Ep 391 ｜ Boulder Shooting： When 'White Supremacists' Aren't White
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Summary
On Wednesday morning a gunman opened fire in a suburb outside of Denver, Colorado and killed 10 people, including a police officer. Today we are praying for the families of those who lost their loved ones in this mass shooting. We also talk to a gun expert and Second Amendment advocate, Cam Edwards, about the gun used in the attack, the importance of the Second Amendment, and the policies that could have prevented this from happening.
Transcript
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hey guys welcome to relatable happy wednesday hope everyone is having a great week so far
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we are unfortunately talking about another mass shooting today i am going to again remind us
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how i believe we as christians have to respond to something like this and what our main focus
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should be in the importance of adhering to the truth we're also going to talk to a gun expert a
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second amendment advocate cam edwards about the gun that was used in some of the policies that
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are being proposed the importance of the second amendment but how we talk about real solutions
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to these kinds of problems because we also have an obligation to have those kinds of honest
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conversations too so first let me tell you a little bit about what happens then we'll talk about the
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victims and again kind of orient ourselves around what is most important on monday a shooter killed
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10 people at a supermarket in a suburb outside of denver colorado it was according to the denver
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post this is the headline boulder shooting gunman kills 10 including police officer at king supers
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the shooting started sometime after 2 30 p.m in the parking lot of a king supers grocery store a
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witness reported he just came in and started shooting another witness said he let off a couple
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shots then was silent and then he let off a couple more he wasn't spraying the denver police department
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sent about 30 people they came in fire trucks ambulances armored vehicles helicopters and regular
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police cars they even used drones to respond to the shooting police surrounded the building and called
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for the shooter to surrender soon after a man was led out of the building with a bloody leg wearing
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nothing but athletic shorts at the time he wasn't it wasn't known if he was the shooter and the picture
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of the shooter being arrested or like this article says we didn't know it was the shooter at the time
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but a picture of this guy being arrested was kind of one of the first things that we saw on social
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media there was also a video of someone there um showing what was happening and we saw people lying
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lifeless on the ground um just terrifying absolutely horrifying if you were someone who witnessed this if you
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were connected in any way to one of these victims this is going to stick with you for the rest of your
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life this is going to traumatize you for as long as you're alive even just the people in this community
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this is going to be such a difficult thing for them to overcome and actually it and it won't be
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overcome by the way it's not really something to be overcome but just something to have to deal with
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when you look in the face of this kind of evil and tragedy and strangely this has happened a lot in a 30
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mile radius of this area in the past 20 years there have been several mass shootings and so um and that
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in itself is very peculiar that in itself is worth noting i don't know what's actually behind that we're
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actually going to talk to cam edwards a little bit about that and some of uh the policies that could be
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um in play and why this is happening in particular in this area in colorado but it's just
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so sad and as we did on monday when we talked about the atlanta shooting i highly recommend by the
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way going back and listening to that episode because we talk a lot about this stuff that we're
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going to talk about um today but in particular or um in relation to what happened in atlanta and
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that episode was a lot longer and a lot more thorough talking about the importance of reacting both
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in truth and in love and so i recommend going back and listening to monday's episode if you
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haven't already we'll link it in the description to this podcast but here are the victims names we
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don't know as much about them yet as we knew um on monday about the atlanta victims that were
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um shot last week and so i don't have quite as much information but i still want to read the names of
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the victims eric talley was 51 he was a boulder police officer he responded to the shooting he
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was the first one to the scene and was fatally shot apparently he was very beloved by this community
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had been a police officer for many years by the way i am so thankful for law enforcement i'm so
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thankful for uh their willingness to put themselves in harm's way to try to preserve as much life as
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possible so thank you so much law enforcement officers who truly are um heroes in so many ways
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and do such an amazing and courageous job they sacrifice in a way that most of us just would
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not be willing to sacrifice and those of you who are married to or are sons or daughters of police
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officers thank you as well um just for your own personal sacrifice your emotional sacrifice as well
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that you put into this and i'm just praying for police officers who have to deal with this kind
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of tragedy and even just like the spiritual and emotional toll that that that puts on someone to
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be seeing this kind of tragedy consistently i just can't imagine it and so definitely thinking about
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um and praying for the family of eric talley as well as the families of these other people who
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were shot and killed kevin mahoney was 61 terry leaker was 51 uh she was the king supers who was
