The Ben Shapiro Show - February 16, 2018


Repeal the 2nd Amendment? | Ep. 477

Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Donald Trump LeBron James Cliven Bundy Rick Scott Austin Stevens Jimmy Kimmel Hitler King David Brett Stevens Kathy Newman Rob Portman Catherine McDougal Jordan Peterson Abraham Lincoln Karen McDougal Charles Lawton Nancy Pelosi Barack Obama Sandy Hook John Adams and 53 more
Another Horrific Shooting | Ep. 476 The Gun Control Movement Ramps Up | Ep. 478

Episode Stats


Length

57 minutes

Words per minute

205.51

Word count

11,796

Sentence count

803

Harmful content

Misogyny

14

sentences flagged

Toxicity

28

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Another mass shooting in the United States, this time in Parkland, Florida, has the media, the left, and the right all on high alert, and Jimmy Kimmel is on the scene to try to make sense of it all. What does he have to say about it? Is it time to get rid of the Second Amendment? Is the National Rifle Association responsible for the latest mass shooting? Or is there something else going on that needs to be done to prevent more mass shootings like this from happening in the future? Ben Shapiro breaks it all down, and explains why the left has no idea what they're talking about, and why they don't even have a plan to do anything about it. Plus, a new toothbrushing company that's going to make brushing your teeth easier and more convenient, and a new electric toothbrush that makes brushing easier and less expensive than ever! Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share to get notified when we deconstruct the latest news in politics, culture, entertainment, and politics! Enjoy & spread the word to your friends about what's going on in your social circles! -Ben Shapiro and don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to let us know what you thought of the latest viral video you saw on the show! If you like it, share it on your social media! and tell a friend about it on Insta! or share it so we can spread it around the wide and spread it far and wide! Thank you for listening to everyone else! Be sure to leave us your thoughts, comments, reviews, and reviews and reviews on the podcast! on your thoughts on it's on the pod! & subscribe to it's a review! Love you're listening to the show? and we'll be listening to it? - Ben Shapiro - Thank you! Timestamps: 5 stars is much more than you'll be the most important thing I can do for me! I'll be looking out for Ben Shapiro on the next episode of the Ben Shapiro Podcasts? 5 stars means more of Ben Shapiro is listening to Ben Shapiro's thoughts on the latest podcast 7/27/29/19/7/10/19 - 5 stars equals 7 days of the best of the week? 6/28/9/30/19 / 7/29 8/6

