Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 787 ｜ The 'Tennessee Three' Aren't Heroes

00:00:00.000 Three Tennessee state legislators are being hailed as heroes, now dubbed the Tennessee

00:00:05.240 Three, for their anti-gun activism.

00:00:08.240 Two of these legislators were removed from the Tennessee House.

00:00:12.380 And because of that, Republicans in the Tennessee House are being accused of racism.

00:00:18.460 What is really going on behind the scenes here?

00:00:21.780 We'll look at this from a political and also theological perspective.

00:00:25.300 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:27.900 Go to GoodRanchers.com, use code Allie at checkout. 0.82

00:00:30.480 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:41.060 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable Happy Wednesday.

00:00:43.860 Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.

00:00:46.400 So I've got to get through this episode as quickly as possible.

00:00:49.680 We have so much to talk about.

00:00:50.920 This could easily be over an hour, an hour and a half.

00:00:54.640 So I'm going to try to abbreviate this story, summarize the story as much as possible,

00:00:58.960 and give as concise of a response as possible.

00:01:02.500 You guys know I'm very verbose.

00:01:04.060 That's going to be difficult for me, but I will try.

00:01:07.740 Tomorrow, we've got an amazing conversation with a dad.

00:01:10.800 His name is Brian Montgomery.

00:01:12.000 And he is going to tell us this tragic but crucial for us to hear story of his son who died by suicide in December of last year after he fell victim to a sextortion scheme on Instagram.

00:01:27.620 You do not want to miss tomorrow's conversation.

00:01:31.080 I know that that already sounds dark and sad.

00:01:33.940 That's because it is.

00:01:34.940 But man, this guy's a strong Christian.

00:01:37.140 There's redemption.

00:01:37.900 There's hope that comes from this story.

00:01:39.260 But there are also very clear warnings and warning signs that parents need to look for.

00:01:45.800 So tomorrow is an episode for sure that you need to tune into.

00:01:49.560 And then you also need to share with every single parent that you know.

00:01:53.120 But okay, let's talk about this subject that I've been wanting to talk about for a few days per usual.

00:01:58.540 There's so much going on.

00:01:59.920 And I never have time to talk about everything that I want to talk about.

00:02:03.360 But because there are so many theological implications in this story or so many theological points being made online about this Tennessee three who happen to be using the Bible to try to defend their politics and not just their politics, but their political strategies.

00:02:20.220 I wanted to speak to it as much as I can.

00:02:22.260 And again, I won't be able to get into the theological depth that I want to, but I will try my best since so many of you have been asking about this.

00:02:29.260 So let me give you a little bit of background on the Tennessee three.

00:02:32.860 That's been their new nickname that the media has given them.

00:02:36.820 Even as these three Tennessee Democratic state legislators have risen to prominence and fame, thanks to a lot of Democrats and left-wing activists on Twitter, who have dubbed them as some kind of heroes for going against the majority conservative state legislature in Tennessee, who are pro-Second Amendment.

00:02:57.420 And yet the Tennessee three, apparently they're on the front lines of the anti-gun rights movement in the wake of the Nashville shooting that occurred a couple of weeks ago at Covenant Christian School, which we've covered extensively.

00:03:11.540 So three Tennessee state representatives, Gloria Johnson, Justin Pearson, and Justin Jones, led and participated in anti-gun protests last week from the floor of the House chamber that disrupted proceedings following the Nashville shooting.

00:03:28.420 They each face votes of expulsion or votes of removal as representatives from this two-year session that the state legislature in Tennessee is in from the GOP-led House for violating chamber decorum.

00:03:40.320 Justin Pearson and Jordans were expelled and Johnson survived the vote by one.

00:03:44.320 There is a theory, by the way, about this one legislator who decided to vote against Johnson's expulsion, that she was pressured to vote against it so that this would turn into some kind of race issue because Gloria Johnson is white. 0.95

00:04:01.380 Justin Pearson and Justin Jones are black.

00:04:04.280 And so the reaction to their expulsion has been this is the deep south being the deep south. 0.99

00:04:09.220 This is the white GOP being the racist white GOP, white supremacist that they are. 0.80

00:04:15.500 The reason why Gloria Johnson was not removed, was not did not actually face expulsion is because she's white. 0.97

00:04:22.960 And these two dudes, these two state representatives are black, but she survived by one vote. 0.99

00:04:29.580 Again, there are theories about that one vote, but also she had a different posture after this, which we'll get into in just a second. 0.81

00:04:39.220 So the Tennessee House of Representatives rules of order, there is a rules of order that you are supposed to follow as a as a representative or as a legislator in Tennessee.

