AS254: Eli vs Travis Part 2

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 254 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. Alright, it's the part 2 that you've all been waiting for, the gun control debate, Eli and Travis. Let's get right back to part 2.

0:00:56 Guest: Well, again, that's an argument of regulation. And I think that's a little bit of an apples to oranges comparison here. I mean, I can think of other products that we sell to the public or regulate, you know, even regulate after the fact that we're selling it that are still harmful if used inappropriately, but they get sold anyway. So, I mean, you're not talking about banning those things, um, under that premise, but you're going to regulate it. Nothing that is even anywhere close to as comparable in danger to guns would fall under the level of ease with which we make it, uh, available for people to buy guns would be my, would be my response to that because the only purpose of a gun is to do harm to another being or oneself. That is the only purpose purpose of a gun, right?

0:01:42 Guest: Now we have, we have found bastardized way to do that, right. We fire little clay discs in the air and we shoot. Yeah. I don't think that's the, that's what they were initially designed to do, but we've used it. I mean, people do go, I mean you've listed some of them already. People sport, people hunt, you know, self-defense is just one subset of what people use guns for these days. And they don't work as self-defence tools, but by statistically they They don't bear out as self-defense tools. They're less effective than a knife in the home. They're left effective in a car. They're last effective. We're owning a dog and I'm not going to deny that either. You know, I used to carry and I don't carry anymore specifically because of that, because I know that I am more likely to escalate a situation unnecessarily because I own, you know, or have a handgun on my person.

0:02:28 Guest: I know if I get into a fight, you know, it might roll out of my hip holster and then And maybe, you know, now there's a, you know, who's going to scramble and grab the gun for a situation. You know, Abraham Lincoln wasn't there, you know saying, oh boy, if I only had a gun on my hip, I could have turned around and shot John Wilkes Booth, you know, like, of course, you know, if somebody has a drop on you already, you know, having a gun on your hip isn't necessarily going to, you know, prevent that situation from happening. In fact, it may make it worse. And that's not necessarily what I'm arguing here. I'm not arguing on On a basis of self-defense, I'm just saying that that is one reason, however ineffective it is, that some people decide to own firearms.

0:03:14 Guest: That would be like saying if I want to have one of those giant anarchist cartoon Acme bombs in my home for self-defence. We all know that's an ineffective thing, so the fact that someone gives a reason for it, and it's wrong. That's a little bit of a hyperbolistic comparison. Comparison, but I mean it's it's definitely hyperbolic, but what we both just agreed to is that saying that a gun is for self-defense is not true and is wrong. Well, you can use it for self defense, I mean, that's not every time a gun may be an ineffective self-defence, it's used 11 times for completed and attempted suicides, seven times in criminal assaults, four times in unintentional suicide, in unintentional shootings. So the same way as I could use a large Acme bomb to scare away burglars, it's a much, much more likely chance that I will do harm to myself or someone unintentionally with that.

0:04:10 Guest: That's the point that I make. And people can accept that risk when they purchase it, right? I purchased all of the firearms I own in my house knowing those things, knowing that I am very unlikely to ever use it in a self-defense situation. By the way, that's not why I bought my guns. That I am much more more likely to commit suicide or commit a homicide simply by owning it, you know, these are risks I accepted, um, from the pleasure that I get out of owning them and using them in the ways that I use them. I mean, these are these are things that I understood. Well, I guess this is my question, at a certain point where for you, I mean, I mean this genuinely, where for you does the risk of public health intervene to the point that you don't think people should be able to own a thing for the pleasure of owning it.

0:04:55 Guest: Because it seems like we agree that practically speaking, owning a gun has almost no use. And what you're really talking about is from a libertarian choice-based, I have a right to own a thing as long as I acknowledge the risks of it. So my question to you is, how much danger does an object in the home need to possess to oneself and others before we as a society decide that there should be severe limitations on it?

Well, before I go ahead and answer that question, um, and in fact I'd like to go back kind of to the root of that question, it's a bit of an appeal to emotion, isn't it?

I mean, if you're citing all of these, you know, deaths that recur as a, or occur as a byproduct of owning firearms, which again assumes, you know, it takes away the culpability and the intent to murder that the person who goes out and kills these people with guns has, and it assumes the fact that he wouldn't go out and and murder these people if he didn't have guns to begin with, but I mean that's kind of the, you know, appeal to emotion, if it would only save one live kind of argument, um, no, I'm just, I'm just telling you the statistics, I'm refuting the claim that gun ownership does or does not matter, I'm spelling out that it does matter, um, appeal to a motion would be one child whose single tear rolls down his cheek as he dies in the street alone and then I play like a country music song. No, I get it, but you're appealing to the consequences then, correct? The consequences of owning firearms, a perceived outcome will determine the proposition's veracity, correct.

0:06:32 Guest: Right. So my question is for you, at what point would an object in the home need to be dangerous to yourself or others that we as a society should decide you no longer have the right to have that simply for the sake of having it, even if you acknowledge the risks of it? To be honest, I don't have an answer for that question. But what I can do is show you an example of, you know, another case where, let's say, something that you use, because I know that you and Thomas, from what I understand, don't own guns and don't use them as a pleasure activity that has a consequence for public safety. So I'm going to try to give you an example of something that you do probably use on a, you know, at least a weekly basis that has consequences in society that we kind of inherently accept and just kind of move on from.

