SIO122: Yes, I Want To Take Away Your Guns

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 122, I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and, well, you've seen the title of this episode, so I suppose there's no sense in hiding it, yes, I want to take away your guns.

0:00:59 Thomas: I don't really want to take the time and waste your time in saying things that everyone's already saying, and in this case, I think that was largely pointing out how absurd thoughts and prayers are, I mean, we all know that, nobody here is seriously under the illusion that thoughts and prayers are the key, and everybody who sends thoughts and prayers every time and thinks that's the solution is most likely in the pocket of the NRA, or they're just naive and wrong Completely wrong. But you know, there I did it, I just said in the pocket of the NRA, and I actually just fell into a common misconception, I believe, because I'm looking at a Washington Post article, and there's other sources for this as well, turns out the N-R-A is not all that powerful. Well, I should say, it's not all that powerful money-wise.

0:01:45 Thomas: It's not as though they are an open checkbook for anyone who will defend their policies, and anyone who won't defend their polices, at least on the Republican side. It is not as if they are just screwed. I'm looking at the numbers here, and according to the Washington Post, since 1998, the NRA has donated $4.1 million to current members of Congress. That's not a whole lot. Since 1998, 4.1 million. And that's all of Congress. So, you know, if you figure roughly on average, half of Congress has been Republican since that time, that's not much money to go around. Something like 300 people and 4.1 million dollars in almost 20 years, it's not very much. Bit of a humorous way, which is the NRA's lobbying budget is around $3 million annually, which is about a 15th of what, say, the National Association of Realtors spends. And nobody really that I know of talks about big National Association of realtors and how much power they exhibit over our process. So I bring that up as an example of what happens in this conversation. And, of course, I'm not an expert on this.

I'm just trying to do my research and apply my abilities the best that I have to find what the truth is. And the fact is the gun debate, no matter how many times we keep having it or not having it, I don't know, depending on how you look at it, but at least as it's been in the news, we don't seem to get any better at distilling these facts down.

0:03:22 Thomas: And there's still so many basic things we all get wrong. Wrong. Bret Stephens has an article in the New York Times, an opinion piece called Repeal the Second Amendment, and I'm not a Bret Stephens fan, he's a conservative, he is a never-Trumper, but But he's a conservative, there's a lot I disagree with him on, but I think he has something interesting to say here, because he goes through in this article a lot of the liberal misconceptions about guns, and there are, now, there are plenty of conservative misconceptions about gun, so don't get me wrong, and I'm not trying to both sides it here, do any false equivalents. We'll But in his opinion, the reason liberals keep perpetuating these misconceptions about guns, including the NRA thing I just mentioned, And. And here, I'll just read a quick paragraph that demonstrates this.

0:04:08 Thomas: Endless liberal errors of fact. There is no gun show loophole, per se. It's a private sale loophole. In other words, the right to sell your own stuff. The civilian AR-15 is not a true assault rifle, and banning such rifles would have little effect on the overall murder rate since most homicides are committed with handguns. It is not true that 40% of gun owners buy without background checks. The real number is closer to one-fifth. He mentions the NRA thing I just talked about and then he says that the Australian model of gun buyback won't work because anytime We've tried it in the U.S. in different places and times and it doesn't—it has really poor results here. He ends up saying the common sense gun laws don't seem to work. Now I dispute that. I think there are some things we can and should do. I'll get to that later.

0:04:53 Thomas: But his thesis here is that the, we're kind of grasping for things. And I think he's right to an extent.

0:05:03 Thomas: And it happens to me is we see high profile shootings. I spend a week being incredibly sad and worried about my baby and when she's going to go to school and all that. And it's horrifying. And we all go through this. I would imagine we all goes through this every few weeks. I don't know how often are these shootings a couple months at most. And sometimes they're back to back, but we all go through that. And we want there to be something we can do about it, but here's where I think we go wrong, and this is my opinion, this is what I think has been happening lately. I think that we go because—or at least some liberals go wrong by wanting there to a common sense answer that will fix this. But because guns are so pervasive, and there are so many elements to this problem, there's so many different ways to poke holes in any individual theory on gun control.

0:05:56 Thomas: In reality, the only thing that will actually solve, or for the most part, you know, greatly reduce a lot of these problems, is repealing the Second Amendment, is getting rid of a kajillion guns. And no one wants to do that, and no one want to say they're going to do it. That's what I want to get at today is that I think we should just start saying that. I mean, maybe people are and I'm missing it, but certainly Obama didn't, no Democrat runs on this because they think it's such a toxic issue, they never want to say, oh, yes, I do want to take away your guns, we should take away guns, and I get it, because it's part of the Constitution. Now, here's the thing. If you listen to opening arguments and if you're otherwise educated about this, it's not necessarily the Constitution. It's the Constitution as of 20 or 30 years ago when they started interpreting it this way.