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which is a grocery store we don't have that where i am um and so i i wasn't i had to look up what what
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exactly it was um king supers employee who had worked at the store for more than 30 years that's
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another thing i just want to note because we're trying to center humans on this people who consistently
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remain in the same job and i don't know this person terry leaker but i imagine if you have had the same
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job at the same place for a long time that means that you're a very dedicated and loyal and hard
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working person i love people who take their job seriously and who no matter what sphere they're
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occupying seek to cultivate it and seek to make it better in whatever ways they possibly can and they
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just stick with something and they stay committed to they stay committed to that to me those are like
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the salt of the earth people the best kind of people you know when you go to a grocery store you go
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somewhere where maybe you're not necessarily expecting some kind of positive interaction and
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then you can tell that the cashier or whoever that you are are talking to um just loves their job and
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has a good attitude and is dedicated to the job that they have how that just brightens your day it
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changes your outlook it reminds you also of what's important and so i'm just so thankful for people
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who's who are dedicated to their job for this long again i don't know anything about this particular
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person but i think the fact that they were dedicated for to this job where they were for this long
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says something probably about their character and integrity ricky ols was just 25 a front-end manager
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at the king supers grocery store jody waters 65 lynn murray 62 suzanne fountain uh 59 trelona
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uh bart kawiak 49 a nevin stanistic 23 denny stong 20 and so we've got some older people we've got
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some younger people really just in the prime of life just starting out who knows what kind of plans
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um they had of course they could have never foreseen something like this and i just think about
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especially these young people 23 20 25 and i'll try not to tear up just thinking about their parents
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like i cannot imagine the pain of course of losing anyone in your life but losing a child i i
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just cannot imagine what their families are going through right now and so we need to remember
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them we need to be praying for their family that the peace of god that the comfort of god would
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surround them this is just devastating and it's sad that we have to have this conversation again
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just two days after we had a conversation about what happened last week in atlanta these people as we
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have to remember as we have to focus on were image bearers of god people that he fearfully and
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wonderfully made in their mother's wombs whose lives had meaning and purpose no matter how much money
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they made their accolades their popularity their number of followers on social media whether or not
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they were married or had kids simply because god made them and put them on this planet their lives had
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value they have souls that are currently living forever in one of two places that sets them and
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us as human beings apart from every other creature in the universe and it is through jesus christ alone
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that our souls find redemption and hope and like we said on monday if this kind of news depresses you
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if it shocks you if it discourages you that's because it's supposed to it should death even as one of
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uh even as the most common experience that every single human being that has ever existed shares
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is shocking because we know inherently as we talked about on monday because because god has placed
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eternity in the human heart that it is not supposed to be this way we're not supposed to have mass
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shootings we're not supposed to have lives taken unjustly we're not supposed to see evil prevail
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and the fact that we do the fact that we do see all this evil and it feels like sometimes wickedness
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is winning it does not disprove the existence of a good all-powerful god but rather stirs in us this
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longing for his return and for him to finally and fully exact perfect justice he is not standing idly
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by as horrifying events occur his wrath again as we talked about two days ago is being stored up it's
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being built up to be unleashed on all evil on which day he will wipe out all wickedness he will wipe
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away all tears there will be no more tragedy there will be no more sadness at all no more no more
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shootings no more cancer no more terrorism no more hate jealousy slander malice no more sin no more
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problems just perfect joy and peace forever and ever and things like this they they just renew our hope
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that's not placed in something in this life of faith in in things that are yet unseen but we know are
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there that's what hebrews 11 1 tells us now faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of
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things not seen the holy spirit gives us a conviction that um that there are things there there's a hope
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there in something that we cannot yet see the bible jesus himself gives us absolutely no indication
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that there will not be great evil and trouble in this world jesus actually promises us in this life
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you will have trouble that's an assurance but take heart i have overcome the world he says so he says
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take heart i have overcome the world not take heart things will probably be pretty easy take heart if
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you follow me i'll make sure that things go smoothly for you and you'll never have to endure tragedy he
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says no no no your confidence your peace your assurance doesn't come from any kind of guarantee that things
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are going to go easily in this life but that he has already overcome the bad and that we wait patiently