0:07:19 Guest: And one example would be alcohol, right? I mean, we all consume alcohol, all three of us, and we know that because alcohol is out there, it will lead to an increase in the likelihood of violence taking place. It will lead to an increase of rapes that take place. You know, you can look at all the crimes where alcohol or, you know, is a part of the equation and say, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and let those things happen because I enjoy drinking alcohol.

And I mean, the same logic applies there. Public safety or reducing, you Know, the amounts of these crimes by some, you know, margin, um, limit your alcohol consumption and say we should get rid of alcohol because it will improve public safety. And I'm just using that. I'm not equating the two.

What I'm doing is I'm just kind of using that as a example to show you how something that you would use, you know, that you get, you know, joy and pleasure out of could be something that has consequences to society, but we allow it to occur anyway. Right. So the bad news is I don't drink. Okay, that's fine. But

0:08:21 Guest: I mean, you don't have to.

0:08:21 Thomas: But you could imagine someone who wasn't a horrible killjoy like Eli who did drink, though. You could imagine, like, we could all, okay, let's all, let'S all imagine someone who's more fun than Eli, like actually fun to be around, that sort of, like let'S ALL picture that person.

0:08:28 Guest: Who sees a whole bottle of table wine and has to finish it. Well, Thomas, Do you drink, Thomas?

0:08:40 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm drunk now. No, I'M just kidding. Hey, look, just because I hang out with with you while I'm on vacation and drink a little bit, doesn't, I never, oh

0:08:40 Guest: Oh, Yes. Blackout drunk, blackout drunk, all three times. I saw him blackout drunk. He tried to arm wrestle Tom. He tried to arm wrestled Tom, Atheistically Speaking. When

0:08:56 Thomas: No, I successfully arm wrestled Tom. It was a successful, it was a stressful arm, what do you think? Every, we had an exchange of arm wrestling where he easily won and it was the perfect transaction of arm wrestling. I don't know what you're talking about.

0:09:01 Guest: You say successfully, where

0:09:15 Thomas: He won easily and that was that.

0:09:14 Guest: We where we were concerned for your health and safety,

0:09:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, well,

0:09:17 Guest: All right, no, so here's, here's the answer to that, the answer is, so I, I totally accept the, the answer to that. And the truth is that there's sort of two answers to that. The first is we do accept limitations on alcohol because of that very reason, right? So that's why we have a drinking age, for instance, because we know the dangers of alcohol.

Just, and by the same token, in the name of public safety, we can look at certain risk factors and certain benefits and weigh the two and decide as a society why alcohol should be allowed after 21, or alcohol should be allowed within certain amounts. Now, we've also introduced tons of laws to alcohol. I mean, we have the whole ATF to introduce tons of law as the quality of alcohol, the control of alcohol over serving.

I mean, I'm a former bartender, so I can tell you, like, one of the really serious things that gets driven into you is not over serving, and it's interesting that media really doesn't convey that, especially if you're ever around Thomas when he's around the the COG disc guys, like the media really doesn't tell you about that.

0:10:18 Guest: But over serving is a huge problem. And it's something that we as a society are working towards amending. The problem is that we can do both. You know, in the interest of public safety, we as society have decided, yes, we want a 21 plus drinking age, we don't want people to drive their cars when they drink, we have more severe punishments for people who commit certain crimes. When they're drinking, We warn people all the time that they're more vulnerable for certain crimes, so we're very aware of the dangers of alcohol. What I'm suggesting is about guns, we have not gone far enough. Just as we all decided that 21 was the drinking age, I want to say, and I think that the numbers and statistics agree with me, that in the name of public safety, we've drawn the line too far to the left, and it's time to draw the line much, much further.

0:11:10 Guest: So the answer is yes, I totally agree with you. There should be limitations on lots of things for public safety. And I'm talking about the limitations on guns. Okay, yeah, and I agree with you there in terms of limitations, but you're talking about banning guns the way that I would, you know, like you're not gonna, you're gonna regulate alcohol sales, you can regulate gun sales the same way, you don't have to ban guns, you wouldn't ban alcohol, you know, just in the name of, you know, reducing rape, murder, all these other things, violence from happening, you know, in the game of public safety, you would regulate, someone presented the statistics to me that someone was three to five more times more likely, or 17 times more likely to kill themselves if they had alcohol in the home than someone who didn't, I would absolutely consider a proposition to ban alcohol. Okay, so if somebody, would you agree that somebody who is drunk is more likely to do something that they wouldn't do, necessarily something more rash, if they were sober? The truth is, I don't know.

I know that statistically, when it comes to alcohol and the claims about alcohol, as far as it, as it being a dangerous factor for, um, you know, crime and, and rape and murder and all those other things, I know statistically the marginal difference between people who drink and people who don't is not significant enough that anyone has felt moved.

I'm not talking about the usage, I'm talking about, so if you look at alcohol usage, usage in crime stats, so, you know, the, the number of times, you know, or if you look at all the rapes that happened in a given year, how many of those times was the rapist giving, you know, uh, the victim alcohol during that incident, or how many times was that rapist drunk his or herself?

