#455 — More From Sam： Guns, Propaganda, AI, and Power Unbound
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
189.69695
Summary
On this week's episode of the Making Sense Podcast, Sam Harris and I discuss the ICE officer who shot and killed an immigrant, Alex Preddy, and the lack of outrage from the gun control movement in the wake of it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
00:00:11.740
hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing
00:00:15.720
the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
00:00:20.060
Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore
00:00:26.240
it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're
00:00:30.200
doing here, please consider becoming one. Okay, we're back with another episode of More
00:00:38.900
from Sam. Hi, Sam. Hey. How you doing? Good to see you. Good to see you too. Before we begin,
00:00:43.600
I just want to quickly run through yet again your upcoming shows. LA was amazing, by the way.
00:00:48.920
Yeah, that was a good crowd. Yeah, it was a great one. Again, for the audience, Sam will be giving
00:00:53.800
a talk in a number of cities in North America this year. Next week, we are in Dallas and Austin,
00:00:59.180
and March, we're in Portland and Vancouver, and then May, we're in Toronto, D.C., and wrapping up
00:01:04.880
things again in New York. If you'd like tickets, you can find all the information at samharris.org.
00:01:10.060
And also, I just have to announce that yesterday, the Waking Up app was named App of the Day in the
00:01:14.940
Apple Store. Oh, yeah. That's great. Yeah, like all overnight sensations. It only took us seven years.
00:01:19.580
Yeah. Yeah. In the making. Yeah, I don't know what took so long, but that was
00:01:23.140
hopefully that's helpful. Graphically, it looks great. It looks amazing. I think they did a great
00:01:28.280
job. The app is bigger than ever, and I can only imagine it's at least due in part to many of the
00:01:32.840
things we discuss here on the podcast. So, if you're listening right now and been meaning to
00:01:36.940
try it out, you can find Waking Up in the App Store, but now with a big, shiny Apple endorsement.
00:01:42.440
All right. Last week, we began in Minneapolis, and this week, we're unfortunately back in Minneapolis
00:01:46.880
again with another utterly depressing killing, this time of Alex Preddy, again by what appears to be
00:01:51.860
very poorly trained ICE officers. What's happened there? Oh, yeah, beyond. I don't even know. I
00:01:57.880
mean, this is poorly trained, poorly vetted. I mean, this is just people who are not behaving like law
00:02:03.460
enforcement officers that are recognizable. The most amazing thing about this killing, apart from
00:02:09.140
how pointless and horrible it was, is the response or lack of response from the gun owners of America.
00:02:19.320
I mean, there's been a few tepid complaints from gun organizations, but we would be in a completely
00:02:25.540
different world if this had happened under Biden or, you know, a Kamala Harris presidency. I'm as
00:02:31.680
astonished by this lack of outrage as by anything that's happened in this last year or so, because
00:02:38.700
this, more than anything that has happened in my lifetime, is a complete repudiation of the Second
00:02:45.460
Amendment. We have millions of Americans who have been telling us for their entire adult lives that
00:02:51.540
the Second Amendment is basically the central precept of their civic religion. And, you know,
00:02:58.180
unlike some gun owners like myself, the real reason to care about it and to own firearms is on the
00:03:04.920
account of these people, not for home defense, but for the remote chance that we're going to find
00:03:10.300
ourselves in the presence of a federal government that is acting tyrannically, they've been preparing
00:03:15.300
for this moment their entire lives, or so they've said, and where the hell are they, right? I think if
00:03:22.220
that pretty killing had happened under Kamala Harris, the next ICE deployment or the next Border
00:03:28.380
Patrol, even more relevantly in this case, because they're the ones who killed them, would be shadowed by
00:03:33.480
500 guys with AR-15s, right? I mean, it's just, it's unimaginable to me that they're having this
00:03:39.740
lack of response, because what we saw from the president and vice president to Kristi Noem to