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for his full and final ultimate victory and yet so many times we think of the existence of evil as
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something that excludes the existence of god when god so clearly over and over again blatantly shows
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us throughout scripture that life is really hard that evildoers seem like they're going to win but he
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says over and over and of course i'm i'm paraphrasing here look how i show up i mean we see god show up
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over and over again in the new testament or in the old testament rather new testament too uh in a way that
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looks like he is stacking the odds against himself and then just knocking them down read the story of
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god's people and you will see from beginning to end god using trouble and sin and injustice and what
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appear to be insurmountable obstacles to give himself glory and then declare victory and that's exactly
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what we see in the ultimate sense uh in the book of revelation that jesus will once and for all
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overcome what what seem like unconquerable enemies of of satan and sin and death and jesus is the only
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answer to those things he's the only answer to evil both then and now he alone opens eyes and gives
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understanding he alone changes the heart of stone to a heart of flesh and that is essentially ultimately
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what is the issue here is a heart of stone matthew 15 19 says for from the heart or for out of
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the heart come evil thoughts murder adultery sexual immorality theft false witness and slander
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all of these things flow from the heart which can only be changed by the god who made it so as for
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this person who committed this shooting we pray jesus would soften his heart and save him as for these
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victims families and friends in this community we pray god would be glorified that he would save them
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that he would equip churches in the area to show them the love of jesus like i said earlier there's
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been a high number of mass shootings in this area alone in the past two decades columbine high school
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deer creek middle school ywam facility aurora theater arapahoe high school thornton walmart stem
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school uh the boulder king supers this last case and we should absolutely ask ourselves like what is going on
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here while we also pray for what we know to be the only real fundamental answer god changing people's
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hearts and reviving communities with his holy spirit i'm not saying that that means that we can't talk
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policy or that we uh can't talk you know solutions in the here and the now but ultimately we know that
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that's what it is like that is the answer so when we react to things like this as christians our
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responsibility is to one center the gospel and the hope that we have in christ to put the humanness
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of this tragedy to the forefront by remembering the victims and their families and then we have to bind
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ourselves to the truth and this is the hardest part seeking to understand what really happened and
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refusing to get caught up in popular narratives and emotional narratives based on no knowledge and
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that's where i want to start i want to look at some of the reactions that occurred on twitter
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right after this shooting and before we had really any knowledge of the facts so these are all accounts
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with thousands some of them hundreds of thousands of followers these are not just random people they've
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all got their little blue check mark this from this is from george han when a white guy with an
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ar-15 shoots and kills a bunch of people is the motive uh really relevant spoiler alert on the
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motive he was having feelings anger inadequacy invisibility impotence i.e not special this is
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from mina harris the atlanta shooting was not even a week ago violent white men are the greatest
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terrorist threat to our country rosanna arquette says call it what it is white supremacist domestic
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terrorism dl hewley says a white armed mass murder has a better chance surviving an encounter with the
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police than a black dude holding a phone don winslow says description police have taken him into custody
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translation he was white dylan park a white man walked into a grocery store in boulder killed 10
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people and was apprehended by the police and walked out of the building completely unharmed right down the
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road police killed elijah mclean while he apologized for not doing anything wrong two different americas
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i will say by the way what happened to elijah mclean was absolutely wrong we'll talk about why that
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doesn't work as a comparison here um amy siskin always has excellent takes she says the shooter uh was
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taken into custody in other words it was almost certainly a white man again if he were black or brown he
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would be dead julie de caro says extremely tired of people's lives depending on whether a white man
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with an ar-15 is having a good day or not hamal javeri replied to her and says it's always an angry
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white man always julie de caro says and they are always angry about women uh tay anderson uh says uh he
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lists a bunch of recent mass shootings and includes boulder at the bottom and says that this is a white
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male shooter just like the other mass shootings well here's the problem with that reaction according
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to the new york post police identified 21 year old ahmad al-aliwi alisa as the suspect in the boulder
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shooting according to that article alisa's now deleted facebook page says that he was born in syria in
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1999 and then came to the u.s in 2002 the daily beast reported his account included postings about islam
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such as the faith's prayers and religious holidays and his apparent suspicion that he was under
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surveillance if these he posted if these racist islamophobic people would stop hacking my life
