The Ben Shapiro Show - Another Horrific Shooting | Ep. 476

00:00:00.000 Another tragic, heartbreaking shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida.

00:00:03.000 17 students and teachers dead after a mass shooting that just is heartbreaking and horrific in every way.

00:00:09.000 We'll discuss it.

00:00:09.000 We'll break it all down.

00:00:10.000 We'll bring you all the information.

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:18.000 So there's a lot to get to with regard to this particular shooting, another mass shooting.

00:00:22.000 It's another month, another mass shooting.

00:00:24.000 And this has driven a lot of folks in the media to do what they always do after a mass shooting, which is call for gun control and then suggest that anyone who disagrees with their prescriptions to solve problems like this must not.

00:00:34.000 I'll talk about that.

00:00:35.000 We'll talk about what exactly happened in Parkland.

00:00:55.000 Who failed?

00:00:57.000 Who succeeded?

00:00:57.000 Some of the stories of heroism.

00:00:59.000 We'll talk about the response.

00:01:00.000 We'll get to all of that in just a second.

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00:02:24.000 Okay, so.

00:02:26.000 You know, last night, in the aftermath of this horrific shooting, my—I was in a pretty terrible mood, as I think most people were who saw the information.

00:02:34.000 It was heartbreaking and upsetting and deeply disturbing, obviously, whenever you see a situation where somebody walks into a school and just starts gunning down students and teachers.

00:02:44.000 And last night, my daughter was really misbehaving.

00:02:46.000 She's 4 years old, and she's at the stage where she says no to everything.

00:02:49.000 Like, everything is a challenge.

00:02:52.000 I have to threaten to take away her blankies unless she gets in bed and stops jumping on the bed so she doesn't crack her head. 1.00

00:02:58.000 I mean, that's basically my life at night.

00:03:01.000 And this morning, she woke up, and I went in her room, and she stood up on her bed, and she said,

00:03:08.000 And

00:03:27.000 Both sides politically, depending on the tragedy.

00:03:29.000 In a terrorist attack, it's people on the right who say people on the left don't care enough.

00:03:32.000 When there's a mass shooting, people on the left say people on the right don't care enough.

00:03:34.000 It's not about the level of caring.

00:03:37.000 Everybody cares.

00:03:37.000 Everybody is just weeping with the families today, as well they should.

00:03:43.000 That does not mean that every policy prescription is equally valid, equally good, or equally valuable.

00:03:49.000 And one of the things that is so disturbing and upsetting about

00:03:52.000 We're good.

00:04:06.000 That's not what we do.

00:04:07.000 On Twitter, particularly, where everybody is looking for an instant reaction, folks on the right, whenever there's a mass shooting, say, let's wait for all the facts.

00:04:13.000 And folks on the left, when there's a mass shooting, says, you don't need any more facts.

00:04:16.000 There have been lots of mass shootings.

00:04:17.000 The United States has more mass shootings over the past 20 years than most of the industrialized world combined.

00:04:22.000 That means it's time for a massive bout of gun control.

00:04:25.000 And I understand the tendency.

00:04:26.000 I do.

00:04:27.000 I mean, I think that the tendency to say, we need to do something, something has to stop here, is strong.

00:04:33.000 But that doesn't mean that any particular piece of legislation that's put on the table is going to be equally valid or that it's going to be equally effective at doing this.

00:04:40.000 So during the ramp up, usually what it turns into is folks on the left scream gun control, folks on the right say, let's wait for all the facts.

00:04:45.000 And then folks on the left say, all you want to do is thoughts and prayers.

00:04:48.000 You don't want to do anything.

00:04:49.000 You're deliberately trying to obfuscate.

00:04:51.000 You're deliberately trying to block progress here.

00:04:54.000 That's not what this is about.

00:04:55.000 The question is—there are two questions.

00:04:57.000 One is the question of sympathy, and one is the question of what we do next.

00:05:02.000 And the first question should not even be on the table.

00:05:04.000 Everyone cares about what happened in Parkland yesterday.

00:05:07.000 You know, the president was getting ripped up and down this morning.

00:05:09.000 He did a statement, about a six-minute statement, from the White House talking about what happened in Parkland, Florida.

00:05:16.000 And here's what he had to say.

00:05:18.000 My fellow Americans, today I speak to a nation

00:05:25.000 In grief.

00:05:27.000 Yesterday, a school filled with innocent children and caring teachers became the scene of terrible violence, hatred, and evil.

00:05:42.000 Around 2.30 yesterday afternoon, police responded to reports of gunfire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

00:05:55.000 A great and safe community.

00:05:59.000 There, a shooter, who is now in custody, opened fire on defenseless students and teachers.

00:06:08.000 He murdered 17 people and badly wounded at least 14 others.

00:06:18.000 Our entire nation, with one heavy heart, is praying for the victims

00:06:24.000 And they're families.

00:06:45.000 Let's move beyond the implication that folks we disagree with are obviously uncaring, unfeeling, crude, barbarous people who don't care when small children and high schoolers are cut short in the prime of their lives before they've even had a chance to have a full life by evil, sick human beings.

00:07:00.000 Let's put that aside, because if we can't put aside the implication that folks we disagree with are evil and nasty, then we can't have a political discussion.

00:07:08.000 If you really think

00:07:09.000 If you're on the left today, and you really think that folks on the right don't care about what happened in Parkland, and that what you're dealing with is an ultimately evil group of people who do not care at all when innocents get shot, then maybe it's time for you to arm up yourself and go fight those people, because only monsters would not care what happened in Parkland, Florida, yesterday.

00:07:25.000 So, what exactly did happen in Parkland, Florida, where here was a school shooting eyewitness talking about the harrowing events?

00:07:32.000 Well, it was a second fire alarm that went off today, around like 2.22, and we were like suspicious because

00:07:39.000 We already had a fire alarm, Joe, going off, so we weren't sure if this was a real fire, Joe, or not.

00:07:44.000 And apparently, I guess, the shooter pulled the alarm so you could have kids going out on the hallway to shoot.

00:07:49.000 And I was on the top floor, and then right behind, right below me, on the first floor, I heard shooting, and I saw two guys running.

00:07:57.000 I went to make a right, and I just ran.

00:07:59.000 And I had my book bag on my back, just in case I got shot from the back.

00:08:02.000 It would go through my book bag and my books.

00:08:05.000 I ran to where there were students and teachers,

00:08:11.000 And we went to Westfleet and then from there I knew it was a real shooting because I saw three helicopters and that's when everyone was just all meant for themselves and

00:08:27.000 I jumped the fence and I just ran.

00:08:29.000 So the shooter, whose name—you know, I'm starting to believe—I've always been conflicted about this.

00:08:36.000 There are a lot of folks who say you should not mention the identity of the shooter, you shouldn't mention the name of the shooter, and I'm starting to believe that's right, because the glorification of these shooters is obviously driving other people to worship them.

00:08:46.000 Since Columbine, a huge percentage of school shooters have worshipped at the altar the folks who were responsible for Columbine, the monsters responsible

00:08:54.000 For Columbine.

00:08:55.000 So, I'm going to avoid mentioning the name of the shooter today.

00:08:58.000 I'm going to talk about what we need to know about him, but I'm not going to mention his name, because I don't think that giving him credibility or giving him fame is a worthwhile thing, because these crimes do tend to create copycats.