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The media ask whether it's time to repeal the Second Amendment.
00:00:02.000 Democrats say the NRA is responsible for the Florida school shooting.
00:00:06.000 And Republicans shoot down a bunch of immigration proposals.
00:00:09.000 We'll talk about all of it.
00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:16.000 Obviously, the tragedy of the Parkland school shooting is still on everyone's mind. 0.60
00:00:21.000 And every time there's a massive shooting like this, whether it's Las Vegas or whether it is Sandy Hook, we now go into a predictable cycle of outrage, where folks say things that are ridiculous, they impute motives to other people that are ridiculous, and then those people fire back, and it becomes highly irritating.
00:00:37.000 Well, we're going to talk a little bit about some of those arguments today.
00:00:40.000 Jimmy Kimmel, of course.
00:00:41.000 We're good to go.
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00:02:12.000 We're good.
00:02:32.000 It's the circular argument that has become highly irritating to everybody involved, in which people on the left scream, do something, people on the right say, well, what would you have us do?
00:02:39.000 And then people on the left say, well, if you're even asking that question, it means you don't want to do something.
00:02:43.000 That seems like the cycle of logic that is applied here.
00:02:46.000 So Jimmy Kimmel, of course, is the leader in being the sort of emotional
00:02:51.000 The emotional avatar for the left.
00:02:53.000 So he goes on his show last night and he of course talks about the shooting and pushes hard for gun control with his usual caveats and freak outs about the NRA.
00:03:03.000 Another senseless shooting, this time at a high school in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman, a former student, opened fire yesterday.
00:03:11.000 Again, 17 lives have been lost, more than a dozen people are hospitalized.
00:03:15.000 Tell your buddies in Congress, tell Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio, all the family men who care so much about their communities, that what we need are laws, real laws, that do everything possible to keep assault rifles out of the hands of people who are going to shoot our kids.
00:03:31.000 Go on TV and tell them to do that.
00:03:37.000 Okay, go tell people what to do, and what we need laws, and what are these laws going to be, and the Congress works for us, they don't work for the NRA.
00:03:45.000 This is one of the things that he was pushing, the idea that the NRA was responsible.
00:03:48.000 We'll get to that in a minute.
00:03:49.000 Again, all of this is just designed to make you believe that Jimmy Kimmel has a plan.
00:03:53.000 Jimmy Kimmel doesn't have a plan.
00:03:54.000 People on the left don't have a plan.
00:03:55.000 And if they do have a plan, it really is to confiscate guns.
00:03:57.000 Now, the minute that you say that about people on the left, they get very upset.
00:04:01.000 No, no, no.
00:04:01.000 We just want reasonable gun legislation.
00:04:03.000 But then they can never name what the reasonable gun legislation is, because if they were to ban assault rifles, the reality is the vast majority of killings that are done with guns in the United States are not with assault rifles.
00:04:11.000 Assault rifles are responsible for less murders in the United States than hands or knives.
00:04:16.000 When people on the left say, well, what if we would just do better background checks?
00:04:20.000 We have full background checks in the state of California, and that has not stopped the Isla Vista shooting.
00:04:24.000 It did not stop the San Bernardino shooting.
00:04:26.000 Again, the problem with these targeted gun laws is that what people on the left really want, if they were honest about it, they would say this.
00:04:32.000 Piers Morgan, when I was on with him in 2013, he refused to say it, but then he finally came out and he was honest about it.
00:04:37.000 What they really want is a UK-style government
00:04:40.000 We're good to go.
00:04:59.000 In the United States, if you're a grandfather in, all of the guns that still are there, there are 300 million guns in the United States.
00:05:04.000 So that would not actually solve the problem you're talking about, because a lot of the guns that are in the hands of people who are going to commit school shootings in the future are already in those hands.
00:05:14.000 So you'd actually have to go around conferences getting guns.
00:05:15.000 Good luck trying to take guns away from 42% of the American public who say, 42% of households say that there's a gun in the house.
00:05:22.000 There's a gun in my house.
00:05:24.000 The government would have to come to my house and take it from me.
00:05:26.000 I'm not going to offer it back in a government buyback.
00:05:28.000 And neither is anybody else who owns a gun.
00:05:30.000 Those programs are wildly unsuccessful.
00:05:32.000 So what the left really is talking about is full-scale gun confiscation.
00:05:36.000 And you see that at the school vigil.
00:05:40.000 There's a vigil at the school.
00:05:41.000 And this chant broke out, no more guns.
00:05:43.000 No more guns!
00:05:46.000 No more guns!
00:05:47.000 No more guns!
00:05:48.000 Now, I don't know what that's supposed to mean, no more guns.
00:05:51.000 Are you going to take away the ones that people already have?
00:05:53.000 Are you going to take away from law-abiding citizens?
00:05:56.000 And then CNN, the rest of the media, they spend an awful lot of time bringing on victims of shootings to talk about what gun policy should be.
00:06:02.000 So, CNN featured a grieving mother.
00:06:05.000 I'm never in favor of this, by the way.
00:06:06.000 I think that it's always a mistake to have grieving people talk about policy because I don't think that your grief is relevant to the policy considerations at issue.
00:06:13.000 You do not have added legitimacy.
00:06:15.000 It's a form of emotional identity politics.
00:06:17.000 You do not have added legitimacy on a topic because as a blank, right, this is what Steven Pinker suggests as identity politics, as a white man, as a black woman, as a grieving mother.
00:06:28.000 As soon as you say that a grieving mother has more moral legitimacy to speak on gun control than somebody who's studied the issue all their life, then you are throwing away reason in favor of emotion.
00:06:37.000 In any case, here's this mother, and obviously you have nothing but sympathy for the mom, and that's why CNN is putting her on the air. 0.99
00:06:44.000 President Trump, you say, what can you do?
00:06:47.000 You can stop the guns from getting into these children's hands!
00:06:52.000 Put metal detectors at every entrance to the schools!
00:06:55.000 What can you do?
00:06:56.000 You can do a lot!
00:06:59.000 This is not fair to our families that our children go to school and have to get killed!
00:07:10.000 I just spent the last two hours
00:07:14.000 Putting the burial arrangements for my daughter's funeral!
00:07:17.000 Who's 14?
00:07:22.000 President Trump, please do something!
00:07:25.000 Yeah, obviously, it's horrifying to watch.
00:07:27.000 I mean, it's just terrible to watch this grieving mother.
00:07:30.000 But when she's screaming at Trump to do something, what—the question is what Trump is supposed to do.
00:07:34.000 The president of the United States doesn't have unilateral authority to seize guns in the United States.
00:07:38.000 The president of the United States does not have unilateral authority to put even metal detectors, which is, by the way, a proposal I agree with, on school grounds.
00:07:45.000 I think that security should be upped at all schools, as I said yesterday.
00:07:49.000 Having armed guards at every school is not a—I fail to understand why this is even remotely controversial.
00:07:54.000 But the reason that CNN—the bigger question is not about the mom.
00:07:56.000 I understand where the mom is coming from.
00:07:58.000 Everyone with a heart understands where the mom is coming from.
00:08:00.000 The question is, why is CNN spending airtime on this?
00:08:03.000 And the reason that CNN is spending airtime on this is because CNN wants to manipulate viewers into responding emotionally to an issue that actually requires thought and reason, as opposed to an issue that requires emotional response.
00:08:15.000 You notice that CNN never does this, by the way, with victims of terror attacks.
00:08:18.000 CNN will never go to victims of terror attacks after there is an Islamic terror attack, for example.
00:08:22.000 And they won't have the victim of the terror attacks family go on TV and say, we need a travel ban.
00:08:26.000 And CNN will never do that because that doesn't agree with CNN's agenda.
00:08:30.000 The point here is that it's exploitative for the media to put grieving people on television simply in order to make a certain political point.
00:08:37.000 It's something I object to generally, it's something I object to on a specific level, and I think that it's something that really needs to stop.
00:08:44.000 And again, they were doing this with students as well.
00:08:45.000 CNN put a student on TV to talk about why this is somehow on Rick Scott, rather than MSNBC doing this.
00:08:52.000 You know, again, it's a flu of emotion.
00:08:54.000 It's anger, it's fear, it's confusion, it's grief.
00:08:57.000 And I've just been trying to channel those all together into some sort of mad inspiration.
00:09:02.000 I'm trying to get the message out that it is important to grieve, but it's also important to make sure the bad guys feel this in the polls, and make sure everybody knows that their votes count on this.
00:09:14.000 It's my astute belief that the blood of those 17 people is on Rick Scott's hands.
00:09:19.000 OK, so somehow it's not Rich Scott, it's Rick Scott.
00:09:22.000 It's somehow the blood of people who died in Parklands on Rick Scott's hands.
00:09:25.000 Why is it on Rick Scott's hands when a nutcase—who apparently the police were called to the house 39 times.
00:09:31.000 This is the new report.
00:09:32.000 The police had gone to this guy's house 39 times, and there was no involuntary commitment of this person, who apparently when he was a child was even put in a facility for violent juveniles.