00:03:45.480
Kash Patel to Stephen Miller, the odious Stephen Miller, we had a full court press in one direction
00:03:53.260
denying the reality of the Second Amendment. I mean, just simply saying that if you're carrying firearms
00:04:00.200
in any kind of proximity to federal law enforcement, that is very likely a death sentence and should
00:04:05.840
be, right? I mean, it's just, add to that the fact that they called him a terrorist and an assassin
00:04:10.040
who's clearly bent on massacre and just automatically lied in, once again, in impossible ways, because we
00:04:16.480
all saw the footage. He never reached for his gun. He was fully disarmed, restrained, and then they
00:04:21.880
shot him. They put 10 rounds in his body and killed him for no apparent reason. Where is gun culture on
00:04:27.920
this? It's completely insane. I'm just, I mean, again, I'm as mystified by this as anything I've seen so
00:04:33.900
far. I want to discuss a different reaction online that I saw. I want you to watch a bit of this clip, and then
00:04:39.100
I'll share Megyn Kelly's takeaway, and then I want to get your reaction to all of this. Can we play that
00:04:43.720
clip, please? This is a moment the news movement filmed on January 13th in Minneapolis, showing a man who
00:04:49.560
appears to be Alex Preddy interacting with federal immigration agents 11 days before Border Patrol shot and
00:04:56.120
killed him. Our footage was analyzed by the BBC, whose facial recognition technology confirmed his
00:05:02.720
identity to a 97% degree of accuracy. Okay, so here's what she said. Alex Preddy was itching for
00:05:09.280
another confrontation with Border Patrol, whom he'd been stalking, harassing, and terrorizing. He had been
00:05:14.040
victimizing them. His felonies are on tape, he was reckless, and it cost him his life. Find another
00:05:19.680
poster boy, illegal, loving leftist. So why can't she be mostly right but entirely wrong? It doesn't
00:05:26.140
matter what happened 11 days before. It doesn't matter who he is. I mean, honestly, he could have
00:05:31.060
been some kind of hardened criminal that they knew they were apprehending for cause, right? And they
00:05:38.480
find a gun on his belt, they disarm him, that's it. They don't kill him. Once he is restrained,
00:05:46.740
and he, again, he never reached for his gun. They found it on his belt when they were wrestling with
00:05:52.520
him, and I mean, that engagement, you know, the fact that they went hands-on at that point seemed
00:05:56.800
totally illegitimate, but let's just say it was fine, right? Let's just say they had reason to force
00:06:02.000
him to the ground, pepper spray him, etc. Again, the video doesn't suggest that, but even if you're
00:06:06.320
going to price all of that in and give them the benefit of the doubt, what then happened is they
00:06:10.400
discovered a gun on his belt. You see one cop grab it and walk away, and then you see him shot by I
00:06:18.540
don't know how many guys, I think it was at least two, for no reason. There's nothing about this video
00:06:24.720
that changes that picture. Well, I'm saying that even if he did those things in real time, which is
00:06:30.060
what you're saying, and he kicked the cop car and he grabbed the cop, all of those things. So what I'm
00:06:34.460
saying is that even if he did all those things in the video and he did it in real time to the cops,
00:06:39.340
Megyn Kelly can be right about saying, you don't behave this way, there are better ways to protest,
00:06:44.460
you can do all those things. But I guess I'm just utterly shocked that the conclusion would be
00:06:49.540
the cost of any of this would be losing your life. Yeah. Well, the thing I'm focusing on here,
00:06:54.520
though, the thing that truly astounds me is that, yes, all of this is true. This is not the way you
00:06:59.240
want to behave as a protester. I have no idea who this guy was. I mean, obviously, he was immediately
00:07:04.720
vilified by the federal government at every level, which is insane, right? We shouldn't have a
00:07:09.820
government that does that. But even if he was the worst person on earth, the way he was killed,
00:07:15.020
the fact that he was killed, and the subsequent statements about that killing are shocking,
00:07:20.280
right? And they're especially shocking for how completely they repudiate the Second Amendment.