0:12:55 Guest: Um, and if you look at that as, you Know, one of the elements in the equation for rape happening, I am, I mean, I don't have the stats in front of me, but I can assure you that it's up there. But we don't, unfortunately, we do not have those statistics, and we do have those statistics for guns. Now, I will say this. If there were just significant mountains of evidence that alcohol, or 99% of murders were committed, and not that those are true for guns, but you understand this thing. If someone presented me me with overwhelming statistical evidence that the use of alcohol could be causally linked to the damage that, uh, these crimes do, then I would absolutely consider that as an argument for public safety.

0:13:39 Thomas: Let me put this out there, though. I think it's an interesting argument. It's something worth considering. Eli, I think you're giving an honest answer, which is if the statistics were as harsh, you would maybe be in favor of banning it. But the one thing I'll say about drinking is it may cause you to make bad decisions. It may cause you to arm wrestle Tom from cognitive dissonance, stuff like that. But it doesn't give you superpowers. Like if someone gets drunk and decides that they want to murder me, I could still take action to try to avoid that to a pretty large degree. I mean, if they have no, but when someone has a gun and they decide I'm going to murder, what am I going to do? Like, I can't, it's such a powerful thing. Sure, you could say that it, go ahead.

0:14:00 Guest: Oh, you haven't seen me drunk, brother. Let me tell you.

0:14:23 Guest: And I just want to point out, cause people will Facebook message me and be like, why didn't you point this out? Why didn't your point this, alcohol has other benefits that are not raping and murdering people. Right, the only use of a gun is to hurt someone else or yourself or to shoot at a piece of paper that's, you know, downrange. I mean, I don't use them to hurt people or hurt myself, right? But I mean the gun in my locker right now, you know, of all the things that I've done with it, it's mostly bringing it to the range and shooting at a piece ofpaper Right, but you can shoot a BB be gunned at a piece of paper. So, if but I like this one, why shouldn't I be able to own this one? Well, you

0:15:03 Thomas: Could we still just have gun range? Like, let's pretend there's a ban on all guns. Couldn't you just have a gun range where it's It's like, yeah, you can use a gun here.

0:15:08 Guest: Know there are gun ranges in New York. New yorg has new yorke City has some of the toughest gun control in the world. I mean, and certainly in the United States, I mean the five-year minimum laws, I mean, it's been, it's an crazy intense level of gun control here. And you can get to gun raisins, you can get to gun ranges in New York City and play with guns. No, I get that, but it won't be a gun that I want to build myself.

So like my AR-15 that I have in my wall locker, I built myself. I built it to the specifications that I wanted. That's like saying that if we ban motorcycles tomorrow, but there was a little place over here where you can go ride on a motorcycle if you want, then why not ban motorcycles if that's going to lead to a decrease in roadside fatalities? This is not the motorcycle that I want.

The question I would ask you is, to what extent is the public harm and cost worth something that I think we've both admitted is a very, very small pleasure for you as an individual versus, I think, we both agree, a much greater magnitude of suffering for others? That's debatable. I mean, you can look at alcohol and say the same thing. And so I don't really have a good answer for that question. I don't think we would even attempt to get anywhere near the good answer to that question, you know, just in the time that we'll have to discuss tonight. Well, that's the only question that I would pose.

I mean, if the argument that people want to make is that it boils down to the public risk versus personal pleasure, I am more than happy for every gun advocate in America to weigh in their mind the gun deaths in the United States versus the pleasure they get from shooting at a piece of paper.

0:16:53 Guest: If that is the weight that they want to take on and that's the question that people want to take on in their mind, I'm happy for each person to answer that question. And I think that most people who come from a place of empathy will find that it's no question at all. I mean, I can't imagine that. So, I mean again, this is under the assumption that if tomorrow we got rid of guns, all of those gun deaths that would have happened tomorrow wouldn't have happened by some other means. We're talking about a matter of degree here. A lot of those deaths will still, a murderer who's mad, you know, at whoever he's going to murder or she is going to murder, could still do so by other means, you know, getting rid of a gun isn't necessarily going to get rid of that intent or get rid of it. Okay, I want to stop you for a second. I want you to stop me because the way that the claim that you just made is that taking away the gun would not make a significant enough difference for it to be worth.

0:17:43 Guest: I'm not saying significant enough difference. I'm just saying that it is going to make a difference by a degree, not not necessarily that that murder goes away. Let's say it's 89 people that would die by guns tomorrow. If guns are banned today, you know, some number call it 86, you know, those murders would still happen. It's just that the three that, you know, wouldn't happen that way because if it weren't with a gun, it wouldn't be possible. Then those guys wouldn't die. And you're, you're talking about saving three, but these are abstract numbers that we can't really, you know, these aren't tangible numbers. We can't, we do have, you see, this is is the interesting thing. We actually do have these numbers. And overwhelmingly, and again, I'll send all these statistics over there. Overwhelmingly, it's not 86 people would die versus 89. It's something in the range of 20 people dying versus 89, the risk factor for death when guns get taken out of the equation is so it's so huge, that it really is worth consideration.