0:06:46 Thomas: When conservatives and the NRA decided to completely revamp how the Second Amendment should be interpreted, so it is constitutional in a way, but it's also a new interpretation that wasn't always the case. But that's very powerful. It's hard to want to campaign against the Constitution. It's very easy to make that look bad. You know, if you campaign against any other constitutional rights like voting rights or due process, you know, you never look good. However, what ends up happening anyway, and I think this has only been true for maybe 10 years, maybe half, I can't remember it much with Clinton, but I was very young. Maybe it was true with Clinton. I'm not sure if it was True before that. But what ends Up happening is no matter what your policies are, and no matter how much Obama said and Hillary said, no, I'm not going to take your gun rights away.

0:07:38 Thomas: No, I'm not taking your guns away. Republicans just decide that's what you're doing anyway. Anyway, so this is the thrust of what I want to get at. No matter what Democrats run on or say they're going to do or as much as they want, they'll just say, I want you common sense gun laws and all that kind of stuff. The NRA, Republicans and all of that still end up just deciding they want to take their guns. I just watched an Obama video that made the rounds in the wake of all this. That was some sort of town hall he was doing while Hillary was was running. And he said that there have been more gun sales during his presidency than ever. Like there's gun ownership soared during the Obama presidency. And you all know this. It's because of that victim narrative.

0:08:23 Thomas: It is the same reason why every time there's a mass shooting, gun sales increase. It's because the NRA and just gun manufacturers, anybody who sells guns, They're able to feed on a fear that guns are going to be taken away, despite the fact that, again, gun ownership soared to new high levels under Obama, higher than ever before, there's still the storyline that Democrats are going to take guns away. So you know what? I'm sitting here wondering, why not just say that then? Why don't we just decide, you know, yeah, assault weapons, that won't eliminate everything, even though I think we should do that, we should ban assault weapons. However, you're right, that I won't eliminate all the murders with handguns and background checks. Yeah, you know, a lot of the guns that are probably most of the guns involved in murders and shootings and all that, they're probably obtained illegally.

0:09:15 Thomas: So a background check won't really help that. So, you know what, we just need to ban guns. We just need to ban guns, and here's what I'm thinking. I think we just move the Overton window a little bit. I mentioned this on OA, but why don't we just start developing a corner of the Democratic Party, or whatever, I guess, I don't know, I think it would have to be the Democratic party, I don't think it's going to be conservatives, I do not think it is going to libertarians, so it's got to be Democrats. A a corner of the party that just honestly says, yes, let's get rid of guns. We don't need them. We don't need to own guns. I got some stats for you. Here's some statistics. So, in the U.S., at this point, last good data that we have, we are now up to 101 guns per 100 residents.

0:10:03 Thomas: That's just a case like, you know, one guy forgets his gun one day and then there's a loaner gun available, one loner gun for every hundred people, so we can all make absolutely sure that we all can have a gun at any time, despite it, we might leave our gun at home that day while we're out, you know, and then, fortunately, if there's a hundred of us, there's 101 guns, so, you can bum You can borrow a gun off of someone else for the time being. Thank you for watching. So, more guns than people, at least, and I'm actually not sure if that's like legal, like 18 and older, so maybe not literally per people, but at any rate, 101 guns per 100 residents, and Japan, 0.6 guns per 100 people. They really have to argue over that little over half a gun. And that gun doesn't even work because it's not even a whole gun.

0:10:50 Thomas: So it says effectively zero guns per hundred. No, of course, that's not how stats work. I know. In China, 4.9 guns per a hundred. India, 4.2 per a 100. And just to give you some idea, like this is what bothers me so much. And it's something that I referenced this a lot, but having grown up conservative and having, I think, grown out of that eventually, one thing that has provided me with so much education is learning what little I have about other places in the world. Because there are, it turns out, Americans, other places in the world, and in red America, in conservative America, it feels as though there aren't, A, there aren't any other places, and B, if there are they're not good.

0:11:36 Thomas: Whatever they are, they're bad. They're bad, they're shitholes and all that other stuff that Trump embodies. And so there's this idea that it can't be any other way. Like it just, it just can't. The founding fathers, when they wrote that second amendment and then amended it and, you know, the seventies and eighties via the NRA, they knew what they were doing. There's no other way to do it. It can't work. But when you look at this data, it's like, no, actually for most of the, the rest of the world, pretty much all of the rest. It's not this way and it works fine. The world's population is, you know, around 7.5 billion people right now. China and India make up 2.8 billion of that—more than a third. More than a THIRD of the world in those two countries, and that's why I mentioned their gun ownership of 4—around 4 for each—4.9, 4.2, so yeah, 4 and a half or something—per 100 people.