00:04:49.280 But it doesn't outline specifically what constitutes what constitutes expulsion.

00:04:54.400 It does outline that a member who does not follow the rules of order could be liable to censor a formal statement of disapproval.

00:05:01.900 The initial protest on the House floor on March 30th consisted of three chanting no action, no peace in response to gun legislation that followed the Nashville shooting.

00:05:13.680 And here's a little clip of that.

00:05:14.960 We'll also put up pictures of the protest that was happening at the Tennessee state capitol.

00:05:38.760 And I use that word loosely as generously as possible because there was a lot of aggression.

00:05:44.080 Some might even call this some form of an insurrection at the Tennessee state capitol after the Nashville shooting occurred.

00:05:53.860 These three legislators were reportedly a part of that.

00:05:57.900 And again, as we just saw, they actually disrupted proceedings on the House floor.

00:06:02.240 So they weren't just outside of the chamber, but actually within the chamber trying to disrupt Democratic proceedings because they didn't like the way that it was going.

00:06:12.620 It goes without saying that is that if this were the other direction, Republicans would be called Nazis.

00:06:18.540 They would be called fascists.

00:06:19.860 They would be called out for undermine undermining a Democratic process.

00:06:26.940 In an interview, Representative Gloria Johnson said that this was an act of fascism to have these representatives removed.

00:06:35.360 That's something that you're hearing echoed by a lot of people on the left.

00:06:41.140 And of course, President Biden had something to say about this, as many Democrats did on Twitter.

00:06:47.840 President Biden said this, three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting.

00:06:52.080 And what are GOP officials focused on punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action?

00:07:00.240 It's shocking, undemocratic and without precedent.

00:07:04.860 So I just want to note that this is more.

00:07:07.620 This is more than Joe Biden said after those three kids and three officials, three adults, officials is kind of a weird choice of words there at Covenant Christian School were actually gunned down.

00:07:20.520 He spent much more energy honoring, quote unquote, trans people right after a, quote unquote, trans person murdered these six people that week than he did honoring the victims.

00:07:31.880 I'm not sure if he ever even uttered their names.

00:07:34.240 He didn't visit Nashville.

00:07:36.340 Jill Biden reportedly did visit Nashville.

00:07:39.800 She attended one vigil.

00:07:41.300 The president himself did not.

00:07:43.020 Kamala Harris did not.

00:07:44.320 In fact, the first time that Joe Biden was supposed to be making a statement about this publicly, he stood before the crowd and he made a joke about chocolate chip ice cream before he addressed anything to do with the victims of this shooting.

00:08:00.820 And so now he's pretending that he is incensed over this, that he is just so distraught over these victims of gun violence.

00:08:08.000 But it's only because he sees this as politically expedient for Democrats.

00:08:12.760 And by the way, it is because the media is on the Democratic side.

00:08:18.480 And so, of course, they are going to use this opportunity to say, yes, these people are being removed because they're on the right side of history. 0.70

00:08:25.800 Republicans are on the wrong side of history and because they're white supremacists.

00:08:30.140 It's not just President Biden. 0.70

00:08:31.660 It's also Kamala Harris.

00:08:32.880 She made a surprise visit to Tennessee to meet with three with these three Democratic representatives.

00:08:40.160 She did not, as far as we know, meet with the families of the victims of the shooting.

00:08:46.080 But she did speak with the so-called Tennessee Three. 0.76

00:08:50.540 She also spoke at Fisk University, which is Justin Jones's alma mater.

00:08:55.700 And she, after meeting with the Tennessee Three, and she condemned them being silenced.

00:09:04.820 Here's a clip of that.

00:09:06.260 A democracy says you don't silence the people.

00:09:09.860 You do not stifle the people.

00:09:11.760 You don't turn off their microphones when they are speaking about the importance of life and liberty.

00:09:18.900 That is not what democracy does.

00:09:26.980 Okay.

00:09:28.140 I just fail to understand why people who broke the rules of House decorum should get a pass.

00:09:38.600 Why?