00:07:26.740
I mean, that's the thing that I just cannot get my head around, that half of America that cares so
00:07:31.780
deeply about gun rights, or whatever it is. Let's just say it's 25% of America that really
00:07:37.420
cares deeply. Let's just say it's 10 million people for whom it's their single issue. Where
00:07:42.520
the hell are they? Yeah. Well, I'm sure we'll continue to talk about this on future episodes,
00:07:48.160
unfortunately. But we got to move on to another topic. Iran. It seems that last time we said it
00:07:53.180
was 12,000 to 15,000 people who had maybe been killed. Now that number looks to be closer or over
00:07:58.080
30,000. Anything new to add to this? Yeah, well, I don't know how reliable these numbers are, but
00:08:02.980
obviously Trump's demand that they not kill their protesters went unheard. And perhaps we're getting
00:08:09.600
ready to respond to that atrocity. I've heard some news that we're moving necessary equipment into the
00:08:19.080
region. So it remains to be seen what's going to happen there. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if
00:08:23.440
we respond. And again, I do think it's sad we didn't do it earlier, but I do think we should
00:08:29.120
give whatever help we can give to toppling this regime and rolling the dice with whatever is the
00:08:35.040
aftermath. Again, this is kind of up to the Iranian people to figure out what the aftermath will be.
00:08:39.560
And I don't know what to hope for there. But, you know, preserving this regime as it is,
00:08:44.380
seems to be in no sane person's interest. So. Well, we don't need to spend too much time on this next
00:08:50.080
topic, but Candace Owens was apparently confused this week when she tweeted back online after
00:08:54.740
internet blackout. I grew up in Connecticut and have truly never seen an ice like this ever. The
00:08:59.760
temperature is 30 degrees, but the ice on our treetops is not melting at all. Never seen anything
00:09:04.980
like this. Anybody else? So. 30 degrees? 30 degrees and the ice is not melting.
00:09:12.520
All right, Candace. That's what you're dealing with there.
00:09:15.460
She never understood much about climate. I remember going round around with her around
00:09:20.800
climate change. And there's a famous clip where she was on Joe Rogan's podcast many years ago,
00:09:27.300
pretending to be a climatologist. So. For that week.
00:09:30.160
I guess the weather is also mystifying. Yeah. Well, while we're on the topic of climate
00:09:34.200
concerns, is there anything you want to update here? I feel like there are so many things to
00:09:38.780
worry about these days that existential climate risk has fallen out of the top 10.
00:09:42.480
Oh yeah. Nobody, nobody's got time to worry about that. It's just, it's too slow moving and it's,
00:09:47.820
um, it's too hypothetical. You know, it would be great if we lived in a world where we could look
00:09:53.680
at things that subtle, but we're, you know, we're, we've got, uh, it's like the house is on fire and
00:09:59.560
worrying about the climate is, I can't even imagine the climatologists have got all the, all their
00:10:05.920
bandwidth for the climate these days. We can't worry about emergency six months away. Forget about
00:10:10.820
anything beyond that. I do want to add some good news here. I saw that we've had over 150 hurricanes
00:10:15.560
on record, make landfall in the Gulf of Mexico through 2024 since they've been keeping track.
00:10:19.760
But last year, after Trump changed the name to Gulf of America, ask me how many hurricanes we've had
00:10:25.280
since then. Yeah. How many have we had? Exactly. None. Let's give credit where credit is due. Got
00:10:29.980
to celebrate those victories. Me and his sharpie. I mean, if push comes to shove, he can just draw a
00:10:34.200
different path to the hurricane and, and save many, many lives that way. Well, and while we're on, uh,
00:10:39.480
funny things, I saw a clip this morning of Nicki Minaj walking out on stage with President Trump
00:10:44.240
at some event. I don't know if you saw it. No, really? Yeah. We got to, let's play a bit of that
00:10:48.380
clip for a few seconds. I am probably the president's number one fan.
00:10:58.940
And that's not going to change. It reminded me of something. And many, many are claiming that you
00:11:05.540
might be the next great prognosticator right up there with Alex Jones, because I want to play this
00:11:11.080
clip of you from 2016 on Rogan's podcast. Let's see. If you'd like to continue listening to this
00:11:16.280
conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to
00:11:22.040
all full length episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad free and
00:11:27.560
relies entirely on listener support. And you can subscribe now at samharris.org.
00:11:35.540
And you can subscribe to our channel. And you can subscribe to our channel. And we'll see you next time.