0:12:29 Thomas: For both of those. For more than a third of the world, just in those 2 examples. And it's working just fine. Now, don't get me wrong, I do not think that this could happen overnight, I don't, and I would go so far as to say this probably won't ever happen, we probably won't ever repeal the Second Amendment, it's so hard to make change like that happen, but you know what I'm tired of? I'm tired of the inevitable disadvantage of being realistic that liberals have.

Conservatives can go more and more batshit and want, you know, every teacher to have a gun to every child's head, and that's fine, they can do that, but the minute I suggest, well, you know, my version of what would be a good idea is not that every man, woman, and child holds a loaded gun every day, which is legitimately how some people in this country think, I think we just shouldn't have guns, like, there just really shouldn't be any guns, there should be, you can maybe have hunting rifles if you need to hunt, and then, and maybe there could be plenty of gun ranges where you get to use guns at the range. Tell you what, go nuts at the range. Use whatever you want. Obviously, there'd be tons of regulation, but you can have all kinds of wacky, crazy guns.

0:13:43 Thomas: Eventually, like in every video game, there's going to be some alien weapons. You can even have those, some sort of plasma nonsense going on. Whatever you want, as long as it's in a gun range. Have fun. But I'm tired of this asymmetry of Democrats cave, and they say, no, that'll never happen, we can never take away everybody's guns, people want guns too much, we care, so let's find something, a very modest and sensible proposal, let's go to the center on this already, and then the right stays way the hell out to the right, and the Overton window keeps moving more and more to the the right. I don't think this happens on every issue. I think that on gun control, it absolutely has happened. I Think that has been one issue where this very much happens. It doesn't happen on everything. It hasn't happened on gay marriage.

0:14:28 Thomas: You know, we were able to stick that one out. There's issues that this doesn't happen. Gun control is not one of them. And maybe the reason why is that with gay marriage, gay people, for the most part, were not happy to put up with, like, second-class citizenship, maybe that's why, I mean, with gun ownership, maybe Democrats are more apt to be like, well, okay, we'll find some compromise, but maybe with gay marriage, it was more like, no, we should be able to do this because it's our right, and there wasn't ever a consistent cave-in of, well, okay, we won't accept full rights, we'll accept half rights as a kind of a compromise.

My memory of it is, correct me if I'm wrong, but my memory of is that the civil union nonsense was more on the right, that was actually, because the left and gay people, I won't say Democrats, because Democrats weren't always great on that issue, as we know, but the gay community and people who were actually fighting for this issue, there wasn't a whole lot of acceptance for second-class citizenship on that, for each separate, but equal. I think my memory of it again, is that it was very much, no, we ought to have the right to do the same thing you guys are doing.

And then because of that steadfast position, the right was the side that had to be, well, let's give you something else. Like, okay, we won't, you know, we want to do nothing, but we'll give you a, some sort of civil union and then you can all be happy. And eventually it was like, no, that's not going to be acceptable. And the window of acceptance was moved further and further left until the Supreme Court was able to take care of it for us.

0:16:06 Thomas: And yes, these are different issues, they aren't directly analogous, but I think that it's useful to look at the difference there, I think it's usefull to think about it, and this is all I'm saying, I want to firmly say, I finally embraced it, I hate guns, I don't think we should own guns, if I were able to wave a magic gun, a magic wand, I would say, no, let's just not have it, police, maybe if you're a security guard who's passed incredible tests, like a pilot's license, You know, equivalent, then maybe you can have a gun and people could hire private security who are highly trained and own guns. But, with those exceptions, and I'm sure we could come up with some other worthwhile exceptions, yes, I do want to take away your guns, I'm tired of it, we don't need them.

0:16:56 Thomas: Now back to some misconceptions, the reason I want to take away your guns is not even because of these mass shootings, I mean, I think I'd be lying if I said that didn't have more of an emotional impact, and just like terrorism has an impact over and above what we're willing to recognize as the actual numbers, you know, if we look at terrorism by the numbers, it's virtually nothing, shouldn't be anything we're even really concerned about in the US, but it has an effect, and that effect is not nothing, and we can't ignore the graphic effect, the visual effect, the feeling of not being safe in your own country. But if we look at the numbers, these mass shootings are a tiny, tiny portion of gun deaths. And indeed, even homicides are a minority of gun death.

