give us, what, I don't know, a few dozen scenes of his life during that time?
Maybe less than that?
Jesus lived a life, a life consisting of 24 hours in a day, and he had about 12,000 of those days, and we have no idea what happened during all of those days, except for a few.
Now, I'm not saying that Jesus was going around slapping the hell out of people for the rest of the time that the Gospels don't record.
I think probably he wasn't.
I'm just saying that you have to be careful with statements like, Jesus never did XYZ.
And I think we all get loose with that sometimes.
I know I've done it too.
That Jesus never said or Jesus never did.
What you mean to say is Jesus is never recorded saying or doing XYZ.
Which in this case isn't even true because Jesus did with people at the cleansing of the temple.
We get that's recorded in all four Gospels and he drives people out with a whip.
That's physical violence that he used.
Different situation, of course, but if you're insinuating that he never physically made contact with someone in that kind of aggressive way, it's not true.
We know that's not true because it's recorded in the Gospels.
But when we talk about what Jesus never did for the times when he's not on camera, so to speak, well, we could say that Jesus never did a sinful thing.
So you could say that, yeah.
And you could say he never did anything anachronistic.
It's probably safe to say that he never played Street Fighter or watched Breaking Bad or used an iPhone, given the time period that he lived in.
But if what we're talking about is not sinful, and it wouldn't be out of place for the time period he lived in, then we can't really say that he never did it.
So is it sinful to swat someone's hand away when they're grabbing you?
I don't think it is.
Why would that be sinful?
And if it's not, and there's nothing about it that's, again, out of place for the time period, I don't know, maybe he did.
Can't really say.
All right.
From Brian says hi Matt.
I read your piece about guns in church and schools be real about this Would you really want to send your kids to school where people are toting guns all over the place?
The way that you Make it sound no I wouldn't want that because you're trying to make it sound like you're going into school and Everybody's got a gun including the kids and they're all just you know twirling their pistols in there with their fingers and stuff like that Yeah, of course.
Nobody wants that But would I want to send my kid to a school where there are competent adults who know how to use firearms and are legally carrying them?
Absolutely.
And I'm kind of at the point where that's a prerequisite, actually, for me sending my kid to a school.
I think I would need that.
And as I pointed out many times, public schools are government buildings And, uh, you know, we could list dozens of other types of government buildings that are guarded by armed security, including even you go to the social service office to get a new, you know, social security card or something.
And there's going to be a security guard sitting there with a, with a, with a gun.
When's the last time the social security office got, got robbed.
It doesn't happen very often.
Yet, you know, there's an armed person there.
You go to Congress, certainly there's going to be armed security.
So, if we have armed security in government buildings to protect documents, to protect politicians, why wouldn't we have it to protect children?
Our own children, especially.
That doesn't make sense to me.
This is from Beth, says, Matt, I'm disappointed in your take on guns and churches.
I expect most conservative pundits to take the standard talking point lines, but you usually are more thoughtful than that.
Do you acknowledge that there is a gun violence epidemic in our country?
If so, how can you deny that reducing the number of guns will at least have some positive effect on reducing the epidemic?
Well, Beth, I don't acknowledge the gun violence epidemic, as you put it, and I'll tell you why.
Because 60% of the gun deaths every year are suicides.
60%.
Now, I do think there's a suicide epidemic, and that's a big problem, but hopefully you would agree that guns have almost nothing to do with it.
People might choose to use a gun to kill themselves if there's one available, but do you think you could permanently stop somebody from killing themselves just by keeping them away from a gun?
Well, I think obviously not.
Any more than you could permanently stop someone from killing themselves by keeping them away from pills, or high ledges, or ropes, or any of the other ways that people use to do this.
So, I think it's clearly absurd to blame guns for suicides.
And I don't think that suicides can get lumped into the gun violence epidemic statistic.
I think it's extremely misleading.
Because when we hear about the gun violence epidemic, obviously what comes immediately to mind is murder.
And it sounds like when you say there's a gun violence epidemic, it sounds like you're saying there is an epidemic of people going into buildings or walking across the street or whatever and using a gun to kill somebody else or multiple people.
That certainly is the impression that's given to us.
But when you look at the numbers, And what comprises most of the so-called gun violence epidemic, it is suicide.
And so that's why it's misleading.
Now, if you take out suicide, you're left with maybe 10 or 15,000 homicides by gun every year in the US, in a population of 330 million.
So that's one in every, what, 33,000 people.
Another way to look at this, a football stadium typically fits 70,000 people.
So in any given football stadium, packed to the rafters, two of the people in that whole stadium will die by gun homicide in their life.