00:09:09.000 But here is Matthew Walker.

00:09:10.000 Matthew Walker was a student at the school, and he was discussing with the media what he saw and also what he knew about the shooter.

00:09:18.000 Honestly, a lot of people were saying that it was going to be him and stuff like that.

00:09:21.000 A lot of kids do jokes around like that, saying that he's the one that screwed up the school, but it turns out, you know, everyone predicted it.

00:09:29.000 That's crazy.

00:09:30.000 Wow, he must have come on the campus then, right?

00:09:32.000 Yeah, he was on the third floor.

00:09:34.000 He knows the school layout.

00:09:35.000 He knows where everyone would be at as of right now.

00:09:37.000 He's been in some fire drills.

00:09:38.000 He's prepared for this stuff.

00:09:40.000 OK, and this shooter, there are always, always, in this case, many, many red flags about this shooter.

00:09:46.000 His Instagram was filled with pictures of him holding up guns.

00:09:49.000 You can see this picture of his Instagram, flaunting his weapons.

00:09:54.000 He was on law enforcement's radar, as well.

00:09:59.000 The New York Post has a long story about it.

00:10:02.000 The suspected gunman is a troubled former student obsessed with firearms who was once identified as a potential threat.

00:10:07.000 We're good.

00:10:30.000 We're good to go.

00:10:48.000 According to the teacher, school officials had sent out an email warning teachers about the shooter and the alleged threats that he was making against other students.

00:10:56.000 The Broward County school superintendent said this didn't happen.

00:10:59.000 He said, we received no warnings.

00:11:00.000 I don't really believe that.

00:11:02.000 Apparently, the FBI received warnings as well.

00:11:03.000 And I will give you more details on that in just one second.

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00:12:57.000 More information on this shooter.

00:12:59.000 So, according to the Broward County Schools District Superintendent, Robert Wonsey, he said potentially there could have been signs out there, but we didn't have any warning or phone calls or threats that were made.

00:13:07.000 But his classmates, the shooter's classmates, say he was a well-known threat at the school.

00:13:11.000 A lot of people were saying that it was going to be him.

00:13:15.000 One of the students said everything he posts is about weapons. 0.89

00:13:18.000 It's sick.

00:13:19.000 And they are looking at some of the motives behind all of this, but apparently he was a loner.

00:13:24.000 He was—law enforcement says he was a member of J-ROTC, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.

00:13:31.000 He was apparently in an alternative school, in an alternate school, and people didn't want to be anywhere near him.

00:13:38.000 He was reportedly wearing a gas mask and carrying smoke grenades during the alleged massacre.

00:13:41.000 It's not clear where he got the smoke grenades.

00:13:43.000 He apparently—he used an AR-15-223.

00:13:46.000 I don't know.

00:14:04.000 So there was a YouTube user who used his real name, this guy used his real name, and he wrote in response to a video by a vlogger that he was going to be a, quote, professional school shooter.

00:14:12.000 And that vlogger warned the FBI.

00:14:14.000 On Thursday, BuzzFeed reported the FBI had been warned about someone of the same name in late September 2017.

00:14:19.000 BuzzFeed spoke with the YouTube vlogger Ben Benite, 36, who said he noticed an alarming response to one of his videos posted and immediately contacted the FBI.

00:14:27.000 Agents with the Bureau's Mississippi Field Office got back to him immediately, Benite said, and conducted an in-person interview the following day, on September 25th, according to BuzzFeed.

00:14:42.000 So you can actually see the screenshot in which the shooter says, I'm going to be a professional school shooter and uses his actual name.

00:14:49.000 It is not an alias.

00:14:50.000 It is it is not a it is not a pseudonym.

00:14:54.000 But I told BuzzFeed that around 430 on Wednesday, 30 minutes after they took the shooter into custody, Special Agent Ryan Furr of the Miami FBI field office contacted him about the shooter.

00:15:03.000 He said, quote,

00:15:04.000 I think we spoke with you in the past about a complaint you made about someone making a comment on your YouTube channel.

00:15:08.000 I just wanted to follow up with you on that and ask you a question with something that's come up, if you wouldn't mind giving me a ring.

00:15:14.000 So the agents visited him in person for a second time on Wednesday.

00:15:17.000 They asked me if I knew who he was.

00:15:19.000 I didn't.

00:15:19.000 I don't.

00:15:20.000 Then they left.

00:15:20.000 I guess it's vlogger, not vlogger, sorry.

00:15:24.000 In any case,

00:15:25.000 The FBI refused to acknowledge that they made this call or that this guy was on their list.

00:15:31.000 According to former classmate Joshua Charo, 16, he said,

00:15:46.000 Apparently, he escaped the school by hiding among the other students evacuating the area, but then he was arrested in a nearby neighborhood at around 4 p.m.

00:15:53.000 So, obviously, shocking stuff.

00:15:54.000 So, here's the question now.

00:15:56.000 So, the question is, what do we do?

00:15:58.000 The question is, what do we do?

00:15:58.000 There are some stories of heroism that I'm going to talk to you about in a few minutes, but what do we do about situations like this?

00:16:04.000 So the Republicans do what the Republicans typically do, right?

00:16:07.000 They say, we need to wait to find out exactly what's happening here.

00:16:10.000 So Marco Rubio says, listen, the senator from Florida, it's his home state.

00:16:13.000 He said, we don't know how this happened yet.

00:16:14.000 In order for us to fight what exactly happened, we have to know what exactly happened and how exactly it happened.

00:16:19.000 Here's Rubio saying this.

00:16:20.000 He just got shellacked on media over this.

00:16:23.000 It's not, only because people don't know how this happened.

00:16:27.000 I mean, who this person is, what motivated them, how did they get a hold of the weapon that they used for this attack?

00:16:33.000 I think it's important to know all of that before you jump to conclusions that there's some law that we could have passed that could have prevented it.

00:16:38.000 And there may be, but shouldn't we at least know the facts?

00:16:43.000 I think that you can always have that debate, but if you're going to have the debate about this particular incident, you should know the facts of that incident before you run out and prescribe some law that you claim could have prevented it.

00:16:54.000 I've seen a lot of that on television, and maybe there is a law that could have prevented this instance.

00:16:59.000 But we don't know that, and neither do they.

00:17:01.000 That's exactly right.

00:17:02.000 But people are saying, how dare he say this?

00:17:04.000 How dare he?

00:17:04.000 Listen, Glenn Kessler fact-checked this statement by Rubio.

00:17:07.000 Rubio made a similar statement last year, saying all the gun laws that have been proposed wouldn't have stopped a lot of these school shootings.

00:17:12.000 And Glenn Kessler, who has no right winger over at The Washington Post, concluded that this was true.

00:17:16.000 Because of course it's true, right?

00:17:18.000 The fact is that in this particular case, if somebody—here's the deal.

00:17:21.000 In a country with 300 million weapons, and there are 300 million guns in the United States, if you are determined to go and hit a soft target with no security present,

00:17:30.000 You're going to find a way to do it.

00:17:31.000 You are.

00:17:32.000 It is not hard to illegally obtain a gun in the United States.

00:17:34.000 Forget about the rules.

00:17:35.000 It is not hard to illegally obtain a gun in the United States.

00:17:38.000 It is not hard to make illegal modifications to a legally obtained weapon.