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phone and let me have a normal life i probably could uh the muslims at the christ church mosque he
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also said in a facebook post were not the victims of a single shooter they were the victims of the entire
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islamophobia industry that vilified them now here's what's very sad and interesting about this according
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to the new york post alisa's identity was known to the fbi because he was linked to another individual
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under investigation by the bureau law enforcement sources told the new york times now if we want to
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talk about a common thread in a lot of these shootings it has to do with it it is that um these people
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are so often known to the fbi now i know that there are probably a lot of instances where the fbi
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actually does stop these things from happening i know there's only so much they can do before
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infringing on people's rights but i don't know i don't know what the solution is there but it seems
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like so many times these shooters their information was known to the fbi they were known to be a threat
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and then they were still able to commit some kind of crime like this abc 7 colorado grocery store
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shooting suspect id'd as man 21 victims between ages 20 and 65 the suspect purchased the assault
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weapon and we'll talk about that phrase in just a minute with cam edwards just six days before the
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shooting on march 16th a law enforcement official briefed on the shooting said the suspect's family
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told investigators they believed alisa was suffering from some type of mental illness including
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delusions uh relative described times when alisa told them people were following or chasing him
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which they said may have contributed to the violence um there is an article on heavy.com that um
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his brother was interviewed and also said look he always thought that people were stalking him he had
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mental health issues he was paranoid he was very short-tempered he was always thinking that people
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were out to get him because he was a muslim which his family said is not something that's
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that's true um and that this was this was an issue that he had he was mentally unstable and his family
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knew this and apparently knew that he had been um this is his sister-in-law saying this told police
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officers that he had been playing around with a weapon that she thought looked like a machine gun
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about two days earlier and they were worried about this and so we get this information that this guy was
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an outspoken muslim that he was worried about islamophobia that he wasn't actually a white guy if you look at the
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pictures of him he actually he doesn't even look like a white guy and then we see the same people
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who said immediately this was white supremacy this is just an angry white male typical this always
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happens we see the same people who said that backing up once we got more information amy siskin
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let's mourn the victims but not glorify the killer with the attention of having his name widely known
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oh okay got it mina harris i deleted a previous tweet about the suspect in the boulder shooting
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i made an assumption based on his being taken into custody alive and the fact that the majority
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of mass shootings in the u.s are carried out by white men we'll fact check that in just a second
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tarik nasheed who really does not need our attention but he is another example of all of this he said
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the fact that this dude gunned down 10 people and the police didn't shoot him that means he's white
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we ain't gonna start playing games just because he was born in syria the suspect is white enough to
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benefit from the privileges of whiteness let us remember proverbs 29 20 do you see a man who is
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hasty in his words there is more hope for a fool than for him there is more hope for fools who people
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who are truly just intellectually deficient there's more hope for that person than for these people
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let me just say we've all been hasty in our words i have certainly been hasty in our words and that means
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that i have also been guilty of that kind of worse than foolishness behavior we see this so much though
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so much and some of these tweets uh from these progressive activists and journalists with hundreds
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of thousands of likes and retweets and so it's almost on purpose to try to shape the narrative
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before we actually have the information to try to gin up some sort of outrage because they know
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that a lot of people who follow them are not going to fact check them they're not going to keep
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following the story they're just going to confirm their biases and they're going to go along with
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the narrative they're going to find a way to make sure that this is still about white supremacy
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no matter what the facts actually say now for the question are mass shooters usually white that's very
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it's very difficult to actually know that because of the way mass shooting is defined it is defined as
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killing four or more people now why is it the number four why isn't it five why isn't it ten why isn't it
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three well there's some speculation about that if you go down from four to three the number of mass
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shootings that happen per year if you were to qualify it that way go up but so does the profile
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of the shooter because murders where three people or three or more people are killed happen almost on a
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daily basis in chicago and la and these major cities that have very serious gang violence so those
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kinds of mass killings those kinds of murders of more than one person happen all the time and they're
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not typically a white shooter so that doesn't really go along with the narrative now according
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for the center for inquiry there is a conversation about this they've got some stats they talk about