0:18:41 Guest: If it was three people, either way, I think we both agree that there's no statistical difference. And you would have disproved my claim. But every measure we have of gun violence or violence with and without guns shows that when guns are involved, the death toll skyrockets. No, what I'll agree with is that, you know, by owning guns, you Know, I'm more likely to commit suicide or I'm More likely to Commit a homicide or something like that. But in a case where, you know Let's say it's a husband who's really mad at their wife for cheating on them or something something like that, you know, and he doesn't have his gun, is he not going to kill her with something else possibly? I mean, does that go away? Possibly he will, but he's much, much less likely by a, by a significant magnitude. He is much, mucho less likely to kill him.

0:19:27 Guest: In a house without a gun than he is with a house with a gun. He's even less likely to kill if she doesn't own a gun, that's what's crazy. One of the things you hear a lot when it comes to, uh, uh one of the, no, I know she owns a gun and he's more likely to grab it to kill her with it. And I'm not disputing that either. But I mean, if you were to look at domestic murders a year and look at what percentage of those murders that went down, guns were used, and if you Were to take the guns away from those situations, what percentage of the gun attributed ones would still happen anyway?

We can't really look at that because that would be a post hoc rationalization that we can't make because we can recreate that situation, take the gun out, put a knife there, and see what would have happened. Saying we don't know what would've happened isn't an argument. What we can do is we can compare houses that did have guns and houses that didn't have guns. And the houses that do have guns are three times more likely to have a homicide with a firearm in them.

0:19:38 Thomas: Yeah, Sam Harris's claim.

0:20:25 Guest: So we actually can make that comparison. We do have that information. Yeah, but that's only looking at two elements in the equation. Now, let's say those same households didn'thave guns. You know, These are, again, situations that happen in the house that you can't recreate. So if you take guns away from those households, that doesn't necessarily mean that those weapons will still happen. This is all an argument from ignorance. No,

0:20:45 Thomas: Well, not only that, I think, Travis, I'm not sure you're understanding what Eli is saying. I mean, yeah. You can't go back and figure out, you know, the counterfactual of every individual situation. But since we have a lot of people and we have statistics on these things, we can compare houses that have guns with houses that don't and look at the increase in murder that happens in those. You don't need to go back and, you know, recreate each individual situation to make a pretty reasonable assumption of the difference between gun ownership and not gun ownership. So are you just rejecting the three to four to five times more likely that Eli is claiming?

0:21:22 Guest: I'm not rejecting that at all. I've not rejected that during this whole discussion. What I'm saying,

0:21:26 Thomas: Well, then I want to try to actually pin you down on it. So you brought up 89 deaths. Now, I just want to ask you directly, Travis, if that number with Eli's proposed gun control, if that member, what would it have to be for you to agree with him? Would it have be zero? Would it to be 20?

0:21:43 Guest: This would be an argument based on principle, not on a specific number. So I would reject it regardless of number based on principal.

0:21:49 Thomas: Well, then there's no point in even talking about that. So if it's true that even, well, but no, I really want to pin you down on this because so

0:21:54 Guest: It's the same so it's the same thing for alcohol. I mean, if you know, 899 people yeah no, no, it's like I said, it's a matter of principle and not necessarily a matter of number yes

0:22:05 Thomas: Even if that took it from 89 to zero, you would still say, no, can't do it. Okay. And I will say, and Eli, you might agree with this. I don't know. If it was proven that alcohol was causing 89 deaths a day and banning alcohol would take it from 89 to zero, I would say, okay, ban alcohol. It would suck.

0:22:11 Guest: That that correct and

0:22:24 Thomas: Yeah. But it's just, it's a matter of degree.

0:22:24 Guest: Alcohol ban it all okay so let me let me give another example here if I could that maybe is a hits a little bit more home for us. All right, so religion, as we all three of us well know, plays some part in a lot of killing that goes on around the world. And if we were to ban religion, or to stop it in existence, if we had some magical switch that could cut it off, would you do that? Or let's say just in this country, would you get rid of and ban religion? Yes. Even though the First Amendment guarantees it, and it's a right guaranteed... Sorry, I should be clear. I have a magic wand where everyone stops believing. I don't like stop people from, I don't like hold people at gunpoint and I'm not one of the Christian movies in the world, you make them stop believing religion like you're forcing that on them.

0:23:19 Guest: YOU SAY RELigion, we CAN'T DO THIS IN THE COUNTRY ANYMORE EVEN THOUGH IT'S GUARANTEED YOU KNOW BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND THEN YOU KNOW

0:23:25 Thomas: I got an answer for you. I do not think it would prevent that much death. I actually do not. I mean, it would be impossible to...

0:23:30 Guest: BUT AGAIN WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT NUMBERS. I MEAN SO AGAIN YOU CAN GO BACK TO NUMBRES AND OKAY SO So what we're talking about in terms of principle, and if that number went up, would you then ban religion? You know, what number would it take going up that religions were a cause of death for, you know, you can look at something like nine 11 and say, you know that was responsible for killing about 3000 Americans. Would you ban religion in the U S based on the fact that it could have potentially saved those 3000 lives, even though it's guaranteed by the the first amendment. So, I mean, the difference between banning religion and Danning and banning firearms is so huge. Like the, the, what religion quote unquote is versus what a firearm is, is such a vast difference. That's true. And I get that, you know, religion might tell you to kill somebody under a certain premise where guns won't, you Know, guns are just inanimate objects projects and religion carries with it an ideology.

0:23:32 Thomas: No, we are talking about... That is what Eli has been claiming. It is a question.