00:09:42.000 Obviously, the system failed here.
00:09:44.000 But what that has to do with gun control is a little bit beyond me.
00:09:48.000 Now, folks on the left, if they're really honest, they will say what they really mean.
00:09:51.000 What they really mean is they want to confiscate all the guns.
00:09:53.000 So let's talk about that in just a second, whether or not all the guns should be confiscated.
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00:11:09.000 OK, so there are some folks today who are being a little bit more honest about what it would take to really get to the gun-free utopia they want.
00:11:16.000 And that, of course, is repeal of the Second Amendment.
00:11:18.000 So Barry White, a reporter, a staff writer over at The New York Times, who was ripped earlier this week.
00:11:24.000 We talked about her.
00:11:24.000 She was ripped earlier this week for being supposedly too conservative, for saying that immigrants get the job done
00:11:30.000 After she—and she tweeted that about the daughter of immigrants rather than immigrants themselves, and she was ripped up and down by members of The New York Times staff.
00:11:36.000 Well, she tweeted out, repeal the Second Amendment. 0.99
00:11:38.000 And then she tweeted out a column that was written by Bret Stephens a year ago, in October of 2017, a few months ago, in October 2017, after the Las Vegas shooting, I believe.
00:11:47.000 And that column was titled, Repeal the Second Amendment.
00:11:49.000 So, let's go through that column, because it's about as good an argument as you will hear for repealing the Second Amendment, and it is not a very good argument at that.
00:11:55.000 So, Bret Stephens starts off that column by deriding what he calls the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.
00:12:00.000 So why exactly would conservatives support a private right to own weapons for the protection of life and liberty?
00:12:05.000 After all, Stephens says, quote, from a law and order standpoint, more guns mean more murder.
00:12:09.000 Now, this actually is not true.
00:12:11.000 More guns in certain places mean more murder.
00:12:14.000 More guns in Vermont do not mean more murder.
00:12:16.000 More guns in rural Texas do not necessarily mean more murder.
00:12:19.000 Steven cites a study in the American Journal of Public Health from 2013 to show that, quote,
00:12:29.000 But there's only one problem with the study.
00:12:31.000 This examines the statistics on a state level, which doesn't make any sense, given that virtually all murder in the United States takes place not in rural areas of states, but in the big cities.
00:12:41.000 And in those big cities, there are very harsh gun laws.
00:12:44.000 In the big cities, that's where nearly all murder in the United States takes place, in big cities.
00:12:48.000 So there's very little link, actually, between state law and state homicide rate, as Eugene Volokh of The Washington Post pointed out.
00:12:57.000 Beyond that, that same study that he's citing that says that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicide, there's one problem with the study.
00:13:05.000 The single largest variable when it comes to murder rate is not actually gun ownership in these various states.
00:13:10.000 The single largest rate, which the study tries to bury, the single largest problem is that the highest correlation is between the number of black people in a particular state and the number of homicides.
00:13:20.000 This is not a racist point, okay?
00:13:22.000 People are not murdering other people because they are black. 1.00
00:13:25.000 That's obviously a stupid notion. 0.99
00:13:27.000 But if you're going to look at what is statistically relevant, and you're going to look at factors that are statistically relevant, the number of black people in a state are more statistically relevant than the number of guns in a state. 0.99
00:13:38.000 This is according to the study.
00:13:55.000 The study tried to bury that data by not showing it in the actual text of the study.
00:13:59.000 So if you love that study so much, then you should recognize that there are variables that have significantly more impact than gun ownership rate.
00:14:06.000 And that has to do, and we can talk about why there's a higher homicide rate in the black community than there is in the white community.
00:14:11.000 A lot of it has to do with under-policing the black community that has been a matter of systemic discrimination since the 1800s, where white communities basically said that black communities fend for yourselves, and that's been inculcated in particular areas of the culture.
00:14:25.000 But that's not the point.
00:14:25.000 The point that I'm making is that if you are going to suggest that gun ownership is highly correlative with gun death, then you have to look at other factors that are highly correlative with gun death and see that these statistics are not nearly as significant as you think they are.
00:14:38.000 Stevens continues by stating, quote, from a personal safety standpoint, more guns means less safety.
00:14:43.000 He then cites the fact that more people are killed every year in accidental firearm death than in self-defense shooting situations.
00:14:49.000 But that's not a proper statistic either.
00:14:51.000 Because the times that people use a gun in self-defense far exceed the number of times you actually shoot somebody to death in self-defense.
00:14:57.000 The goal of having a gun in your home is so that you can pull it out.
00:15:00.000 I mean, I know there's a woman around the corner, and she was at home, and there's a guy who tried to break into her house.
00:15:06.000 She went and got the shotgun from the back room.
00:15:08.000 Well, rather, she screamed. 0.99
00:15:09.000 The guy ran away.
00:15:10.000 The police came.
00:15:11.000 They told her, what you should do next time that happens is, do you have a gun in the house?
00:15:14.000 She said, yes.
00:15:15.000 They said, go get your pump-action shotgun and then cock the shotgun.
00:15:19.000 Right?
00:15:19.000 Give it a ch-ch-ch.
00:15:20.000 Do that near the door and the guy will run.
00:15:23.000 You won't have a problem.
00:15:23.000 Now, that would not show up in any of the statistics that are being measured by the CDC.
00:15:26.000 It would not show up as a use of a gun in self-defense, because you didn't actually point it at somebody, you didn't actually shoot somebody, you didn't actually wound somebody.
00:15:33.000 But this sort of stuff happens all the time.
00:15:35.000 And there's a widely varying set of statistics on how often people use guns in self-defense this way.
00:15:40.000 According to the National Self-Defense Survey extrapolations,
00:15:43.000 People use firearms in self-defense millions of times a year.
00:15:45.000 That may be too high.
00:15:46.000 Brian Doherty at Reason has an exhaustive analysis of whether it's hundreds of thousands of times a year or millions of times a year, but it's certainly not 268 justifiable homicide by firearms.
00:15:57.000 That is not the full measure of the number of times people actually use guns in self-defense in the United States.
00:16:02.000 So Stephen then moves on to deriding the philosophy of gun ownership.
00:16:07.000 He says that the idea that we can protect liberty by having guns in the United States, that we can protect from foreign threat by having guns in the United States, is a quaint idea. 0.82
00:16:14.000 Well, I wonder if it's such a quaint idea after Afghanistan, after Vietnam. 0.89
00:16:17.000 The fact is that small arms gun ownership and guerrilla warfare have been successful at thwarting some of the greatest powers in the history of humanity—the United States in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and the Russians in Afghanistan, for example. 0.56
00:16:27.000 Those have been thwarted by IEDs and small guns.
00:16:30.000 These are not being thwarted by necessarily top-level military weaponry.
00:16:35.000 Finally, he goes on and he says that the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachment of government power is silly.
00:16:43.000 And then he says, well, look at the Whiskey Rebellion.
00:16:45.000 That wasn't a check on government power, except that it sort of was.
00:16:48.000 The Whiskey Rebellion, which happened in the late 1790s, it was directed at an internal whiskey tax placed by the federal government.
00:16:56.000 There were a bunch of people who grew corn for whiskey, and they were very upset that the whiskey tax was affecting them, and there was an armed revolt.
00:17:02.000 And it was put down with violence.
00:17:03.000 A couple of people were hung in it.
00:17:04.000 And so he says, well, that showed that there was a failure of armed insurrection.
00:17:08.000 Except for the fact, of course, that President John Adams may have lost the presidency in 1800 based on that, and that President Thomas Jefferson then immediately went about revoking the whiskey tax.
00:17:16.000 So it obviously had a pretty significant
00:17:18.000 In fact, you can even look at today.
00:17:20.000 There's a big hubbub over Cliven Bundy.
00:17:22.000 You remember this.
00:17:23.000 There's nearly an armed standoff with the federal government over Cliven Bundy's territory, where Cliven Bundy wanted to feed his cattle on land that he historically grazed cattle on, and the Environmental Protection Association, the EPA agency, rather, they came in and they said that this was terrible, that he couldn't be grazing his cattle on this area, and they tried to fine him, then they tried to seize his farm.
00:17:43.000 And Clive and Bundy refused to go along with the arrest, and a bunch of people showed up and refused to go along with the arrest as well.
00:17:49.000 Well, there was just a jury nullification that happened, and Clive and Bundy went free.
00:17:53.000 The Bundy family went free.
00:17:55.000 And now there's been a major political push in the United States to get the EPA out of the business of regulating so much land.
00:18:00.000 So, yes, armed insurrection is not always worthwhile.
00:18:03.000 Sometimes it's terrible.
00:18:04.000 The Civil War was a terrible, terrible thing.
00:18:06.000 But the idea that having lots of people with guns does not somehow check the ambitions of the federal government is obviously nonsensical. 0.97