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familicides they represent the most common form of mass murder they're principally defined as close
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victim as a close victim offender uh relationship according to a study by fridel perpetrators of
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this kind of crime are typically white middle-aged males who target their spouse or intimate partner
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children or other relatives and then you've got felony killings they're distinguished by motive
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murder is used to achieve some primary criminal objective typically involving financial gain this is
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according to the same study by fridel due to their general lack of sensationalism so again it's not
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being reported very often felony killings are not widely publicized despite representing the second
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largest category of mass murder perpetrators of felony mass murders tend to be young black or hispanic
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males with extensive criminal records i mean you probably don't even know except for maybe you heard
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about it when i talked about it on monday that there was a mass shooting um at a dallas nightclub just
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last week in which eight people were shot thankfully not all of them died um but you probably
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didn't even know about that because the perpetrator was not white there and the the victims weren't
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either by the way um and so it didn't perpetuate any kind of interesting narrative for a lot of the
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people that are in the media and so it's just not talked about so this article goes on to say
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despite their extreme visibility public mass killings account for the smallest proportion of all mass
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murders formally these incidents are defined by attack location public mass killers are a heterogeneous
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group and are frequently delineated into several subtypes public murders are often stereotyped as
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middle-aged white men who have suffered a series of failures in different areas of life though some
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research indicates a disproportionate number of immigrants commit public massacres according to that
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same study by fridel these public mass shootings are what most people wrongly consider as typical
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of mass shootings the fact of the matter is according to the statistics that we have
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like this really isn't a white problem it's not it's not just a black problem it's not just a hispanic
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problem it's not just an immigrant problem um like we see this across all demographics and yes some of
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the most sensationalized stories have been of disgruntled young white men but statistically these
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shootings that we are seeing are or just the definition of mass shootings in general are are not committed
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by any one group um in a way that is uh that characterizes the entirety or even a majority of
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mass shootings this is according to statista between 1982 and march 2021 66 out of the 121 mass shootings
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in the united states were carried out by white shooters by comparison the perpetrator was african-american
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and 21 mass shootings in latino and 10 when calculated as percentages this amounts to 54 percent of mass
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shootings for um by a white person 17 percent by a black person and eight percent um by a hispanic person
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now if we look at the proportion of the population that this represents we've got white people making up
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about 60 plus percent of the population so this 54 percent of of mass shootings it goes in line with
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that population size we've got black people making up 13 percent of the population and they make up 17
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percent of these mass shooters according to this definition and so that's a little bit more than their
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population size and then them being latino taking up 10 percent of mass shootings um or uh eight percent
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of mass shootings latinos hispanic people actually make up a much larger proportion um of the population
00:27:48.120
than uh black people do and so that number the eight percent is actually much lower than the population
00:27:55.060
size of hispanics so just looking at proportionality there so front page mag just looked at the shootings in
00:28:02.420
2019 um and so they looked at the different percentages of white versus black when it comes to
00:28:09.400
mass shootings in 2019 they say the 51 percent were black 29 percent were white and they talk about the
00:28:18.040
different scenarios in which this happened of course the narrative is that it's only one kind of
00:28:22.540
disgruntled white person the fact of the matter is is that uh this particular article says mass shooters
00:28:28.680
are not necessarily a white problem or a black problem looking at the data from the mass shooting tracker
00:28:34.600
widely utilized by the media as of this writing of the 72 mass shooters in 2019 perpetrators and
00:28:40.560
shootings that killed or wounded four or more people whose race is known 21 were white 37 were black
00:28:46.340
eight were latino and six were members of other groups so it all depends too on which outlet that
00:28:53.140
you're looking at that uh looks or that how they define mass shootings when we were looking at the
00:29:00.080
other article when we were looking at statista and we were looking for the center um for inquiry
00:29:06.380
uh we were looking at a large span of mass shootings this particular article was only looking at 2019 and
00:29:14.000
actually found that numerically there were more black people who committed mass shootings than white
00:29:19.660
people uh three mass shooters were asian two were american indian and one was arab these numbers are if
00:29:25.900
anything vastly understated as many as half of the mass shootings that took place in 2019 thus far remain
00:29:32.800
unsolved but they often took place in black areas and unfortunately claimed uh black victims so if this
00:29:40.800
sounds confusing to you that's because it is confusing the outlets report different um different mass
00:29:47.680
shootings in different ways using different definitions using different kinds of statistics that either
00:29:52.920
talk to raw numbers or either talk to proportionality i think what it tells us is that unfortunately black
00:29:58.760
communities are typically victims of gang violence and do claim three or more lives very often that's not
00:30:06.940
always qualified as a mass shooting but when you look at the numbers and you look at the percentages we see
00:30:12.780
that different kinds of mass shootings are kind of unique to different kinds of communities and that it's not
00:30:18.500
in particular a white problem where it's not in particular a black problem it's really just
00:30:23.600
a murder problem a violent crime problem that unfortunately um has spiked in many ways over
00:30:30.160
the past year or so and so again to try to make the narrative about whiteness or about white supremacy that