0:24:27 Guest: But, you know, looking at it under the assertion that religion enables killing to a greater extent and contributes to, you know, a higher number of killings per year in this country, would you make a ban on religion knowing that it would improve public safety by, you know, reducing a certain amount of deaths per year? I don't know that religion causes a certain amount of deaths this year. So I'll, I'll pivot the metaphor ever so slightly or a decade, you know, or 20 years, because we can look at something like nine 11 or right. But if I knew that for instance, religion and special protections we give to religion, uh, cause a certain amount of rapes a year, which we do, right. We, we now look back on history and we say the special protections that we gave to the Catholic Church caused a ton more rapes than needed to happen.

0:25:15 Guest: And if we hadn't given those protections to the church, those rapes would not have happened. Would I have stopped giving those protections such as anonymous interchurch tribunals, not paying taxes, secret Nazi gold holdings, inner legal thing, lobbyists, of the many things? I'm sure 27 people are going to tweet at me and be like, how could you not mention that the Catholic Church does this? If I could take away all of the privileges we give to the Catholic Church to prevent the rapes, yes, I certainly know. I'm not talking about taking away the privileges. That would be like saying I will ban Catholicism to lower the rapes of children. By some number here we're

0:25:54 Thomas: It's just not, you can't do that. Okay, a couple answers. You can't do it. It's an idea. You ca n't ban ideas in that way. It'S impossible. You ca n' t define them in that w y.

0:26:01 Guest: We're in like magic land where you can do this like you can suppress it yeah I

0:26:03 Thomas: Look, like Eli said, if you could, if we' re waving magic wands and saying people won' t believe things without sufficient efficient basis anymore. Sure. I mean, that would, yeah.

0:26:11 Guest: Wave it twice. No, they will, they will, they will want to believe these things, but they won't be allowed to and yeah

0:26:16 Thomas: Yeah. So I would say no, because you just can't do it. It's impractical. And when you look at the societies that, that this is, this is where, you know, my argument will come in line with the classic Christian argument you get where atheism caused all this bullshit. I don't think atheism cause, you knows, Stalin and all that, but you can look at these places, Pol Pot or whatever the example is, where they've decided we're going to ban this way of thinking and we're going to not let it happen. I mean, they're not, the evidence would not bear that out. I don't think you would possibly be able to find good evidence. You're giving little anecdotes like, oh, the 9-11 or whatever, but you would not be able to, I

0:26:38 Guest: Yeah I don't think this is no it's fine, and maybe it's the wrong example, but you know, like the alcohol thing was probably a better example where if we just banned alcohol sales across the country I

0:27:00 Thomas: Think the alcohol thing is a better example and I think both Eli and I agree that if it, if we statistically knew to a reasonable certainty that alcohol was killing 89 people a day that it didn't need to and we could get that to zero, yes. Um, I, well,

0:27:15 Guest: Don't even think you need to look for those statistics. I think that that's just the thing, that by common sense people know that consuming alcohol will more, let you know, will increase the chances that you're going to kill yourself tonight or kill somebody else through the bad decisions that you're gonna make. I don't have those stats in front of me. I would love to do some research and find that out we would need it yeah we would needs those stats, and I have those, I, I have No, no doubts in my mind that, you know, based on the amount of, you know, alcohol usage and all these other incidents that happen, rape, murder, all these other things, that removing alcohol from that equation will put an end to some of those, or would have stopped some of those. And just by the fact that that, you know, slim margin exists, it puts it in the same category as what we're talking about with guns, reducing the deaths. We're agreeing that we would, if you had those numbers and they, they were correct, we would agree that you should ban them. So our question, or yeah,

0:27:34 Thomas: We would need them. That's the thing. I mean, you would need the stats. Yeah.

0:28:12 Guest: We've said that.

0:28:12 Thomas: Well, we've already said that several

0:28:13 Guest: Yeah.

0:28:13 Thomas: Times.

0:28:14 Guest: So the, so the question we have for you is what level of, what level of danger would have to be possessed to the public by anything, be it alcohol or guns or a rape robot, which I invent in my room that just goes off on a raping spree, but also delivers is one out of 8,000 people a delicious Mars bar. Like, what amount of danger has to be... I'll give you an example of where I wouldn't stand on that.

0:28:38 Thomas: Do I, can I get both on that Eli?

0:28:40 Guest: No, that's fine.

0:28:40 Thomas: Is it?

0:28:41 Guest: I can with regards to firearms, right, I'm not talking about banning all firearms, but I am talking about regulating them, right? I agree with regulating to prevent a certain... In the interest of public safety. So I don't advocate for making rocket launchers available, right. I don't make a case for making Apache attack helicopters with Hellfire missiles on them available to the public. This might be a more useful question then. What is your argument against making missile launchers available? If I just want to use it for fun, I'm just going to shoot my missile at a piece of paper.

What is you argument against missile launchors? Why shouldn't I, on principle, be able to have a missile launcher? Because one, there's not really other applications of how to use that other than killing large amounts of people. So with guns, I can go out and sport with them. I can just have them as I'm just going to use my, but we're not using, we're talking about that. We're just, I'm going to use mine for target shooting. I'm gonna shoot very large explosive targets with my rockets in principle. Cause we, we already talked about that with guns. Right. And I, I know that's fine. Right.