0:17:43 Thomas: Suicides are far and away the biggest portion of that. It's probably three to one suicides outnumber homicides. And an assault weapons ban isn't going to stop suicides, and background checks probably, I mean, might cut into a little bit, but most likely won't stop suicides, it might reduce it a little bit, you know, these high-capacity magazines, all the things that we think about doing, which I want to emphasize, we should do, and I will get to that in a bit. We should do all that. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but I'm going to comment on that later. But all these things that we all want to do once, you know, one of these big scale events happens, these won't really touch the suicide problem, won't even touch much of the gun homicide problem.

0:18:29 Thomas: There's all kinds of problems with guns, and a lot of them, indeed, most of them for any one measure, it's not going to quite cut it, like, let's say, officers who were killed on duty, by the way, this is one piece of the vast sum of evidence that shows the Republican ideas are idiotic on this, the idea that more guns is going to stop gun violence is laughable, it is not true. There's been a tweet circulating about like, oh man, if only there were guns at Fort Hood to stop that shooting. It's like, yeah, it was Fort Hood, there were plenty of guns, there are highly trained people with guns, couldn't stop it. There were, by the way, every police shooting, there's a highly trained person pretty much with a gun and police are still killed by guns all the time.

0:19:15 Thomas: And the data is clear as well. There's a Vox article I'll share that has a good roundup of all this. The case is clear. More gun ownership equals more gun deaths. It's just as simple as that. The states that have more gun ownership have more guns deaths. The developed countries with more guns, and this is the chart, I might try to make this chart the art for the show because it's just so absurd to see the United States way out, way past all the other data points in guns per hundred people. And then on the other axis, gun related deaths per hundred thousand people. Uh, and it's, the U.S. is way out there, but there's also a trend line, a very solid trend line with other developed countries, even though they're far lower and there's far fewer gun deaths, there's still a trend between obviously more guns and more gun deaths.

0:20:08 Thomas: That's just how it works. And a lot of those oftentimes aren't even including suicide, which I think you should Because guns make suicide much more effective. The states that have higher rates of guns, gun ownership, have more suicides. That's another element of this Vox article and has the underlying data with it. And the suicide thing is interesting because I think a lot of people, this is really odd, it's like conservatives are not in favor of assisted suicide or like right to die oftentimes, but somehow they are willing to argue that like, well, suicide with guns is still the person's choice, it's not really that big of a deal because they're choosing to end their lives, which is odd, but also it just is such a, as they say, it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

0:20:56 Thomas: And firearm suicide is 96.5% effective. I don't know who that 3.5 percent are. They're either very lucky or just not very good with a gun, but it's 96.5% effective and other methods of suicide. Now, like cutting, for example, 5.1%, poison, 7.4%. So with those methods, if somebody tries that, then they have a chance for, a high chance of survival actually, over 90%, 95% for cutting, 92% for poison, high percentage of survival, and then they're able to maybe get the resources they need, get help, maybe it's a wake-up call, maybe they, just the experience of coming close to death changes their mind, and that reduces the likelihood that they'll want to do it again.

0:21:44 Thomas: Here's a quote from Jill Harkavy-Friedman, Vice President of Research for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, quote is, Time is really key to preventing suicide in a suicidal person. First, the crisis won't last, so it will seem less dire and less hopeless with time. Second, it opens the opportunity for someone to help or for the suicidal person to reach out to someone to help. That's why limiting access to lethal means is so powerful.

So it's pretty clear, more guns equals more suicide, more gun equals more gun deaths, it's all established, I think we're all on the same page there. I think, though, there are probably some of you listening who definitely disagree with my plan to take away everybody's guns, and if I were to guess, and I mean this charitably, if I would guess, I feel like there's likely a feeling of, I have a right to defend myself from other people, because, you know, maybe there's some pessimism that it's always going to be a violent world or country, there's always gonna be guns out there, which, you know, we can argue. I feel like there is something we could do about that. But let's say you feel like there's always going to be guns or it's always gonna be violent. I have a right to protect myself.

And maybe you gun enthusiasts and gun owner out there, you just can't stop but envision a scenario where Thomas Smith has taken my gun away and all of a sudden there's a burglary, there's home invasion or somebody attacks me or something and I am killed or hurt or something or my loved ones are killed or heard because I wasn't able to protect myself with my gun because Thomas took it away.

0:23:23 Thomas: And I understand that feeling. Here's my feelings though, I have a feeling of, I don't want my kid to be killed with a gun. I don't want to be a killed with the gun myself. I'd want a bunch of people that I could potentially know to commit suicide because they have easy access to a gun, so we both have feelings that involve the death of us or our loved ones, and then I think it's kind of up to the data to resolve it personally, and if you look at the data, I've got a study right here, and I will link it to you, of course, which I always do. For every one time, for every one time a gun in the home is used in a successful self-defense or even just a legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.

