Episode 652 Scott Adams: Bad Gun Control Arguments and Hollywood Blacklisting
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Todd, Pete, John, good to see you.
Hey, Jordy. Deep Southern.
All right. You guys are quick.
And you know why you're here to enjoy the simultaneous sip.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of steinichelis tanker to a thermos of glass to canteen the vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
Are you ready? Good morning from the gym, Tom.
Get ready with your beverage.
Simultaneous sip on.
Oh, that's good stuff.
All right, I'm going to make you quick today.
Well, I always say that, but then I don't.
So, you've probably been following the story of Debra Messing and Eric McCormick, two Hollywood stars who have been asking for the list of the names of donors to Trump so that they can do what?
Well, people said, what?
Don't you know that Hollywood has a bad history with blacklisting?
And that if you're okay with blacklisting, you don't understand the Hollywood history.
And so even Whoopi Goldberg went hard at Messing and McCormick For suggesting that we should start blacklisting people for their political voting.
And I think that they got embarrassed into adjusting their opinion.
But I want to read to you Eric McCormick's tweets.
So here's the setup.
Eric McCormick and Messing asked for the list of who's donating to Trump.
So that they can not work with them anymore.
In other words, so they can actively discriminate against those people who have donated.
So people said, well, that's a blacklist.
And here's how Eric McCormick is trying to weasel out of what he did.
You ready for this? I'm going to read his actual post.
He says, I want to be clear about my social media posts from last week.
Okay, he wants to be clear.
So he's saying that what he said was unclear.
It's funny because it didn't sound unclear, which has been misinterpreted in a very upsetting way.
He's been misinterpreted and it's upsetting him.
Now he says in underlines, I absolutely do not support blacklist or discrimination of any kind.
Okay. That's clear.
At least he's being clear.
He doesn't support that.
But now it makes you wonder why he's asking for that information.
Why is he asking for that if he's not supporting it?
But he goes on to answer that question.
He says, as anyone who knows me would attest, meaning that he doesn't like blacklists.
And then he says, I simply like to understand where Trump's major donations are coming from.
Okay. It's a quest for knowledge.
I simply like to understand where Trump's major donations are coming from.
Notice he changed it to major donations.
Do you see that little sleight of hand?
So he's trying to get away from Any donation from any citizen is bad, and therefore, if you gave $10 to Trump, you must be a Nazi.
That's the problem, because some 40% of the country are pro-Trump.
And he realized that he just lost all of their business.
So he's trying to insert this word major before donations so that he can sort of weasel it away from people who are donating and make it more about the major donations.
You know the big corporations?
You and I hate the corporations, right?
We're on the same team, those big corporations with their major donations.
We're against that, right?
So that's his first weasel move, is putting the word major in there, which wasn't there before.
And then he says, I'd simply like to understand where the major donations are coming from, which is a matter of public record.
Which it is. I am holding myself responsible for making educated and informed decisions that I can morally and ethically stand by, and to do that, transparency is essential.
Huh. He's not blacklisting.
He simply wants the list of people who voted a certain way so that he can educate himself and make informed decisions that he can morally and ethically stand by.
Totally different than a blacklist.
Totally different. Wait, no it isn't.
It's exactly a blacklist.
So he wrote this whole thing to say, I don't believe in blacklists, and here's why I believe in blacklists.
They're both right here.
I don't believe in blacklists, but let me tell you why I believe in blacklists.
Let me tell you. Blacklists are very important for my moral character and all that.
So here's the thing I wonder about both McCormick and Deborah Messing.
Do they have any smart friends who are willing to give them an honest opinion?
Because think about it.
Imagine you're a famous celebrity.
Do the people who want to hang out with you tell you when you're this stupid?
Do they have even one friend who's going to say, Debra, Debra, I know you feel passionate about this.
I get where you're coming from.
You don't have any bad intentions.
But do you understand what you're doing?
Do you actually understand what you are doing?
Don't do this.
It's the dumbest thing anybody ever did in the world.
And I feel as if you and I could not have done what Eric McCormick and Deborah Messing did, because one of our friends would have said, Scott, We gotta talk.
This is the worst idea you've ever had.
But I feel like nobody talked to them.
Do they literally have no friends who are willing to tell them the truth?