00:18:11.000 The reason that we're not really talking in serious terms about full-scale gun confiscation is because you try that crap in Texas, it ain't gonna go well. 0.95
00:18:19.000 Stevens then turns to the active shooter phenomenon. 0.94
00:18:21.000 He says that such situations are extremely rare in the rest of the world, which is true.
00:18:26.000 It is also true that they are extremely rare here in the United States as well.
00:18:30.000 So John Lott's website, the Crime Prevention Research Center, he goes through the annual death rate from mass public shootings comparing the European countries to U.S.
00:18:37.000 and Canada, and he did it on a per capita basis.
00:18:39.000 So one of the things that happens is that the United States is compared to Britain, for example.
00:18:44.000 You say, oh, there are lots more shootings here than there are in Britain.
00:18:45.000 Right, we're a much larger country than Britain.
00:18:47.000 When you actually look at the death rate per million people from mass public shootings from 2009 through 2015, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center, the number one country was Norway because they had that horrible Andres Breivik shooting.
00:18:58.000 And then it's Serbia, France, Macedonia, Albania, Slovakia, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium, Czech Republic, and then the United States.
00:19:05.000 How about frequency?
00:19:06.000 Forget about the number of dead.
00:19:07.000 How about frequency of mass public shootings?
00:19:09.000 So if you look at the frequency of mass public shootings from January 2009 to December 2015 per million people in order, it's Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Switzerland, Norway, Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, France, and then the United States.
00:19:23.000 The average incident rate for 28 EU countries is 0.0602, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.0257 to 0.09477.
00:19:32.000 The U.S.
00:19:34.000 rate is 0.078 higher than the EU rate, but the U.S.
00:19:38.000 and average for EU countries are not statistically different.
00:19:41.000 In other words, we're having about the same number of mass shootings as are happening in other countries, and we have significantly more guns.
00:19:48.000 So this idea that everything lines up is just not statistically correct.
00:19:52.000 Again, the case for full-scale gun confiscation is particularly weak, especially in a country where you have, as I say, some 300 million guns and 100 million gun owners.
00:20:03.000 Finally, he says that leftists are losing the gun control debate when they lie about the facts, which is true, and that they should stop talking about quote-unquote common-sense gun control and they should just repeal the Second Amendment. 0.73
00:20:13.000 He says gun ownership shouldn't be outlawed.
00:20:14.000 It doesn't need a blanket constitutional protection either.
00:20:18.000 It never occurs to Stevens that the fundamental argument in favor of
00:20:21.000 Owning a gun is protection of life, which is the fundamental right that you have in a state of nature according to both the Founding Fathers and John Locke, and that the reason you have a gun is to protect your own life and protect your own liberty.
00:20:31.000 And a state powerful enough to confiscate weaponry on a grand scale is a state powerful enough to end your rights as well.
00:20:37.000 Other rights, not just your First Amendment rights.
00:20:40.000 Stevens finishes by saying, But that's not true at all.
00:20:49.000 The true foundation of American exceptionalism is the idea that we built a system on unchanging human nature.
00:20:54.000 Human nature has not changed.
00:20:55.000 And the idea of handing a complete monopoly on gun ownership over to the federal government is a scary one, or should be a scary one, to anyone who loves liberty.
00:21:04.000 Okay, when we continue here in just a second, I want to talk
00:21:08.000 about the NRA because the left is going nuts over the NRA.
00:21:12.000 So let's talk about that.
00:21:13.000 Okay, let's begin with Nancy Pelosi. 0.62
00:21:15.000 So Nancy Pelosi, of course, has decided that the NRA is fully corrupt and that they are the ones deciding America's character. 1.00
00:21:22.000 Here is the House Minority Leader.
00:21:24.000 Whose political survival in this body is more important than the survival of our children, for example?
00:21:32.000 Most recently, yesterday, Sandy Hook.
00:21:35.000 For example, or on the streets of our cities.
00:21:37.000 Who of us in here is more important?
00:21:40.000 Whose political survival is more important than that?
00:21:43.000 Nobody's.
00:21:44.000 Nobody's.
00:21:44.000 So we have to be bold, we have to go forward, and we cannot let the National Rifle Association and its many, however they get their money, and that's another subject, to decide what the character of America is.
00:22:00.000 This sort of kabuki theater in which Democrats participate is quite gross.
00:22:05.000 They did control the Congress with 60 votes in the Senate, as well as a majority in the House and the presidency from 2009 to 2011.
00:22:10.000 And here is the grand total number of major gun legislation pieces they passed.
00:22:15.000 Zero.
00:22:16.000 Okay?
00:22:16.000 The answer is zero.
00:22:17.000 This is what Democrats always do.
00:22:19.000 They don't want to touch these issues because they think they're political winners. 0.97
00:22:21.000 Instead, they wish them to fester.
00:22:23.000 If Democrats really thought that gun confiscation were a thing, they could have moved in favor of it in 2010, in 2009, in 2008.
00:22:29.000 They didn't do any of those things.
00:22:31.000 Instead, they sat around and waited for Republicans to take office again.
00:22:34.000 And then they rail against the Republicans supposedly being in the pay of the NRA.
00:22:37.000 They did the same thing with illegal immigration.
00:22:39.000 We'll get to that in a little while.
00:22:40.000 Democrats have been saying that illegal immigration, DACA, deeply important things, they didn't do anything on illegal immigration while they had control.
00:22:46.000 And now that Republicans have control, they're railing against Republicans.
00:22:48.000 This is the game they play.
00:22:49.000 But I want to go to a core view that she's talking about here, and it was repeated across the media, that the NRA is in control of our politics.
00:22:55.000 That the reason that we haven't had a vast gun confiscation or new gun laws passed is because of the evils of the NRA, which is paying people off.
00:23:02.000 MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle said the same thing.
00:23:05.000 She suggested that it's just because Republicans are being paid off by the NRA.
00:23:09.000 President Trump tweeted his prayers, adding, no child, teacher, or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.
00:23:19.000 Well, the NRA spent more than $21 million supporting President Trump in his 2016 election, almost $10 million in ads and other pro-Trump material, and $12 million attacking Hillary Clinton.
00:23:32.000 The thoughts and prayers are with the victims.
00:23:34.000 The dollars and cents are another story.
00:23:38.000 Yeah, so the idea, again, is that the NRA is responsible for everything bad happening in Congress because they've been paying people off.
00:23:44.000 Jimmy Kimmel said the same thing last night. 0.97
00:23:46.000 He had said that the NRA had Congress's balls in a money clip, which is just absurd.
00:23:51.000 Last night, he said, somewhere along the line, these guys forgot they work for us, not the NRA, us.
00:23:56.000 And this time, we're not going to allow you to bow your head in prayer for two weeks until you get it all clear and you move on to the next thing.
00:24:00.000 We're going to make sure you do something this time.
00:24:02.000 Well, no you're not, because the vast majority of the public is not in favor of the do-something mentality.
00:24:06.000 The vast majority of the public is in favor of perhaps some measures that would do something here, but you have to name the measures.
00:24:13.000 But let's discuss the underlying claim.
00:24:14.000 Rob Reiner did the same thing.
00:24:15.000 He said,
00:24:25.000 Our hearts, right?
00:24:26.000 The NRA is heartless because it says that law-abiding citizens should own guns.
00:24:29.000 You think the NRA is in favor of these school shootings?
00:24:31.000 You think the NRA wants these things to happen?
00:24:33.000 You think the NRA is indifferent to all of this?
00:24:35.000 When we last had a major shooting, which was after that church shooting in Texas,
00:24:41.000 The guy who put down the shooter was an NRA member.
00:24:43.000 The media conveniently ignored all that.
00:24:44.000 He was an NRA instructor.
00:24:46.000 Because in their crusade to make it seem that the NRA wants to get guns in the hands of bad people, they ignored the fact that the NRA ensures that good people can have their hands on guns. 1.00
00:24:54.000 But this money point is so stupid. 0.96
00:24:56.000 That Donald Trump is only pro-NRA because the NRA spent some $21 million on the Trump election cycle. 1.00
00:25:04.000 You know how much money was spent in that election cycle?
00:25:05.000 Like a billion dollars was spent in that election cycle.
00:25:08.000 They did the same thing.
00:25:08.000 Stephanie Ruhle did the same thing, by the way, with Rob Portman in Ohio.
00:25:12.000 She said that in the last 30 years, Rob Portman received some $3 million from the NRA.
00:25:18.000 Rob Portman, in his last senatorial race, spent $30 million.
00:25:22.000 So the amount of money he's received from the NRA is not 10% of what he spent on one election cycle.
00:25:26.000 And this is true across the board.
00:25:28.000 So how much money does the NRA actually spend?
00:25:30.000 First of all, the NRA spent approximately $13 million on all candidates between 1998 and 2016.
00:25:34.000 $13 million.
00:25:37.000 That is according to PolitiFact.
00:25:38.000 That is not according to me.
00:25:39.000 That's PolitiFact, the left's favorite fact checker.
00:25:42.000 The NRA spend money on outside expenditures.
00:25:43.000 This would be their own PACs.
00:25:45.000 They're spending money on ads in the amount of $144.3 million plus another $45.9 million on lobbying, which is a grand total of $203.2 million on political activities over 18 years, or approximately $22.6 million per two-year election cycle.
00:25:59.000 The NRA does spend a lot more during presidential election cycles.
00:26:02.000 According to Open Secrets, the NRA spent some $54 million in 2016 on politics.
00:26:07.000 That would be on issue ads across the country, that would be on lobbying, that would be on organizing, all the rest.
00:26:12.000 So, that sounds like a lot of money, right?
00:26:14.000 $54.4 million in 2016 on politics.
00:26:16.000 And they really are the entirety of the gun lobby.
00:26:18.000 The so-called gun lobby is basically the NRA.
00:26:20.000 There are a few other organizations, like the Gun Owners of America, but those are much smaller organizations.
00:26:25.000 So let's look at some other segments of politics and where money gets spent.
00:26:28.000 So, according to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, how much did labor unions spend in 2016 alone?
00:26:34.000 They spent $1.713 billion, billion dollars, on political activities and lobbying for 2016 alone.
00:26:44.000 So, the NRA spent $50 million, and the labor unions spent $1.713 billion, billion.
00:26:49.000 Okay, that means that they spent like 3% of what the labor unions spent.
00:26:58.000 That's an insane number.
00:27:01.000 But it doesn't matter.
00:27:02.000 They're going to continue to proclaim that the NRA is the most powerful force in politics.
00:27:05.000 It's also interesting.
00:27:06.000 The unions spend this much money.
00:27:07.000 You never hear about the idea that these Democrats are being paid off.
00:27:12.000 By the unions.
00:27:13.000 That the unions are paying off Democrats in corrupt fashion.
00:27:16.000 And there's a lot more evidence of that than there is that the Republicans are being paid off by the NRA.
00:27:21.000 The Republicans are being elected by the NRA to presumably be pro-gun.
00:27:26.000 But they were pro-gun before the NRA was there.
00:27:28.000 If the NRA disappeared overnight, there'd be five million gun owners who joined another gun organization, and that gun organization would be lobbying.
00:27:34.000 When it comes to the unions, it's a different story.
00:27:36.000 Unions are very often in the business of giving money directly to candidates and then sitting there and actually making deals with the candidates for their union members, which seems a lot more corrupt to me.
00:27:44.000 How about the abortion industry?
00:27:46.000 Between 2012 and 2016, Planned Parenthood spent $34 million on outside spending, according to Open Secrets.
00:27:49.000 EMILY's List, another abortion group, spent $33.2 million in 2016 alone.
00:28:00.000 So the abortion lobby is spending about as much as the gun lobby.
00:28:03.000 But you never hear that Planned Parenthood is paying off the Democrats.
00:28:06.000 You never hear the EMILY list is paying off the Democrats.
00:28:08.000 Groups spend a lot of money.
00:28:10.000 But the notion that the NRA is disproportionately buying politicians, it's just not factually true.
00:28:14.000 Which brings us to a deeper question.
00:28:16.000 Do these outside groups actually buy politicians, or are they simply backing politicians who already support their agenda?
00:28:21.000 You have to show the politician who switched his position from anti-gun to pro-gun after the NRA jumped in.
00:28:27.000 Donald Trump knew that the American public, and particularly Republican primary voters, were not going to stand for an anti-gun position.
00:28:32.000 He didn't shift for the NRA money.
00:28:35.000 But it's always easy to have this ridiculous theory that there's someone out there, some evil, nefarious force, who's spreading money in the back room.
00:28:42.000 And that's why gun control hasn't prospered.
00:28:45.000 The reason gun control has not prospered in the United States is because it's deeply unpopular when you come down to the specifics.
00:28:50.000 That is why.
00:28:51.000 It's not because of NRA money.
00:28:52.000 The NRA is popular because people don't want large-scale gun control.
00:28:57.000 It's not that people don't want large-scale gun control because the NRA has lots of money.
00:29:02.000 Folks, for all the talk about gun control and a piece of breaking news from the Wall Street Journal, the FBI has now said it mistakenly didn't investigate a credible and specific tip about the teenager charged with storming into the Florida high school and killing 17 people.
00:29:16.000 In a statement, the FBI said it received a call on a tip line from a person close to the shooter.
00:29:21.000 The caller provided information on, quote, his gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.
00:29:29.000 The information should have been assessed as a potential threat to life.
00:29:32.000 It was not forwarded for investigation to the FBI's Miami field office, and no further investigation was conducted.
00:29:39.000 So, well done, FBI, for all the talk about how the government is necessary in order to remove guns from 300 million—300 million guns in American society, remove guns from 100 million people across the country.
00:29:51.000 The FBI can't even track down one damn lead that says everything you need to know about the guy who went in and shot up a school.
00:29:58.000 You want to talk about government malfeasance and government incompetence? 0.98
00:30:01.000 Start there.
00:30:01.000 You want to talk about helping to solve this problem?
00:30:04.000 Start with the government actually following its own rules.
00:30:07.000 Start with the government actually doing what it's supposed to do. 0.98
00:30:08.000 The government sucks at everything and they prove it once again.
00:30:11.000 And the idea that I'm going to hand over my gun to this government and they're going to protect me? 0.99
00:30:14.000 You have got to be kidding me.
00:30:15.000 Okay, in just a second, we're going to talk about immigration proposals that happened yesterday, plus the president doing some serious King David-ing in a little while.
00:30:23.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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00:31:03.000 All right, so I just want to give you a brief update on what happens on immigration.
00:31:07.000 So March 5th is when DACA is supposed to expire.
00:31:10.000 DACA, that is when supposedly deportations begin for people who have not registered through the DACA system, or when deportations could begin for even those who have registered with the government through the DACA system.
00:31:21.000 That's not actually going to happen.
00:31:22.000 In all reality, not much is going to change on March 5th, except that people will not be given new work permits, essentially, in the United States if they are illegal immigrants.
00:31:29.000 There were four bills that were brought up yesterday in the Senate.
00:31:32.000 All of them died.
00:31:33.000 They were all dead on arrival because Democrats are not willing to compromise on these issues.
00:31:37.000 So, here are the bills.
00:31:38.000 There was the John McCain-Chris Coons bill that was touted as a moderate reform measure.
00:31:42.000 It never made it out of debate.
00:31:44.000 That basically was a proposal to give permanent residence to recipients of DACA immigration program in return for $110 million annual grant for increased border security.
00:31:55.000 It specifically excluded any funding for construction of a wall on the southern border.
00:31:59.000 That one did not make it out of committee.
00:32:00.000 Second proposal was Pat Toomey's proposal from Pennsylvania, Republican.
00:32:04.000 He proposed that the U.S.
00:32:05.000 cut off funding for sanctuary cities and sanctuary states like California until those cities and states agreed to share current information with federal immigration authorities, according to Emily Zanotti over at Daily Wire.
00:32:15.000 Fifty-four senators voted to put that bill to a full Senate vote, but Toomey couldn't get any bipartisan support and it died in debate.
00:32:21.000 And then there were two more proposals that actually came up for a formal vote.
00:32:24.000 The final two proposals were dueling agreements on DACA and the border wall.
00:32:27.000 One was from the White House, and one were from Senators Mike Rounds, Republican from South Dakota, and Senator Angus King, independent from me, but he's really a Democrat.
00:32:34.000 He caucuses with the Democrats.
00:32:35.000 The bill traded a path to citizenship for DACA recipients for border enforcement and even $25 billion for southern border security construction projects, but included a conditional amnesty for DACA parents.
00:32:46.000 And it was popular among members of both parties, but 54 senators only voted for the bill because Trump came out and said that he was not in favor of the bill.
00:32:52.000 Listen, that is dramatically to the left of where Barack Obama was.
00:32:55.000 Barack Obama in DACA, which was executive amnesty, it was illegal, it was unconstitutional, DACA covered 690,000 people.
00:33:20.000 Why on earth are Republicans trying to more than double, nearly triple that from 690,000 to 1.8 million?
00:33:25.000 Because it's a more accurate number.
00:33:27.000 But it's a more accurate number.
00:33:29.000 You know, tell that to the steel workers. 1.00
00:33:31.000 Tell that to the truck drivers. 0.98
00:33:32.000 Tell that to the American people.
00:33:33.000 We promised we wouldn't do amnesty.
00:33:36.000 So basically Trump turned against a lot of his own proposal after his base didn't like it, which is fully predictable.
00:33:42.000 The White House bill was presented by Chuck Grassley.
00:33:44.000 That bill included a path to citizenship for DACA recipients conditioned on $25 billion in financial support for a border wall.
00:33:50.000 Grassley's bill did make it to the floor, but even Republicans were reticent to vote for the deal, and it failed 39 to 60.
00:33:55.000 So that means that nothing has gone forward here.
00:33:58.000 Democrats did not vote with Republicans in order to pass the 60-vote threshold.
00:34:01.000 They were given a vote, and they voted against both of those proposals.
00:34:03.000 So, yes, a lot of Republicans voted against Trump's proposal.
00:34:07.000 Democrats should have universally voted for those proposals if they thought that it was going to stand.
00:34:10.000 The rounds bill got a vote.
00:34:12.000 It got 54 votes, in fact.
00:34:13.000 But the Democrats were not willing to allow it to go to a full vote, right?
00:34:16.000 There was a filibuster that was in place, so they needed 60.
00:34:18.000 So, well done, Democrats, not compromising once again.
00:34:21.000 Trump did blame the Democrats for this, of course.
00:34:24.000 But his leadership on this was less than stellar, shall we say?
00:34:28.000 But he did prove, by the way, that Democrats were not fully—it doesn't really matter, because Democrats had nothing to lose here anyway.
00:34:33.000 Democrats were always willing to let Trump go all the way down the line and then reinstate DACA informally.
00:34:37.000 They're fine with that.
00:34:38.000 They want to make Republicans look both heartless and incompetent, and they will succeed, probably, in that task.
00:34:43.000 OK, time for a quick Trump investigation update, or Trump scandal update.
00:34:48.000 So, a couple of stories out today.
00:34:50.000 One, Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says that she had sex with Trump, she says that she kept the dress that she had. 0.52
00:34:57.000 on when she was being nailed by Trump, and so she still has all of his DNA on it.
00:35:02.000 I didn't know this was a thing, by the way.
00:35:03.000 Like, apparently Monica Lewinsky did this, and now Stormy Daniels did this. 0.99
00:35:06.000 Is it a thing that if you have sex with a famous dude that you get to—that you keep the clothing?
00:35:09.000 Very weird thing.
00:35:10.000 I've never heard of anything like this, except apparently it seems to be happening a lot.
00:35:14.000 That is one story.
00:35:15.000 Other story is that apparently the National Enquirer spent $150,000 on a story about Trump having an affair 0.62
00:35:24.000 With a playboy playmate—this is while he was married to Melania—who is being cucked so often it makes your head swim.
00:35:31.000 She was cheating on her repeatedly, of course.
00:35:33.000 Not a shock.
00:35:34.000 And apparently the National Enquirer, because the editor over there is friends with Trump, bought the story and then buried the story, which of course is not shocking either.
00:35:41.000 The woman's name is McDougal? 1.00
00:35:43.000 Catherine McDougal, I believe?
00:35:45.000 And Karen McDougal.
00:35:47.000 So Karen McDougal is a playboy playmate. 1.00
00:35:48.000 She had an affair with Trump.
00:35:50.000 And she has a long series of contemporaneous diary notes that suggest that this was happening.
00:35:56.000 Of course, the White House says this didn't happen.
00:35:57.000 That's not true.
00:35:58.000 Of course, it probably did happen.
00:36:00.000 A lot of King David-ing going on.
00:36:01.000 A lot of people out there in religious land saying, well, he's just like King David.
00:36:05.000 No, he's not just like King David.
00:36:07.000 The whole point of King David is that he repented.
00:36:08.000 There is no repentance here.
00:36:10.000 Yuck.
00:36:10.000 OK, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then the mailbag.
00:36:13.000 So, things I like.
00:36:14.000 So this was Valentine's Day week.
00:36:16.000 So it was Valentine's week.
00:36:18.000 So here is what many people consider to be the most romantic theme in the history of modern music.
00:36:24.000 This, of course, is Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.
00:36:34.000 I don't know.
00:37:10.000 OK, so there it is.
00:37:13.000 You most frequently hear of this because of the movie Somewhere in Time, which starred Christopher Reeve back in 1980.
00:37:19.000 It was a big hit at the time.
00:37:21.000 So it's worth listening to the whole piece.
00:37:23.000 It's actually a really great piece.
00:37:24.000 The rhapsody on the theme of Paganini.
00:37:26.000 The romantic theme is only about two and a half minutes of that.
00:37:28.000 OK, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.
00:37:35.000 So, number one, University of Minnesota.
00:37:36.000 I'm supposed to speak there week after next, and they have apparently exiled me to a building off campus for safety reasons.
00:37:42.000 It's like a 400, 500-seater as opposed to the 1500-seater that was requested.
00:37:46.000 They are having a simultaneous event on the main campus at University of Minnesota, sponsored by the Women's Center, about anti-racism in the era of Trump.
00:37:53.000 Because I was apparently a Trump supporter and a racist.
00:37:55.000 I am neither, of course.
00:37:56.000 So that was weird.
00:37:58.000 But they're having that in the middle of the campus.
00:38:00.000 So apparently, no safety concerns when lefties are holding a counter-event to my event, but serious safety concerns when I hold my event, which means I have to be exiled.
00:38:07.000 Once again, demonstrating the heckler's veto in full effect.
00:38:09.000 Speaking of the heckler's veto, my friend Steven Crowder apparently has now been banned from DePaul University.
00:38:14.000 So just like I've been banned, he and I have both been banned from DePaul University.
00:38:17.000 He was supposed to do an event there.
00:38:19.000 And they've preemptively banned him.
00:38:21.000 They've said that his comedy videos are obviously intended to demean and insult, which, if you've ever seen Stephen's show, is true, because he's a comedian.
00:38:28.000 Name a comedian who did not demean and insult, and I will name you a not-very-funny comedian.
00:38:33.000 So, Stephen's been banned from DePaul University.
00:38:35.000 So, congratulations to Stephen on joining the list of those of us who can no longer travel to that great university.
00:38:40.000 Okay, final thing that I hate.
00:38:41.000 So, LeBron James went after President Trump yesterday and said that President Trump doesn't give a bleep about the people.
00:38:46.000 This prompted Laura Ingraham to go on a 1.00
00:38:50.000 Diatribe against LeBron James.
00:38:52.000 Here's what LeBron James had to say. 0.90
00:38:55.000 Ron, you called the president a bum.
00:38:56.000 Yeah, straight up.
00:38:58.000 How do you describe the climate for an athlete with a platform nowadays that want to talk about what's happening in our world?
00:39:05.000 Well, the climate is hot.
00:39:07.000 The number one job in America, the point of person, is someone who doesn't understand the people. 0.89
00:39:15.000 And really don't give a f*** about the people.
00:39:17.000 When I was growing up, there were like three jobs that you looked for inspiration or you felt like these were the people that can give me life. 0.92
00:39:25.000 It was the President of the United States.
00:39:27.000 It was whoever was the best in sports.
00:39:29.000 And then it was like the greatest musician at the time.
00:39:32.000 You never thought you can be them, but you can grab inspiration from.
00:39:36.000 I feel like I can be, you know, if it was a neighborhood African-American cop and he was cool as hell coming around, you know, I feel like I could be him.
00:39:42.000 It's easy to be him.
00:39:43.000 Yeah, I could be him.
00:39:44.000 But I never felt I could be the President of the United States, but I grabbed inspiration from that.
00:39:47.000 And this time right now, with the President of the United States, it's at a bad time.
00:39:54.000 And while we cannot change
00:39:58.000 What comes out of that man's mouth.
00:40:00.000 We can continue to alert the people that watch us, that listen to us, as this is not the way.
00:40:08.000 Now listen, LeBron has every ability to speak out about these things and he's obviously got a big platform and people listen to what he says.
00:40:13.000 I don't think it makes him a political expert by any stretch of the imagination.
00:40:17.000 When he points out that the president has not done a good job of connecting with a lot of people in the United States, this is obviously true during the election cycle, it was true after the election cycle.
00:40:24.000 So there's some truth to this.
00:40:25.000 I'm not
00:40:26.000 As a general rule, in favor of people who have not spent a fair bit of time studying politics, speaking with authority about politics, I will say that what LeBron is saying here, there's an element of truth to what LeBron is saying here with regard to the president's capacity to reach out to people.
00:40:41.000 He needs to do a better job of reaching out to people.
00:40:44.000 It would help if people would also reach out to the president.
00:40:47.000 Meaning, if LeBron reached out to Trump and said, you know, I want to start a dialogue with you, I think that would be more useful than him sitting there and griping about Trump, per se.
00:40:56.000 Although, listen, he has every right to do it.
00:40:58.000 Okay, time for some mailbag stuff.
00:41:00.000 Okay, you know what?
00:41:00.000 One more final thing that I hate.
00:41:02.000 I would urge everybody to go back a couple of days ago.
00:41:04.000 I did a long monologue about Black Panther, which I have not seen yet.
00:41:07.000 I'm looking forward to seeing it this weekend, I hope, if I have time.
00:41:10.000 And then I want to give you my honest opinion about it.
00:41:12.000 The entire monologue was critiquing the media's response to Black Panther, because the media was basically suggesting this was the end of the world, right?
00:41:18.000 This was the most important thing that has ever happened to the black community, according to members of the New York Times.
00:41:22.000 There were two separate major op-eds in the New York Times about the importance of Black Panther as a cultural moment and all of this.
00:41:29.000 That's what I was ripping.
00:41:30.000 It's being taken out of context in Kathy Newman.
00:41:33.000 Kathy Newman was, of course, the person who interviewed Jordan Peterson and just kept retwisting what Jordan Peterson was saying.
00:41:38.000 It's being Kathy Newman.
00:41:38.000 Go back and watch the original monologue.
00:41:40.000 You'll see exactly what I meant.
00:41:41.000 What I was talking about specifically was that I don't believe that people should get deeply excited about
00:41:47.000 Racial solidarity issues.
00:41:49.000 I think racial solidarity is a mistake, whatever the race. 0.82
00:41:53.000 I think that religious solidarity is one thing.
00:41:55.000 Philosophical solidarity is one thing.
00:41:57.000 But racial solidarity is generally a tribal affiliation that I'm not fond of.
00:42:02.000 And the media portraying this as a major, massive cultural moment, I thought was wildly overblown, as I said a couple of days ago.
00:42:08.000 That was the main point of that, so go back and watch it if you don't believe me.
00:42:11.000 Okay, time for some mailbag entries.
00:42:14.000 David says, Well, I don't think there's been a significant deterioration of mental health by statistics, although more Americans are now on antidepressants than at any time in American history, by a fairly significant margin.
00:42:43.000 The problem is that whenever you look at these shootings, and then there are studies about the shootings, the sample size is simply too small.
00:42:49.000 There are not enough mass shootings for you to gather any sort of trend line other than a rough trend line.
00:42:54.000 So what we can see is that a huge number of these mass shootings involve people who are deeply mentally ill and about whom there were red flags.
00:43:00.000 So, if there is an increase in school shootings, I'm not sure that you can attribute that to greater rise in the number of people who are mentally ill in the United States, but you may be able to say that where we should be looking if we want to stop school shootings is among people who are severely mentally ill, who are schizophrenic—for example, violent schizophrenics, because not all schizophrenics are violent—and people who have evidenced threats against neighbors, people who have acted oddly.
00:43:21.000 In other words, look for red flags.
00:43:23.000 The question is, what's the goal of the study?
00:43:24.000 If the goal of the study is to suggest measures by which we stop mass shootings, then we ought to be looking at what best fits the trend line as opposed to broad societal trends.
00:43:33.000 Because let's say that it were single motherhood, for example.
00:43:36.000 Single motherhood does correlate highly with general crime, but it doesn't correlate as highly with mass shootings, for example.
00:43:42.000 Well, the way that you keep your competitive lead is through a purist approach to free trade.
00:43:45.000 It means that all the inputs in your industry are cheaper.
00:44:04.000 So, let's say, for example, that we put no tariffs on anything, but China tariffs the crap out of our products.
00:44:11.000 They are taxing their own citizens.
00:44:13.000 And let's say they tax their own citizens to dump all of that money into steel, undercutting our domestic steel industry, which is kind of what's happening.
00:44:18.000 Okay, let's say that they do that.
00:44:20.000 So now steel is cheaper on the American market.
00:44:22.000 So that means that American auto manufacturers are using that steel to make products cheaper than they will be able to make those products in China.
00:44:28.000 In other words, protectionism is almost universally linked with subsidies to a particular industry.
00:44:32.000 Subsidies to a particular industry mean taking from one potential industry and giving to another potential industry.
00:44:37.000 It means you're taking, China is taking money from an industry that would thrive on free trade and is instead giving that money to an industry that does not thrive on free trade, namely the steel industry, for example.
00:44:48.000 Well, that's not good for China.
00:44:50.000 Maybe good for China's steel industry.
00:44:51.000 It's not good for China's overall economy.
00:44:53.000 What is better for an overall economy is to take cheap inputs and use that to make the most competitive products and then out-compete people despite tariffing.
00:45:01.000 By the way, if you tariff your own country, if you raise tariffs to a high level, that does not make your country stronger.
00:45:05.000 It makes your country weaker.
00:45:06.000 Take this to its logical extreme.
00:45:08.000 If you tariffed everything at 100% in the United States, meaning that everything you buy had to come from the United States, we would all be significantly poorer because we'd all have to spend a lot more money on products we are used to getting for cheap.
00:45:18.000 That would not forward competition.
00:45:19.000 It would not forward style of life.
00:45:20.000 It would not make your life better.
00:45:25.000 What are your barometers for measuring cultural shifts?
00:45:27.000 I do think conservatives are gaining ground in U.S.
00:45:28.000 culture.
00:45:29.000 You can see it particularly on issues like abortion.
00:45:31.000 And I think a lot of that is because of the fragmentation of media.
00:45:33.000 The fact that the media is no longer controlled top-down.
00:45:36.000 The fact that there are literally hundreds of thousands and millions of people who engage with the show every single day.
00:45:41.000 We have like a million people who engage with this show every day.
00:45:44.000 And there's no gatekeeper.
00:45:45.000 Right?
00:45:45.000 If you want to watch the show, you watch the show.
00:45:47.000 It's not that there's somebody who had to green-light me over at a network.
00:45:50.000 That demonstrates, I think, the cultural shift, and it's happening in entertainment terms as well.
00:45:53.000 Fewer people going out to see the media-approved movies, more people staying home and watching what they want to watch, taking movies that weren't hits and making them hits on the back end.
00:46:01.000 It's really fascinating to watch.
00:46:06.000 Well, I'm not sure it's a matter of the government diversifying.
00:46:09.000 I think the American people might be better served by more parties.
00:46:11.000 Unfortunately, the system tends to favor a two-party binary system.
00:46:14.000 Now, the thing in favor of a two-party binary system is it creates a certain level of stability.
00:46:19.000 Usually in multi-party systems, those are usually linked with parliamentary systems where you need a majority to govern.
00:46:24.000 The minute there's not a majority to govern, no coalition to govern, then everything falls apart.
00:46:28.000 You have to have a new election.
00:46:29.000 This creates tremendous instability in these systems, and it means that it's very hard to get anything done.
00:46:34.000 Yeah, there's a fair bit of gridlock, particularly around dismantling social programs, for example, because there's so many particular interests represented.
00:46:42.000 So, there are costs and benefits, is what I would say there.
00:46:45.000 Panagiotis, is that how it's pronounced?
00:46:47.000 Hi, Ben, I'm a high school student in Canada, and most of my political education is colored by a certain point of view.
00:46:51.000 Could you explain to me what a right-wing dictator would look like?
00:46:53.000 Is there credence to the idea that Hitler was a right-winger? 0.53
00:46:55.000 Okay, so, in order to explain what a right-wing dictator would look like, you have to distinguish between the right-wing in Europe and the right-wing in the United States.
00:47:02.000 Conservatism in the United States, it is impossible for there to be a conservative dictator in the United States because conservatism is essentially classical liberalism, meaning small government is baked into the cake.
00:47:13.000 You could theoretically have a dictator who said, I'm not going to control everything.
00:47:17.000 A right-wing dictator would look like a minimalist king, maybe.
00:47:20.000 And somebody who says, go about your daily business and I'm just here to make sure that you don't kill each other.
00:47:26.000 That's what a conservative dictator would look like. 0.88
00:47:28.000 But it's very difficult to think of that actually happening because typically in monarchies, the idea of a small government monarchy is extraordinarily rare.
00:47:36.000 In fact, I can't name a single instance in which that has happened.
00:47:40.000 Usually when people say right-wing dictator, they really mean people who are anti-communist.
00:47:43.000 So Hitler was considered anti-communist and he was right-wing when you compared him to the left in Germany.
00:47:48.000 The left in Germany was communist.
00:47:49.000 But Hitler's policies were fully in favor of national health care. 0.75
00:47:53.000 His policies were fully in favor of gun confiscations.
00:47:57.000 I think that the basic gap between how politics works in Europe and how politics works in the United States, there's a serious lack of classical liberalism in Europe.
00:48:08.000 American conservatism is based on classical liberalism.
00:48:10.000 So what's defined as right-wing in Europe is basically anything that's anti-communist, even if those people are, in some parts of their program, socialist.
00:48:18.000 So, by American standards, Hitler was not a conservative.
00:48:21.000 By German standards, Hitler was a right-winger, and he allied with right-wingers in his government.
00:48:26.000 So, in politics—I can name a lot of people in politics because I was always into history—it was usually historical figures.
00:48:37.000 It was usually John Adams or Winston Churchill.
00:48:40.000 Or Abraham Lincoln.
00:48:41.000 Growing up, I didn't have sports posters on my wall.
00:48:43.000 I had a giant poster of Abraham Lincoln on my wall at home.
00:48:46.000 I had a poster with all the presidents on my wall at home.
00:48:48.000 Those were the things that I always found inspiration in, were ideas and people who represented those ideas.
00:48:54.000 Moses, obviously, if you're a Jew. 0.76
00:48:57.000 I never found tremendous inspiration from cultural figures.
00:49:00.000 There are people who I found inspiring just at an artistic level.
00:49:03.000 So I still find Roger Federer, for example, inspiring at an artistic level.
00:49:06.000 Just somebody who is the best at what he's done, he's the best ever at what he's done.
00:49:10.000 That's an inspiring thing.
00:49:11.000 I find William Beethoven is inspiring in the sense that he is the pinnacle of human achievement.
00:49:16.000 These things are inspiring, but not in terms of I get my moral code or my moral ideas from those folks.
00:49:21.000 Let's see.
00:49:22.000 Well, the question is not the amount of money that you are handing to people who are on food stamps.
00:49:25.000 The question is,
00:49:44.000 Do those food stamps enervate a population?
00:49:46.000 One of the reasons to have work requirements for all of this is to create an incentive scheme whereby you are getting people off of food stamps.
00:49:52.000 The goal of food stamps should be not just to feed people, it should be to get people off of food stamps.
00:49:55.000 The goal of welfare should be to get people off of welfare.
00:49:58.000 In other words, make a plan and the system should be responsive to the plan that you make so that it's not a permanent handout, it is in fact a hands up if you're going to have these programs at all.
00:50:07.000 This is why I think private charity is much better because
00:50:09.000 If you are face-to-face with someone and you say, I want some of your money, it's a lot easier for that person to say, well, why do you deserve my money?
00:50:14.000 And then you actually have to come up with a plan for success.
00:50:17.000 If you have a nameless, faceless system that hands you a check every month, very often that is going to actually create an incentive for you not to have a plan, because that check is just going to be there no matter what.
00:50:27.000 Ooh.
00:50:27.000 From the 90s and 2000s is a little too narrow for me, because I don't think there have been a lot of great comedies in the 90s and 2000s.
00:50:31.000 Best comedy films ever?
00:50:32.000 I mean, Tootsie definitely has to be on the list, and that was like 1984, maybe?
00:50:36.000 1983?
00:50:36.000 Liar Liar, I think, is really funny.
00:50:37.000 Tommy Boy is my guilty pleasure.
00:50:38.000 I think that movie is insanely funny.
00:50:57.000 I'm not a fan of a lot of the modern comedies, actually.
00:50:59.000 Airplane is a great comedy, obviously.
00:51:02.000 There are some that are less funny than they are.
00:51:04.000 Groundhog Day is not the super funniest movie, but it's a very good movie.
00:51:09.000 One of my favorite comedies growing up was The Court Jester, which comes from the 1950s because it's all just cleverness and wordplay. 0.97
00:51:15.000 Zoolander, if we're going to modern comedy, Zoolander is really funny, but again, it's stupid funny. 0.99
00:51:19.000 Meet the Parents, stupid funny. 0.91
00:51:22.000 Those are probably the ones that come immediately to mind, but I actually tend to favor older comedies over newer comedies, and some that are kind of obscure. 0.93
00:51:29.000 There's one called Ruggles of Red Gap with Charles, what's his name now?
00:51:34.000 Man, I'm losing my mind.
00:51:35.000 Ruggles of—I'm going to look it up, because otherwise I'm going to go absolutely insane.
00:51:39.000 Ruggles of Red Gap is with Charles Lawton, and that is from 1935, and that's a really good movie.
00:51:46.000 Ben says, Dear Ben, My name is James Tyler, and I've had the pleasure of becoming a first-time dad.
00:51:51.000 My wife and I love our daughter very much.
00:51:53.000 I'm wondering at what age it's okay to start introducing your children to political ideals.
00:51:56.000 I don't think it's even a matter of teaching your kid about tax rates.
00:51:58.000 I think it's a matter of teaching your kids about values.
00:52:00.000 People ask, you know, how did I get so conservative at such a young age?
00:52:15.000 And what I usually say is that I grew up with a certain set of values that are innately conservative.
00:52:18.000 Personal responsibility.
00:52:20.000 You have to clean up your room.
00:52:21.000 You're responsible for your actions.
00:52:23.000 You have to work hard.
00:52:24.000 If you do work hard, then good things will come to you.
00:52:26.000 If you don't work hard, then bad things will probably happen to you.
00:52:28.000 That decisions have consequences.
00:52:30.000 That what you do is up to you.
00:52:31.000 That you are an individual.
00:52:32.000 They're not beholden to any group that wants to make a... You have to be moral, regardless of what other people in your class are doing.
00:52:38.000 These are values, and I'm sure your wife would probably agree these are values that actually have to be inculcated, essentially, from the time the kids are born.
00:52:44.000 Those actually have political ramifications.
00:52:46.000 The separation between politics and values is the death of civilization.
00:52:49.000 Matt says, Ben, I recently heard a friend of mine who is majoring in English education talking about how one of her classes was teaching about how there is no proper English and that it is racist and oppressive to correct grammar and pronunciation, specifically of black students speaking in Ebonics.
00:53:00.000 What do you say to someone who claims that any language is proper as long as it gets the point across? 1.00
00:53:04.000 That's stupid. 1.00
00:53:05.000 That's what I say to that. 1.00
00:53:06.000 There is proper use of language, just like there's proper use of mathematics.
00:53:09.000 Mathematics is a language.
00:53:12.000 Those rules can change over time.
00:53:14.000 There are ways of communicating that do not involve proper English.
00:53:16.000 That is still a form of communication.
00:53:18.000 But this is like the folks who say there's no such thing as good art and bad art.
00:53:21.000 Yes, there are things such as good art and bad art.
00:53:24.000 And there are elements of sentences, like verbs, nouns, and adjectives.
00:53:27.000 And if you use them interchangeably, your sentence makes no sense.
00:53:29.000 So even folks who believe that Ebonics is
00:53:32.000 Sort of traditional English, their equivalent.
00:53:34.000 Even those people would acknowledge that there are certain ways that words are used in sentences, that if you use them in different ways, the sentence would make no sense.
00:53:40.000 Well, there are other rules as well, and those rules include how to spell words, they include how to pronounce words, they include how sentences are constructed and paragraphs are constructed.
00:53:52.000 There is a better English and there is a worse English. 0.99
00:53:54.000 And there are different forms of English. 0.99
00:53:56.000 But if you want to proclaim that all forms of English are equivalent, that's really, really dumb.
00:54:00.000 I mean, Yiddish is not the same as English. 0.66
00:54:01.000 Ebonics is not the same as English.
00:54:03.000 If it is used in a... Either it is a...
00:54:07.000 Different form of English that is not as proper in the sense of actually abiding by the normal rules of English, or it is a separate language entirely, which is what some Ebonics advocates suggest.
00:54:18.000 It's a little bit hard to tell, honestly, because some of the people who are making the allegations are his political opponents.
00:54:28.000 One of the people testifying against him is Yair Lapid, a guy who could become prime minister if Netanyahu is ousted.
00:54:33.000 Also, it seems that
00:54:35.000 So I think I read an article on this the other day on the air about the corruption allegations.
00:54:40.000 It seems that all of the things that he was supposedly promising in return never materialized.
00:54:43.000 It's hard to say there was bribery when nothing materialized on the other end.
00:54:47.000 I am of the Viennese, the Austrian school of thought when it comes to monetary policy.
00:54:50.000 I don't believe that the Federal Reserve is a necessary component to a functioning banking system.
00:55:03.000 George says, Hi, Ben.
00:55:16.000 The growth of the 1990s was largely an after effect of the growth of the 1980s, and you can see that because you can see how the economy was contracting up until about 1983 when it turned around.
00:55:26.000 Okay, final one.
00:55:29.000 This is a tough one.
00:55:29.000 Okay, Ben says, I have a question regarding homosexuality.
00:55:32.000 I struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction, but I am still attracted to the opposite sex.
00:55:35.000 What I really want for my life is to have a wife and children, but I feared this would get in my way one day.
00:55:38.000 What advice can you give me for this?
00:55:39.000 And I'm curious to ask, how do people of the Jewish faith and community handle homosexuality and people who have unwanted same-sex attraction?
00:55:45.000 Well, I mean, the way that we handle unwanted same-sex attraction would be the same way that you handle unwanted sexual attraction to people who are not your wife, meaning that attraction is something that we all have to struggle with.
00:55:56.000 Attraction to things that we can't have or that we maybe morally oppose, that's something that we all struggle with on a real basis.
00:56:03.000 That doesn't mean all those struggles are equivalent, obviously.
00:56:05.000 If you have same-sex attraction, that's not equivalent in kind to me having struggles with being attracted to women who are not my wife, for example, as every man
00:56:14.000 Does, right?
00:56:15.000 Every single man is built for polygamy, and every single man who is moral aims toward monogamy.
00:56:20.000 But the idea here is that behavior and attraction are two separate things, and I'm not going to make light of the struggles that somebody has with attraction.
00:56:29.000 Do I think that homosexuality is necessarily entirely genetic?
00:56:31.000 No.
00:56:32.000 Do I think some of it's environmental?
00:56:33.000 Probably.
00:56:33.000 Do I think that it's a reality?
00:56:34.000 Of course it's a reality.
00:56:36.000 How you choose to deal with it, obviously, is your individual choice in a free country.
00:56:39.000 But if you want to have a wife and you want to have kids, then I would recommend that you keep away from situations in which you would be tempted to act on attraction.
00:56:48.000 Again, the same advice that I give to men who don't want to have an affair.
00:56:51.000 Stay away from situations where you'd be tempted to act on an attraction.
00:56:54.000 Stay away from things that attract you if it's something that bothers you and if that's the way that you want to live your life.
00:56:59.000 Okay, so we'll be back here on Monday with much, much more.
00:57:02.000 I am sure.
00:57:02.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:57:03.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:57:08.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.
00:57:10.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
00:57:12.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
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00:57:17.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
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00:57:20.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
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