0:24:18 Thomas: So, guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or non-fatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure, kill, and self-defense. And then, tie that together with, if we took away all the guns, you wouldn't need a gun as much in self-defence, so that would reduce as well. But already, the numbers overwhelmingly tell us that it's not worth it. So, I get—we all have feelings here. I feel like I don't want there to be guns. I feel like I don't want to live in a country that's got so many stupid guns. It's a stupid feeling. We don't need it. I feel like we can evolve a little bit, and we can be enlightened a little bit, we don't need this. And I get it, right now, your feeling, gun owner, Mr. Gun Owner, because something like 77% of gun owners are male, your feelings have the weight of the Constitution behind it.

0:25:13 Thomas: And you know what? You're right, currently. Currently, you are right. Your feeling, even though I believe the data far and away favors my feelings right now. Your feelings are backed by the the Constitution. So for now, you win. I mean, you're winning. But I just simply don't believe that people from 250 years ago knew better. And again, that has been reinterpreted. It's not really the founding fathers. I think if you resurrected them, pointed out the situation we're in, I can't imagine they'd be like, sorry, we wrote it down. We wrote a weird sentence that says something about a militia and well-regulated, but you know what? Everyone should own assault assault rifles. No, I don't think they would say that, but let's even pretend they thought that, or they thought there should be some right to own as many guns as you want at all times and carry them at all time, no matter what.

0:26:04 Thomas: Well, that was then. That was a different time with different guns. Different situation. Completely different. Completely different. We have better data now. Better data and we have way more effective weapons that are capable of mass killing, and we just don't need it, and the data shows that as much as you want to feel like you can defend yourself in the home, it's more likely that you will kill yourself or your child will get a hold of the gun or it won't help you or it'll be turned on you in a situation, I mean, those things are more likely, and I know you all feel like out there that you're going to be the lucky one, that the rules don't apply to you, that you can text while you drive and you're fine. Whatever it is, I get it. We all feel that, but that all cancels out and the data is what should matter.

0:26:52 Thomas: Now I want to get to common sense gun control. Because I have—you might think from listening to this that I'm speaking out against some of these common sense measures and some of this Democrat measures that they want. I'm not. I think we should do that. I just think we get rid of all guns. And so—but I understand that's not going to happen. So in the interest of some sort of compromise, I think it should be—I want to flip the tables. I want the overwhelming—I wanna do everything I can to get get the overwhelming zeitgeist to be someday. It won't happen in my lifetime, but I can try. I want to do everything I can to get it to be, we don't need any guns. And then I want Republicans to come to the table and say, well, hold on. What if we do all these measures to keep our guns? And then you know what? Then we can say, okay, fine.

0:27:38 Thomas: You can keep some of your guns because you've come to us. And that's That's my fantasy, that's my ultimate aim. You know, I get it, it's not going to happen, but let me talk briefly about why we should, what we should be doing. Here's why we should already have this. There's just a Quinnipiac poll released that says stricter gun laws are favored 66 to 31. Now, that, that that's not that overwhelming, but that's, that a wide majority. So, stricter gun laws, so, right away, the public supports stricter gun laws. And that, and that's as general as it gets. And that is important because what you find when you look into this research and polling is that the more specific a question you ask about gun control, actually, the more favorable it is. But the more broad you ask, the less favorable because I think it has to do, my guess is, that it has to do with identity and it has to do with partisan politics.

0:28:33 Thomas: So if you just ask like, hey, guns, good or bad, you know, something very vague, you're more likely to get a 50-50 answer than if you ask something like, okay, what about the X measure, like taking X measure to ensure safety, then you actually get overwhelming numbers. For example, universal background checks, 97 to 2.

0:28:56 Thomas: Does anything poll that favorable? Universal background checks are favored 97 to two. Why is that not already the law yesterday or 25 years ago? I mean, that's what we have to fix. Now, I get it. I want to take away all guns, but that's not going to happen. What we should be doing is years ago doing some of these common sense things that everybody wants. And the reason we aren't is now I would have said earlier, if I hadn't read that data to you, I would have said it was the NRA and the lobbying and all that. It's not really the money. I really don't think it is. I think the NRA represents a group of people who are powerful. I think they don't even need really to use much money. They just represent a view that is prevalent.