00:30:37.380
it's always white people that are committing these crimes it's just it's not accurate in the same way that
00:30:43.720
i mean we've talked about unfortunately black men take up a disproportionate percentage of the
00:30:50.320
homicides committed in this country and homicide victims in this country and yet when a homicide
00:30:55.660
happens i don't think that it would be right for us to say well we probably know the race of the
00:31:00.680
shooter we probably know the race of the people involved i don't think that's right and yet it's okay i
00:31:05.980
guess for all these blue check marks on twitter to assume the race of the shooter even though the
00:31:11.360
numbers don't actually back up their assertions representative ilhan omar said the shooter's
00:31:16.380
race or ethnicity seems front and center when they aren't white otherwise it's just a mentally ill young
00:31:21.560
man having a bad day narratives drive our responses to awful crimes that is not true like that is the
00:31:27.380
most gaslighting statement i've ever heard it is the opposite that is true it's the opposite that is
00:31:33.460
true we almost immediately know the race or we assume the race when uh when the perpetrator is white
00:31:40.180
or when we assume the perpetrator is white or when the perpetrator might look white otherwise it's
00:31:44.860
actually very hard to find the race of the perpetrator in these situations she also says
00:31:49.920
so he's muslim is trending did i miss he's christian uh trending for last week's atlanta mass murder
00:31:55.640
yes you did miss that you missed that op-eds in the washington post about how purity culture somehow
00:32:02.720
influenced the atlanta shooter to do what he did not the inherent dangers of prostitution and
00:32:09.420
exploitation not the objectification of of women that is uh that is rampant in that industry and
00:32:16.260
in the pornography industry not mental health not the isolation that we have shoved onto people for
00:32:20.680
the last year who were already mentally unstable but the general theology of sex purported by some
00:32:26.640
churches that the guy in atlanta may or may not have been under the influence of at some point in his
00:32:33.220
life like there were all these think pieces making that connection and salon also for example as we
00:32:38.920
talked about on monday but when it comes when it comes to this like are we not allowed to talk
00:32:44.340
about the shooter's theology that he actually directly purported in his facebook page what about
00:32:49.600
his motives like what about his mentality we had all of this um sophistry we had all this analysis when
00:32:58.420
it comes to the atlanta murder and how christianity plays into it and being against crt critical race
00:33:04.420
theory plays into it and how whiteness plays into it but with this it just has to do with guns like
00:33:10.200
that's how quickly the narrative changed at first it was whiteness and white supremacy white domestic
00:33:15.220
terrorism now we found out that he is actually a muslim who was afraid of islamophobia and now it's all
00:33:21.400
about guns um he was like i said explicit about his beliefs on facebook his family said that he was
00:33:28.200
paranoid always thought that people were targeting him because he's muslim but we don't talk about
00:33:34.240
that democrats the same democrats who said that it was whiteness are now only talking about guns they
00:33:39.480
don't want to talk about motives they don't want to talk about mental illness they don't want to talk
00:33:42.900
about any kind of belief systems um and by the way all of the victims of this crime were whites when
00:33:49.400
most of the victims but not all were asian in atlanta we were told that it was assuredly undoubtedly
00:33:56.520
anti-asian racism and white supremacy so what happens when someone who is non-white kills victims
00:34:02.600
that are all whites is it not anti-white hate and why not okay now we're going to talk about
00:34:08.180
the the guns and the reaction that the democrats are having to all of this and why it is it's not
00:34:14.920
bringing us to the right solution and there's so much more that we can talk about in all of this but
00:34:20.300
unfortunately we don't have the time to do it we'll try to pick back up on some more of it tomorrow
00:34:24.860
cam thank you so much for joining us could you tell everyone quickly who you are and what you do
00:34:34.800
sure my name is cam edwards i'm the editor at bearingarms.com and the host of the bearing arms
00:34:41.320
cam and company podcast great and i want to get your insight into um unfortunately what happened
00:34:48.140
earlier this week but specifically about the gun that was used it's being called an assault weapon
00:34:54.520
an assault rifle people are talking about an assault weapons ban can you break that all down for us and
00:35:00.780
kind of tell us um what's going on what what was the weapon used and could there be any kind of ban
00:35:06.940
that would have prevented this sure so we don't specifically know um what firearm is used although
00:35:13.960
the affidavit that was released yesterday uh points to a ruger ar-556 pistol which is an ar-style
00:35:21.680
pistol uh but apparently there was also a a handgun uh that was found at the scene of the crime as well
00:35:28.320
and the reason why folks are talking about you know a quote-unquote assault weapons ban is because
00:35:32.540
the city of boulder back in 2018 tried to put a local ban on these types of firearms as well as
00:35:39.300
quote-unquote high capacity magazines on the books uh that law was actually struck down by a judge in
00:35:44.000
colorado a couple of weeks ago because it violated the state's firearm preemption law uh now the guns
00:35:49.900
in question are commonly owned uh there are more than 20 million ar-style firearms in this country and
00:35:56.180
there are more than 150 million magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition uh so gun
00:36:02.240
control advocates like to seize on this type of firearm saying that they're you know uniquely dangerous
00:36:06.880
that uh there's no reason for americans to possess these battlefield weapons of war but what we're
00:36:12.100
talking about is the most commonly sold centerfire rifle in the country today these are firearms that
00:36:17.980
are used by lawful americans for hunting for recreation for competition and yes for self-defense as well
00:36:24.120
so talk about what the democrats are now saying that they want to do on the heels of this as far as
00:36:31.800
legislation goes and do you think any of their proposals would have actually stopped what happened in
00:36:38.100
colorado well right now they're talking about the two bills that have passed out of the house hr 8 and
00:36:44.160
hr 1446 both of these deal with background checks and no they wouldn't have made a difference because
00:36:48.920
uh this individual was legally eligible to purchase a firearm so he could pass a background check and
00:36:54.020
apparently did so uh when he purchased this firearm about a week or so ago uh hr 8 would impose
00:37:00.060
universal background check requirements on every law-abided american if you were to sell a gun to your
00:37:05.860
neighbor loan a gun to your cousin you could be looking at a year in federal prison if you did not
00:37:11.820
conduct a background check beforehand hr 1446 would allow the federal government to extend the waiting
00:37:19.580
period basically indefinitely right now if you go to the gun store and you go through a background check
00:37:24.820
it's the national instant check system and ordinarily it's pretty instantaneous right you might have to wait
00:37:30.740
a few minutes but you get a response there are times however where folks are going to get a response from
00:37:35.820
the nick system that says delayed and that means that the fbi is uh is doing more research into
00:37:41.300
whether or not you're legally eligible to purchase a firearm under existing federal law right now the
00:37:46.000
fbi has three business days to conduct that additional research after those three days are over the seller of
00:37:52.480
that gun can choose to release that firearm if they want what hr 1446 would do is extend that to 10
00:38:00.880
business days and then after that 10 day period has expired if the seller of that gun hasn't heard