00:09:38.860 Just because they're Democrats?

00:09:40.640 Democrats?

00:09:40.960 Democrats?

00:09:41.140 Democrats?

00:09:41.640 Democrats?

00:09:42.640 Democrats?

00:09:43.140 Democrats?

00:09:43.640 Democrats?

00:09:44.640 Democrats?

00:09:45.640 Democrats?

00:09:46.640 Democrats?

00:09:47.640 Democrats?

00:09:48.640 Democrats?

00:09:48.860 All right.

00:09:54.080 So here is Justin Pearson on the Tennessee House floor as these three representatives are facing expulsion.

00:10:06.100 It seemed like the NRA and gun lobbyists might win.

00:10:11.080 But all that was good news for us.

00:10:14.060 I don't know how long this Saturday in the state of Tennessee might last.

00:10:18.680 But, oh, we have good news, folks.

00:10:21.900 We've got good news that Sunday always comes.

00:10:25.900 Okay.

00:10:26.240 So everyone's talking about what an amazing rhetorician he is, how he's so powerful.

00:10:32.020 I mean, you're listening to this.

00:10:33.160 Of course, it sounds like MLK.

00:10:34.940 The cadence sounds like MLK.

00:10:37.020 He looks like some kind of Malcolm X type activist.

00:10:41.260 That's the purpose of the news interviews that he gave after it's obvious that they are trying to bill him, paint him as some kind of civil rights era hero.

00:10:52.120 The aesthetics, the branding, the branding, the PR that's going into this is extremely intentional.

00:10:58.820 It's extremely orchestrated and it's extremely strategic.

00:11:04.020 And it happens to be working.

00:11:05.840 I saw David Hogg, the anti-gun activist, saying, wow, this is so amazing.

00:11:10.340 This looks like a piece of history.

00:11:11.840 But really, it's happening right now.

00:11:13.840 Yeah, it's meant to look like a piece of history.

00:11:16.300 It's propaganda.

00:11:17.780 That's what it is.

00:11:19.420 And so that was him on the House floor.

00:11:21.360 But let's look at him from just a few years ago in 2016, when he was just a good old college student and he was running, I guess, for class for class president.

00:11:37.460 And here's what Justin Pearson sounded like just a few years ago.

00:11:42.920 I want to do this by partnering with organizations from the Boone Democrats to the Boone Republicans.

00:11:48.980 I want to bring together different voices, dissenting voices, voices that may be more liberal or more conservative in order that we can reach a point of sort of the radical middle.

00:11:58.040 So this is fake.

00:11:59.600 He is putting on this voice.

00:12:01.520 He wants to sound like MLK because, again, this is about branding.

00:12:05.840 This is about exploiting a very real tragedy.

00:12:09.760 I mean, those little bodies and little caskets, the six caskets are freshly buried in the ground.

00:12:18.220 These parents are still reeling.

00:12:20.640 These family members are still reeling from their loved ones, dying at the hands of a mass murder just a couple of weeks ago.

00:12:29.240 And they are seeing the brightest, the shiniest moment of their careers.

00:12:34.800 And President Biden, Kamala Harris, MSNBC, CNN, left wing activists are all using it to show, look, how great we are, how racist the GOP is.

00:12:46.860 And I saw James Lindsay say this, and I think it's a really good point.

00:12:49.960 They are using the Tennessee three to try to distract from the Nashville six because they don't really want to talk about that because the shooter was transgender, period. 0.53

00:12:58.860 And so because they're more concerned about, quote, unquote, transphobia than they are, the deaths of these children, not all of them, but the people that we have talked about listed specifically on the show, the activist class on the left.

00:13:13.360 They want to instead point you to these three supposed heroes.

00:13:20.180 Also, Justin Jones, he is a part of this.

00:13:24.220 He's another he's another representative here.

00:13:28.000 And then, of course, as I said, you also have Gloria Johnson and something that we see in all three of them is the use of scripture to try to justify their stance, to try to give more substance to what they're doing,

00:13:45.640 to try to paint themselves as some kind of biblical, as some kind of biblical heroes.

00:13:54.600 You will see, for example, that Justin Jones says there's a scripture that says the stones will cry out.

00:14:06.240 And that's why we were shouting.

00:14:08.700 Here's a clip of him saying that.

00:14:10.580 Somebody said they were shouting on the floor.