0:29:41 Thomas: There is a view that is very prevalent on the right that, you know, you can kind of pry my gun from my cold dead hands view. And I don't even think the NRA needs to fund all that much stuff. They can just kind of grade candidates and then people will support people on the right will support the candidates that are more favorable toward guns. But universal background checks are 97 to 2. That should have happened years and years ago. Now, nationwide ban on assault weapons, this is something that did exist, it had a sunset provision because of Republicans, and it was allowed to sunset. This is 67-29, that is a wide majority favor a nationwide ban of assault weapons. They almost made it happen in 2013, but they weren't able to, so that is something, that is a failure of Congress.

0:30:32 Thomas: That is the failure of our democracy to represent us. 83 to 14 favor mandatory waiting period for all guns. 83% to 14%. And then finally, Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence. That statement was favored 75 to 17. Congress needs act. So that needs to happen. That should be a given. It should be an absolute given that the kinds of things that overwhelmingly our voting population supports, our citizens support, the The government should make happen. Congress, in theory, should represent our interests. That's what we, that's what needs to change here the most. And you know, lest you think that this was some liberal poll that I'm citing, like the equivalent of a Fox News poll on the left, 20% said that the solution to gun violence at schools was armed teachers.

0:31:29 Thomas: 20%. Armed teachers used to be the joke that The Onion told that was like, okay, that's funny, no one really thinks that, like that's obviously absurd. It's getting to the point where that, that onion article that with the picture of the badly photoshopped teacher holding a gun pointed at the students, that's getting to the point where it's a significant percentage of our population wants that to be the policy. Like that's an actual policy statement of 20% of people right now. Absolutely absurd. Absolutely.

Do I really need to say why that's so absurd? Do I need to waste a minute on that? That. I mean, everyone has pointed out online, we can't even give our teachers notebooks and pencils and stuff. We can't fund basic education, but we're going to expect teachers, in addition to paying out of pocket for everything, books, pencils, and all that stuff, and being some sort of superheroes who watch our kids all day for very little pay, we're gonna expect them to also be highly trained badasses. School teachers, are you kidding me? Are you living in the same reality that I'm living in?

This is so, anyway, no, the answer is no, by the way. So that should all be a given. That should already, that shouldn't even be part of the bargaining. It should not even be like, okay, we'll give a concession of, you know, we do some of these measures. No, no, no. That's what the population wants. And that's what should, and I think will happen. Because I am allowing myself a modicum of optimism because of how incredible the kids at this school have been, the spokespeople. It's been remarkable. It's been absolutely remarkable. And it's been something that's been different.

0:33:11 Thomas: Now, I just tweeted, how different? I don't know. But it's certainly different. You cannot deny, you know, if you've gone through this a number of times, which we all have, I mean, we've all been living in this society, or at least that my international listeners have been paying attention to it. Because for some reason, you know more about our country than we do. But anyway, you've been here. We've been here before. This is different. There's rallies, there's speeches, the kids are incredible, they're well-spoken, they're making great points. They're absolutely owning Republicans on social media. It's different. Now, again, how different? I don't know. Is it different enough to make real change? I think it could be. I think it could be if we can hold this enthusiasm into the elections coming up and probably need to do so for two more years to to actually get a majority in Congress to do anything.

0:34:04 Thomas: But it could be different. I'm a little optimistic about it. But again, I want to emphasize, that shouldn't even be necessary in order to get something to happen that's favored 97 to 2, that should, we should need no anything, there doesn't need to be a revolution, there ought not to need to be, you know, some sort of massacre in the, in the voting booth, in order to get our government, the representatives of us, to do something that 97% of us want, that should not be an issue. You likely saw Dinesh D'Souza's ridiculous and disgusting and cowardly awful tweet about the students, uh when, when Florida, by the way, because what they're doing in Florida, and maybe, by, the way these students will only focus at the local level, which, you know, fine, focus where you are, and maybe that's where we can make, uh start to make progress locally, and then broaden that out, but the students reacted to the Florida Congress voting to not even look into this issue.

0:35:03 Thomas: They just, gun control, nah. And there was a picture of some crying kids who were among the victims of this mass shooting, and Dinesh D'Souza said this is the worst news for them since their parents told them they had to get a summer job. That's some Christian morality you got there, buddy, that's, I'm glad you've, you've got the right religion that, that, you know, causes you to act well, and you're going to heaven, none of us are over here who don't ridicule victims, children victims of a mass shooting, but, you know, you got that morality, I am glad, I sure Jesus just loves you, buddy. I'm I mean, I'm sure in the Sermon on the Mount, there must have been a part in the Bible somewhere where he said, oh yeah, and also in addition to blessed are the meek, he then like went on to pwn some high school kids who had just been, their friends had been killed, I am sure that was right after blessed are meek or something, somewhere in there.

