Aug. 17, 2018 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:07:44
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unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| Joining me today as a lawyer, a gun rights activist and the host of NOIR on NRA TV, Colia NOIR. | ||
| Welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| How's it going, man? | ||
| How's it going, my friend? | ||
| It's going good. | ||
| It's good to be in L.A. | ||
| I am glad to have you on. | ||
| We've been trying to do this for about a year. | ||
| You're a busy man. | ||
| Yeah, I just like to think so. | ||
| It might just be a facade I put on to avoid people. | ||
| But no, in reality, it's been a pretty busy year. | ||
| Extremely so. | ||
| And it doesn't ever seem to slow up. | ||
| And just when I think it does, something else jumps off. | ||
| Well, if you think coming on this show is going to help slow it down, you are sorely mistaken. | ||
| Yeah, well, I'm a bit of a masochist in that regard. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| We'll see by the time this hour is done. | ||
| What sort of unearthed hell we can unleash on you. | ||
| I'm pretty sure there will be some. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, don't worry, because there will be equal amounts on me just for sitting here with you. | ||
| That's the interesting thing, you know. | ||
| I don't want to say I've been blind to it, but just seeing some of the reaction and the responses that I got, especially, for instance, when I was on Mar. | ||
| After I did Bill Maher, I saw some of the comments from, I say the other side just for ease of communication, but for people who largely don't agree with me and his audience, they were like, Oh, why would you have the NRA guy on there? | ||
| Even a, there was a tweet I responded to yesterday. | ||
| And even though I was on my no tweeting deal that I like to put myself on because it's so toxic in there sometimes. | ||
| How often do you do that? | ||
| Every 30 minutes. | ||
| I'm trying to do weekends and I'm disappearing in all of August. | ||
| See, man, Twitter's toxic, man. | ||
| When you're in the lane that you and I are in, it's toxic, man. | ||
| And it can really—even though you don't think you're taking that in, even when you're | ||
| just kind of scrolling through, you're taking that in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And it is like I constantly—I've developed this pattern of just, "Yeah, don't respond | ||
| to that, because they're baiting you," you know what I mean, and things of that nature. | ||
| But I saw a tweet, and she's like, "Yeah, I love Bill Maher. | ||
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unidentified
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Oh, I love this episode, but you have that NRA guy on there." | |
| I'm like, "Jesus, are we not allowed to have discourse anymore?" | ||
| Especially if it disagrees with something that you believe in? | ||
| And I was like, this is a very dangerous road we're going down if that's gonna be the case. | ||
| Because you forget, we live in this country together. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And we're not all the same. | ||
| There's about 350 million of us. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And we might not all think the same thing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Pretty crazy. | ||
| It's kinda sad, at least for me. | ||
| It's a little disheartening. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I grew up Under the guise and understanding the importance of discourse and being able to talk things out, even if you do disagree with someone. | ||
| But then even still having the ability to set aside whatever views I may have on a particular issue and then be able to speak with you cordially or have respect for you, even though we don't agree. | ||
| That's the way I was brought up. | ||
| And so to see the country kind of falling into this extremely vitriolic divisiveness, It's unheartening. | ||
| I don't mean to get all emo on you, but it does bother me. | ||
| Usually we don't have the guests cry until the end, but all right, we can do it this way. | ||
| But that's exactly why I wanted to have you on, because you are okay going into enemy territory. | ||
| I'm not calling this enemy territory, but you did Marr's show where you knew a certain percentage of the audience was just gonna hate you, and we talked about it briefly right before we started, but you found Marr to be basically pretty respectful and open, even though on policy he probably disagrees with you. | ||
| Pretty much, yeah. | ||
| And it was something that I ended up respecting about him in that regard, because like I said, I went in prepared for war. | ||
| I didn't go in to do war, but I went in prepared for it. | ||
| It was like, prepare for the worst, hope for the best. | ||
| And I'd say I got the best in a sense of, it was a discourse where he challenged me, but it wasn't this kind of... | ||
| Yeah, he wasn't trying to get you. | ||
| He was trying to understand you. | ||
| I'm trying to do that here. | ||
| I think there's a couple other places where people are trying to do that. | ||
| But yeah, that's the thing that's been lost. | ||
| And that's an interesting thing you point out there. | ||
| I think sometimes people take offense to that idea. | ||
| It's like, you're intriguing. | ||
| I think intrigue kind of offends people sometimes, because it's like we all grow up with a typical understanding of what we expect certain people to be like. | ||
| And then when certain things don't fit, it's like, hmm, that's interesting. | ||
| How did you get there? | ||
| And I think when it's innocent like that, I don't think there's an issue there. | ||
| When you use it to try to kind of muscle people into believing a certain thing based on what they are, | ||
| then that's when we start having problems. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's like, you see me, it's like, how do you as a black guy? | ||
| Like it happened to me when I first started doing what I did with the NRA. | ||
| Russell Simmons, and I'll never forget this. | ||
| I was like in Virginia Beach, I think. | ||
| And Russell said, I did my first sets of videos rolled out with the NRA, and I get this tweet | ||
| from Russell Simmons, and he's like, how can you as a young black man push that? | ||
| You know, the typical rhetoric in that regard. | ||
| Even though he often is all about trying to get people together. | ||
| Exactly, which is really odd. | ||
| And so I responded, I said, you know, I didn't know advocating for self-defense and self-reliance was a bad thing. | ||
| I didn't know that only non-black people were allowed to do that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so that was kind of like my first foray into that world of, wait a minute, people have an expectation of me based on my race that I'm not going to say I was oblivious to, but it just, when it was coming from people that look like me as well with the same level of intensity, that's when I go, wow, okay. | ||
| All right, so that's what this is. | ||
| Yeah, all right, so I want to back up to a little bit of childhood and growing up, because your evolution's kind of interesting, but let's just sit with this for one second, because I think there's something really interesting about that thing right there, that often if you listen to the media, they'll tell you that police are hunting down black men and all of this. | ||
| And then at the same time, you're saying Well, we should be able to arm ourselves and protect ourselves from the white supremacists. | ||
| Whoever. | ||
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unidentified
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Whoever it is. | |
| Whoever, yeah. | ||
| I'm doing that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I know. | ||
| But meaning that lawfully and legally, we should be able to take care of ourselves. | ||
| If you believe that the system is so corrupt and the police are so corrupt and there's racists running around everywhere, you're trying to bring the power back to yourself. | ||
| To me, that's very empowering, yet somehow this seemingly is lost when this conversation hits the mainstream. | ||
| Amazing! | ||
| I don't understand it. | ||
| It's like, in one breath, you're talking about, let's take the current administration, for instance. | ||
| Like, they'll paint it as this, the most vicious and vile thing on the planet, and then it's like, well, then let's give the same guns that you have for your own self-reliance that you would use to protect yourself against this monster that you said existed, and let's give it to them, and then place your entire reliance with respect to your safety on the same people you're telling that I should be scared of. | ||
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unidentified
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They're horrible, give them your weapons. | |
| What? | ||
| It's mind-blowing, right? | ||
| And so what it does though, it exposes this notion that there's an absence of ability to, I don't want to say ability, or people just choosing not to critically think. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And we're at a point now where we have access, and I tell people, it's like, it amazes me some of the questions that I get. | ||
| And it's like, You literally have a device that gives you access to all of the information in the world. | ||
| It's in your pocket! | ||
| And in the case of my overabundance ass, I have two of them, right? | ||
| And it's like, it takes care of... You carry two phones? | ||
| I assume you have like eight guns on you at all times. | ||
| There's a rifle somewhere or something, right? | ||
| And it's amazing how when we have such access to so much information, we've become so lazy at reaching for it. | ||
| It was almost like back in the day when we didn't have this access, we were more adamant about searching and seeking it out and critically thinking about things. | ||
| It's almost we've become too fast for our own good, right? | ||
| So the obsession now is instant information, instant information, regardless of whether | ||