00:17:42.000 It is not difficult to carry out a terror attack.

00:17:45.000 And this was essentially a terror attack.

00:17:46.000 There is no reason that you can't do that.

00:17:50.000 Which brings us to question number two.

00:17:51.000 There are two questions.

00:17:52.000 One, what can we do to minimize the chances that this happens? 0.88

00:17:55.000 And number two, how do we maximize the chances that the response time is the shortest so that we can kill somebody like this before they're able to do any more damage?

00:18:02.000 So the answer to question number one, there are some things that we can probably do.

00:18:06.000 Jim Garrity over at National Review has suggested, for example, that we really crack down in more harsh fashion on straw purchasers.

00:18:11.000 Straw purchasers are people who buy a gun and then transfer it illegally to somebody. 1.00

00:18:15.000 So, I buy a gun legally, and then there's somebody I know who can't get a gun, and so I transfer that gun legally to that person.

00:18:20.000 That makes me a straw buyer.

00:18:21.000 That's illegal.

00:18:22.000 In the last 10 years or something, only 44 people have been prosecuted in serious fashion.

00:18:27.000 We're good to go.

00:18:53.000 Apparently, this shooter was also on the radar for local law enforcement.

00:18:57.000 Apparently, his mom had called up—his mom, I think, recently passed away.

00:19:00.000 Apparently, his mom had called up the police, and they'd had, like, sit-down sessions with this kid.

00:19:05.000 So there were a lot of red flags.

00:19:06.000 Everybody was warning about him, and nobody was able to do anything.

00:19:08.000 So maybe one of the things that we should do, as a preventative measure, is make it easier to involuntarily commit somebody like this, who sounds like he's a sociopath.

00:19:16.000 And maybe we should make it less difficult for family to say, listen, we can't control somebody like this.

00:19:20.000 This person is dangerous.

00:19:22.000 Right now, the law in most states across the United States is that we will only put you on a 48-hour hold, a 48-hour psychiatric hold, if you are a danger to yourself or others.

00:19:32.000 And then if you can show that you're not a danger to yourself or others, we release you again.

00:19:36.000 Well, that's probably not enough.

00:19:38.000 An involuntary commitment in the United States is incredibly difficult.

00:19:41.000 Very, very tough.

00:19:43.000 Maybe that needs to change, because how many of these school shooters have been people who should have been in psychiatric care? 0.96

00:19:51.000 It sounds like this guy was crazy. 0.96

00:19:52.000 It sounds like Jared Lee Loeffner in Arizona was crazy. 0.57

00:19:54.000 It sounds like James Alsa—what was his name?

00:19:58.000 I can't remember his name.

00:19:59.000 The evil guy who shot up a theater in Aurora, Colorado. 0.97

00:20:03.000 That guy was crazy, obviously. 0.97

00:20:05.000 Adam Lanza. 1.00

00:20:06.000 The shooter in Sandy Hook was a crazy person. 0.91

00:20:09.000 All of these people should have been forcibly incarcerated for psychiatric care. 0.98

00:20:14.000 They were not.

00:20:14.000 There's something wrong with that system.

00:20:16.000 I mean, we have to have heavy screening.

00:20:17.000 We don't want innocent people being forcibly institutionalized.

00:20:23.000 We do want to make sure that if you have a real mental illness and you're a threat to others, that you're not out on the streets able to walk into a school and start shooting it up.

00:20:29.000 So that's something that you could, there are a couple things you can do right off the bat to stop this.

00:20:33.000 Background checks, would that have stopped this case?

00:20:34.000 No, because again, there was nothing for them to check.

00:20:36.000 He had no criminal record.

00:20:38.000 The only way that you could presumably stop somebody like him from buying that weapon is to ban the weapon outright, ban the sale of the weapon outright.

00:20:43.000 So that's what the left is starting to propose now, is let's ban the sale of the weapon outright.

00:20:47.000 That probably would not have stopped this particular case, because again, if you are determined, there are too many guns in the United States to prevent the illegal sale of a gun to somebody who wants one.

00:20:56.000 And unless you're willing to undergo a full-scale gun confiscation, in which you're talking about hundreds of millions of weapons across the United States, which would not go down without significant violence, particularly in gun-heavy areas, then you're not talking in the real world.

00:21:09.000 You're just not speaking about things that are happening in the real world.

00:21:12.000 In Australia, the gun violence rate has gone down at a lower rate than the United States, despite the gun confiscation.

00:21:18.000 The gun confiscation only took one-third of the guns.

00:21:20.000 That was the gun buyback program in Australia.

00:21:22.000 It's illegal for people to own guns.

00:21:24.000 Two-thirds of the people who own them still own them.

00:21:26.000 So the idea that people are just going to turn over their weapons is insane.

00:21:29.000 It's not going to happen.

00:21:30.000 So then it becomes a question of what can we do practically, and a lot of the measures that the left talks about wouldn't do anything practically when they say ban assault weapons.

00:21:38.000 OK, so what do you mean by assault weapon?

00:21:40.000 You mean the grip?

00:21:42.000 You mean the way that the stock attaches?

00:21:43.000 What are you talking about assault weapon?

00:21:45.000 You're going to ban all rifles?

00:21:46.000 Because again, you're going to need a mass confiscation if you actually want that to work.

00:21:49.000 So this is where the rubber hits the road.

00:21:53.000 There are a lot of polls that suggest that Americans want more gun control.

00:21:56.000 These polls are pretty much meaningless.

00:21:57.000 They're about as meaningless as the polls that say that Americans want spending cuts.

00:22:00.000 We want spending cuts until you tell us what it is that you want to cut.

00:22:03.000 Americans want gun control until you tell us what it is that you want to control.

00:22:07.000 If you're telling us that you want background checks, we're pretty much all for that.

00:22:10.000 They exist.

00:22:11.000 If you buy from a federally licensed firearms dealer, as happened in this case, and you fail the background check, you can't buy that gun.

00:22:17.000 That exists.

00:22:18.000 People on the left like to talk about the gun show loophole, the idea of hand-to-hand transfers.

00:22:22.000 There's not a ton of evidence that that is connected to crime, hand-to-hand transfers, that I legally sell my gun to Mathis, for example.

00:22:27.000 There's not a lot of evidence that that has any impact on crime.

00:22:32.000 But that's not stopping the left from making hay while the sun shines politically.

00:22:36.000 And that's where I really object.

00:22:38.000 Again, going back to the original point, people on the left continue to insist over and over and over again that if I want to look specifically at what measures they're pushing,

00:22:48.000 Then this means that I'm doing something wrong.

00:22:50.000 Instead, I should just give them a blank check because something terrible and evil just happened.

00:22:53.000 Okay, in just a second, I'm going to show you the Democratic response to this and where I think it is morally deficient.

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00:24:30.000 OK, so the Democrats in the media respond to this shooting with their usual excitement and alacrity.

00:24:37.000 They are not excited, obviously, that people got shot, but excited that now they get to push this issue into the forefront once again.

00:24:42.000 So Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she comes out and she says, it's not too soon to talk about this.

00:24:46.000 Now, what the left never says is what this is.

00:24:49.000 They say it's never too soon to talk about gun control.

00:24:51.000 OK, what do you mean by gun control?

00:24:53.000 And what does that mean?