00:14:12.420 They were shouting on the floor and reminded me of a scripture from Genesis that said the blood cried out.

00:14:19.320 The blood cried out.

00:14:20.720 That's what we were saying.

00:14:22.400 A scripture that says if we are silent, the stones will shout out.

00:14:26.140 That's why we were shouting.

00:14:28.540 No action.

00:14:29.820 No peace.

00:14:31.360 No action.

00:14:32.640 No peace.

00:14:33.800 No action.

00:14:35.140 No peace.

00:14:35.860 Okay, so he's talking there about two different passages that have absolutely nothing to do with what he's talking about.

00:14:43.400 And this, of course, is the problem with eisegesis.

00:14:45.560 When we take a topic, when we take a meaning and we try to find scripture that appears to back up what we're saying,

00:14:52.120 we very often decontextualize the scripture.

00:14:54.760 We misuse and abuse scripture for selfish purposes.

00:14:57.980 That, of course, is what's happening here.

00:14:59.900 He's talking about Genesis 4 when Cain killed his brother Abel, and the Lord says to Cain,

00:15:06.960 Where is Abel, your brother?

00:15:09.600 What have you done?

00:15:10.420 The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground.

00:15:14.860 And it is true that God demands justice for this.

00:15:17.940 Now, is Justin Pearson's definition of justice or Justin Jones's definition of justice rather the biblical definition of justice?

00:15:27.000 I would say likely not.

00:15:28.380 He is an advocate of social justice.

00:15:30.700 He is an advocate of a newly finagled sense of equity that is actually injustice rather than biblical justice.

00:15:40.900 We've defined biblical justice many times on this podcast, which, and we've given the scriptures to back this up,

00:15:47.820 and so you can go listen to past episodes on social justice versus actual justice.

00:15:52.140 It's direct.

00:15:52.900 It's truthful.

00:15:53.880 It is proportional.

00:15:56.060 And so Justin Jones is not actually an advocate of biblical justice.

00:16:02.280 This idea of no justice, no peace, or no action, no peace.

00:16:07.240 You're talking about vengeance there.

00:16:09.100 You're actually talking about we are going to make your lives miserable until you do what we want.

00:16:13.800 That's extortion.

00:16:14.760 That is not necessarily justice, especially when the policies that you're advocating for don't actually have any kind of provable correlation to saving lives.

00:16:25.600 And then he is also talking about a passage in Luke 19 when Jesus says this, and I'm just going to pull it up so I get it correct.

00:16:37.360 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher, rebuke your disciples.

00:16:41.880 And he answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

00:16:49.160 The very stones would cry out even if you silence them.

00:16:52.220 That has nothing to do with politics.

00:16:54.280 That has nothing to do with political activism.

00:16:56.520 It has nothing to do with anti-gun legislation.

00:16:59.340 He is talking about worship.

00:17:02.560 He is talking about the worship of God that even if you silence the human worshipers, even the very stones will cry out to worship the Lord and to declare and affirm his Lordship.

00:17:14.580 And so per usual, with progressive eisegesis, you are twisting scripture to try to make a point that scripture simply is not making.

00:17:24.680 And yet it's really incredible, all of the professing Christians that you see on Twitter hailing these people as amazing revivalists, as people who understand the canon of scripture, people who understand the gospel.

00:17:40.060 He is also referencing at one point Jeremiah 6, 14.

00:17:45.040 He says, they have healed the wound of my people, lightly saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

00:17:52.120 Again, extracting that verse out of its context.

00:17:56.160 This is also the problem with thinking that scripture is about us.

00:17:59.980 Scripture is to us, but it's not about us.

00:18:02.640 Thankfully, graciously, we play a role in the eternal redemption story.

00:18:07.020 But the point is always God.

00:18:08.680 The point is always his glory.

00:18:10.660 When we put ourselves at the center of the narrative, which this kind of liberation theology always, always does, then we get interpretations extremely wrong.

00:18:19.740 That's also where we get theological liberalism, because when you put yourself at the center of the story, your culture, your political beliefs, and then everything starts to change depending on the changing morality of society at the time.

00:18:34.260 Now, Shane Claiborne, he's a progressive, I guess he would call himself a progressive Christian.

00:18:44.400 He said that there is a revival happening at the Tennessee Capitol.