| or not the information is of any use or good, or if it's even correct. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And so, I hate it, because, you know, I've blogged, I've done all of those things, and | ||
| I actually get people who get mad at me when I don't jump on a certain issue quick enough. | ||
| And when I say quick enough within 30 seconds— Right, the second it's breaking. | ||
| I'll see that sometimes. | ||
| Something goes down in the news, and literally two minutes go by, or I'm at dinner, and I wasn't looking at my phone, and then I'll get a slew of tweets. | ||
| People, wow, see? | ||
| You didn't comment on that. | ||
| You must be in on it. | ||
| And God forbid it involves a black person, and there's a gun within 10 miles. | ||
| I have to jump on it. | ||
| You know, and there are some cases I understand. | ||
| There are some people who do, who are just now getting into this, who are just now getting into firearms, and they are black, right? | ||
| And, you know, they look to me for understanding and direction, because I've been doing this for so long. | ||
| So that I understand. | ||
| But other people, it's just this constant desire to be like, aha! | ||
| I got you! | ||
| I knew you were a coon! | ||
| Kind of deal, right? | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| Give me 30 seconds to even read the article you just sent me 10 seconds ago. | ||
| And then not to mention, there's a thing called work that I do, so I'm still doing that as well. | ||
| So I'm juggling a lot of things. | ||
| I don't have to tell you, you probably have to read 10 more articles to even ascertain anything close to the truth. | ||
| Bingo. | ||
| And that's the one thing that I think a lot of people don't do. | ||
| And I almost tweeted that the other day. | ||
| I go, you know, it's very dangerous to read headlines, especially in the day and age of clickbait titles. | ||
| To just read headlines and then make an opinion based off of that, or think you know or understand what happened in a particular story. | ||
| Because there are so many articles that I've read about me and what I've said, where the headlines said one thing, and to cover their asses, within the article, they'll clarify exactly what it is that I said. | ||
| But they're banking on the idea that people are just going to read the headlines and then run with that. | ||
| And so it ends up making a fool of people. | ||
| What's your personal policy on that, about how to respond to that? | ||
| Do you go all in on the fight? | ||
| Do you ignore it? | ||
| Because this has happened to me a lot. | ||
| Just in the last week, Daily Beast said I was an alt-right cheerleader. | ||
| Now correct me if I'm wrong, you're black? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| How am I doing for an alt-right cheerleader? | ||
| You suck. | ||
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unidentified
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Now, well, I mean, but this is the level of stupidity. | |
| But then it's about how much time do you want to invest in defending yourself? | ||
| And by doing that defense, do you just add intensity to the people going, ah, see, we can get him to defend himself. | ||
| And then before you know it, your whole life is dedicated to defending yourself from fake attacks rather than doing the work that you care about. | ||
| Well, two things. | ||
| One, they do it to you because you're dangerous. | ||
| You're dangerous not because you agree with me in certain issues. | ||
| You're dangerous in the fact that you're just simply willing to talk to me. | ||
| So, for instance, the same thing happened when I did the interview with Killer Mike, right? | ||
| They jumped all over him. | ||
| Not because of what he said, but just because he sat down and had the conversation with me. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Half the time they don't even listen. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| That's interesting you pointed out, because I was talking to my friend, I'm like, how can anyone watch this interview and not walk away with saying, you know what, that was a great conversation by two people who don't agree on everything, but there's some things we agree on. | ||
| He's like, because they didn't watch it. | ||
| And I was like, what do you mean? | ||
| It's like I had this weird blonde moment, right? | ||
| I'm like, what do you mean? | ||
| He's like, they didn't watch it. | ||
| He's like, they don't actually watch the video. | ||
| They just read the title and then assume they know what happened in the video and then make their opinion from there. | ||
| And I'm like, damn, you're right. | ||
| I hate going down the weeds with too much of this, because it feels like we're just responding to all of the craziness. | ||
| But even in the YouTube ecosystem, when we put videos up, sometimes within 10 seconds, there's 100 comments. | ||
| That was an hour long video. | ||
| I don't know how the hell, I want that time machine because I would be a lot more productive. | ||
| But it's always the haters that do it. | ||
| That's why I want to bring it up. | ||
| Because then that hate is the thing that's always leading us. | ||
| And then I think that brings it back to where you started a moment ago, which is that we're in this polarized thing. | ||
| And it's because the haters are sort of paving the road and everyone else is just going down the road. | ||
| I think a few of us are actually trying to pave a better road that more of us can get on. | ||
| The interesting thing about the discourse the way it is now, right? | ||
| And so, our politics have become our entertainment. | ||
| That's the dangerous aspect, right? | ||
| So, if it's not vitriolic, if it's not snarky, if it's not any of those things, people don't pay attention to it. | ||
| And I'm the biggest advocate of like, all right, look, if you don't agree with me on something, you don't have to be an ass about it, right? | ||
| Now, can I be snarky? | ||
| Hell yeah! | ||
| You know, I can absolutely be snarky. | ||
| But what I try to do to respond to your initial question when you ask me, like, how do I go all in? | ||
| Do I respond? | ||
| So like for instance on Twitter, what I've kind of held myself back to doing now | ||
| is if I can tell that the person is literally seeking out an answer or a response, | ||
| I'm gonna give them that same energy in terms of okay, no, let's have that conversation, right? | ||
| Because there was a point in time where everything I responded to, | ||
| I would respond to it through the lens of just being this snarky asshole, you know what I mean? | ||
| And yeah, sure, was I entertaining myself? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But then I had to ask myself, was I really moving the conversation and the dialogue along? | ||
| Even though it is Twitter, right? | ||
| It's Twitter, it's a dumpster fire, right? | ||
| But when I started-- | ||
| It has some importance. | ||
|
unidentified
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It does. | |
| That's just the truth. | ||
| That's why it keeps coming up in so many of these conversations. | ||
| You've got high-level people with great minds that are open and engaging that are still involved in the stupidity of that. | ||
| So I always feel guilty when I bring it up with a guest. | ||
| I'm always like, I don't want to touch that thing again. | ||
| And then on the other hand, we all know it's real. | ||
| So it just is whether we want it to be or not. | ||
| Like you said, whether we like it or not, it's the medium of expression right now. | ||
| And so we have to either adapt or die. | ||
| But, you know, it's—I try to be what it is—I try to be the opposite of what I complain about. | ||
| At least I try, in terms of, like, sometimes I'll see snarky messages, and then I'll respond by trying to be reasonable. | ||
| I'll say, OK, I get it. | ||
| You don't like me. | ||
| But answer this question for me. | ||
| And I try to move the dialogue along. | ||
| You know what ends up happening? | ||
| Tweet gets deleted. | ||
| Almost every single time. | ||
| The second you shed a little light on it, rats scatter. | ||
| Before we dive too much into your past, what is the thing that they're criticizing you most for? | ||
| You come across to me as a pretty rational, decent, open guy. | ||
| You're trying to empower yourself. | ||
| Okay, so what is it that they're always going after you? | ||
| Is it that thing that a black man shouldn't be for guns? | ||
| I mean, is it that simply stupid? | ||
| So, I'm not gonna be so naive as to assume it's simply just because I'm black and I'm into guns. | ||
| The NRA thing holds, that's part of it. | ||
| That's a big part of it. | ||
| It's just aligning myself with an organization that they see as being a racist organization that hates black people. | ||
| Okay, we're gonna talk plenty about the NRA. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's that element of it. | ||
| But then there is also this idea that, being a young black man, that I'm supposed to run from guns because of the projected image that we've all had forced down our throats with respect to black men and firearms in this country for decades. | ||
| You know, black man with a gun, he's a thug, he's a drug dealer, he's a gangbanger. | ||
| Period. | ||
| So now, when I Young, attorney, educated, open-minded, you know, with respect to different issues. | ||
| And then I'm pushing the narrative of the Second Amendment. | ||
| It sets off an explosive level of cognitive dissonance in people who have what—I love this quote, and I believe it was Bush who said it—this soft bigotry of lowered expectation. | ||
| Right? | ||
|
unidentified
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And they hate it. | |
| They hate it the same way they hate you now, because you can't control someone who's willing to think independently, outside of what is stereotypically expected of you, right? | ||
| And that's where the labels come in. | ||
| So it's like, you know, you're progressive, you're liberal, you know, so forth and so on, but you still have that ability to step outside of that and say, you know what, let me—let me—okay, I can see that perspective. | ||
| That's dangerous for people who want to control people. | ||