00:24:54.000 What specific proposal are you putting on the table?

00:24:56.000 And if you don't have one, then what exactly are we talking about here?

00:25:01.000 I hate vague terminology.

00:25:02.000 I think that it's useless in politics and it's counterproductive in politics.

00:25:06.000 And, in fact, all it is for the left is a buzzword.

00:25:08.000 When the Democrats controlled Congress, when they had 60 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House and the presidency, they didn't pass one piece of solid gun control legislation.

00:25:15.000 They could have.

00:25:16.000 They didn't.

00:25:16.000 They knew it was unpopular.

00:25:17.000 They knew the American people wouldn't like it.

00:25:19.000 They knew that, in many cases, it probably would have been unconstitutional.

00:25:21.000 But here is Debbie Wasserman Schultz again saying it's not too soon to talk about gun control.

00:25:26.000 Listen, I am happy to talk about gun control. 0.71

00:25:28.000 But you need to show me what is the specific piece of legislation we are discussing, what is your specific proposal, and then we can talk about it.

00:25:34.000 Otherwise, you just saying, I don't like guns, is as useless as you saying, I don't like nuclear weapons.

00:25:40.000 I'm not a huge fan of nuclear weapons either.

00:25:41.000 They do a lot of damage.

00:25:42.000 But we have to talk, in serious policy terms, about the costs and benefits of the United States having nuclear weapons.

00:25:48.000 And the same thing is true with regard to private ownership of guns.

00:25:51.000 Here's Debbie Wasserman Schultz doing the routine. 1.00

00:25:53.000 It's absolutely not too soon to yet again say that something has to be done about access to guns in this country.

00:26:01.000 But just as important, something has to be done about making sure that people who have mental health challenges get the help that they need.

00:26:12.000 Okay, so if we all agree with that, on the mental health challenges, that people who have mental health problems ought to get the help that they need, then we need to strengthen the system.

00:26:19.000 I think we all agree on that.

00:26:20.000 And there are ways that we can strengthen the enforcement of preventing mentally ill people from getting guns. 0.92

00:26:25.000 In the state of California, a couple of years ago,

00:26:28.000 We're good.

00:26:48.000 Boiling down of this stuff to legislation, things become a lot more complicated.

00:26:52.000 So, for example, there are a bunch of people online who have now been claiming that Donald Trump rolled back an Obama rule on background checks for gun ownership, that they struck down an Obama-era regulation blocking gun sales to the mentally ill.

00:27:04.000 This is the line.

00:27:05.000 CNN ran it.

00:27:06.000 The Hill ran it.

00:27:08.000 NPR ran it.

00:27:09.000 The idea being that Republicans made it easier for mentally ill people to get guns.

00:27:12.000 That is not what the House Republicans were doing.

00:27:15.000 That is not what it was.

00:27:16.000 Charlie Cook writes about this over at National Review.

00:27:19.000 He says,

00:27:36.000 Because most people read headlines and ignore the articles underneath, both Twitter and Facebook were full of talk last night about the perfidy of the House.

00:27:42.000 So here is what exactly happened here.

00:27:44.000 Okay, there was a rule.

00:27:46.000 That Obama-era rule was not that gun buyers must obtain background checks or that the mentally ill are barred from buying guns.

00:27:52.000 And it wasn't an NRA initiative.

00:27:54.000 It was an ACLU initiative.

00:27:56.000 The NRA and the ACLU both supported what the House did.

00:27:59.000 Why?

00:27:59.000 Because here's what it was about.

00:28:17.000 Bureaucrats within one federal agency would be able to say that old people who are no longer able to take care of their finances should have their guns removed from them, and this should be used as a definition of mental defective.

00:28:28.000 There are a bunch of problems with this.

00:28:30.000 So as Charlie says, on separation of power grounds, the prospect

00:28:33.000 We're good to go!

00:29:00.000 Again, the link also between financial acumen, being able to take care of your finances, and being able to own a gun, that link is really weak.

00:29:08.000 I know a lot of people who are not capable of handling their finances.

00:29:11.000 And most of those people are still able to handle a gun.

00:29:14.000 It doesn't matter.

00:29:15.000 The left trotted out this nonsense anyway all day yesterday, and you're still seeing it today.

00:29:19.000 Blumenthal—Senator Blumenthal from New Jersey—from Connecticut, rather, Richard Blumenthal, he was doing the same routine as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, however, and blaming Congress for not doing enough, even though he can make no specific proposal that would have stopped what happened yesterday.

00:29:34.000 This one is the 18th school shooting just this year, but also the day-by-day deaths that are preventable, and we have an obligation to prevent.

00:29:44.000 Congress has been complicit.

00:29:46.000 Congress bears responsibility.

00:29:49.000 So when they say Congress has been complicit, then you hear the MSNBC host go, hmm, yes, yes. 1.00

00:29:55.000 It just shows you how stupid this whole conversation is. 0.99

00:29:58.000 Explain how they've been complicit. 1.00

00:29:59.000 Explain the law that they should have passed that they didn't pass.

00:30:01.000 Explain what they did wrong.

00:30:03.000 Don't just say Congress has been complicit on a broad level and something bad happens.

00:30:06.000 Congress isn't God.

00:30:08.000 There are certain things that should have been done here.

00:30:09.000 It sounds like the FBI blew it.

00:30:11.000 And our great, hallowed FBI.

00:30:13.000 But the idea that Congress is responsible for this without mentioning what proposal Congress voted down is beyond insipid.

00:30:20.000 Also, the left keeps implying, for example, there are a bunch of pieces of misinformation going around today.

00:30:24.000 Another piece of misinformation going around.

00:30:26.000 The NRA is paying off politicians to be pro-gun.

00:30:28.000 That is not the case.

00:30:30.000 There was a rumor going around on the left.

00:30:32.000 It's a Stephanie Rule, I believe, on MSNBC. 0.79

00:30:35.000 was suggesting that it's just terrible that there was one senator who received $3 million over the last 10 years from the NRA.

00:30:44.000 That senator spent $30 million on his last senatorial race alone. 1.00

00:30:47.000 If you think that he moved from anti-gun to pro-gun because the NRA paid him off, you're an idiot. 1.00

00:30:51.000 Another piece of bad information that you're seeing parroted by the media. 1.00

00:30:55.000 There's a group called Everytown.

00:30:56.000 Everytown is a gun control group.

00:30:57.000 And Everytown said that there were 18 school shootings in the month of January.

00:31:01.000 Now, you may be wondering, why didn't I hear about those school shootings every single day?

00:31:04.000 The answer is because there were not 18 school shootings in the month of January.

00:31:06.000 There were more like three.

00:31:08.000 Even one is terrible.

00:31:10.000 But there were no mass school shootings, and the ones that exist are bad enough without you having to blow it up to 18.

00:31:17.000 We can go through them.

00:31:18.000 ABC News said there were 18 school shootings in the first 45 days of 2018, according to Everytown.

00:31:23.000 And New York Daily News said the same thing.

00:31:26.000 But that's not true.

00:31:27.000 Okay, twice.

00:31:28.000 So they counted these as gun incidents on campus.

00:31:30.000 Twice, someone shot themselves on a school ground.

00:31:33.000 One incident on January 3rd featured a man shooting himself in a former school's parking lot.

00:31:37.000 On January 10th, a teen killed himself in an Arizona elementary school bathroom.

00:31:40.000 Okay, that is not a school shooting.

00:31:42.000 That is a school suicide.

00:31:43.000 Hey, four times a bullet was fired through a school or dorm's window.

00:31:46.000 A gunshot on January 4th was fired at a high school in Seattle through an office window.

00:31:50.000 No one was hurt.

00:31:50.000 On January 10th, a shot was fired shattering a California University classroom window.

00:31:54.000 No injuries reported.

00:31:55.000 The same day in Texas, a bullet was accidentally fired through a classroom wall at the Grayson College Criminal Justice Center.

00:32:00.000 No one injured.

00:32:01.000 On January 15th, a bullet traveled through a residential hall's dorm room.

00:32:04.000 No injuries reported.

00:32:06.000 On January 25th, a Mobile, Alabama high school student fired a gun on campus.

00:32:10.000 No injuries.

00:32:10.000 On January 26th, shots were fired from a car in a parking lot.

00:32:14.000 No injuries.

00:32:14.000 On February 5th, a third grader pulled the trigger on a cop's gun.

00:32:17.000 No one was injured.

00:32:18.000 On February 8th, a shot was fired inside Metropolitan High School.

00:32:21.000 No one was injured.

00:32:22.000 Okay, there have only been a few cases in which someone was injured other than the shooter.

00:32:26.000 January 22nd in Texas, a teenage girl was wounded by shots from a semi-automatic handgun.

00:32:30.000 That same day, a 14-year-old boy was injured in a shooting in Gentilly, Louisiana.

00:32:34.000 February 1st, five children were injured in an accidental shooting, so that's not even a purposeful shooting, it's accidental.

00:32:39.000 And finally, on February 5th, a teenager was shot and injured outside a high school.

00:32:43.000 There were only three deadly shootings, apparently, in the last 45 days.

00:32:47.000 So that is still awful.

00:32:48.000 Every one of these is awful.

00:32:49.000 Every one of these is tragic and terrible and an act of evil.

00:32:52.000 That does not mean that 18 happened.

00:32:55.000 So I think that it's just important to get the statistic correct.

00:32:58.000 You wonder why people don't trust the media?

00:32:59.000 It's because the media don't bother to do any of this.

00:33:00.000 They just give you the bottom line, 18 school shootings.

00:33:02.000 And then, the minute you dig into it, you realize there were not 18 school shootings, there were three.

00:33:06.000 A football player was shot and killed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

00:33:09.000 In Benton, Kentucky, two people were killed, another 15 shot at Marshall County High School.

00:33:13.000 January 31st, there was a fight that broke out at a Pennsylvania high school and a 32-year-old man was shot and later died.

00:33:19.000 So that is not the same as what the media have been telling you.

00:33:22.000 The media's malfeasance here has been really quite awful.

00:33:24.000 And we're going to talk about the media malfeasance here in just a second.

00:33:27.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire and subscribe.

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00:34:26.000 So, as I said, the media response to the shooting has been filled with lies and untruths and half-truths.

00:34:31.000 And what it really is about is folks in the media demonstrating how much they care.

00:34:35.000 This has become the game.

00:34:36.000 And it's not a game in the sense—none of this is really a game.

00:34:40.000 But this has become what the media do.

00:34:42.000 What the media do in the aftermath of a shooting is they demonstrate

00:34:45.000 How deeply they care.

00:34:46.000 All the late night hosts go out there and talk about gun control, even though a simple note of sympathy would suffice.

00:34:53.000 They decide that they become experts on gun control.

00:34:54.000 Members of the media go out there and talk about how much they care, because in American society, for some odd reason, we have decided that we can judge whether you are making a quality proposal by the level of how much you care. 1.00

00:35:07.000 This is stupid politics. 0.93

00:35:08.000 The level of how much you care has nothing to do with the decency, strength, or truth of a proposal that you are making. 1.00

00:35:14.000 Nonetheless, these emotional pleas continue from the media.

00:35:17.000 There's a commentator named Kavanaugh on NBC saying that the argument against gun control is legitimately over.

00:35:22.000 There is no more argument against gun control because of the shooting.

00:35:24.000 The argument that gun safety laws don't work has, I mean, it's jumped shark week.

00:35:30.000 It's gone.

00:35:31.000 Look at these mass killings.

00:35:32.000 That argument is gone.

00:35:34.000 We need to have reasonable laws, not taking away anybody's rights.

00:35:39.000 Everybody's got to work together.

00:35:40.000 Are we making the Second Amendment a suicide pact for all of us, our children, the mall, the school, the college?

00:35:48.000 This is crazy.

00:35:49.000 And we can do better.

00:35:50.000 Okay, that is ATF Special Agent Jim Kavanaugh, law enforcement analyst.

00:35:54.000 Solid law enforcement analysis there.

00:35:56.000 Reasonable gun laws that don't violate anyone's rights.

00:35:58.000 Why, that sounds just magical.

00:36:00.000 Now, what the hell are you talking about?

00:36:02.000 Like, really, make a proposal.

00:36:03.000 Put it on the table.

00:36:04.000 Let's discuss it.

00:36:05.000 But don't give me the reasonable gun laws, and then don't actually propose a gun law.

00:36:10.000 You can't do that.

00:36:11.000 That's not fair, it's not right, and it's not true. 0.97

00:36:14.000 It's just foolishness.

00:36:15.000 And more than anything else, it's designed to put people who are in favor of gun rights on the defensive. 0.98

00:36:21.000 Oh, you're unreasonable.

00:36:22.000 See, if you disagree with Jim Cavanaugh that there is a case against gun control, then that means that you're unreasonable.

00:36:27.000 It means that you don't care.

00:36:28.000 It means that you're a bad person.

00:36:30.000 This is what I said to Piers Morgan years ago after the Sandy Hook shooting, that he's standing on the graves of the kids at Sandy Hook in order to promote his political agenda.

00:36:36.000 Unfortunately, members of the media still play this game.

00:36:39.000 If you cannot assume good intentions on the part of your political opponent, you're never going to be able to make a deal.

00:36:43.000 You're certainly not going to be able to come to any sort of conclusion.

00:36:46.000 It wasn't just Kavanaugh.

00:36:47.000 Don Lemon on CNN made an emotional plea for gun control after the school shooting.

00:36:51.000 So just forget politics here.

00:36:53.000 This is about lives, the lives of all Americans.

00:36:56.000 We need to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

00:36:59.000 Everyone agrees with that.

00:37:01.000 People who oppose gun control will say today is not the day to talk about it.

00:37:05.000 And you know what?

00:37:06.000 They are absolutely right.

00:37:08.000 Because the day to talk about it was weeks, months, years, or decades ago.

00:37:12.000 And yes, of course, we also need to make mental health a priority in this country.

00:37:16.000 But guess what?

00:37:17.000 We can do both.

00:37:19.000 We can do both of those things at the same time.

00:37:22.000 If we don't, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

00:37:26.000 This is America, people.

00:37:28.000 Don't forget that.

00:37:29.000 OK, yeah, I got this is America. 0.56

00:37:30.000 I mean, I like Don, but I mean, come on, come on.

00:37:34.000 Yes, this is America.

00:37:35.000 Guess what's in our Constitution?

00:37:36.000 A Second Amendment.

00:37:37.000 That's part of America.