So why can't I have an AR-15? I mean, I can see where you could kind of go with this comparison here. What I would say is that, you know, by what the Second Amendment guarantees us, you know, what it was, what its intent was, you know, I don't think the intent of the Second Amendment applied to something like a rocket launcher, per se.

0:30:14 Guest: And we can have a much larger discussion on the intent to the Second Amendment. And I'm sure that's going to happen here in about five minutes. Andrew Torrez.

0:30:20 Thomas: Well, I think we're kind of running out of time. So I, I have a couple questions that I want to ask you guys maybe to challenge you, uh, each actually. And it sucks because, uh. Travis kind of already took the one I was going to ask him. I don't know what I was going to ask you, Travis, maybe you can clarify a little more, is all your arguments do seem to apply to pretty much all guns. So where do you draw that line? Do you think actual automatic weapons should be okay? Well,

0:31:15 Guest: A well-regulated standing militia, they were afraid of, you know, federal consolidated governments that had too much power that could, um, you know, become tyrannical and enforce that, you know, bad policies against the people. So one of the reasons they wanted to avoid that was to make a citizen army and to prove, you know, basically restrict the powers that the federal, uh, government would have

0:31:39 Thomas: Can we all agree that that's completely irrelevant in this day and age? It could not be less relevant. There's no amount of firearms that we all could have that that would do anything against the government? Could we, could we, just

0:31:50 Guest: Yes and no. And here I'm going to give you a point here. So look at no, no, just hear me out for a second. So let's look at the Syrian conflict, for example. So the forces that went against Bashar al-Assad started out with just, you know, AK-47s, whereas he had an army with, air, air force tanks, all these other things. And when you look at an insurgency and how it starts off, they usually start off very asymmetrically, you know disadvantaged to the military that's in power. And so what they have to do is they use ambush tactics. They, you know, concentrate their forces where the enemy's weak so that they overrun them, maybe grab some rocket launchers out of their supply trains and then use things like that against, you know, the rocket launcher or the the air force and stuff

0:31:52 Thomas: Mainly yes. Okay.

0:32:34 Guest: Like that. Not only that, but they're using I

0:32:35 Thomas: Do you possibly envision that happening in this country?

0:32:38 Guest: Don't you know that just happened right not at all Bundy's and the bird thing no I know and I'm not I'm not one of the guys go well we arrested them they mattered so little we arrested them we didn't even

0:32:44 Thomas: No, but, but here's what I'll say, Travis. Here's what we're going to do. Here's, here's, what I'm going to say. That, that might, that mind actually be an interesting argument to look at in other countries. I, I think that it is context dependent.

0:32:49 Guest: Kill them yeah no that's fine, do you mind if I I finish my kind of thought that but I mean as as long as the the people are allowed to own long guns that they could you you know, potentially carry out an insurgency against the government with, I think that that's a fine kind of starting point. And that if it not only that, but the, um, the collateral damage aspect comes into play in something like an insurgency, right?

So as the government becomes more oppressive, kills people with rockets or something like that, you know a bunch of the people in the Air Force are going to defect and say, I'm not doing this because, you know, we're killing a whole lot of people for no reason. And a lot of the times, you know, they'll turn their weapons over the other side and they'll join that other side.

So when people say that we couldn't fight against the United States government, one, it is a volunteer force, but that doesn't necessarily mean to say that one day the majority gets in power and the majority is so fearful of a loud minority that they're going to look to suppress that by force.

0:32:58 Thomas: Well, we are, okay, as long as it's quick, go ahead.

0:33:58 Guest: It's happened throughout history. We're not immune to that. I don't think we're a situation today at all where that's likely to happen, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen years from now. And I think that the founding fathers built that clause into the constitution as a means of offsetting that. And I Think that is worth preserving no

0:34:14 Thomas: Okay. Well, I want to get to my question to Eli, but I mean, I just, I'll take it as your answer that you did. So you're saying no assault weapons or, or sorry, no automatic weapons, but some sort of, you know, it's obviously you seem okay with like an AR-15 magazine

0:34:28 Guest: Automatic weapons. And, and I would even advocate for a mega magazine limitations.

0:34:34 Thomas: Limit. Okay.

0:34:35 Guest: Yeah. I

0:34:35 Thomas: What, what would it be? I'm just curious since you know more about guns than I do. What would, what would you advocate?

0:34:39 Guest: Would Say, I would say 10, and particularly because I know things like Orlando are on the forefront of people's minds. And it did want to mention this at least once while we're talking about this. Um, the type of firearm used in a mass shooting like that has very little to do with kind of the level of, um, destruction that will come out of a mass shooting.

The real things that will affect, you know, how much damage the guy causes are things like spatial distribution of the targets, the number of egress routes that they have, and how quick the police response time is. So we, we saw this, you know, by accident almost with the case of, you know, the scumbag who did the shooting in Orlando.

He picked a area where all of his targets were going to be in very close proximity to each other, had, you know, very few escape routes, and it became kind of like a fish in a barrel situation, whereas if he were to engage the same number of people in an outdoor situation with lots of cover around and, you know, broad daylight, it's not a, you know, night, dark nightclub with strobe lights going off, um, they would have had a lot more, you know, routes to run away from

0:35:45 Thomas: Right.

0:35:45 Guest: A lot longer.