And that actually, I think, makes it seem worse than it is, because there's a very good chance that in any given stadium, nobody in the whole building is going to die by gun violence, because the inner city accounts for a disproportionate amount of the gun homicides.
So it's not like this is a problem spread evenly throughout the U.S.
But any way you look at it, you know, I don't think 10,000 in a country of 330 million counts as an epidemic.
The only way that 10,000 homicides in a country of 330 million can be called an epidemic is if you're starting with an assumption or a hope or a belief that nobody will be murdered in a country of 330 million.
So if your expectation is zero, And then you look and it's 10,000.
Well, yeah, that's an epidemic.
But if you begin with an understanding of human nature and an acknowledgement that murder will happen and that it does happen in every country, no matter what, then you have to ask yourself, realistically, best case scenario, what should the murder rate be?
You know, what I'm saying is, well, I mean, we talked before about should and shouldn't.
So if we're talking ideally, in an ideal utopian scenario, what should the murder rate be?
Well, in that case, yeah, it should be zero.
But realistically, practically speaking, in the real world, in a country of 330 million, what should the murder rate be?
You can't say zero because that's not at all realistic or practical.
Because then you're not talking about the real world.
You're talking about a fantasy utopia, which doesn't exist.
So that's my question to you.
You think 10,000 is an epidemic?
Well, what do you think?
Even if we got rid of all the guns, what would you expect the murder rate to be? 5,000?
I think wherever you put it, 10,000 maybe is a little higher than what you would like or what you think we can get at the number two, but it's not at epidemic levels in comparison to your realistic expectations.
Now, it's bad, obviously.
Every murder is bad.
Every violent death is a horrible thing.
And I'm not saying we should just accept it for what it is.
What I'm saying is we need to be reasonable and rational and realistic in the way that we discuss it.
We have to avoid sensationalism, and that's my thing.
But going back to the numbers.
So most of the gun deaths are suicides.
Then you've got this minority of cases where it's a homicide by gun.
A disproportionate number of those are inner city drug and gang related.
And the crucial point there is that most of that violence is by people who illegally obtain the guns to begin with.
So you can't make it more illegal.
If somebody illegally has a gun and they go commit a murder, well, they've done two illegal things.
And I don't think you can make those things any more illegal than they already are.
So additional laws and regulations on top of that probably won't do anything.
So I think what you really have to look at when we talk about gun regulations and the so-called violence epidemic and so on, what you have to look at are cases where legal guns owned by registered gun owners are used to murder another person.
And that is a very small percentage of the overall gun violence statistic.
And in that very small percentage, given that much of it, most of it, the vast majority of it is from domestic disputes, I don't see how regulations against guns would do anything.
You know, unless you're talking about trying to confiscate every gun and get rid of all the guns, Which you can't do constitutionally, and hopefully if you are living in the real world, you realize that you can't do it feasibly and practically either.
So if we're not talking about that, but if you're trying to be reasonable
and talking about things that we could feasibly and within the framework of the Constitution do,
I don't see how anything you could do would prevent most of the murders
that are committed by legal gun owners.
Because if a guy in a drunken rage kills his wife, well, if he had never committed a crime before that,
and before that point, he was a law-abiding citizen and an adult and all that,
then on what basis would you deny him his right to own the gun?
Thank you.
This isn't the minority report.
We can't look into the future.
Yeah, that we could talk about red flags and so on, but if the red flag is not a crime being committed, um, or, you know, someone being committed to a mental institution because they're completely insane.
I mean, if that's not the red flag, then I don't, then what can you do?
Um, and so that's, that's my, my stance on it.
I just don't see, I think the, when you're talking about gun violence epidemic, I think it's that sensationalist nonsense.
And it's just not true.
And even though all murder is obviously bad, and we all agree on that, and we would all like to see fewer murders, I just don't see how additional regulations on top of the regulations that exist will do anything.
Especially when you consider that, you know, inner cities are, again, the disproportionate number of gun homicides happen there, And those are the places, usually, where you have the strictest gun laws.
In places like Baltimore and Chicago.
So, I think that's what you have to... I try to be... This isn't me spouting talking points.
Nothing I'm saying here is a talking point.
Now, these might be points that conservatives often raise.
I'm not saying that I've come up with some bold new argument or anything.
But I'm trying to rationally and reasonably work through this, and that's how I work through it.
It doesn't make any difference to me that among conservatives the standard position is to be pro-gun and pro-gun rights.
I don't care if it's the standard.
It is my position, but it's not my position because it's the standard one.
I don't care about the standard position.
This is just how it seems to me.
You can tell me where you think I've gone wrong.
I'd like to hear it.
All right.
Thanks, everybody, for watching.
Thanks for listening.
We'll leave it there.
Godspeed.
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