00:37:38.000 This idea that we're all sitting around wailing and gnashing our teeth over meaningless slogans.

00:37:46.000 This stuff should have been done years ago.

00:37:48.000 Make your case.

00:37:50.000 Make your proposal.

00:37:51.000 I don't understand.

00:37:51.000 Do you have a secret proposal?

00:37:52.000 Is it like Trump's foreign policy on ISIS that he wasn't going to reveal during the campaign?

00:37:56.000 Or Dick Nixon's proposal on how to end the Vietnam War in five minutes?

00:38:01.000 Like, what's your proposal?

00:38:02.000 We've been around.

00:38:03.000 I'm waiting.

00:38:04.000 Put it on the table.

00:38:04.000 Let's talk about it.

00:38:05.000 But we're not getting any of that.

00:38:06.000 Instead, we get the, we cannot accept this.

00:38:08.000 Right?

00:38:09.000 America's better than this.

00:38:10.000 Whenever people say things like, America's better than this, it's so irritating, because the suggestion is, if I disagree with your general proposition on policy, then that means I don't think America's better than this.

00:38:19.000 I think America's worse than this. 0.99

00:38:20.000 I think people deserve to be shot. 0.99

00:38:21.000 He wasn't even the worst person on CNN last night. 1.00

00:38:23.000 That was Philip Mudd.

00:38:24.000 Philip Mudd is the national security analyst, counterterrorism analyst over at CNN.

00:38:28.000 He teared up, and then he started talking about, we cannot accept this.

00:38:31.000 I have 10 nieces and nephews.

00:38:33.000 We're talking about bump stocks.

00:38:35.000 We're talking about legislation.

00:38:37.000 A child of God is dead.

00:38:40.000 Cannot we acknowledge in this country that we can't, we cannot accept this.

00:38:47.000 I can't do a wolf.

00:38:48.000 I'm sorry.

00:38:49.000 We can't do it.

00:38:50.000 Okay.

00:38:52.000 Do you think we all don't feel like that?

00:38:55.000 You think we all don't feel like that?

00:38:56.000 We cannot accept this is such an obnoxious statement.

00:38:59.000 Of course we can't accept this.

00:39:00.000 Who are you implying can't accept this?

00:39:02.000 Are you implying that a bunch of us who own guns accept this? 1.00

00:39:05.000 We're the ones who want to stand out there and shoot this bastard before he enters the school. 0.99

00:39:08.000 Are you suggesting that those of us who think the best solution to this would be armed security are accepting this? 0.99

00:39:14.000 On the contrary.

00:39:15.000 I went to a Jewish day school here in Los Angeles for high school.

00:39:18.000 It's a high school called Yeshiva University of Los Angeles or Yeshiva of Los Angeles.

00:39:22.000 It changes name a couple of times.

00:39:23.000 It's right next to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

00:39:25.000 Every month, probably once a month, we had to evacuate the school because of a bomb threat.

00:39:29.000 Because it's a Jewish school and that means there are anti-semitic bomb threats on a pretty regular basis.

00:39:33.000 While I was there, there was a guy named Buford Furrow. 0.97

00:39:36.000 Buford Furrow was an actual white supremacist terrorist.

00:39:41.000 He graduated from ULA in 2000. 0.92

00:39:44.000 He, in 1999, shot up a Jewish community center in the West Valley here in Los Angeles.

00:39:49.000 And before he did that, he drove past our high school.

00:39:53.000 He drove to the high school.

00:39:54.000 He stopped at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

00:39:56.000 He thought about going in, and he saw security guards.

00:39:58.000 He wrongly assumed they were armed.

00:40:00.000 They were not armed.

00:40:00.000 But he wrongly assumed that they were armed security guards.

00:40:02.000 And he thought to himself, OK, I can either walk in here and get my ass shot, or I can go to a place where there will be no security, like the JCC, and then I can shoot up as many people as I want. 0.99

00:40:12.000 He ended up killing several people. 0.99

00:40:15.000 And the point of the story is that security at schools matters.

00:40:22.000 For the left, which has constantly suggested that government stimulus would be had by creation of government jobs, how about this?

00:40:26.000 How about the government, local government, state government, how about they pay for security at their schools?

00:40:31.000 How about we make sure that there are armed guards, several armed guards, on every school campus?

00:40:35.000 This is not too much to ask.

00:40:36.000 We have armed security guards at malls, for goodness sake.

00:40:38.000 Why shouldn't we have them at schools where we have a bunch of sitting duck students, the most valuable commodity our society has, kids, and they're utterly unprotected. 0.86

00:40:47.000 And you stick a gun-free sticker up there and you think that's going to somehow dissuade people from walking on campus with a gun?

00:40:53.000 I don't understand why this is even mildly unreasonable.

00:40:55.000 How is it unreasonable to suggest that maybe we ought to have armed people who are qualified with a gun standing there to make sure that other armed people can't walk in the school?

00:41:03.000 This guy walked in there with a full-on rifle.

00:41:05.000 He wasn't concealing it.

00:41:06.000 He was banned from campus.

00:41:08.000 And when people say, well, you can't do identity checks at the door in school, why the hell not?

00:41:12.000 Why can't you do identity checks in school?

00:41:13.000 We had one in my high school.

00:41:15.000 This idea that, oh, you're militarizing the school.

00:41:17.000 You know what?

00:41:19.000 The security at my daughter's preschool is really good.

00:41:22.000 Militarizing schools.

00:41:24.000 You know what militarizes a school?

00:41:25.000 Somebody walking in with a gun and murdering students.

00:41:27.000 That militarizes the school.

00:41:28.000 You know what doesn't militarize a school?

00:41:29.000 Having a security guard that everybody knows their name and they're friends with, who knows how to use a gun and is capable of doing that in case a bad person walks on campus with a gun.

00:41:37.000 This notion that you're going to protect students by doing none of that.

00:41:41.000 They're fragile psyches.

00:41:42.000 Let me tell you something.

00:41:43.000 What's more fragile than a student's psyche?

00:41:45.000 Their body. 0.93

00:41:47.000 This idea that students are so fragile psychically that if they see a man with a gun in a uniform, or if they see cops on campus, or if they see a security guard on campus with a gun, not a security monitor with a stupid radio, an actual gun, if they see that person, this is going to disturb them. 0.89

00:42:03.000 It's going to make them unable to function in a normal society. 1.00

00:42:07.000 What kind of stupid crap is this? 1.00

00:42:08.000 What absolute utter nonsense? 1.00

00:42:11.000 Even when I went to middle school, there were security guards with guns.

00:42:15.000 In Israel, every school has a security guard with a gun, or multiple.

00:42:19.000 Are the kids from Israel somehow really screwed up because they saw a gun? 1.00

00:42:22.000 Only people who are idiots think that the mere sight of a gun traumatizes a child so much that they'll never recover. 1.00

00:42:28.000 You know what traumatizes a child? 1.00

00:42:30.000 Being shot.

00:42:31.000 You know what traumatizes a child?

00:42:32.000 Seeing their classmates shot.

00:42:33.000 You know what traumatizes a child?

00:42:35.000 Hiding in a closet, texting their parents that they might be about to die because there was no one on campus with a gun to stop a bad man who walks onto campus with a gun.

00:42:42.000 So listen, I'm happy to look at gun control proposals if they are actually specific so we can determine what is true and what is not.