00:18:48.020 I saw other Christians who are similar to him in his ideology also saying that these three legislators, especially Representative Jones and Representative Pearson, are doing an amazing job for Christians.

00:19:01.420 I saw Dr. Anthony Bradley, who, you know, he does a lot of important work on the crucial role of fathers in society, specifically in the black community.

00:19:12.700 But when it comes to issues of social and racial justice, he tends to be extremely progressive.

00:19:17.800 And he said, you know, white evangelicals in the GOP, they are just they don't know what to do with these men who are drawing from the black tradition of understanding and applying the whole canon of Scripture rather than just the Gospels and a few epistles.

00:19:32.560 Well, look, these guys, as we would expect, are not theologically solid.

00:19:40.020 They're simply not.

00:19:41.020 Like, if you look at some of the things that, for example, Representative Justin Pearson has said in the past about God, I guarantee you even someone like Anthony Bradley would not agree with because these guys are liberation theologians.

00:19:52.780 They come from the tradition of James Cone, who himself was not an actual Christian.

00:19:57.960 He did not believe in the exclusivity of Christ.

00:20:00.360 He did not believe in the absoluteness of the gospel.

00:20:04.680 He said that he believed that all religions were on an equal playing field as long as they led to some form of liberation.

00:20:14.860 He saw Jesus.

00:20:15.920 He saw the Bible as a means to a means to an end of political and racial and social liberation rather than the end in and of itself.

00:20:26.840 And these guys just kind of repeat his talking points.

00:20:31.060 Here is Justin Peterson quoting James Cone by saying Jesus was gay. 0.99

00:20:39.340 Jesus is black. 0.99

00:20:43.140 We could also say Jesus is gay. 0.99

00:20:47.440 And any other identity being humiliated. 0.99

00:20:50.560 One of my students, Jacqueline Grant, said Jesus is a black woman and she is right. 1.00

00:20:56.060 Jesus is a way of talking about God's solidarity with people who are hurt and despised.

00:21:00.840 This is Reverend Dr. James Cone, the father of black liberation theology.

00:21:06.140 And this is in his final book.

00:21:08.600 Said I wasn't going to tell nobody.

00:21:12.600 Jesus is a black woman and she is right. 1.00

00:21:17.080 Yeah, so that's where he is. 0.97

00:21:20.640 He has a lot of clips like that saying that Jesus is Jesus is black and gay mother God rather than father God.

00:21:31.440 And so the fact that you have Christians that fancy themselves real Christians hailing these people as some kind of theological heroes, champions of the faith.

00:21:42.920 It's just not it's just not what's really going on here.

00:21:47.080 Just a couple of days ago, these three representatives were on Good Morning America and they were taking selfies.

00:22:06.900 They were posting and tweeting about how awesome it is.

00:22:10.360 This is what Representative Gloria Johnson said in a picture in front of the Good Morning America sign with the two other representatives.

00:22:18.400 So this is a thing she says.

00:22:20.400 I'm so happy that we had the opportunity to talk about the gun violence process on a national stage.

00:22:25.920 How weird, like how tone deaf can you possibly get?

00:22:28.760 We must act now.

00:22:30.220 These young people and their parents want us to now to act now to save lives.

00:22:36.020 I mean, but they're just like they're grinning on their they're grinning in front of a Good Morning America sign.

00:22:43.900 Like they're obviously excited about the fame that they have been afforded by the media.

00:22:50.760 As I already said, President Biden, Kamala Harris, they're using this as a media opportunity.

00:22:56.800 They're using this as a way to up their approval points.

00:23:01.460 We've already forgotten about these little victims.

00:23:03.620 We've already forgotten about the fact that apparently there are transgender people that are purposely targeting schools. 0.85

00:23:09.540 This is not the only story there was thankfully a plan for a plan foiled, as we talked about earlier this week, by a person who identifies as transgender in Colorado, who planned to shoot up a school, apparently for the same kind of motivations. 0.60

00:23:24.080 It's also odd, by the way, like apparently we were so done with that story that we are not even curious about the manifesto anymore, because remember, the shooter wrote a manifesto.

00:23:34.800 Remember the Buffalo shooter, that horrible, horrible shooting that happened in Buffalo, New York, where the guy went there because reportedly he was really literally a white supremacist and wanted to go into a majority black community and shoot up a grocery store and kill as many black people as possible.