0:35:45 Thomas: Understood. And, and none of Eli's arguments that I know of really come from mass shootings. So, I think, but I

0:35:50 Guest: No, I know. It's just something that I wanted to put out there for.

0:35:53 Thomas: Got you. So I need to, I got to move on to Eli's question. Thanks for your honesty of your answers and everything. I totally disagree with the government thing, but, but but I appreciate that. So Eli, my question for you is, and this is a hypothetical thing. If, if let's say the, you've got, you got all your gun facts here. Let's say that the number was only suicides. I'm curious if, if, uh, Travis's liberty argument would, would have any sway for you there. Would you, if it were only the fact true that gun ownership increased suicide and murder somehow just didn't happen with it. I just want to try to isolate that variable. Would that change your attitude to it?

0:36:34 Guest: I, I, it certainly would. It absolutely would because then it would become about a person's personal choices and it would sort of bring up the larger question of right to die. And, uh, as someone who suffers with clinical depression, as someone whose lost friends to suicide, as someone who's mentored kids who would certainly take up a suicide attempt at certain points in their lives. I have a tremendous amount of bias as to people's right to die when they're not in tremendous amounts of pain or very, very sick. Um, so the answer is I really wouldn't know. I wouldn't really know. I know my own biases automatically jump down my throat and tell me like, Oh no, no, it's fine because you know, I can help so many people and blah, blah, my background instantly jumps in and wants to talk about how suicide's not an answer and people need to do this, that, and the other. But the truth of the matter is it would entirely change the question for me. And I don't have a good answer about it. It would be something I'd have to consider much more carefully.

0:36:44 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm.

0:37:34 Thomas: Well, it's interesting because suicides are the majority of of the gun deaths. They are more than the other ones. So that's something to think about, I suppose. But all I want to thank you guys both for coming on and hashing this out. I appreciate it. I appreciate the intellectual honesty and the desire to actually interact with each other. Um, I, I don't know, Travis, are you, are you unmoved by any of Eli's arguments and vice versa for Eli?

0:38:00 Guest: Basically, because most of my arguments came on a matter of principle, not necessarily on a numerical scale. And that was kind of one One of the main questions that we were looking at today. I don't feel that I've moved on it, I guess.

0:38:15 Thomas: Hmm. What about you, Eli? Are you about to let him go out and buy a gun and, uh, let it, yeah.

0:38:19 Guest: It was a snarky email.

0:38:22 Thomas: All right. Well, thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Uh, and, yeah, I mean, I maybe, uh while your minds might not have been changed to, to either side, maybe some people listening might have changed their minds on a few things. So I definitely appreciate that and

0:38:34 Guest: Excellent. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thanks for having me on too, Thomas. I appreciate it.

0:38:54 Thomas: Alright, that does it, Eli and Travis. Again, thanks to them both for participating in that. I actually had a lot of people on that Facebook thread who were suggested or wanted to be the pro part of the pro-gun debate. So, it was interesting. I went with Travis. He was kind of, you know, his first one there, error kind of thing. First come, first serve. And the only reason I mention it is I would like to know from you guys if you want more of this debate, if you would like perhaps to find different people to do it, to get a sort of a different perspective on it. It's something we can look for in the future. Or if this was sort of enough, if this satiated the gun debate, we'll kind of see. Let me know what you think. If there's other arguments, maybe they didn't cover or other angles you might might want to explore on that.

0:39:43 Thomas: So feel free to let me know in the comments what you think of all that. There certainly was no shortage of people of both sides who would love to participate. So we'll see if we want to arrange more of a gun debate. Made their arguments and we got to kind of listen to both sides. You guys know me, I think you know I'm more on the anti-gun side than the pro-gun side, but I'll be honest, I haven't thought of that grade of an argument for the alcohol analogy. I mean, I think I kind of have but I'm not sure my answers and Eli's answers, I'm I'm not sure they were 100% on because it could be possible. I mean, if we found out tomorrow that alcohol, banning alcohol would prevent more deaths than banning guns, which I mean it's possible.

0:40:30 Thomas: It's certainly a possibility. What would be the, I think our instinct, most people's instinct is, well, we still, it's not a good idea. We tried it with prohibition for one thing. So that didn't work. But then a Second Amendment person might come along and say, well, that's what's gonna happen with guns, you know, you tried it, it doesn't, you can't ban things like that, the black market thrives and crime goes up, all that kind of thing. And it may very well be true, so that's why I'm not totally satisfied. The one thing I'll say is that it does inhibit you too, like it's not like when you, as I said when they were debating, I mean, if you drink alcohol, sure, you might maybe make worse decisions, but you're going to be also slower when you make those worst decisions and more uncoordinated. Whereas the gun is just a tool that you can just wreak havoc on people.

0:41:19 Thomas: I mean, mass murder people with this tool, whereas alcohol is just sort of a connection to, you know, maybe people wouldn't otherwise commit a crime, but they have too much to drink and so they commit a crime. I don't know, it once again it would be hard to get the numbers on that. But it's not impossible to imagine that the numbers could turn out the same or, or more deaths than guns. It's, I, I did some googling and just from overdrinking, just drinking excessively, not even looking at the crime aspect, I saw one estimate that was like 80,000 deaths a year just from the health effects of drinking, which is already close to guns. I mean that's already right there, pretty much, I think it was 100,000 a year or something like that that Eli said for guns.