00:42:48.000 What I am not willing to do is entertain the idea that if you just say gun control, I'm supposed to bow to whatever you fill in that blank check with. 0.68

00:42:55.000 And meanwhile, I'm supposed to pretend that it's not idiocy not to have armed security guards on campus. 1.00

00:43:00.000 Just stupidity. 0.99

00:43:01.000 Now, I thought there was something else interesting that was tweeted out yesterday. 0.99

00:43:04.000 Michael Ian Black, who's a comedian, he tweeted something out about how there is something deeper than the gun problem happening in the United States.

00:43:12.000 I think he's half right and half wrong.

00:43:13.000 Here's what he tweeted, quote, Deeper even than the gun problem is this.

00:43:16.000 Boys are broken.

00:43:17.000 Until we fix men, we need to fix the gun problem. 1.00

00:43:19.000 The last 50 years redefined womanhood. 0.99

00:43:21.000 Women were taught they can be anything. 1.00

00:43:22.000 No commensurate movement for men who are still generally locked into the same rigid, outdated model of masculinity, and it's killing us.

00:43:28.000 If you want to hurt a man, the first thing you do is attack his masculinity.

00:43:31.000 Men don't have the language to understand masculinity as anything other than some version of a caveman because no language exists.

00:43:36.000 The language of masculinity is hopelessly entwined with sexuality, and the language of sexuality is hopelessly entwined with power, agency, and self-worth.

00:43:43.000 So men, and boys before that, don't have language for modes of expression that don't readily conform to traditional standards.

00:43:48.000 To step outside those norms is to take a risk most of us are afraid to take.

00:43:51.000 As a result, a lot of guys spend their lives terrified.

00:43:54.000 We're terrified as being viewed as something other than men.

00:43:56.000 We know ourselves to be men, but we don't know how to be our whole selves.

00:43:58.000 A lot of us, me included, either shut off or experience deep shame or rage, or all three.

00:44:02.000 Again, men are terrified.

00:44:04.000 Even talking about this topic invites ridicule because it's so scary for most men and women.

00:44:08.000 Men are adrift, and nobody is talking about it, and nobody is doing anything about it, and it's killing us.

00:44:12.000 I think that he has a point that boys are broken.

00:44:14.000 I think that's true.

00:44:15.000 But his suggestion that what is happening here is basically that men have been told that they ought to act like men, that this has corrupted manhood, is nonsense.

00:44:24.000 If there was a collapse in manhood over the last 50 years, you have to ask what changed.

00:44:28.000 What changed in the model of manhood was the definition of manhood.

00:44:32.000 Manhood used to be about being a protector.

00:44:35.000 I don't have to redo the sheepdog speech here from American Sniper, but that's what being a man was about.

00:44:40.000 That being a man, I will say the main message.

00:44:42.000 The main message, if you haven't seen American Sniper, a very famous speech by one of the characters, the main message is that men can either be wolves or sheep or sheepdogs.

00:44:51.000 They can either be victimizers, or they can be the victimized, or they can be the sheepdogs who ensure that the wolves are kept at bay.

00:44:56.000 The job of men was to protect innocence. 0.70

00:44:58.000 That was the number one job of men. 0.98

00:45:00.000 Not job number two, not job number ten.

00:45:02.000 Getting laid was not high on the list.

00:45:04.000 Playing video games was not high on the list.

00:45:06.000 Protecting women and children was number one on the list.

00:45:09.000 It's why when the Titanic went down, the idea was women and children first. 0.99

00:45:12.000 That was a good thing.

00:45:14.000 Men are supposed to protect.

00:45:16.000 That is a man's job. 1.00

00:45:17.000 And I'm not talking about shortcomings in some of the men at the school, because that was not happening, okay?

00:45:22.000 There were real men at the school.

00:45:25.000 The real one was a football coach who was murdered yesterday.

00:45:28.000 Coach Aaron Feist was initially said to be dead.

00:45:31.000 Then he was thought to be alive.

00:45:32.000 He passed away this morning.

00:45:34.000 Apparently, he jumped in front of the bullets in order to stop students from being shot.

00:45:41.000 It's really, really sad.

00:45:42.000 He worked as a security guard at the school for at least eight years.

00:45:45.000 And apparently, when the shooting broke out, he jumped in front of the students and was murdered.

00:45:52.000 There are men who are willing to be protectors.

00:45:54.000 But the question is not about those men.

00:45:56.000 The question is about people who become shooters.

00:45:58.000 Boys, particularly, they either create or they destroy. 0.90

00:46:01.000 This is true from the time they're children.

00:46:03.000 They're either building blocks or they're knocking the blocks down.

00:46:05.000 This is what boys do.

00:46:07.000 That means that boys have to be trained from a very young age to build and not to destroy.

00:46:12.000 They have to be told not only not to destroy, but that it is their job to build.

00:46:15.000 And the way that you build a society, the way you build a community, the way that you build a safe world is with men who protect human beings from other bad human beings.

00:46:24.000 Make men into heroes.

00:46:25.000 Don't make them into feminized versions of what you wish men were.

00:46:32.000 You can't get rid of manhood.

00:46:33.000 You can't get rid of masculinity.

00:46:34.000 Nor would you want to.

00:46:35.000 A society without masculinity is a society that's bound to the eventual degradation of civilization. 0.80

00:46:41.000 What you actually want here is a manhood. 0.68

00:46:44.000 A proud manhood that stands up for women and children.

00:46:46.000 That turns men into heroes.

00:46:47.000 That makes men aspire to be heroes.

00:46:50.000 It doesn't abandon boys and tell them they're wrong for feeling that aggressive impulse.

00:46:55.000 Men are aggressive.

00:46:56.000 It's what they do.

00:46:57.000 Channel that aggression towards something good, and you get great civilizations.

00:47:00.000 Channel that aggression towards something evil, you get evil civilizations.

00:47:03.000 But it must be channeled.

00:47:05.000 It's something we ought to keep in mind as we move forward in these discussions, that something is happening on a societal level that is really negative and really nasty, and it goes deeper than the kind of weapons that are available on the market.

00:47:15.000 Okay, so there's a lot going on on immigration.

00:47:19.000 But we're going to save that for tomorrow, because there have been a couple of immigration plans proposed.

00:47:23.000 The White House is in favor of one, not in favor of the other.

00:47:25.000 The one that seems to be moving fastest through the Senate, to make a long story short, is a proposal that essentially allows illegal immigrants up till now to stay in the country illegally and to bring in some family members, and even allows a four-month grace period for people who are entering the country now illegally to get in and never be deported.

00:47:41.000 The White House has already said they won't sign that bill, but that seems to be the one that's moving through the Senate.

00:47:44.000 We'll have some more updates on it tomorrow.

00:47:45.000 OK, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:47:49.000 So, things that I like.

00:47:50.000 So, Steven Pinker has a brand new book called Enlightenment Now.

00:47:53.000 So, I haven't actually read the book yet.

00:47:54.000 I'm looking forward to reading it.

00:47:55.000 I ordered it yesterday.

00:47:56.000 He is a psychologist who's come under heavy scrutiny from the left, not because he's a right-winger.

00:48:01.000 Steven Pinker is not a right-winger.

00:48:02.000 Like Sam Harris, he's on the political left.