00:23:50.140 We got that manifesto out really quickly because it was really useful for the media to say this is right wing violence. 0.97

00:23:56.740 This is a result of mainstream conservatives somehow ginning up hatred and violence against black people.

00:24:02.720 But when it comes to this person who identified as the opposite sex, who apparently targeted targeted a Christian school that she allegedly felt was opposing her stated identity, we're not allowed.

00:24:16.960 We're not even allowed to see what her stated motivations were.

00:24:19.680 Don't you think that that's a little odd?

00:24:21.600 We've moved past that.

00:24:22.800 And now we are just using this as an opportunity for Democrats to become famous and not just that, but to also whip up even more hatred and outrage against Republicans.

00:24:32.960 There's an independent journalist by the name of Judd Legum.

00:24:36.160 And I think that's how you pronounce his last name.

00:24:38.940 And he has he has decided to dox the House Speaker in Tennessee, Cameron Sexton, or at least his children.

00:24:49.920 And he's sharing some information about this House Speaker, including the school that his children attend.

00:24:56.460 And he's putting it on his website, which is popular, popular information.

00:25:02.620 So Legum says that he believes that Sexton is violating the Tennessee Constitution because he also resides in Nashville during the year rather than the district that he represents.

00:25:13.060 The Tennessee Constitution says that he can only represent the district if he is a qualified voter of that district.

00:25:17.620 And so he is saying that this guy is violating his own rules.

00:25:21.600 He thinks that he's pointing out hypocrisy.

00:25:23.480 All right, you can do that.

00:25:24.940 You're an independent journalist.

00:25:26.380 I haven't assessed all of this reporting myself.

00:25:29.460 I haven't been able to verify it.

00:25:31.100 So I don't know if what he is saying is true.

00:25:33.200 But look, if he has done the digging and he believes he has a story, whatever, he can report on that story.

00:25:39.540 He but he decided that he was going to post the address of this, the House Speaker's former private residence.

00:25:48.740 He did get that information from Sexton's website.

00:25:51.400 So that is not necessarily that's not necessarily doxing because it is public information.

00:26:00.040 But you are purposely trying to more widely circulate that.

00:26:04.720 But really what the doxing is and the message that I received from one of you being concerned about this was in regard to the private school, which I'm not going to put up here.

00:26:16.740 I'm not going to stay here, but was in regard to the private school that his children, the House Speaker's children attend.

00:26:26.840 And this person even says Sexton and his spouse are show regularly attending events on the school's Facebook page.

00:26:32.540 So what are you trying to do here?

00:26:35.100 What are you trying to do here as a journalist?

00:26:36.560 Are you trying to make sure that his children are endangered?

00:26:41.340 Are you trying to make sure that his children get hurt, that his children get, I don't know, kidnapped to try to politically pressure him to make a different decision than the political decisions that he is making on behalf of his district?

00:26:55.740 OK, it's one thing to talk about what you think is a violation of the Tennessee Constitution.

00:26:59.620 It's another thing to try to put his family, his children in danger because you politically disagree with him.

00:27:06.800 And this is happening at the same time that we are trying to elevate the Democratic Party and and elevate these three legislators as some kinds of heroes.

00:27:19.040 That's it's really, really disturbing.

00:27:49.020 That are representing the things that we are voting for, the things that we hold dear.

00:27:53.460 We should be praying for their safety.

00:27:54.820 I mean, it goes without saying that I would not like this if this were going in the other direction.

00:27:59.320 No, kids should absolutely be off limits.

00:28:02.700 And this, again, is by the same people who have already forgotten, who have already given up on the story of these three children and three adults being murdered in Nashville has nothing to do with it.

00:28:14.400 And these are the same people, by the way, who want to convince us to give up our guns.

00:28:18.920 You're trying to simultaneously show me that you're willing to dox children of your political opponent while you are asking the rest of us to give up our guns.

00:28:29.720 So you're making us feel very vulnerable.

00:28:31.660 I mean, we already know that you guys vote for the politicians that will not enforce the laws and actually put people in jail who are a harm to society.

00:28:40.520 So you've already given us that reason not to give up our guns.

00:28:43.260 But now you're showing us as a form of journalistic activism that you are willing to put our children at risk because you don't like the things that we believe in or the things that we have to say.