0:42:07 Thomas: So just with that alone, it's already somewhat close. I think what I could say about that is that the analogy is just not quite right for many different ways, and I don't know, again, let me know if you have a better answer to this, you listeners out there, I'm sure someone will, or who knows, maybe it's just, maybe, it's always possible that the argument is good and therefore we shouldn't ban guns at all, I mean, that's certainly a possibility, it doesn't seem right to me, but anyway. But anyway.

I think they're different in enough various ways, I mean, your toddler can't get a hold of alcohol and then shoot you or your other toddler or themselves, I mean, that, so that's, it's different in that way, there's just, there are a lot of little differences between the two things that make it, another thing, you could easily, very easily make your own alcohol, there's bathtub gin, that kind of thing, that's possible to make your own gun, but it's not, it's not as easy. It's certainly much more difficult and would certainly be much more difficult to do with precision and to make like, you know, assault rifles and and automatic weapons and stuff like that. So, I mean, there, I think my only answer is that there's just enough differences like that to make it not not really a good comparison, but I'm not sure.

So I'm not sure where I stand on that one. But I do think that Travis is just wrong about the military part. I mean, I, you guys have heard me say this before. I just don't, it is unrealistic that we are going to have any chance against the US military if the government becomes tyrannical or something. You can bring up Syria as an example, but I mean, the fact of the matter is the United States Army- me.

0:43:55 Thomas: Is so much bigger than like the next 10 or whatever, I mean it's just not, it's so that is kind of a contingent thing. I mean you could imagine a government sort of like the uh the early United States government was, back when the Second Amendment might have made more sense, but then also the the thing is the gun technology was so much different, so it really, there just wasn't that much harm caused, if any, really, I mean a very small amount, by owning your own really shitty piece of 1700s, 1800s weaponry, you know, there just wasn't that much potential for harm. Now the potential is so much different. It is context dependent. I don't think these rights, like, well, I just mainly the Second Amendment right, I guess. Other rights are less like this, but the Second Amendment right, I think, is so context-dependent because what is, you know, it's just the right to bear arms should not be infringed. There's so much else to do with that. I mean, what is arms? What are they like?

What were they like back then? What do they like now? You know, there's not a lot that's like that. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, I mean that you could make an argument like the internet changes that a little bit, but there's this right, I don't think, is some inalienable thing that was passed to us by God, like a lot of people in this country treat it as, because it means such a different thing now than it did then.

0:45:17 Thomas: I also think at this point, the practical argument is something to consider. I mean, when you're talking about an outright gun ban, or at least an effectively a ban like Eli was talking about, it is true that there's so many guns. We would need to take drastic measures to get rid of all the guns that would just be floating around. But it's just something you would have to do if the will were ever there. I don't know that the will to do that will ever exist in this country. But I'm worried that at this this point, it's just a culture change. I mean, you just, our culture just would have to completely change. We're so gung-ho, gung-ho is what I was going to say. We are so gung-ho, gung-ho about guns that it's, it is sort of like, I was thinking of the parallel with alcohol.

0:46:03 Thomas: I mean, there are Islamic countries, you know, Middle Eastern countries where alcohol is not not really allowed. And I don't think there's like a thriving black market bathtub gin mafia situation going on there that I know of. And it might just be that because it's so ingrained in their culture and their religion that alcohol is not a good thing, that there's not as much problem there. Whereas for us with guns and alcohol, both, it's kind of in our culture that they're great. So I think that makes it just so much more difficult to have a ban on this sort of thing work, but although those are concerns, on the whole, I still think, I think what Australia did, I mean, I just wish we could do that here. I think there would be still a huge black market and that would be something we'd have to deal with, but But that just, that shouldn't be an impossible task.

0:46:55 Thomas: That should be something we could try to do, and there, the bottom line for me with the gun ban is that, as Eli shares this attitude, the upside is so small. The upside is, oh, I enjoy having an instrument of death and being able to shoot a piece of paper with it. For me, I don't value that. I, I, don't, I know other people do, but it, when there's so much death coming from it, I can't relate to that. I can't relate to wanting to be able to have that thing that can kill somebody, even though you're not going to, but just I want to have it so bad that we need a right to all have one and then all the gun deaths that come from that. Okay, well, those are some of my thoughts on that. I'm also really looking forward to what you guys think on gun control, and I'll see that in the comments, and, and I'll be sure to go over those at some point in the future of the show.

0:47:46 Thomas: So thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate all the patrons. Oh, I have some great new ones I need to thank, and I will do so right now! So, thank you to Dan Irizarry, Shiran Kochavi, Hunter Ash, and Jaded Zappa. Thank you guys so much for pledging, in particular Hunter Ash who made a very generous pledge and is now going to get thanked. Again, I gotta thank my top patrons, Hunter Ash, Allahng Blakok, Inciting Incident Podcast, Kaylee Reiser, Zimu Zinu Jr., Adrian Borschoff, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Steve Sigmund, Peter Skelton, Brian Garefort, Dale, Matt Garrett, Ian Rozzano, Samantha. Thank you guys for supporting the conversation and debates like these. It's how we learn and adjust our opinions accordingly with the facts. So thank you guys so much for listening and I will see you next week.