0:36:00 Thomas: What a disgusting piece of garbage that guy is. And then there was Bill O'Reilly's tweet, which was, the big question is, should the media be promoting opinions by teenagers who are in an emotional state and facing extreme peer pressure in some cases? There's so much I love about this. First off, you know, he's right. We should only listen to serial sexual harassers on issues of gun control, not people who are victims. But no, no, that joke aside, I love this idea that we can't listen to the constituents who are affected by an issue. That's not how government should work. We shouldn't find, you know, like if there's been a, uh, you know, bank fraud and some people lost their retirement, we shouldn't talk, don't talk to the people who lost their retirement.

0:36:45 Thomas: We don't want to hear them. We should, you don't know, talk to Alan Greenspan or some crap like, no, these are the voters. These are people who should matter, and these are the people who are going to matter when they can vote. They're months away from being voters. Is that what the cutoff is? Sorry, they're a couple months too young to actually be voters, so we don't care what they have to say. No, I mean, they are going be voters.

By the way, they have parents. The parents also are our voters. There are a lot of people who were already 18 who are victims. But my favorite part about that tweet was actually the second part, who are facing extreme peer pressure in some cases, what, gee, why do you think they're facing peer pressure, that's odd, could it be, like, the only thing I can think of is maybe so many of them want there to be more gun control, like as in, there's so many people who are like, why hasn't Congress done anything about gun control that there would be, to the extent that there there would be pure pressure. Doesn't that answer itself, Bill? I mean, if there's such a situation where there's pure pressure to...

To speak on an issue, doesn't that, maybe instead of saying, no, let's silence what the majority of citizens want, maybe you should be asking Congress, why aren't you, why isn't Congress responding to peer pressure, why are they responding to the pressure of citizens who actually want these things to happen?

I got one more thing to say that it might piss some liberals off, so, you know, that's always, that always fun, stay tuned, because, as you might have seen, Republicans accuse these students of being coached, you now, they're making, oh, they are being coach to say this, how could, I'm not gonna address the, there's the conspiracy theory that they're crisis actors, that all horrible,

0:38:30 Thomas: We should never forgive Republicans for mainstreaming awful conspiracy theories about crisis actors. That, of course, of course. But beyond that, even just the ones who are not making that bold of a claim, but are making the claim like, oh, somebody's coaching these students. And by the way, making the claims that the media is maybe cherry picking only the liberal or anti-gun students, which is, you know, you could, that's possible. It would be possible that that's a problem. And I could understand Republicans being mad about that. But then what happened was Trump did this this listening session where he had cherry picked people who were only going to really praise him and be not exactly in favor of gun control to listen. And what happened was liberals did the same thing.

0:39:18 Thomas: And they said like, oh, they've been coached, cherry picked only the ones who would say something nice about Trump. And, you know, I got to be honest, I don't think that's what we should be doing. I think that, yes, it's true that Trump likely, or not him, but his administration likely would only pick students for a listening session that are like fans of Trump. And, you know, that sucks. It's stupid. But at the same time, I really don't think we should be playing a game of, well, when our side is doing it, the students are just acting of their own free will and they're great, but then when the other side is doing it the students or coach, we shouldn't have that battle. What we should be doing is, no, let's hear from everybody, and you know what, let us solve it at the voting booth. Because I think these students are doing an incredible job and they represent a wave of new voters coming on.

0:40:07 Thomas: And I think, you know, what, fine, if Trump wants to cherry pick some pro-Trump students at that school? You know what? Go ahead. But I for one will welcome the challenge of the numbers. I would pit the students who want some sort of gun control measures as a result of this atrocity. I'll take those odds any day. I will be on the side of, I bet you there's going to be more students on that side than Trump can cherry pick. Let's just solve it in the voting booth. One more thing I have to say about how awful Republicans are on this issue, you always hear it's about mental health, it's not about guns, it is about mental health. Well, A, why is it always men? Why is it 97% or 98% men? Seems like you would then have to conclude that only men have mental health issues, pretty much, I don't think that's right.

0:40:58 Thomas: But secondly, secondly, okay, let's pretend, let us ignore all of the bullshit and the obvious reasons why you're full of crap. Let's take you at your word, Mr. Trump. Let's say it is about mental health. What are you doing about it? Have they ever done anything that would lead you to believe Republicans give a shit about mental health? Trump's budget got an NPR article up here for you. Trump's budget would slash mental health resources. So, oh, it's about mental. It's not about gun control. It's about dental health. Well, what are you going to do about it, cut health care, get rid of health care for people. Um, here would slash the spending for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration by $665 million, additionally, Bloomberg reported the National Institute of Mental Health would see a 30% reduction in funding, a half-a-billion-dollar decrease in 2019, and by the way, everyone's seen this too, a year ago, the president signed a bill making it easier for people with mental illness to buy guns.