Because this looks like some serious bubble stuff here.
All right. I decided to make everybody angry at me by writing a blog post in which I called out what I call the dumbest arguments about gun control, just to make everybody hate me.
I took the arguments on both sides.
Which arguments do you think I took from both sides that are the dumb ones?
All of them. Every one of them.
One of the problems with the gun control argument is that both sides are talking nonsense.
Why is that? Is it because everybody is dumb in the world?
Well, you know, some people think that, but that's not the specific problem here.
The specific problem and the reason that both sides are talking nonsense, complete nonsense, It's because nobody can say the truth.
Do you want to hear the truth?
People like guns, if they like guns, because they like guns.
Sometimes they like them because they're fun and they like to shoot them.
Sometimes they want them for defense.
They feel that it makes them feel safer.
Some people want to protect the country.
They have reasons they want guns, but most of them are bad, at least when they...
Most of the reasons that are given in public are bad because the real reason mostly is selfish.
People don't usually like to share selfish reasons in public because the topic is about America in general.
So can you go into a conversation about what's good for America in general and say, you know, I don't really care what's good for America in general.
This is what's good for me.
You can't do that. So instead you come up with some BS argument about why it's good for the country in weird ways.
Now there is at least one good argument in this bunch, and I'll tell you what it is in a minute.
But let me tell you the bad countries, the bad arguments.
The first bad argument is that other countries do this or that.
So as soon as you say another country has strict gun control and low rates of crime, you're not saying anything useful.
Because there are so many differences between the United States and any other country that you're just being dumb if you say, look at Japan!
Or look at Great Britain.
It's just a dumb argument.
Now, what would be a better argument, but imperfect, would be to say there's a city in the United States that's very similar to this other city.
They both have similar problems, similar race of crime, et cetera, similar demographics.
And this one city made a change.
And then five years later, we can see if anything is different in their statistics.
Now, that would be a reasonably good argument.
And even that would be imperfect.
But at least you would be in the rational, you know, field.
But comparing the United States to Japan, too many differences.
It's a useless comparison.
Great Britain, useless.
So that's the first big argument, bad argument.
The other bad argument comes from the anti-gun people who say that your private guns, even the AR-15s, etc., even those would be no match for a standing army should the United States turn into a dictatorship and they want to crush the citizens.
It won't make any difference that you have your puny little weapons because you can't stand up to the military of the United States.
Stupid argument. Totally stupid argument.
Because the weapons that the citizens have are not meant to shoot down drones and take on a nuclear bomb and knock down a jet.
That's not what they're for.
If we ever got in a situation where there was a military coup and we had a dictator, the citizens' guns would be used for kidnapping, assassination, And disrupting economic situations.
And it would be very good for that.
For example, if you were in the military and you decided to side with the dictator, people would know who you are.
I mean, your neighbors know if you're in the military or not.
So if you're in the military and you haven't defected and left, You must be with the dictator.
At about that point, your family would be rounded up and murdered.
I'm not saying I'm in favor of that.
I'm just saying that's what would happen.
So the families of all the people who were complicit in some kind of a takeover of this country, the families would be rounded up and murdered.
The friends would be rounded up.
And that would be very effective.
In making people maybe not support the government.
So there would be a massive murder spree in this country, like you've never seen before, and the government would say, we could control this country, we could, but we'd have a country we didn't want to own, because we wouldn't be able to go out in public.
No leader would ever be able to see the sunlight again.
We have so many weapons in this country that anybody who is associated with the government, let's say there was a dictatorship that took over, they would never be able to see the sunlight again because there would be bullets fired in their direction every time they went out in public.
So... The no match for a standing army argument is stupid because that's not the matchup.
It would be more of a guerrilla war and killing of family members and for that our guns are quite sufficient.
Then there's the slippery slope argument.
The slippery slope says if you do anything in the realm of gun control eventually your guns will be taken away.
The slippery slope argument is magical thinking.
It's sort of a form of word thinking.
That because the word slippery has slippery right in the word, there must be something about the situation that's just going to keep slipping.
But there isn't.
Slippery slope is magical thinking.
Everything goes in the direction it's going until something stops and no exceptions.
It's a basic rule of physics.
If I drop a ball from my hand, it will keep going to the ground until it hits the ground or something else stops it, right?
Every policy goes in the direction it's going until the public says, oh, that's far enough, and then they stop.
So take seatbelts, for example.
The fact that you have to put a seatbelt in your car is at a slippery slope to having no cars.
It is not, although someday we'll probably have no cars, but it's not because of seatbelts.
All right, so pretty much everything in the world looks like a slippery slope if you're on the side of not wanting to happen.
But stop saying slippery slope, because it's magical thinking, as if there's something about this one case that is the one case where public opinion won't stop it when it goes too far.
It's never happened before, probably never will happen.
It's just magical thinking.
Here's another bad argument.
It's in the Constitution. We have a constitutional right to own firearms.
That is a terrible argument.
It might be a true statement.
I'm not arguing the fact of it.
I'm just saying it's a terrible argument because the Constitution was written with provisions that it can be adjusted and updated and changed.
So it doesn't matter that it's in the Constitution.
It matters if we want it to be in the Constitution.
Because if 60% of the public, let's say a super majority, two-thirds or whatever, if two-thirds of the public wants something to change in the Constitution, We can do it.
The Constitution predicts that and allows it.
And indeed, we've changed things so that the right to vote has changed, for example.
Slavery changed, for example.
So if your argument is it's a constitutional right, that's a stupid argument.
Because that can be changed whenever the public wants to.
Now, you might say it's hard to change, but that would be a different argument.
Others say it's a God-given right.
I would say that's magical thinking because I don't...
Well, let me lump together the other bad argument I don't have listed on my blog post.
But one of the arguments is, Scott, Scott, Scott.
And it's always said as if I don't understand things.
And here's the argument.
Scott, I have to get Dale in to explain this to you.
Dale, where are you?
Here's Dale. Dale, explain to me about rights.
Oh, Scott, Scott, Scott, you're so stupid.
Because you think rights are something the government gives to you?
No! No!
The government does not give you rights.
It can only take away your rights.
So you don't have a government giving right to a gun.
You just have a right to a gun.
And scene.
Stupid argument. It might be true in some philosophical sense that rights are something you're born with and governments just take them away, but that's just word thinking.
It has no practical meaning in the real world.
In the real world, governments exist and they do restrict your rights in a billion different ways.
So if governments exist, and they do, And they can restrict your rights, and they do, then for all practical purposes, the government decides what rights you have.
And the government grants you those rights by simply not acting against them.
Now, you can say, Scott, that's totally different.
In a practical sense, your rights come from the government.
I know you don't want that to be true.
I know you think that on a philosophical level it's not true, but in a reality level it's true.
So I'm sorry if I'm arrogant and condescending, but I'll block you so you don't have to see it.
Thank you.
All right. Another bad argument is the Constitution refers to militias, not ordinary people owning guns.
Here's what's wrong with that argument.
You and I are not on the Supreme Court.
If you and I were on the Supreme Court, we could have a good argument about whether it's about militias or it's about private gun ownership.
That would make perfect sense because we're on the Supreme Court.
And somebody brings us that question, and we argue it.
But if you and I are not on the Supreme Court, it is complete stupidity for you and I to argue about what the Constitution means.
Completely irrelevant. It's irrelevant what you think the Constitution means, because you're not in the Supreme Court.
Neither am I. Now, I could read the Constitution and say, huh, I don't see that there.
But it doesn't matter. It only matters if the Supreme Court sees it there, and they have decided.
Now, did the Supreme Court massage the meaning in the Constitution to make it allow people to have firearms for non-militia purposes?
It looks that way to me.
It looks like the Supreme Court sort of created a right out of that language that wasn't necessarily there before.
In the way that governments create rights, as I just explained.
But I don't care because I'm not on the Supreme Court and that decision is already made.
So arguing about a decision that's not your decision to make and has already been made by the Supreme Court, it's a useless argument.
Here's another bad argument.
People will just use other tools to kill.
What about that story from China where somebody killed eight school kids with a knife?
He attacked the classroom, I guess.
Sure, people will use other tools to kill.
Throughout history, people have used other tools to kill.
Here's why this is a stupid argument.
It's a stupid argument.
I want to say it's suboptimal or use other words, but it's hard.
That's just a stupid argument.
And here's why. When you add friction to any activity of humans, they will do less of it.
Pretty much every time.
So if you make something harder to do, you get less of it.
But you'd never get zero of it.
You can't make it, you probably can't add enough friction to the gun situation to make zero problems.
That's probably not a thing.
But you can make it harder.
How do we know that's true?
Well, you don't see a lot of mass murderers using army tanks.
Why is it that you don't see mass murders using actual military tanks?
It's because it would be really hard to get one.
A lot of friction.
Why don't you see more mass murders using fully automatic weapons?
Because you can buy one.
They're just really expensive and there's more hoops to jump through and they don't make them new so you'd have to buy a used one but you could get one.
Or you could get one maybe from the military illegally somehow.
You could do that. But But it's hard, and so you don't see that weapon used.
So in every realm of human behavior, adding any kind of friction changes behavior somewhat, and you can certainly try it in different places and see if it works or not.
So yes, people can use other tools to kill, but any friction will change the number of people who use guns to kill.
Which is not to say I'm in favor of that friction, by the way.
Don't assume that when I'm talking about the bad arguments that you know my opinion, because that's not in here.
Nothing I'm saying here is going to give you my summary opinion of gun control.
Because my summary opinion is I'd like to keep guns because they would be good for me, but I'm pretty sure it would kill other people.
So that's my opinion.
Many of you have a similar opinion.
All right. Some people say that criminals can always get guns, so all you're doing is keeping it away from the law-abiding people.
That's a terrible argument.
It's a terrible argument.
Yes, it's true that criminals would be more capable of getting illegal guns, even if the laws change.
That's true. It's not on point, though.
Because I'm not worried about the criminal so much, because you're right, they will get guns.
But what about the 18-year-old who's got some mental issues?
If an 18-year-old with mental issues and no criminal contacts, he's not part of the criminal underworld, you know, he's just not a criminal, he just has some mental problems.
If you make it harder for that kid, that 18-year-old, to get an AR-15, that probably makes a difference.
Even if it doesn't change what criminals do, you probably can make it a little harder for the 18-year-old with a mental problem to get a weapon.
So the argument criminals can always get guns is off point.
It's true, but it's off point because there are a lot of people who have no criminal record, no criminal contacts, and you'd also want them to have a little trouble getting a gun if they had a mental problem.
Others say that gun deaths are not that high.
If you subtract out the suicides, which apparently are something like half or two-thirds of all gun deaths, and you subtract out the criminals who are shooting other criminals that you don't care about as much, you get down to what some people would say is a pretty reasonable number.
Maybe 10,000.
10,000 a year.
But that's a bad argument because we would not stop trying to fix something that killed 10,000 people a year.
If it were any other topic and it killed 10,000 people a year, There would be a whole industry trying to reduce that 10,000 to zero.
And other people have said, hey, but swimming pools and bicycles and other things are killing more people.
But you look at the swimming pool industry and look at all the things they've done to make swimming pools safer.
They have all kinds of technology.
I've got a pool cover on mine.
In my state, you'd have to build a locked fence around your pool so that the neighbor kid can't wander into it.
So every industry that kills 10,000 people a year is working very hard to get that number down.
Guns are no different. So it wouldn't matter if it's 20,000 or 10,000 or even 5,000.
You would still try pretty hard to get that down to zero.
So it's not an argument to say the deaths aren't really that high.
Other people said, Scott, you're ignoring the most important part.
You're ignoring all the lives that are saved by guns.
Meaning that when people own guns, it makes crime less likely because there's so many people with guns that the criminal doesn't want to go there.
What about all the people who would have been murdered except they had a gun?
You're not including those, Scott.
That is a terrible argument.
A terrible argument.
Here's why. We're looking at the net deaths.
Looking at the net.
If the net can be driven down by whatever change it is, and wait for it, wait for it, whether that change involves adding guns to a situation, or whether that change involves subtracting guns or making them harder to get somehow, or anything else, aren't they both good?
It doesn't matter how you get there, you know, so long as society agrees that it's a reasonable step.
So, because you can test these things, I would be in favor of some places adding more guns.
In other words, there are probably places in this country where adding some guns would actually make people safer.
Don't you think? There are probably other places in this country where adding guns would make things worse.
Don't you think? Now, that's just a supposition.
But it feels very testable.