00:38:06.140
back from the government they still can't release the firearm they're supposed to petition the attorney
00:38:10.980
general of the united states for permission to sell that gun and of course the federal government doesn't
00:38:16.820
have to provide that permission so this is really a backdoor way to delay or deny or impose indefinite
00:38:24.880
waiting periods on firearm sales which could make it impossible for some people to purchase a gun and i'm
00:38:30.980
guessing in this legislation there's no clear reason or there there's no boundary that says okay uh your
00:38:39.720
permission or your allowance to to have a gun is only limited to um or your disallowance i should say the
00:38:47.720
prohibition on you holding a firearm is not limited to these specific qualifications so for example it's
00:38:55.120
not just for people who have committed some sort of crime or have some sort of mental illness it's
00:39:00.380
really for any american that permission can be held indefinitely it's not just for certain kinds of
00:39:07.440
americans with maybe what would be considered a sketchy background it can be anyone right i mean you know
00:39:13.420
that's a really good point because the law is clear that it's supposed to only be for those who are
00:39:18.400
disqualified from owning a firearm if you are convicted of a felony offense or a domestic violence
00:39:24.500
misdemeanor or you've been adjudicated as mentally defective in other words you've been involuntarily
00:39:29.440
committed by a judge to a mental institution then you are disqualified you have lost your right to own a
00:39:35.080
firearm but under 1446 again the fbi could just sit on these requests and they don't have to provide an
00:39:42.080
answer there's nothing in this legislation that would compel the agency to respond we know right
00:39:47.440
now that a large number of denials are basically false positives people who might have the same name
00:39:52.500
or a similar name to a prohibited person uh who get you know caught up in the nick system and they're
00:39:57.700
denied even though they're legally eligible to purchase a gun this would exacerbate that problem
00:40:02.160
but one thing we know it wouldn't do is it wouldn't stop criminals from getting a hold of guns because
00:40:06.920
they're not going through background checks to begin with yeah what do you say to the people who say okay
00:40:12.020
okay whatever we've got to do something we've got to push some kind of legislative gun control
00:40:17.840
because this is a problem that's unique to the united states and we need to save lives we need fewer
00:40:23.100
guns on the street and so we've just got to do something to make it harder to purchase guns because
00:40:29.420
america has been dealing with this unique problem for too long what's your response to something like
00:40:34.500
that my response is we need to do something that works not just do something uh you know whether you like
00:40:39.740
it or not we live in a country in which we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms and a lot
00:40:44.360
of other countries don't uh in some cases their violent crime rates are lower in some cases their violent
00:40:49.140
crime rates are higher but what we do know is that here in the united states violent crime until last year
00:40:54.920
when uh all of a sudden we saw the you know biggest one-year crime spike in american history thanks
00:40:59.680
to the covid closures the civil unrest the moves to defund the police violent crime in the united
00:41:04.820
states has actually been declining for 25 years we're at 50 year lows at least we were in 2019
00:41:10.940
even though we have you know 100 million plus gun owners we have more than 20 million americans who are
00:41:17.180
exercising the right to carry a concealed firearm and we do have a right to keep and bear arms so
00:41:23.520
we need to work within the constitutional boundaries and that means we need to focus on those who are
00:41:29.280
actually responsible for violent crime uh and you know the democrats they offer this one-size-fits-all
00:41:34.500
solution well if we just pass a gun ban or background checks or gun licensing laws it'll
00:41:38.500
have some sort of trickle-down effect on criminals let's start to focus on the criminals right now
00:41:43.020
right you know and there are there are non-partisan policies that can be put in place at the local
00:41:49.660
level that actually focus on those who are most likely to offend and those who are most likely to
00:41:55.040
be the victims of violence that don't involve new gun control laws that actually involved a change in
00:41:59.900
tactics targeted deterrence we need to be working on those programs in places like chicago baltimore
00:42:05.640
new york los angeles where you know gang and drug-related violence has increased we also need
00:42:11.360
to focus on mental health and that's not a dodge i know the gun control advocates say oh yeah you always
00:42:15.760
bring up mental health we have a crisis in this country including in colorado by the way where people
00:42:20.960
who need help cannot get it you cannot find an inpatient bed unless you've committed a crime
00:42:27.420
that's a crisis and it needs to be addressed and it's so easy for politicians to say well no let's
00:42:33.740
just pass a gun control law because that doesn't cost a lot of money you don't have to figure out
00:42:37.740
how to pay for it it's a soundbite solution but it's not a real solution so if we're going to get
00:42:43.220
serious about this and we can't try to ban our way to safety we actually have to address the real
00:42:47.740
problem and you would think the democrats they must know some of what you're saying that there are a lot
00:42:54.120
of other problems that can be dealt with before we start infringing on the right of law-abiding people
00:42:58.880
to be able to defend themselves and their families how they see fit what do you think is behind the
00:43:05.460
push constantly to take away the rights of people who are not committing these crimes who are not
00:43:11.800
committing these mass shooters are these mass shootings why do they believe the country is going
00:43:17.520
to be more safe if someone like you or i who is not going to commit these crimes don't own guns
00:43:24.520
i think ultimately for those folks it boils down to they don't like guns they don't want anybody to own
00:43:30.280
one uh because they don't own one themselves and so you know that that's sort of the uh the the
00:43:35.920
second amendment repeal argument right that we have to reduce the number of guns in our country
00:43:40.320
in order to make us safer even though as i said for 25 years we've seen more guns and less crime
00:43:46.440
in the united states but there is i think a competing point of view on the left that is starting to
00:43:51.800
bubble up um when you look at some of these you know community activists who talk about the need
00:43:56.480
to reimagine policing uh they they talk about over incarceration in this country well that mindset
00:44:03.500
is diametrically opposed to the old school gun control ideas of let's put more gun laws on the books
00:44:09.500
that are going to be enforced by police and that's what's going to make us safer right because these
00:44:14.040
activists say whoa whoa whoa if we put more laws on the books they're going to be used against young
00:44:18.840
black and brown men they're going to put you know people in prison and in fact we see this in places
00:44:23.000
like new york state uh a couple of years ago there was a reporter for slate emily bazalon who spent two
00:44:28.880
months in the brooklyn gun court just watching to see who was going through the door what they were
00:44:33.060
being charged with and she saw that 70 percent of the defendants who were facing years in prison
00:44:38.900
uh we're we're facing those uh the possibility of a prison sentence for simply possessing a firearm
00:44:43.900
without a license they had no criminal history no history of violence but because they possessed a
00:44:49.700
gun without a license that they couldn't get in new york city they're looking at three and a half years
00:44:54.040
in prison so there are folks on the left who are starting to look at this and say well this is a
00:44:58.160