00:48:04.000 But Steven Pinker is willing to discuss the reality that there is such a thing as objective truth, that some cultures are better than other cultures, that reason makes a difference, and that the Enlightenment was something that was good.

00:48:16.000 Now, where I think that, I'll read the book and then I'll give a fuller critique of it, but my initial response and my initial prediction about the book is that Pinker, in taking a somewhat anti-religious view, because Pinker is an atheist from what I understand, that in taking a somewhat anti-religious view, he's ignoring the root fundamentals of the Enlightenment.

00:48:33.000 I'm a pro-Enlightenment guy too, but I also acknowledge where the Enlightenment came from.

00:48:37.000 It didn't just spring out of the minds of man unprompted.

00:48:40.000 There was a whole set of developments that occurred before that,

00:48:43.000 And then we've ripped away a lot of the developments undergirding the Enlightenment, and then we want to keep the actual cherry on top.

00:48:48.000 Well, you can't get rid of the Sunday and keep the cherry on top.

00:48:50.000 That's not how this works.

00:48:51.000 You can't keep the roof of the building by destroying its foundations.

00:48:53.000 But I'll have to read the book to see if that's what Pinker actually does.

00:48:57.000 But this book is doing really well.

00:48:58.000 I'm really glad to see it.

00:48:59.000 His book, Pinker's book, Jordan Peterson's book.

00:49:02.000 There are a lot of people who are in the sciences, people who are now rising up to defend civilization against the postmodernist cult that has torn down science, torn down reason, torn down

00:49:13.000 Humanism, not just secular humanism, but religious humanism.

00:49:16.000 And I think that it's important to fight back against that.

00:49:19.000 You know, I provide very often on this show a vision of a humanity that is in some ways degraded, in some ways degrading, meaning that it is degrading over time.

00:49:30.000 But the reality is that, as I've said before, this is the best time in human history to live.

00:49:34.000 Now the question is, what can we make ourselves to make ourselves the best selves to take advantage of that and continue that progress forward rather than moving backward?

00:49:40.000 Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.

00:49:46.000 Thing that I hate, number one.

00:49:47.000 So, one of the things that is super irritating whenever we get into a gun discussion is how little people on the left know about guns while they're talking about them.

00:49:54.000 So, we heard the usual schtick about how this weapon, if you held down the trigger, that it was going to fire a continuous stream of bullets.

00:50:00.000 That's not true.

00:50:00.000 It's a semi-automatic.

00:50:01.000 That means every time you pull the trigger, there's one shot that is fired. 0.97

00:50:04.000 Stephen King made an ass of himself on Twitter. 0.93

00:50:07.000 Here he is tweeting out, 0.95

00:50:09.000 against Rick Wilson.

00:50:09.000 So Rick Wilson says you're a hell of a lot more likely to be killed in Florida by an opioid overdose than MS-13, but my bae.

00:50:15.000 So that was Rick Wilson ripping on President Trump, actually, because that's what Rick Wilson does a lot.

00:50:20.000 He's ripping on Trump for talking about MS-13 and the dangers of illegal immigration. 1.00

00:50:26.000 Stephen King, however, is an ignorant moron. 1.00

00:50:27.000 So Stephen King tweets out—he's a good writer. 1.00

00:50:30.000 I mean, I like some of his books, at least until the end.

00:50:32.000 Every one of his books starts with an interesting premise and finishes with the entire world burning down.

00:50:36.000 So you can basically skip the first 700 pages of his novels, figure there's some creepy stuff, and then just watch.

00:50:42.000 Whatever contained small world he's built burned to the ground while a couple of children walk away.

00:50:46.000 That's always the ending of every single one of his books.

00:50:48.000 In any case, Stephen King tweeted out, So Rick Wilson tweeted out, And Stephen King said, So apparently he thinks MS-13 is a gun.

00:51:06.000 Okay, MS-13 is a gang.

00:51:08.000 It is not a gun. 1.00

00:51:09.000 You have to be an idiot to think this. 1.00

00:51:11.000 Didn't stop Stephen King, though. 1.00

00:51:13.000 So, Stephen King tweeting out, obviously, that somebody's gonna walk into your school with an MS-13 or something.

00:51:19.000 Well done, Stephen King.

00:51:20.000 Just don't talk...

00:51:22.000 Honestly, don't talk about things you don't know anything about. 0.96

00:51:24.000 Elizabeth Warren, also yesterday, she made a fool of herself. 1.00

00:51:27.000 She spoke to this Native American group, we discussed it at length yesterday. 0.92

00:51:30.000 Here's what it sounded like when this very, very Native American woman, who is whiter than I am by a score, by a huge margin, wearing her traditional Native American garb, here's what she said about her Native American background.

00:51:43.000 It has been an honor to work with, to learn from, and to represent the tribes of my home state of Massachusetts, the Aquinnah and the Mashpee Wampanoag.

00:51:55.000 So it's a great delight to be here.

00:51:57.000 Thank you.

00:51:58.000 President Trump likes to talk about Pocahontas.

00:52:02.000 Yep.

00:52:03.000 So I figured, let's talk about Pocahontas.

00:52:08.000 Our country's disrespect of Native people didn't start with President Trump.

00:52:13.000 It started long before President Washington took office.

00:52:17.000 Okay, stop this.

00:52:18.000 Stop this nonsense.

00:52:18.000 You want to talk about disrespect to Native American people?

00:52:20.000 How about pretending to be one? 0.69

00:52:22.000 How about spending your career pretending that you have Native American ancestry so you can get a job at Harvard? 0.98

00:52:27.000 That seems a lot more disrespectful to Native American heritage than somebody mocking you for doing that.

00:52:31.000 I will continue to call Elizabeth Warren foca-hontas.

00:52:34.000 It's not Pocahontas, President Trump.

00:52:35.000 It's foca-hontas. 0.98

00:52:36.000 I'll continue to call her foca-hontas because she's not Native American. 1.00

00:52:39.000 And hijacking somebody else's culture for specific use in an affirmative action program seems pretty wild to me.

00:52:46.000 And yet there she was talking about how she's going to stand up and defend Native American people. 0.95

00:52:50.000 Just ridiculous.

00:52:50.000 The fact that the left goes along with this demonstrates that even identity politics has to take a backseat to leftism when the rubber meets the road.

00:52:57.000 OK, we'll be back here tomorrow.

00:52:58.000 We'll talk about the immigration plan that's moving forward and all of the fallout from yesterday's horrific, heartbreaking shootings.

00:53:04.000 Obviously, not only do our thoughts and prayers go out to the people who were affected by the shooting,

00:53:09.000 But I would love to see some of the proposals that I made on the program today.

00:53:13.000 Yes, with regard to straw purchasers.

00:53:15.000 Yes, with regard to mental health checks.

00:53:18.000 I would like to see some of those proposals advanced.

00:53:20.000 So lest anyone say that we're not about moving forward politically.

00:53:23.000 We should be moving forward politically, but on a basis of specific proposals, not on the basis of gun control, and therefore you don't care about what happened.

00:53:31.000 Everyone cares about what happened.

00:53:32.000 We all stand together on this.

00:53:33.000 And if you don't believe that, then I think that you're doing something that's relatively un-American. 0.69

00:53:38.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:53:38.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 15, 2018

Another Horrific Shooting | Ep. 476

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