0:41:57 Thomas: It rolled back the Obama rule that would require the Social Security Administration to send records of some beneficiaries with severe mental disabilities to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. System. Sure, let's pretend you're not completely lying about this, let's pretend it is mental health, whoa, it's not guns, it's mental health, what are you going to do, well, take away healthcare, A, slash spending on the mental health administration, and by the way, let us also make it way easier for people with any mental illness to buy guns, that's my solution. Solution. It's a joke, it's a JOKE! Even if you do think the issue is mental health, you should still vote out Republicans. Finally, to summarize, yes, I want to take away your guns, but no, I don't think it's realistically going to happen anytime soon.

0:42:45 Thomas: Things like this take a long time, but you have to start somewhere, and you have make the first steps to change a culture, and, you know what, it feels like things are changing, it could be wrong, who knows, but with these high school students, it really feels like, there could be a major culture change that could result in something like a constitutional amendment or could result in something like maybe a Supreme Court decision somewhere a few decades from now that vastly changes how things are done. You never know. But we have to start somewhere. We have to sow the seeds. And so yes, I wanna take away your guns but I will settle for a whole bunch of really strict gun control in the meantime, that's what I'll settle for.

0:43:38 Thomas: All right, thanks so much for listening, couple of announcements, important stuff here, listen up, for one, Philosophers in Space update, we have released episode two on the main feed for anyone who can't afford to be a patron or doesn't want to, you got another episode on the main feed, go and check that out, and also we made the decision that we are just gonna go ahead and sort of modify our goals a little bit, we're gonna put out one episode a week of of Philosophers in Space, but until we hit those goals, it's just going to be for patrons. We're going to only do two normie episodes a month until we hit those patron goals. So we just, people were really excited about it and we just wanted to make it happen for the patrons. We didn't want them to be charged and then not be doing episodes. So, we committed. We're doing an episode a week.

0:44:23 Thomas: We love the show. People are really loving it. Please check out Philosophers in Space. It is awesome. Secondly, I want to talk for a brief minute on Patreon and my membership because, as you know, I switched to SeriousPod.com support, but also I've still obviously done Patreon because a lot of people appreciate the convenience of Patreon and it's where they are, it's were they're supporting other people. And I want say that for a while, as, you know, I was trying to push people over the website and that really came from what I hope you'll understand was a fear of Patreon, this corporation that seems to make blunder after blunder in terms of decisions controlling my livelihood. It was a very nerve wracking scenario and I really wanted to move people over to something that I had control of.

0:45:11 Thomas: And a lot of you did, a lot you went to SeriousPod.com support and you joined up and I thank you so much, but you know there was something that was lost, which is I don't really feel like we have one community of supporters anymore because Patreon, started Facebook for website members to sort of have that Patreon forum equivalent, but I think what I'm going to do, I think it would be better if I tried to let anyone who wants to over on Patreon to also join that Facebook group, so if you are a Patreon supporter of mine, thank you. Uh, I, I'm going to de-emphasize the difference a little bit because I think some time has passed, some people have moved over to the website, so I feel less threatened by Patreon's terrible decisions and I'm gonna go ahead and equalize so that either way you support, it's awesome, you're gonna get the same stuff, I'm not gonna do website exclusives anymore.

0:46:08 Thomas: I think the scare has passed a little bit for me, and hopefully that's warranted. You never know what Patreon's going to do next. But I'm going to equalize that, and if you support me in any way—if you support the show in anyway—you're going to get the same bonus stuff. You're gonna have the same access to the Facebook group. I will put out a post giving Patrons instructions about how to get on that Facebook group, and really, I'll just leave it up to anyone to decide. If you want to cut out the middleman, you know, and not be forking over money to Patreon, which a lot of you didn't want to, a lot of you hated Patreon with very good reason, you've got the opportunity to do so at SeriousPod.com support. But if you like Patreon or if you like being there and you like that you can support other shows on there, I get it. Patreon.com Serious Pod is still there.

0:46:53 Thomas: Either way you're supporting the show, you're making it happen, and you're getting access to the bonus extra stuff. So thank you so much. Look out for that. Let's try to make one Facebook community for all supporters and make it fun and make and make it interactive. That's all I've got for today. I've still got some really good interviews in the can, but I really wanted to speak about this issue. So I thought I'd do a commentary episode. Make sure to hit me up with voicemails if you've got opinions on this. I think that could be interesting. Definitely could be a good area of discussion. I'm curious how people will react to this one. But thank you so much for listening, and I will see you on Monday. Day.