Texas might want to try adding some guns to a county.
Maybe Chicago wants to try something different.
And maybe we learn which one of those works.
And maybe we see that it's different in one place than it is in another.
So I'm not telling you that we need fewer guns to reduce gun deaths.
I'm saying that it can be tested and that it's probably not the same in one region versus another region.
So... So I'm not ignoring the number of lives saved by guns.
I'm looking at the net and the net number of people dead can be driven up or down based on your policies.
So let's try some stuff and see what it does.
All right. Some people say that testing some kind of gun control in one state won't work because people can just drive across the state border and get their gun there.
That's a terrible argument.
It's a terrible argument.
Even though it's true.
So things can be true and also a terrible argument.
So it's true that you can drive across a state and do something you couldn't do in the other state.
But, number one, that ignores the fact that you could also have a law in the neighboring state that says you won't sell guns to people from another state.
That wouldn't be obnoxious, would it?
If California said, you know, if you live in California, you have to abide by our gun restrictions.
But if you're a resident of another state, you can't buy a gun at all.
Because, you know, you live in another state.
So if you live in another state, go deal with that state when you want to buy a gun.
I can imagine that kind of a law, and that would not seem too obnoxious to me.
And that would also, you know, allow you to test within one state, at least more easily.
Now, suppose that the neighboring state doesn't play along.
Let's say the neighboring state says, ah, we're not going to have a law about your state.
If somebody wants to come here and buy a gun, it's legal here.
They can do it. So let's say the neighboring state does not play along and you can go there and buy a gun without the same limitations.
You would still be able to pick that effect up.
In other words, you would be able to measure...
This guy lies.
This guy lies, gets blocked.
You would still be able to measure whether it made a difference because, again, it would add friction.
It would be harder to go to another state.
So you would expect there would be some decrease...
In gun deaths, if the change that you implemented made a difference, it might not be as big a change as if all the neighboring states were the same, but you would be able to measure it if it made any friction, you'd see it.
You should also be able to measure the distance from the border.
So you should be able to see that the gun deaths, for example, don't change much for people who live on the border of another state, because like you said, they could just drive one mile by a gun and come back.
But it might make a difference to people who are in the center of the state who would have to drive a few hours to get a gun illegally.
That would be friction. So you should be able to measure what works and what doesn't even if there's some bleed across the states.
All right. Here's maybe the worst of the worst arguments.
You ready for this? This is the dumbest of all the dumb gun arguments.
And most of you have said this argument.
And there's just no way to shade this.
This is a dumb argument. And here it goes like this.
Chicago has the tightest gun laws and also very high gun violence.
Therefore, say the bad arguers, that's evidence that tight gun laws don't make you safer because it's not working in Chicago.
Is it immediately obvious to you why that's a dumb argument?
Or does that sound like a good argument to you?
Here's the problem. Which locations implement the strongest gun restrictions?
Would it be in the places that have no deaths from guns?
No. Because why in the world would you put gun restrictions someplace that doesn't have any problem with guns?
The place you would put your strongest gun restrictions is where you have the most gun problems.
You should expect that every place eventually Every place that has lots of gun problems should eventually become among the most gun-restricted places.
Of course!
It's not an argument against regulations.
It's a description of how those regulations got there in the first place, because it was an emergency.
They're trying to do what they can with their limited tools.
Now, I'm not saying that those gun restrictions work, and I'm not saying they don't work.
I'm saying that there's an obvious reason why Chicago has lots of gun restrictions.
It's because they're desperate, and whatever else they've been trying hasn't been working.
You would expect other cities with the same problem to also be moving in the same direction.
So those are the worst arguments.
The best argument for owning guns was sort of embedded in the bad arguments.
It's sort of the opposite of the bad.
The best argument for gun ownership, number one, A guerrilla, an armed guerrilla movement in this country is a good defense against the government.
Trying to abuse the citizens.
Even though it doesn't stand up to a standing army, it wouldn't need to.
As I said, there would be kidnapping, there would be assassinations.
The country would be completely unlivable, so nobody would want to conquer it because it would just become a shooting gallery.
So that's a very good reason.
I think that argument is strong.
It does protect the republic.
Now what about, let's say some foreign country, let's say China, just picking somebody randomly, had plans to conquer and occupy the United States.