really dumb idea and you're saying this is going to backfire and it's going to make things work
00:45:01.620
or a disproportionate number of those people that that reporter saw were black and brown is that what
00:45:07.480
you're saying yeah young black and brown men without serious criminal histories right who
00:45:12.140
were going to prison because they possessed a gun without a license that they couldn't get
00:45:15.680
in new york city and a license by the way that is not required to own a gun in most of the united
00:45:20.440
states you know we keep hearing this talk about the second amendment is racist no it's not gun control
00:45:24.920
is racist gun control laws have been historically used to deprive minorities and disfavored americans of
00:45:30.740
their right to keep and bear arms the second amendment protects a right of the people of all the people
00:45:35.840
to keep and bear arms and in that example that you just gave those people were already willing to
00:45:42.060
break the law that was on the books that you have to have a license in order to have a firearm
00:45:47.280
they were already willing to break that law to own a gun so what is going to be the inhibition that
00:45:53.960
another law would then uh would then place in in front of them um if they're already willing to break
00:46:01.340
the law to own a gun they would be presumably willing to break another law to own a gun
00:46:06.160
i saw a similar argument in the washington post i think it was either right before or right after the
00:46:11.740
election from someone who was on the left i think that they consider themselves a pretty far left
00:46:16.640
activist an op-ed in the washington post saying that biden's gun plan to impose a fee i think it was
00:46:22.940
like i think it's ten thousand dollars or something to own a certain kind of gun or you have to turn your
00:46:28.100
gun in uh she was arguing that look this only affects poor gun owners this doesn't affect rich
00:46:34.080
people rich people are going to be able to keep their guns but that particular part of guidance of
00:46:38.700
biden's gun control plan would disproportionately affect uh poor people who just want to defend
00:46:44.440
themselves and disproportionately that means that that's going to affect these black and brown
00:46:49.200
communities so again it's gun control that affects those uh what are called marginalized communities
00:46:56.080
not the rich white people that the laughter saying actually represent the second amendment defense
00:47:03.900
yeah i think that's right i mean and look and there's a long history of this in the gun control
00:47:08.480
movement you can go back to the 1970s when they tried to enact bans on so-called saturday night specials
00:47:14.000
these were basically you know cheap affordable handguns uh and again gun control advocates said no no we
00:47:19.360
got to ban these things because they're the tool of criminals well they're also the tool of lower
00:47:22.440
income americans who couldn't afford a 400 or 500 firearm we see this with the restrictive licensing
00:47:28.500
fees in places like new york city or the subjective issue licensing laws in places like california where
00:47:34.600
you have to be able to document a specific ongoing threat against your life in order to get a license
00:47:39.240
to carry now if you're a wealthy individual if you're a celebrity now the rules probably don't apply
00:47:44.100
to you but the average citizen is being told sorry you just don't have a good enough reason to
00:47:48.900
protect your life uh as you say these laws i believe are discriminatory on their face they're
00:47:53.760
certainly discriminatory in practice uh and you know look i'm a white guy in my 40s who lives in
00:47:59.720
rural virginia uh i have a sheriff who is strongly uh you know pro second amendment i would imagine that
00:48:05.180
if new federal gun control laws came down he would be very unlikely to enforce these new laws so
00:48:09.720
me personally you know i'm probably not going to be impacted by a lot of these gun control laws
00:48:14.220
but i don't support them because i know good americans will be impacted by these gun control laws
00:48:21.720
and the folks we really need to be worried about aren't going to be touched by them yeah to close us
00:48:27.080
out i get this question a lot you know the majority of my audience they're young women who they might
00:48:32.800
you know they might know because they're conservative that the second amendment is important but a lot
00:48:37.140
of them don't carry guns they might not own guns themselves and just in this past year because of some
00:48:42.020
of the reasons that you listed some of the unrest and feeling vulnerable especially those that live
00:48:46.760
in cities they have started to consider this but they've also started to wonder and this is a christian
00:48:51.540
podcast and so a lot of christians are starting to wonder hang on why is the second amendment why is
00:48:57.440
the right to keep and bear arms considered a god-given right why is it important why shouldn't we just all
00:49:03.660
give up our guns and hope that things just get safer so just to close this out can you give us kind of
00:49:08.980
your concise argument for why it's so important to defend the second amendment as what we believe to
00:49:14.640
be an inherent god-given right absolutely look i i think that you know as as a christian when we talk
00:49:22.940
about a god-given right i mean fundamentally we have a a right of self-defense that is inherent in nature
00:49:27.860
it's not just a a human right we can see this even among you know the animals of god's creation
00:49:33.000
but our life is important and look as a christian i believe that we do need to love each other we
00:49:38.940
need to love our enemies we need to walk through this world with love in our hearts but jesus told
00:49:44.420
his disciples before they set out to evangelize the world get a sword and if you don't have one sell
00:49:50.860
your cloak and buy one because he wanted his disciples to be able to protect themselves he knew
00:49:55.920
that the world was a dangerous place that doesn't mean that we go out and we wield that sword we wield
00:50:00.800
that firearm to exert our own power to exert our own authority uh and dominion over others but we
00:50:07.660
use those tools to protect human life to protect the people that we love to protect strangers who
00:50:14.380
are in need and that is why i i firmly believe uh that the god-given right to self-defense uh and
00:50:21.680
the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is so vitally important for each and every one
00:50:26.320
of us yes i am for the right to defend yourself as you see fit for the same reason that i'm against
00:50:33.360
abortion because i believe in the protection of innocent life people say that it's hypocritical
00:50:39.120
to be against abortion and for the second amendment i think it's completely consistent i believe in
00:50:44.460
protecting innocent life um and so that would be my reasoning in addition to everything you said people
00:50:50.700
are made in the image of god and therefore i believe that we have a right and a responsibility
00:50:56.100
to do everything that we can to responsibly uh protect and defend um that innocent life so thank you
00:51:04.580
so much for talking to us for giving us your insight can you tell everyone where they can follow you
00:51:10.440
sure absolutely you can find me at bearingarms.com also the bearing arms cam and company podcast which
00:51:17.400
focuses on second amendment news and information uh we're on youtube at townhomemedia rumble.com
00:51:22.620
at bearing arms cam and company as well as apple podcast amazon podcast and more thank you so much cam
00:51:29.900
okay guys thank you so much for listening there's so much more to talk about here but i hope i kind of gave
00:51:44.860
you at least an overview of everything that's going on and like what we need to focus on and the truth
00:51:50.660
behind everything there's so many more details and we'll wait until they come out to keep talking
00:51:56.040
um uh about some of this and the reality behind it but we'll be back here uh tomorrow and if you've got
00:52:04.080
any recommendations for something that you really want to hear about or you really want analysis of then
00:52:08.720
please let me know and we'll try to cover that but i will see you guys then