00:28:53.840 And you're trying to convince us to support anti-gun legislation.

00:28:57.700 Like, do you not see how that's probably not going to work?

00:29:01.340 Do you not see how people would see that and then think, well, you know what?

00:29:04.780 Maybe you actually just want to hurt me.

00:29:06.920 Maybe you just actually want to hurt me and my family.

00:29:08.800 And that's why you want to take away my guns.

00:29:11.840 I don't think so.

00:29:12.820 So this is actually what encourages people to go out and find ways to defend themselves.

00:29:18.280 So it's just really, really ugly stuff.

00:29:33.040 And look, I haven't even gotten into the debate over what the specific gun legislation is.

00:29:38.760 As I've said before, I've said this many times.

00:29:41.740 I am not against honest, in good faith discussions about legislation that would provably and logically protect the lives of people against violence perpetrated by people who are carrying guns.

00:29:56.800 But as it is, we have a lot of laws on the books that are currently not enforced right now.

00:30:03.300 I got a message from someone saying, you know, I'm a fan of you, but we've got to ban right now high capacity magazines.

00:30:10.200 And if you're, you know, on the right side of history or if you're a reasonable person or if you're really creative, whatever, then you will support this too.

00:30:17.400 So, and look, okay, let's have a discussion about that.

00:30:20.380 But I'm going to have some questions.

00:30:21.800 And I think it's okay to have questions.

00:30:23.400 And as soon as you ask questions, as soon as you give an opposing side when it comes to this, the other side shuts down and just gets mad at you and pretends like you don't care about human life, which is not true at all.

00:30:31.800 I want to know what you mean by a high capacity magazine.

00:30:34.500 And I want to know why that.

00:30:36.700 If we're looking statistically, the vast majority of deaths at the hands of someone who is carrying a gun is because of a handgun.

00:30:45.440 A lot of these are happening in deeply blue cities where there are already strict regulations on guns.

00:30:51.760 Why aren't we enforcing the laws already on the books that could actually prevent the deaths that are occurring?

00:31:00.200 Like, have we ever thought about the criminal justice policies that are being put in place where a large majority of these gun deaths are happening?

00:31:08.260 A lot of them, the majority of these deaths are because, especially of young people, people under the age of 18, is because of gang violence.

00:31:17.760 Like, have we ever thought that maybe we're not enforcing the law?

00:31:20.940 We're not making the punishments harsh enough for this kind of violence.

00:31:24.100 And that's why these numbers are so high.

00:31:26.440 When it comes to AR-15s, look, I want realistic solutions.

00:31:31.720 I really do.

00:31:32.780 I want realistic solutions.

00:31:34.020 And the fact of the matter is, you don't have to like this, but the AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America.

00:31:42.180 It's been around since the 1950s.

00:31:44.460 For the first 40 years of its existence, it was not used for a mass shooting.

00:31:50.020 The nature of the AR-15 has not changed.

00:31:52.920 But obviously, something changed within those 40 years.

00:31:56.300 And still, even today, even though every single murder is absolutely tragic and we should be looking at real solutions and real problems to try to figure this out, it still accounts for a tiny, tiny percentage of deaths by gun.

00:32:11.980 Like I said, the majority of it, it's a handgun.

00:32:15.180 Are you going to ban handguns?

00:32:16.300 Are you going to confiscate the AR-15s?

00:32:18.160 What are we going to do about the 99% of gun deaths that are still happening?

00:32:23.340 So, like, I want reasonable solutions.

00:32:25.240 I want a reasonable conversation.

00:32:26.700 I want a logical conversation.

00:32:28.020 It's not enough just to say, well, other countries have regulated guns and so we should regulate guns too because it works.

00:32:34.200 That doesn't take into account the many, many other factors that go into crime statistics in other countries.

00:32:41.300 People often list Australia, for example, and the ban on certain kinds of guns, certain kinds of weapons in Australia, and then a precipitous decline of gun violence.

00:32:51.420 But they never show you that the precipitous decline of gun violence in Australia was happening long before this ban ever went into place.

00:33:00.500 Again, not against the conversations, but the side that is for legislative solutions.

00:33:07.720 And I believe that there could be some, okay?

00:33:09.720 Again, not against them.

00:33:11.020 I believe that there could be some that doesn't violate Second Amendment rights, doesn't violate someone's right to be able to carry a gun and defend themselves and hopefully protect lives.