Could they do it?
No, they couldn't.
Because there are enough guns that the locals could wipe out the police force in an afternoon.
So the first thing they do is if the police force was somehow on the side of the dictator, The police would be wiped out in an afternoon.
It probably wouldn't even take all day to do it.
Like all the police would be murdered by the end of the day.
Now that's, of course, the police who are loyal to the dictator only.
Here's another good argument for guns.
That in some places, they make you safer.
That's a really good argument.
Because I'm pretty sure that there are statistics that show that in some situations, extra guns work.
It would be good to know what those situations look like, and maybe we need to do a little more testing.
But it's very important also to note that what works in one place isn't necessarily going to work in another.
So those are good arguments.
And I would stick to the good arguments.
So as I said, I'm pro-gunned.
Strongly pro-gun.
Under no situation could I abide by confiscation of guns.
And I think the buyback gets close enough to confiscation that I don't think I can support that.
But having a discriminatory, a very discriminatory gun policy...
Well, I could look at that.
And by discriminatory, I say targeting young white, well, just males.
They don't even have to be white. But young males probably need more restrictions on gun purchases.
Than women, than people who've been in the military, than people who already own guns.
So there are a number of categories of people who should not be restricted because they seem obviously safer than other categories.
But if you've never owned a gun, you've never been in the military, and you're 29 years old and your first gun is an AR, maybe we should look at that a little bit closer.
Scott, that did not come off very well, dude.
All right. So all the people who just make stupid personal comments will get blocked.
Anybody who has an argument, totally open to it.
So I'm just going to block all the...
Rest of the people who are making it personal.
So all the people who are saying, it's just a bad argument, it's stupid, blah, blah, blah, you're losing this, Scott.
All the people who say that, it's because I've destroyed their argument and they don't know what to do about it.
They feel bad. So, do you feel bad that I just destroyed your best argument?
Because that happened to a number of you and it probably is not pleasant.
Alright, well, it looks like People got that message.
Okay, if somebody has an argument that I did not include, because I did add some extra arguments at the end.
Let's see. I had an update.
Oh yeah, I included the updates.
Well, somebody is groaning because I said young white males before I changed it to just young males.
Because I am a white male and I was once young, I feel qualified to speak about our extra risk.
If you were insuring somebody to buy a car, you would say, uh-oh, young males are riskier than young females, so we'll change the price.
If you were to get a loan, the bank would look at all of your particulars of your life to decide what your risk was.
I don't think we could ignore the fact that most of the gun crime comes from young males.
I mean, how do you ignore that?
It would be ridiculous to ignore it.
Now, it would be discriminatory, but so is your car insurance, and somehow we live with that.
Somebody said, you misunderstood.
The Chicago situation restrictions are a century old.
Irrelevant. It's irrelevant.
Because a century ago, why do you think that they put in strict gun control?
It's because they had a problem.
It doesn't matter when it happened.
Somebody says, mental health issues in this country can't be ignored.
Yeah, I mean, that...
That's a given. As I've said we've become sort of a zombie country.
There is actually a zombie apocalypse happening now.
And the zombies are the people who are on drugs or have mental problems and are not getting the treatment that they need.
Their brains are effectively not working, but their bodies are.
And they get to march around in public just like everybody else.
So there is a zombie apocalypse.
The zombies happen to be on drugs or have mental problems or both.
And it's getting bigger.
All right. How come the inner city crime is ignored?
We have to pick out the white males.
Blah, blah, blah. Nobody's ignoring it.
Nobody's ignoring inner city crime.
This was a sermon, not a persuasive argument.
Okay, you get blocked for word thinking.
So word thinking is when you try to make a point, but all you've done is put a different word on something.
This was not persuasive.
It was a sermon.
A sermon would be if I had a point of view.
A sermon would be I was trying to persuade you toward a particular outcome.
That didn't happen here.
I simply told you the arguments you shouldn't use because they're weak.
All right.
All right, a lot of you want to make this racial, but I choose not to at the moment.
All right, all right.
So I appear to have triggered many of you by using the phrase white male.
Because many people are saying, but wait, it's not, you know, the white males are not the ones statistically with the problem.
Will you stop commenting if I agree that's true?
Would that be enough to make you stop saying that?