| So, when I want to control the way you think, the way you see yourself, I cannot allow you to develop an ability to think independently on separate issues, because then I can't control you. | ||
| So, if I say, you know what? | ||
| I can do everything for you. | ||
| Depend on me. | ||
| The last thing I want you to do and understand is, you know what? | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| You mean to tell me I can protect myself? | ||
| You mean to tell me I don't have to depend on calling a cop in order to come save me if someone does try to break into my house? | ||
| Because then I can't control you. | ||
| I can't own your vote. | ||
| Because what the gun has done for me and a lot of people, it serves as a catalyst for the awakening of a lot of people to understand, you know what? | ||
| I can do more for myself than I realize. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And once that, once that spark is set off, then a lot of things you start to realize. | ||
| You know, I don't, you know what, maybe, you know, now that I'm holding myself to a different level of accountability, Maybe I might try to do this on my own. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Doesn't it just feel good? | ||
| I mean, putting aside, I know a lot of people are into facts over feelings these days, right, Shapiro? | ||
| But doesn't that statement right there, that you can do more for yourself, it just feels good, like taking some power back to yourself and going, the government or you, whoever you are, you're not in charge of my life, my responsibility, my livelihood, my family, the rest of it? | ||
| Invigorating feeling in the world. | ||
| And I'm with you. | ||
| I'm all about facts over feelings. | ||
| And I mean it from the standpoint, I don't allow my feelings to dictate the facts. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I do think feelings are necessary, right? | ||
| Because in the absence of them, we just become cold, calculated creatures, right? | ||
| And we are still human. | ||
| We are human. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| For now, at least. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So, you know, when I talk about the issue of firearms, I do I was having a discussion with a lady not too long ago about just general firearm issues with respect to her son, right, who's a young black man. | ||
| And I asked her, you know, like, are you fearful of the idea of him carrying a gun and so forth and so on. | ||
| And I have to bring myself back when I'm having a discussion with someone like that, because I don't have kids. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So yeah, am I a godfather? | ||
| Yeah, and I love her, but it's not the same for a woman who has a son. | ||
| So I have to be cognizant of that and understand what goes into that when she's thinking about whether or not she's okay with him owning a firearm. | ||
| And then on top of that, having this idea that her son is more likely to get killed by a cop because he has a gun on him versus when he doesn't, you know? | ||
| And that's where the feeling component comes in, where it's necessary. | ||
| I think if you can't sympathize with that, then it makes you dismissive. | ||
| And so then that person can't relate to you, then we can't have that conversation. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And that comes from personal experience for you. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Because when I was reading your bio there, I mean, there's some really interesting stuff about how you evolved sort of politically and personally, but when you started getting into guns, you kind of had to hide it from your mom even. | ||
| Everyone actually. | ||
| Just tell me a little bit about growing up and then sort of your politics and then how do we get so into guns? | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| So I grew up largely a closet anti-gunner. | ||
| I didn't realize I was anti-gun until there was one present, right? | ||
| I wasn't kind of rabidly running out screaming, "I hate guns!" or anything like that. | ||
| But when a woman was present, I remember this one moment when I was in college, I had a | ||
| roommate, one of their friends brought a gun over. | ||
| I was like, "You need to get the hell out of my apartment." | ||
| And I had a good friend of mine who randomly just asked me, "Hey, do you want to go to | ||
| Never even thought about it. | ||
| Never even crossed my mind, which is how I know a lot of times I can decipher based on certain comments, whether or not somebody is actually commenting from a place of ignorance or place of understanding. | ||
| Because I was that guy. | ||
| Never even thought about going to a range, never thought about shooting a gun, but could tell you all the opinions in the world why I didn't like it. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And so, when I hear that rhetoric now, I can usually point it out and I'm like, you've never shot before. | ||
| You've never even held a gun before. | ||
| And so, from that perspective, we went to the gun range and I shot for the first time. | ||
| And I was hooked. | ||
| Now, I was hooked, not from a political standpoint, not even from an empowering, oh my god, I can protect myself now standpoint. | ||
| It was just pure fascination with the mechanics, the physics, all of it. | ||
| I'm a very curious mind, so for me it was like, I kind of like this. | ||
| The idea that I'm launching a projectile faster than the speed of sound at a little target, like a hundred yards away, that was awesome to me. | ||
| So first shot, you were hooked? | ||
| First shot, terrified. | ||
| The second shot also. | ||
|
unidentified
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So it was like love at second shot, right? | |
| So from that perspective, so after that, I just, I followed that rabbit all the way down the hole. | ||
| But it was, like I said, it was more from a scientific, mechanical understanding of it. | ||
| Then, as time went on, then I started looking at it from a more intellectual, Second Amendment political activist standpoint. | ||
| And then I started, then the lawyer mind kicked in. | ||
| And I started looking, and I'm like, I'm hearing something. | ||
| Because during the time period, that particular time period, we had a couple of pretty big mass shootings that happened. | ||
| And so I started paying attention. | ||
| So now I'm paying attention more to this. | ||
| It's kind of like when you're thinking about buying a car, and you never see it on the road, and once you start thinking about buying it, you see it everywhere. | ||
| That's pretty much what happened now. | ||
| So I'm like, I'm hearing the conversation about guns everywhere now. | ||
| And I'm like, none of this is making any sense logically. | ||
| Like, what people are proposing, it doesn't, it was so pure, it wasn't like an agenda drum, it was like, this doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| It's like, a window, like a sticker on a window's not gonna stop somebody from bringing a gun in. | ||
| They're saying that it's illegal. | ||
| You mean the sign that says no firearms? | ||
| Yeah, like that. | ||
| You mean the bad guy's not gonna read the sign and be like, ooh. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Probably go to the other place. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, that's kinda when I started jumping into the more activist, advocate side of things, with respect to the Second Amendment. | ||
| Yeah, but when you first got guns, you were literally hiding them, weren't you? | ||
|
unidentified
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I was. | |
| From your mom, because... Because she was very much... I mean, she was a single-parent mom raising a black son. | ||
| She wanted to thwart every stereotype on the planet, right? | ||
| My mom overcompensated with me tremendously. | ||
| Because she understood, in her mind, the limitations that come with being a woman raising a man by herself. | ||
| So she overcompensated. | ||
| So where it's like, you usually typically have, like, mama's boys who are just kind of like, mom does everything for me. | ||
| She can do shit for me. | ||
| She was just like, go wash your own clothes. | ||
| Come here, go do shit. | ||
| Like, everything she made me. | ||
| And at the time, I just thought she was just being A mean mom, right? | ||
| Not realizing, you know, it was her overcompensating from the standpoint of, like, I gotta make this dude, I gotta raise a man. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Right? | ||
| And so, but, so she was trying to buck, so I knew once I started getting into guns, no, no, no, no, because the perception was black man with gun, gangbanger, right? | ||
| And, you know, she had some insecurities in that. | ||
| She's like, you know, like, there's gonna come a point where I'm not gonna be able to control this kid. | ||
| I don't know what he's going to be doing. | ||
| And so I didn't want to terrify her and make her think that I was living some nefarious lifestyle. | ||
| It was almost in a way to protect her more than was to hide it for my sake because I didn't want her to feel like she failed as a mother. | ||
| And so I knew if she saw the AK-47 that I had hidden under my bed, in her mind, she knows nothing about guns. | ||
| All she knows is what she sees in the media. | ||
| And we all, like we touched upon before, that imagery is not positive. | ||
| So, she comes home, sees AK-47 in the bed, she's like, oh my god, my son is a gangbanger. | ||
| First you said under the bed, now you said in the bed. | ||
| Is there anything you want to tell me here? | ||
| We'll talk about that later. | ||
|
unidentified
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The irony behind it is it's kind of embarrassing because we're both basketball fans. | |
| I used to sleep with my basketball. | ||
| Oh yeah? | ||
| Oh man, yeah. | ||
| Ball was life. | ||
| That was everything. | ||
| Now... You still got any skills? | ||
| I got a little something something. | ||
| I got a little something something. | ||
| I'm actually working on trying to, for the next NRA annual meetings, put together like a 2A charity basketball event. | ||
| If you're down. | ||
| Can I get in on that? | ||
| Yeah, let's do it. | ||
| Alright, let's do it. | ||
| I've never slept with my guns down. | ||
| That was an odd Freudian slip. | ||
| I know, right? | ||
| Okay, so from that point, when you started getting okay with this and now you're exploring it, as you said, intellectually, how long before you were really an advocate for this stuff? | ||
| Because you always sort of wanted to fight for something. | ||
| That seems to be a theme with you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what I wanted to do. | ||
| I wanted to be an advocate. | ||
| I wanted to be in the courtroom defending people. | ||
| That was my goal, even to the detriment of my grades. | ||
| I focused more on my mock trial stuff when I was in law school than I did my actual work, like school-wise, right? | ||
| And I liked being the voice for people. | ||
| I like being able to speak to people who can articulate certain things the way that maybe I can. | ||
| And I never saw this going the way that it did, but I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do. | ||
| And for me, with the gun thing, I remember being in, like, I'd be in, like, class in law school, and the way that, like, the seats are staggered, they're like stadium seats, right? | ||
| So, if I'm on my computer and you're behind me, you can see what I'm doing on my computer. | ||
| And, like, I'd be in class and, like, I'm researching guns and stuff like that, right? | ||
| And, yeah, oh, man, oh, dude, like, people, and the thing is, a lot of things that were being said about me, I didn't even know about until later on. | ||
| People were concerned. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Like, really, like, yo, it's like, yo, what's going on, dude? | ||
| Yeah, he's like, he's great, he's not doing anything crazy, he's not, you know. | ||
| And look, I get it. | ||
| If you don't, if you're not into that kind of thing, and you don't follow it, the idea of being passionate about something you perceive to be a tool that's used for killing people and only killing people, it's going to seem a little odd to you. | ||
| But, because I came to it so naturally, so organically, without any of that, it just made sense in my mind. | ||
| I was so unapologetic about it once I got over being apologetic about it that I didn't | ||
| push it in people's faces. | ||
| But there was even a time—like, that's how my Instagram got started, was me separating. | ||
| So the people who followed me up until that point—I had a girlfriend at the time—was | ||
| like, "You know, I get a lot of questions from people. | ||
| You think you can kind of tone down the gun stuff a little bit?" | ||
| And it was kind of an innocent thing. | ||
| But inevitably, I just said, "You know what? | ||
| Forget it. | ||
| I'm just going to set up a whole other page, and I'm just going to do all the gun stuff I want to do on that page. | ||
| And then now that's taken over. | ||
| I don't even use the other one. | ||
| I don't even know if I remember the password. | ||
| And so from there, that's where things really started taking off. | ||
| And then when I started—because I started doing gun reviews. | ||
| And so then from there, when I got into the political component of it, then I started doing my commentary. | ||
| Alright, so let's do this. | ||
| I want to do Gun 101 with you. | ||
| All the things that we should know about guns. | ||
| And then I want to do the most common misconceptions about guns. | ||
| Because I think part of the issue right now is every time something happens, Every time there's a shooting, half the people don't know anything about guns on one hand, half the people then give you all of those misconceptions. | ||
| It gets it confusing for everybody and even the people who I generally trust, I sense don't know exactly what they're saying. | ||
| So I want to do a video with you right now where every time one of these incidences happen, And someone starts asking me this, asking me that. | ||
| I wanna go, I've got the thing that I can point you to with the answers. | ||
| So let's do gun 101. | ||
| What do we need to know about guns? | ||
| First and foremost, AR does not stand for assault rifle. | ||
| So when I say AR-15, that's not assault rifle. | ||
| It does not mean assault rifle. | ||
| An assault rifle is a gun that is fully automatic. | ||
| That means I pull the trigger, I hold it back, and it expends all of the ammunition in the magazine. | ||
| So that's Jesse Ventura in Predator. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| Okay, that's a great gun. | ||
| Yeah, love that gun. | ||
| Not gonna argue about that. | ||
| Not gonna say I wouldn't mind owning it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, so that's automatic. | |
| You're just holding it down and then it's gone. | ||
| Holding it down and it will fire every round subsequently until it's completely out. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And does so at a very high rate of speed, generally speaking. | ||
| Semi-automatic, so now there's been this thing where people conflate this or use semi-automatic as a kind of a hyperbolic way of Characterizing guns as death-killing machines, right? | ||
| Virtually every modern gun is semi-automatic, and what that means is one press of the trigger, you get one bullet, versus holding the trigger down once and getting all of the bullets. | ||
| Okay, so that's a great distinction right there, because often when this happens, you see people saying we have to ban semi-automatics. | ||
| It's semi-automatic! | ||
| That's virtually every modern gun. | ||
| Yeah, it's just, so it's not, because all the, the only difference between that and a A fully automatic. | ||
| Well, what's one that you're just loading one bullet in? | ||
| Okay, so that would be a bolt-action. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| So there's fully automatic, semi-automatic, and bolt-action. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| Bolt-action is more aligned to like hunting, right? | ||
| Or high precision shooting. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And it's a bolt because it allows you to build a gun up in such a way where it's the tighter constraints within a gun and it allows you to be more accurate. | ||
| Okay, so you would say then that when all of these people come out and say we have to ban semi-automatics, that they are actually just flat-out confused, or intentionally conflating or obfuscating what the truth is related to them. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| And so it's either they're confused, ignorant, or they're doing it purposefully, like you just stated. | ||
| Okay, so let's do some NRA stuff while we're doing this. | ||
| What is the NRA stance on automatics, just being able to hold and shoot? | ||
| I mean, the way it's currently regulated is the way it stands. | ||
| Right now, in order to get an automatic gun, there's a certain process you have to go through in order to get them. | ||
| And that it's been that way for a very long time now. | ||
| And that it exists as it does now. | ||
| And that's essentially where the stance is with respect to fully automatic guns. | ||
| What are people using fully automatic guns for? | ||
| Because I think this is where you'll hear people go, well, no one needs an automatic to hunt. | ||
| Well, see, here's the thing, though. | ||
| It's the idea of putting it under the guise of needing, right? | ||
| Name another right where we use that same standard. | ||
| You know, it begs the question. | ||
| And so, it's like, okay, you have a fully automatic gun, and you have semi-automatic guns, you have bolt action. | ||
| There are different reasons why you would want each of these guns. | ||
| Now, I can delve into that, but then that starts getting into the very nerdy side of firearm ownership, where the enthusiast aspect of that comes into it, is understanding tactically why you would want certain things. | ||
| And so, for me, I'm not personally—I don't have a problem with people owning fully automatic guns, personally. | ||
| I just don't see that as a significant danger above Beyoncé owning a nuclear suitcase. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So, people tried to make that absurd argument to me before. | ||
| It's like, well, then, won't you be allowed—well, that's because there's a cost-benefit ratio that doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That you just—that's inherently self-destruction. | ||
| So how is that protecting you in any way from the very thing that you're supposed to be protecting yourself against? | ||
| Do you think there should be a higher threshold to be able to get an automatic than some of the other weapons you're talking about? | ||
| Me personally, threshold in what respect? | ||
| In terms of... Either higher graded background checks or references. | ||
| So let's talk about background checks for a minute. | ||
| So there's this idea and this notion that we don't have background checks for our guns. | ||
| We do. | ||
| And the funny thing is, we in the gun community have become a victim of technology. | ||
| And what I mean by that is people think that just because I can go into a gun store, if I really wanted to, I can go into a gun store right now, buy a gun within two minutes. | ||
| Just like that. | ||
| You can. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you've done all of the background stuff. | ||
| See, that's the thing though. | ||
| I'm still undergoing the same processes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, I go into a store, I find a gun. | ||
| I like this gun. | ||
| I say I want to buy this gun. | ||
| I fill out the form 4473, which asks me a series of questions. | ||
| Then they take that information and they submit it to the FBI database and they do a background check. | ||
| But it happens instantly because technology. | ||
| Right? | ||
| It's interesting because there's a lot of people who feel like I should undergo some type of CIA investigation before I buy a gun. | ||
| The same people who also hate the government. | ||
| Exactly, right? | ||
| So, the instant aspect of the background check causes people who don't know very much about the process to think that there isn't one. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Just because I can buy the gun easily doesn't mean it was done thoroughly. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I underwent the background check. | ||
| There's a system there. | ||
| They checked it against the system. | ||
| If I don't have any felonies or anything that prevents me from owning that firearm, I'm allowed to buy the gun. | ||
| Okay, so when people say there are no background checks, or the background checks aren't tight enough, or however you want to extrapolate that, is there any credence to any of that? | ||
| So now let's talk, so I think what you're kind of going into is universal background checks, right? | ||
| So when they say universal background, now they do conflate these terminologies. | ||
| Universal background check is a very specific statement. | ||
| It's not like saying Coke. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| Because people hear universal background checks and all they hear is the background check part. | ||
| That universal means something. | ||
| And what that means is it's a requirement that on every single transaction you have to undergo a background check, even private transactions. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So right now in California, if I had a gun, right, I can bring a gun into California, I just can't carry it. | ||
| But you're like, hey, you know what, Collins? | ||
| I like that gun you have. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| I want to buy it from you. | ||
| In California, I can't sell it to you, right? | ||
| Now, here's what I can do. | ||
| I can say, all right, cool. | ||
| When I get back to Texas, I'll transfer the gun to a gun store here in California, if it's on the specific list that allows you to actually own that gun. | ||
| Right, because California has a stricter list. | ||
| Exactly, yeah. | ||
| And then you would have to go to the gun store and then buy it, right? | ||
| Now, let's say I decided to give you the gun anyway. | ||
| Privately. | ||
| Right now. | ||
| In this room. | ||
| No one else is here but you and I. And I sell you the gun. | ||
| You want me to show the cameras? | ||
| I don't have any plans on going to jail. | ||
| And I sell you the gun. | ||
| And then let's say you have the gun. | ||
| What is there to check against? | ||
| What database is there to check against to determine whether or not you got a background check for that gun? | ||
| I just completed two issues right now. | ||
| Well, if we did it on the DL, there's no way. | ||
| There's no way. | ||
| And that's what the whole concept of the universal background check is. | ||
| It is to require a background check for every private transaction. | ||
| Now, legally right now I can't do it, but like in Texas, I can sell a gun to a friend, and as long as I know he's not a prohibited person, and I know he's not a felon, I can sell him that gun. | ||
| No problems. | ||
| That's completely legal. | ||
| What the universal background check idea suggests is he should be required to undergo a background check before I can sell him that gun. | ||
| That would mean he and I would have to go to a gun store and undergo a background check, then he can go and buy the gun from me. | ||
| So is the problem with the way it is currently, say, in Texas, the way you're describing, that you just would not know potentially enough information about the person you were selling it to? | ||
| Yes, that's a potential, absolutely. | ||
| And so the reason why I'm against the universal background check is because there is no other way to enforce it but for a national gun registry. | ||
| Because otherwise, you have nothing to check it against. | ||
| To say, if a cop walks down the street and sees you have a gun, he's like, did you get a background check for that gun? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How is he going to prove otherwise, unless there's a national registry? | ||
| And the answer is, OK, fine. | ||
| Well, then let's have a national registry. | ||
| No. | ||
| Because we've seen time and time again that when the governments have a national registry for firearms, they subsequently use it to confiscate guns. | ||
| Now, the problem is, when you say that, they try to put the 10-4 hat on you, right? | ||
| Except—because what they envision is, you know, roving truck, black military trucks coming down the street, pulling guns from people's houses. | ||
| No, that's not what happens or how they do it. | ||
| It's constructive. | ||
| And then, when you have potential presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton suggesting we should take up the Australia model, which did that very thing, they used a national gun registration to tell people to say, you know what, you need to turn in your guns. | ||
| It's a voluntary buyback. | ||
| No, it's a mandatory buyback, right? | ||
| And if you don't sell your guns back, guess what? | ||
| You go to jail. | ||
| That's a confiscation. | ||
| It's a constructive confiscation, but a confiscation nonetheless. | ||
| Just because they didn't roll the military trucks down the street and pull them out of your house doesn't mean it isn't confiscation. | ||
| And so that's why I'm adamantly against universal background checks, unless you can demonstrate a way for me for it to be applied in such a way that would not require gun registry, because I do not trust my government not to exploit that registry in their favor. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So how much of this then, because we've talked about it, you said to me right before we started, you're sort of a libertarian. | ||
| I think is exactly what you said. | ||
| I don't want to put words in your mouth. | ||
| How much of this does go back to that states should be able to make the decisions that they see fit? | ||
| I mean, I suspect you probably wouldn't be that thrilled living in California. | ||
| Other than the weather. | ||
| I'm here in California. | ||
| The weather, the women, the food. | ||
|
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You guys have pretty good food in Texas. | |
| Yeah, we do. | ||
| I'm not complaining about that. | ||
| So, see, that's just it too. | ||
| It's like, well, how far do those states' rights go from the standpoint of violating my Second Amendment right? | ||
| I believe in states' rights right up until the point you started violating my constitutional ones. | ||
| And so when you have places like California, which I think I'm being currently violated now, the fact that I can't carry my My God, what is the difference? | ||
| I can take my car with my Texas license and drive it right into California. | ||
| No one has a problem with that. | ||
| I can drive up and down these roads and as fast as I want, as recklessly as I want. | ||
| Yeah, that might be illegal, but I can still do it. | ||
| There's that potential to do it. | ||
| But yet, I can't carry the thing that I carry to protect my life with the same license? | ||
| That doesn't make some sense to me. | ||
| Am I in any less danger here than I would be in Texas? | ||
| If anything, I can make the argument that there's more danger for me here and that I don't know the area very well. | ||
| So in a weird way, you're actually making a non-states rights argument here, right? | ||
| Because if you're saying you want the same thing everywhere, that's not a states rights argument. | ||
| It's not, but that's what I'm saying. | ||
| But that's under the guise of me feeling like me not being able to carry is a violation of my constitutional right, right? | ||
| Because states' rights doesn't allow them to violate those constitutional rights. | ||
| And that's the argument I'm making. | ||
| Now, it's difficult because then you start talking about the idea of having a uniform concealed carry platform, right? | ||
| One license allows you to carry a gun everywhere, right? | ||
| Then you start getting into weeds about, okay, well, that's violating states' rights. | ||
| That's only if you don't see my ability to carry a firearm as a, sorry, my ability to carry a firearm as a violation of my constitutional rights. | ||
| Right, so it's an interesting philosophical place to talk, because it's like, it just depends where you start. | ||
| Because even though I'm definitely a states' rights guy, I hear what you say there, and then on the other hand, as a states' rights guy, to me, if a state wants to have stricter laws, And you're a big gun guy, then you actually are allowed to leave. | ||
| As I would say for virtually every other situation, it's kind of shitty. | ||
| It doesn't feel great to have to leave a place that you want to be at, but if they're doing things as part of their state experiment that you don't like, well, it's on you to get going. | ||
| Yeah, but if that same state creates a law that violates my right to privacy... | ||
| Right, well we have constitutional rights that's superseded. | ||
| So I get the patriarchy. | ||
| Are we missing anything else on the technical front? | ||
|
unidentified
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front we did that recalls the c_e_o_ uh... | |
| from a chemical standard yet Yeah, just from the mechanical standpoint, or just any of the language that we use related to this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay, so yeah, so then of course there's, some people can say it's trivial, some people say it's not. | ||
| So, the magazine versus clip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The general term, actually it's called a magazine. | ||
| A clip is an actual thing, it's just different from a magazine. | ||
| That's... | ||
| Kind of slightly trivial, but it does typically kind of expose people who don't really know much about guns. | ||
| When you say clip versus magazine, because the proper terminology would be magazine. | ||
| As far as any other mechanical components. | ||
| So what do I need to know about the magazine? | ||
| Well, that's just terminology. | ||
| It is semantics, right? | ||
| I don't always go about correcting people because I feel like it just creates, it kind of makes me look like an ass to a degree. | ||
| No, no, no, but that's why we're doing this. | ||
| I want to clean somebody's stuff up. | ||
| The biggest thing is just the assault weapon thing, right? | ||
| Because the AR-15 is a civilian weapon. | ||
| It's designated—the biggest difference between an AR-15 and an assault rifle is that the assault rifle is fully automatic, and the AR-15 isn't. | ||
| That's the biggest distinction between the two. | ||
| Of course, then you can make the argument, well, that's a very minor distinction, you know. | ||
| There are a lot of people who make that argument. | ||
| But I don't look at the AR-15 any differently than I look at the handgun, in that sense. | ||
| Okay, so every time when one of these happens and we hear the AR-15 is a weapon of war... So are handguns. | ||
| You would basically put the AR-15 and the handgun in the same category as pulling once, shooting once. | ||
| So that would not be categorized as a weapon of war, in your estimation. | ||
| That terminology is designed to manipulate the emotions of people who don't know anything about guns. | ||
| So when you hear, if you don't know anything about firearms and you hear, he's the weapon of war. | ||
| Technically speaking, all guns are weapons of war, right? | ||
| Swords can be weapons of war. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So, but, what that does mentally, like, they understand language very well. | ||
| They like, they're like not even human. | ||
| But in terms of the, I call it the anti-gun side of things, they understand the use of language very well. | ||
| And they confuse it purposely. | ||
| So when you hear someone who doesn't know anything about firearms, think about it, like, if I'm already kind of I'm a little scared of firearms, and then I hear he used a weapon of war. | ||
| What image comes up in your mind? | ||
| It's Rambo, you know? | ||
| He's running down there, just going crazy. | ||
| And that's exactly what he's doing! | ||
| But he could do the same thing with a handgun. | ||
| And so, the biggest thing that I like to—when I'm having these conversations with people is, you're going to walk away with two points of—two trains of thought. | ||
| I'm either going to get you to admit you just want to ban all guns, or you can see my perspective. | ||
| Because if you're willing to say, you know what, we need to get rid of all the assault weapons, as they understand them to be, which is essentially AR-15s. | ||
| But now it's actually become even more broader, like we need to get rid of all semi-automatic weapons, right? | ||
| And that's virtually every modern gun. | ||
| So let's say they want to ban AR-15s. | ||
| AR-15s, the rifles aren't even used. | ||
| The percentage that rifles are used in actual shootings is so low and marginal, it's unreal. | ||
| So then why are we focusing on that? | ||
| But, okay. | ||
| So then what are most shootings? | ||
| They're handguns, right? | ||
| So if we got rid of that, and we got rid of AR-15s, and then we have another shooting that happened, because our most deadly school mass shooting was Virginia Tech, and he used a handgun. | ||
| So then what happens if that happens again? | ||
| So now what are you going to ban? | ||
| You're going to ban handgun? | ||
| And that's when you're stuck having to confront the fact that, OK, either you really just want to ban all guns, or you understand that the distinction is irrelevant. | ||
| Right? | ||
| We've got to get to the absolute point of issue in why these things are happening. | ||
| And focusing on the gun is doing a disservice to the conversation. | ||
| It sounds like I'm just utilizing—I'm using the bigger issue as a scapegoat. | ||
| But in reality, if you really sit down and think about it, right, we have over 300, close to 400 million guns in this country. | ||
| They're not going anywhere. | ||
| And understanding that, you've got to then sit down and say to yourself, all right, if we're going to try to fix this issue of gun violence, or just violence in general, we've got to get to the root of the issue of why people are doing it. | ||
| And then, understanding that, staying within the context of reality, we've got to understand, well, in the process, I still have to protect myself. | ||
| And because people are still going to be able to get their hands on guns, whether they're legal or not, and use them to commit crimes and to threaten people's lives, I've got to be put in a situation to defend against that. | ||
| So you can ban all the AR-15s you want, doesn't mean it's going to stop somebody from getting one on the black market. | ||
| So now, yes, I don't run from the fact that the AR-15 is a more powerful platform. | ||
| That I agree with. | ||
| And I don't run from that. | ||
| There are going to be people who are going to be mad at me for saying that. | ||
| But the reason why I don't run from it is because that's the very reason why I want an AR-15. | ||
| When it comes to defending my life, I don't want it to be a fair fight. | ||
| Period. | ||
| I don't want to have to confront someone with an AR-15 with a handgun if I don't have to. | ||
| If you come in my house, I'm not grabbing a handgun. | ||
| I'm grabbing an AR-15. | ||
| See, we have this strange thing. | ||
| It's like when people will say, okay, well, the Second Amendment says the right to bear arms, and then they'll put up a picture of the type of arms that existed way back when, and it's like, well, then we should have the right to that, because that's what they were talking about. | ||
| And it's like, this is so disingenuous. | ||
| It's very disingenuous. | ||
| It's like, they were also talking about why you should be able to form a militia, and it's like, The thing that we'd be fighting against now has a lot more power, and it doesn't mean that just because you have some guns, you're gonna be able to stop the guys in the black trucks, as you talked about earlier, but maybe you could defend yourself a little bit longer, and who knows what happens with a little bit of time. | ||
| I mean, if we're gonna be real with it, they're still fighting in Afghanistan, and those guys over there are just using AK-47s. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So, like, we can't—just because we're going to lose doesn't mean we just lie down and do it, you know? | ||
| And the whole notion of, like—ah, man, I just lost my train of thought. | ||
| This idea of owning firearms to combat the government, it's—and they think it's preposterous. | ||
| But I'm like, ask the people in Venezuela. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's going on there? | |
| And again, these are now the people, at least in this current moment, the people who say that the government is run by Orange Hitler. | ||
| Man, it really, well, this is a good spot to, I think, change some minds. | ||
| And as I said to you before we sat down, I've never considered myself a gun person per se. | ||
| I'm interested, I'm always interested in talking about these things. | ||
| But I do find myself now more pro-gun. | ||
| It's probably not even the right phrase to say. | ||
| than I've ever been in my life. | ||
| But for me, it has more to do with that I'm really understanding what rights are | ||
| in a much clearer way, and what I want the government to do and not to do. | ||
| And once you understand that, then, you know, it's tough. | ||
| It's tough to take other positions. | ||
| It is. | ||
| So is there anything to you that, when they always say sensible gun control, and I'll always see the pro-gun people will say, well, the people that always say that just don't know what they're talking about. | ||
| Now I sense you're probably in that spot, because you were just saying what they do with language. | ||
| Yeah, so sensible gun control. | ||
| Most of the time when people say that, they actually advocate things we already have. | ||
| So, background checks. | ||
| Background checks, things of that nature, right? | ||
| And then you have other languages, like the gun show loophole. | ||
| Yeah, let's talk about that. | ||
| That's not a loophole. | ||
| All that is is a private transaction. | ||
| That's all that is, and it's just happening, it just so happens to happen at a gun show. | ||
| If you bought a gun from an actual dealer at a gun show, you still have to undergo a background check. | ||
| So when they say loophole, what they're saying is that if you are at a gun show, you're not a dealer, you can actually sell that gun at the... If one, the person's not a prohibited possessor, you're from the same state, then yes. | ||
| If there's nothing that precludes them from owning a firearm legally, I can sell them a gun at a gun show. | ||
| So the only slippery part of that is what we talked about earlier, which is you just may not know all the information about that person. | ||
| So there is, I guess there's a little bit of a gray area in that one, is that a fair? | ||
| In terms of the background? | ||
| Yeah, that you're sort of taking somebody's word for it at that point, right? | ||
| Like if you just meet somebody that day and they're like, I wanna buy that gun, and you say to them, you ask them all the appropriate questions, they could be lying to you, right? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But that's just. | ||
| Yeah, but then that, so then, The response that they have to that is a universal background check. | ||
| But as I pointed out, how do you enforce it without a national registry? | ||
| And then with that national registry, even with the national registry, it doesn't stop anything. | ||
| Right? | ||
| We tend to go down this road of just wanting to do things to make ourselves feel better. | ||
| But in reality, name one mass shooting that would have been prevented with a universal background check. | ||
| Not one. | ||
| Because even the people who had guns who weren't supposed to have them, they got them illegally. | ||
| Right? | ||
| It wasn't because it wasn't a universal background check that stopped them from getting it. | ||
| No, it wasn't. | ||
| So I have to ask the question, I go, then why are we doing this other than just to make ourselves feel better? | ||
| Because it's literally doing nothing. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| And so that's why, like the person who bought and sold a gun privately at a gun show could on that, in the parking lot of the gun show. | ||
| Could have done it at their house before going to the gun show. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But what it does is when you frame it within the context of the gun show loophole, | ||
| it makes it seem like it's this bizarre where everyone comes there together | ||
| and sells illegal guns, right? | ||
| That's the image that's created in minds. | ||
| Right, like it's barter town. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Like they feed on the ignorance of people, right? | ||
| Because like, not everybody knows that much about guns. | ||
| It's like, it's one of those things, like I don't know a lot about a lot of other things | ||
| that people may know a lot about, right? | ||
| So if you tell me something and I'm not really researched and schooled on that issue, | ||
| you can get me to believe some pretty kooky stuff. | ||
| Yeah, and that's what I'm talking about. | ||
| I mean, that's what you consistently see every time we talk about this. | ||
| And you know, there's this other piece of it where it's like, every time a shooting happens, you know, there's this pylon where now we should talk about it. | ||
| And then there's this other part of us where it's because we go from one crisis to another, that there's never really, it seems to me at this point, we never really have time to really ever fully unpack any of these things. | ||
| I think there's moments like this, but on a national level, we're not particularly good at these conversations. | ||
| No, because then what it does is it just turns into a political sparring match. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, right after the last shooting and when Dana Loesch and Rubio were on that CNN town hall, I mean, it was... You mean the gladiatorial fest? | ||
| It was a disaster. | ||
| I mean, it was everything I hate about cable news. | ||
| It was everything I hate about just the quick bites of all of this and flashiness and just who can we take out right now. | ||
| It was a disaster. | ||
| And I said, and I pointed this out, how can we have a real honest conversation when they try to paint pro-gun people as crazy when we say, no, the ultimate goal is to ban guns, but then I can watch a CNN live town hall where Rubio suggests, you do realize banning all semi-automatic guns is essentially banning all guns, and the entire stadium erupts in applause and cheers. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| So then it goes. | ||
| Rubio said exactly what you said. | ||
| And they started cheering. | ||
| Even when confronted with the, because Rubio said, look, you want to ban on some automatic guns, so here, let me educate you really quickly and tell you, that's virtually all guns. | ||
| So even when he corrected them, so it wasn't, they can't claim they were ignorant on it, because he just explained to them, that means banning virtually all guns. | ||
| And they erupted. | ||
| So it goes, okay, so now you have all those pro-gunners told you. | ||
| Right, so we're just gonna go back to our corner, and we're gonna go back to their corner. | ||
| Exactly, and there's no discussion, because while we're trying to be fair, your ultimate goal is to try to ban them all. | ||
| Yeah, there was that moment, I'm sure you remember this, after the Parkland shooting, when they had the big rally, and one of the survivors got up there and said, we're gonna come, what was the line, do you remember the exact line, where she said basically, We're gonna come for the semi-automatics now, but we're gonna come for everything later. | ||
| Something to that effect. | ||
| I'm slightly butchering it, but I thought, wow, now you're flat out saying. | ||
| And you're just giving, you're telling them now. | ||
| So I could see why. | ||
| You know, I see this with all my frustrations with the left all the time. | ||
| It's like, I know they're never gonna stop. | ||
| I've seen it so consistently, and that's why I'm staking out some positions. | ||
| But sometimes it's kinda sucky to have to just be like, well, the people that I'm fighting against, so to speak, they're not dealing in the same world that I'm dealing in. | ||
| And that makes it more important for me to stake out a position. | ||
| But the thing that's most frustrating about it is the way they'll color it in the mainstream media is that we're unreasonable. | ||
| We don't want to move one inch. | ||
| We've dug our heels in. | ||
| All we want is—we don't care about anything. | ||
| And really, what it is is, no, I let you into my house, and now you're trying to take my house from me. | ||
| So get out. | ||
| Because that's essentially what they're saying, is, all right, so they'll say, well, common sense—that's why we hate that word, common sense, because it's disingenuous. | ||
| It's like, well, we need common sense measures after a shooting, all right? | ||
| And another shooting happens. | ||
| We need more common sense measures, and another shooting happens. | ||
| We need even more common sense measures. | ||
| When does common sense measure stop being common sense and just intruding on my rights? | ||
| Yeah, and I can see that, you know my thing, from guns to you is free speech to me, and it's like, I can see this coming with that. | ||
| If these guys took control, you'd start seeing, well, we can have free speech, but we need some common sense controls around free speech. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So I do understand the position that you're in there. | ||
| I tell people all the time, I'm like, there are over 300 federal gun laws in this country. | ||
| I think we've been reasonable. | ||
| I think if we were really truly being unreasonable, we wouldn't have over 300 federal gun laws. | ||
| And I can't even begin to tell you how many we have on a state level, right? | ||
| So, it's incredibly disingenuous to think that we're just being hard-asses who don't want to move one inch on the issue, right? | ||
| No one's saying it should be a free-for-all, where we're just handing out guns to everyone like Oprah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I don't think anybody has a problem inherently with background checks. | ||
| Now, when you start talking about universal background checks, that's a different thing. | ||
| But since nobody, since they never want to make that distinction, right? | ||
| No one ever knows that. | ||
| Yeah, then you can't, you can't. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And then the idea of, like, you know, we can talk about gun-free zones, right? | ||
| And it begs the questions, like, What is that sticker on the window going to do for me? | ||
| So now I have to make, like, people don't really like to sympathize with gun owners in the sense of, like, we all want the same result, right? | ||
| We want the killing to stop. | ||
| We want the violence to stop. | ||
| Notice I said violence and killing, not just gun violence, right? | ||
| Because we can't just focus on gun violence, because violence is violence. | ||
| However you die, you die, and it's bad all the way around. | ||
| But when I have to make a decision about whether or not I potentially break a law to go into an establishment that may or may not cause me to need my gun at some point, man, that's messed up. | ||
| And I know that there are a lot of people who don't see it that way, because they don't see value in the Second Amendment, because they're not firearm owners. | ||
| Right? | ||
| There are a lot of people who look at the Second Amendment as useless, because they don't own firearms. | ||
| But when you have a group of people who understand the importance of it and how it fits into their lives, and they understand that at the end of the day, when something happens, the only person who's going to be there to stop it is you. | ||
| That's a big deal. | ||
| So it's not just me trying to protect a piece of metal because I just want to have fun with my guns. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's much bigger than that. | ||
| It's this idea that I have to rely on myself. | ||
| You can tell me all day long the police are going to be there, the police are going to be there, but they're not going to be. | ||
| They're just not. | ||
| And then you continue. | ||
| We were at Parkland. | ||
| Exactly, right? | ||
| So then you add kids, family into the mix, that ratchets it up to a whole nother level. | ||
| What about the piece of this that's just sort of optics? | ||
| So you know every now and again you'll see a picture of like three dudes with big-ass guns at Chipotle, you know like an open carry. | ||
| Now I know if I walked into Chipotle and three guys came in with big-ass guns on their back, - They're gonna take notice. | ||
| Well, I would take notice and I'd probably leave. | ||
| I probably would. | ||
| I would just be like, you know, look, and again, I'm here in California where that would be so, | ||
| so out of the norm that whatever. | ||
| But for the person that's living in Texas, you can do this. | ||
| If I was in Chipotle, right, and three guys walk in, I probably would leave, | ||
| knowing everything that you just said there, knowing that these guys are probably NRA members. | ||
| And as far as I know, no NRA member has ever done a mass shooting, right? | ||
| Okay, so, you know, because you see this all the time, these celebrities, Michael Ian Black, like Pat on the show, who's on this rampage, telling everyone that you guys are terrorists, I mean, really, that you're part of a terrorist organization, I mean, okay. | ||
| And so are the other five million members. | ||
| Right, but I think there is something about some of the optics of that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I would be nervous. | ||
| Now, I get your point would be, well, those guys are gonna protect you when the other guy walks in or whatever. | ||
| And some of that may be feelings over facts right there, but it just is. | ||
| The interesting thing about it, that is a big debate within the gun community as a whole. | ||
| The idea of open carry versus concealed carry. | ||
| I don't ever open carry. | ||
| Except for maybe if I'm out hunting or I'm on the range or something like that. | ||
| But that's a personal decision. | ||
| I'm choosing my own for various reasons. | ||
| One, sometimes I'd rather not have the attention. | ||
| And tactically, I like the advantage of having the element of surprise. | ||
| You don't know I have a gun on me, so if I had to use it, I'm going to be reacting, right? | ||
| I'm not going into a place to shoot it up. | ||
| If somebody decides to come into a place to shoot it up, I'm going to be reacting to that. | ||
| So I need all the advantages I get from my personal perspective. | ||
| So I want the element of surprise. | ||
| There are some people who think in the alternative. | ||
| They feel like just the mere presence of that gun is a deterrent. | ||
| From anyone who wants to come in and do something bad. | ||
| So for guys casing out a couple of stores and then you see there are certain citizens in there with long guns and some that have handguns on the side of their hip, then that's a deterrent, right? | ||
| I understand the alarm that people who don't necessarily engage and interact with firearms get when they see people walking around with rifles, right? | ||
| Even I've seen a couple of people in Texas do it. | ||
| And initially, my gut reaction, and I'll admit, was like, "What's going on here?" | ||
| Now I'm very versed with firearms, and I have a gun, too. | ||
| So at that point, I actually almost welcomed it. | ||
| And the reason why is because if you're going to do something, I now get to see you attempt to do it. | ||
| You get what I'm saying? | ||
| There's a telegraph. | ||
| You are in a unique case on this one. | ||
| Yes, but I'm speaking from purely a place of personal preference, right? | ||
| I'm not speaking on the whole for anyone else or anything like that. | ||
| Me personally, I would rather like to know you have it. | ||
|
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Right? | |
| If I can see it. | ||
| Because then I know where to focus my attention versus me kind of being alone to a state of complacency because of its absence. | ||
| And then all of a sudden somebody stands up and decides he wants to shoot the place up. | ||
| And then I have to react to that. | ||
| But again, that's tactics, right? | ||
| That's personal preference in that regard. | ||
| However, I do understand the alarm that somebody would have seeing three guys walking the Chipotle with rifles. | ||
| Because it seems, seemingly, especially to them, it seems like that's a bit excessive. | ||
| I'm not gonna lie to you. | ||
| If I could conceal carry a rifle, I would. | ||
| Because it's better at defending me than a handgun was. | ||
| The only reason I have a handgun is because it's small enough for me to conceal. | ||
| And it allows me to live my life uninterrupted. | ||
| Otherwise, I'd walk around with a rifle. | ||
| Okay, so we can't end without doing sort of what I think would be the big question for everything we've talked about here and for someone that works with the NRA and your shows on NRA TV and all that. | ||
| So what is going on in America right now that seems to be unique to our society? | ||
| We do have more shootings here than I think virtually all other Western nations combined. | ||
| Feel free to fact check me on that if I butchered that one. | ||
| But it does seem, and even if I'm slightly off on that. | ||
| No, no, you're good, you're good. | ||
| It seems that there is something uniquely happening here. | ||
| Now, I would argue that there's all sorts of mental health issues and probably prescription drugs and maybe non-prescription drugs and all sorts of other stuff. | ||
| So there's a couple of things, so I'll try to keep this as concise as possible, because we are going to get into weeds for a split second here. | ||
| So first of all, let's talk about mass shootings, or school mass shootings, for instance. | ||
| I recently just read a study from Northwestern University, not too long ago, which talked about comparing the number of school mass shootings back in the 90s versus today. | ||
| And what they concluded, essentially, was the perception is that it's happening more frequently, but it's not. | ||
| It's actually on par or even less now than it was then. | ||
| Now, people are going to be like, oh my God, how could you possibly say that? | ||
| Google it. | ||
| It's a Northwestern University research. | ||
| I can't remember the actual title of the actual research. | ||
| We're going to grab it from you after this and we'll have my guys link to it in the description. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So, that being said, mass shootings account for a very, very, very marginal percentage of shootings in this country. | ||
| Let's start off with the overall. | ||
| So, 35 to 36,000 people each year die from guns, right? | ||
| I didn't specify gun violence, but just guns, because they don't do that. | ||
| They'll just say gun violence, right? | ||
| So, about 60 to 65 percent of those, that 35,000, is suicides. | ||
| Now, what I'm not saying is we don't care about suicides. | ||
| We do. | ||
| However, when it comes to the idea and the issue of somebody shooting at me, that's not—it's not germane. | ||
| But then, even still, if you want to make the argument, well, if we had less guns, we'd have less suicides, that's also not true, because our suicide rate is on par with every other major country. | ||
| So if it was the case that the more guns you have, the more suicides, we'd be leading the charge. | ||
| We don't. | ||
| Where there's a will, there's a way. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Even the more famous suicides we've had, they didn't use guns. | ||
| So we set that number aside, which is a huge number. | ||
| 65% is a huge number out of 35, 36,000. | ||
| So then you have about 1-3% which are justifiable homicides. | ||
| That's self-defense. | ||
| That's including police shooting criminals who are shooting at them. | ||
|
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Right? | |
| And people who use guns in self-defense. | ||
| Right? | ||
| We've got to set that aside, because that's not the issue we're trying to address. | ||
| So set that number aside. | ||
| And then you have about 5%, which are accidental. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Kid finds a gun, pulls triggers. | ||
| Unfortunate. | ||
| Extremely unfortunate. | ||
| However, I believe, personally, half of that could easily be addressed with more education. | ||
| So, if we took the energy that we took, that we place now, on trying to vilify guns, and have national campaigns teaching people about gun safety, that will cut that number in half, because a lot of these accidents are easily preventable, but they're just people who have guns who just don't know. | ||
| And so if we spent time educating those people. | ||
| Do we know what percentage of that subset is getting those guns legally or illegally? | ||
| Because I would imagine that a lot of it's probably illegal, which is why they don't know how to use the gun in the first place. | ||
| I'm not gonna assume I have that answer, because I don't have that hard number. | ||
| But I do feel comfortable assuming that as well, right? | ||
| And so if we take that accident and set that aside, purely homicides, We're looking at around 7,000 to 10,000 every year, right? | ||
| Now, that's a different-looking number, right, when we've accounted for all of the context here with those other shootings. | ||
| Now, the vast majority—I'd say close to 80 percent that I've read in a couple of articles—of those homicides are happening in the inner cities of our country. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So then, reason goes, all right, so let's look at those inner cities, and let's look at the dynamics there, right? | ||
| You have low jobs, lack of economic opportunity, destroyed households, and a narco-economy that warrants—that warrants, but creates the necessity for this type of violence. | ||
| So, if we dealt with the socioeconomic aspects of what's going on in those areas, right, Do we really have a gun problem? | ||
| Just think about it. | ||
| I know other communities filled with black people. | ||
| They have guns. | ||
| They don't have the same level of violence. | ||
| Because I only say black people because most people associate the inner city with black people, right? | ||
| But the reason why we have that high level of concentration of violence is because of the conditions in those environments. | ||
| And even within those communities, there are—the vast majority of those people in those communities are good people. | ||
| And it's a very minor group of people who are creating a large number of the violence, right? | ||
| So, there's something to be said. | ||
| Do we really have a gun problem, or do we have a socioeconomic suicide problem in this country? | ||
| Because at the end of the day, There's 35,000 to 36,000 that people are assuming is all gun violence by way of homicides, people shooting at other people to kill them. | ||
| It's not the case. | ||
| We're looking at closer to 7,000 to 10,000, if that. | ||
| And so, if you take those numbers and you compare them to other countries, then how does it look? | ||
| To be continued. | ||
| Yeah, well, I'm so glad that we finally did this, and we will definitely do this again, because I think this story and everything we've talked about here is just gonna continue. | ||
| I mean, these are the battles that we're now fighting on many fronts related to the Constitution, and free speech, and free expression, and your ability to own your life and all that stuff. | ||
| That's all we ask, is just let me, and I'll say one last thing. | ||
| There are a lot of people who are like, well, how do you feel the need to carry a gun? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Like, the chances of you needing to use that gun to protect yourself is like 1%. | ||
| And the answer I have for that is this. | ||
| You may be right. | ||
| The chance of me needing to actually use my gun to defend myself may be really slim. | ||
| Maybe 1%. | ||
| But if that 1% happens, it's 100% of everything. | ||
| The consequences are 100%. | ||
| And that's why it's so important. | ||
| All right, well, that's how you end a show. | ||
| You know, maybe we'll do this next time. | ||
| Maybe we'll bring you on with someone on some of the other side of the issues on this, and we'll talk about it. | ||
| And we'll have that conversation. | ||
| Sounds like a plan. |
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