00:33:23.280 I believe that there could be policy legislative discussions to be had there.

00:33:27.860 Let's do that in good faith.

00:33:30.160 But if that side, if the Republican side is willing to come to the table and have those policy discussions, then the other side needs to be willing to come to the table and have the moral discussion.

00:33:39.440 Because like I said, we've always had tens of millions of guns in this country.

00:33:43.880 The AR-15 has been around for a very long time.

00:33:48.980 The guns haven't changed.

00:33:51.600 Something has changed.

00:33:52.700 So if we're willing to talk about the guns, let us also talk about the moral and the cultural rot that progressive secular humanism has wrought, different spelling, in our country and has captured all of the institutions.

00:34:07.460 Like, let's talk about the moral decline that has also occurred here.

00:34:11.900 And I'm not saying that that necessarily comes with a straightforward policy solution.

00:34:16.100 But if one side is willing to come to the table and talk about policy and legislation, the other side needs to come to the table.

00:34:21.100 And let's talk about the moral and the cultural, the social, even the spiritual darkness that this country is facing.

00:34:27.640 And maybe the people on the left side of this issue who think just gun confiscation is the only answer.

00:34:33.080 Maybe they're going to have to take some ownership and perpetuating the godlessness and the chaos and the purposelessness that is driving, unfortunately, a lot of these crimes.

00:34:43.920 And so let's come to the table.

00:34:45.960 But don't tell me we're not going to talk about the deeper stuff if I'm willing to talk about the policy stuff.

00:34:50.980 And you're also going to I mean, we're going to have to be logical here.

00:34:53.940 We're going to have to look at what would actually prevent these kinds of crimes and what laws are on the books that we can already go ahead and enforce.

00:35:01.100 So all this to say, you know, I don't even know necessarily that the Republicans made exactly the right move in removing these two legislators.

00:35:11.280 It seems so to me, I'm open to hearing the other side of this when it comes to just like the politics of it, the hip hop, whatever.

00:35:20.580 I'm willing to debate that.

00:35:22.480 I'm not willing to say that these three are heroes.

00:35:25.140 I'm not willing to say that there's some kind of like theological moral exemplars here.

00:35:31.380 They're not like some civil rights era heroes that we should be looking to.

00:35:36.340 I'm also not interested in, oh, this is racism because they happen to be black.

00:35:42.060 There's literally no incentive in this country whatsoever to be seen as discriminatory against black people. 0.86

00:35:49.720 There are only incentives in the other direction.

00:35:53.240 And again, if this were Democrats doing this, they would be applauded.

00:35:57.200 Democrats, I mean, they do this kind of stuff.

00:35:58.940 And by the way, these representatives in the past have called for the expulsion of of legislators,

00:36:09.880 especially on the federal level, who they see as white supremacists and insurrectionists and things like that.

00:36:14.660 So come on.

00:36:16.260 All right, guys, so that's all we really had to say about the Tennessee story.

00:36:33.380 Honestly, there was so much more in there that we could break down, that we could try to try to understand.

00:36:41.660 And and we'll talk about it more probably with James Lindsay, because I think that he has a really kind of good grasp of what is going on behind behind the scenes here.

00:36:55.680 Also, just a reminder, Mother's Day, Father's Day is coming up, especially Mother's Day, guys.

00:37:02.900 And as I've said many times, your wives, they want that relatable merch. 0.85

00:37:07.860 They want that relatable merch. 1.00

00:37:09.980 And so go to AllieMerch.com. 0.99

00:37:12.620 You can use code Allie10.

00:37:15.020 You get 10% off.

00:37:16.480 I'm wearing my Be a Salmon sweatshirt right now with the little fish.

00:37:21.720 That means we're swimming upstream against the culture. 0.68

00:37:24.940 And these are our most popular.

00:37:26.580 Actually, I think this product is probably the most popular, all of the Be a Salmon stuff.

00:37:30.860 And so your wife, your your baby mama, people get some out when I say that she will love it.

00:37:37.080 She will love it.

00:37:37.900 And she will thank you.

00:37:39.500 All right.

00:37:39.980 That's all we've got time for today.

00:37:41.980 We will see you guys back here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 12, 2023

Ep 787 ｜ The 'Tennessee Three' Aren't Heroes

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript