Ep. 128 - Don’t Bring A Knife To Leftists’ Gun Fight
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
183.26714
Summary
On this day in 1973, Marlon Brando was assassinated in Hollywood. On this episode of The Michael Knowles Show, Michael talks about the possible repeal of the Second Amendment and why he thinks it would be a good idea.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
With 20 years reporting on the markets, I know that some industries are built to last,
00:00:03.980
but others are built to lead. John Oelichman here. If you want exposure to what's really
00:00:08.280
shaping our world, think beyond trends. Think defense, healthcare, telecom, real estate,
00:00:13.920
gold, crypto. They're not just headlines, they're foundations. And with GlobalX,
00:00:18.400
one of Canada's largest ETF providers, you can invest in them intelligently. With a range of
00:00:23.660
ETFs designed for long-term growth and steady income opportunities. GlobalX,
00:00:28.120
where innovation meets investing. Brought to you by GlobalX Investments Canada, Inc.
00:00:32.440
For key risk information, please refer to the ETF's prospectus, available at globalx.ca.
00:00:37.800
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has called for the repeal of the Second Amendment.
00:00:44.020
The only problem is there is no gun problem in America. Conservatives keep defending their
00:00:49.320
Second Amendment rights on the left's terms, but even a cursory look at the numbers shows
00:00:54.040
America does not have a gun problem. We will analyze. Then, on this day in history, in 1973,
00:01:01.100
Marlon Brando ruins Hollywood. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:11.160
A lot to get to today, a lot to talk about. And I'll start out on a nice note. At least they're
00:01:16.600
honest. At least they're honest. At least John Paul Stevens, former justice of the Supreme Court,
00:01:21.480
is finally being honest and not saying, we need to ban this sort of accessory to rifles. And we
00:01:27.860
need to ban this random kind of rifle, but not the other kinds. At least he's being honest. And
00:01:31.940
that's what the debate is really about, repealing the Second Amendment. So we will analyze and we will
00:01:36.020
take a look. Should we repeal the Second Amendment? What would happen if we did? What are the forces
00:01:41.460
urging us to do that right now? But before we do that, we've got to make a little bit of money.
00:01:45.960
We have to thank a sponsor to the show, a wonderful sponsor, Lending Club. This is a really
00:01:52.340
great service that is available to you. Lending Club gives you access to low-rate loans of up to
00:01:59.480
$40,000 for almost any purpose. You can take control of your debt, finance a major purchase,
00:02:05.900
or finally make those home improvements. Now, you can't just go and run away and just go to Vegas and
00:02:11.000
drink yourself into a stupor. That's probably not. But there are a lot of uses. Everybody could use
00:02:16.940
a little bit of money, and sometimes you're just a little bit tight. You need a little loan to get
00:02:20.100
you through. Lending Club is a great way to do it. It's so 21st century. It is easier than going to a
00:02:25.860
bank. It offers lower rates than high-interest credit cards. A lot of people I notice, they're in
00:02:31.640
a pinch, they need money at a particular time, and they'll use credit cards and pay these exorbitant
00:02:37.540
fees. Don't do that. There are smarter options available to you. Do not just swipe. Just go to
00:02:42.420
LendingClub.com, enter how much money you need, and see if you're approved within minutes. You can pick
00:02:48.640
the offer that's right for you, and the money can be in your account in just a matter of days. It is
00:02:53.320
that simple. For more than 10 years, Lending Club has helped millions of people with over $31 billion
00:02:59.180
in loans. Take charge of your finances today with Lending Club. This is a great service.
00:03:04.300
It's very easy. Money is fungible, and sometimes you need a little bit more money than in other
00:03:11.040
times. Don't be foolish. You can use money to get you through in a pinch. Go to LendingClub.com
00:03:17.160
slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, and make sure that when you need that money in a pinch, you don't do it
00:03:23.080
in a very expensive way. You do it in an easy way with the lowest rates possible. Go to LendingClub.com
00:03:29.340
slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, to check your rate for free. It will not impact your credit score.
00:03:35.300
That is LendingClub.com slash Knowles, LendingClub.com slash Knowles. You know, there are all these
00:03:42.100
sometimes little repairs. I, for a period when I was in my teens, I owned a house, and everything
00:03:50.260
seemed to happen at once. The roof would break, and the heater needed to be fixed, and this and that.
00:03:55.020
It'll help you get through, you know, credit card debt. Sometimes you want to deal with that,
00:04:00.840
that long overdue vacation. There's so much you could do with just a little bit of money.
00:04:04.340
You can start now at LendingClub.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, all loans made by WebBank
00:04:11.000
member FDIC, equal housing lender. Okay, let's get into this. Let's get into the guns. We're talking
00:04:18.640
about guns. We're talking about money, all very important things to the American dream.
00:04:21.920
Um, so John Paul Stevens has called to repeal the Second Amendment. A few observations right off
00:04:29.720
the bat. John Paul Stevens is a Republican. This isn't some lefty judge. I mean, I guess,
00:04:34.500
obviously, he is a lefty judge, but he's a Republican. He was nominated for the Supreme
00:04:38.620
Court by President Gerald Ford. He was nominated for the appellate court by Richard Nixon. He isn't
00:04:43.140
a Democrat. He's a Republican, but obviously, he's not a conservative. He's not an originalist,
00:04:48.000
certainly to say. There's a big difference here between Republicans and conservatives. Not all
00:04:52.420
Republicans are conservatives or originalists or defend our Constitution. This calls to mind a
00:04:57.420
second thing. This op-ed alone that he published in the New York Times calling for the repeal of the
00:05:02.380
Second Amendment should remind us all, thank God Donald Trump won the presidency instead of Hillary
00:05:08.760
Clinton. Thank God. I know we're all very upset about this budget. It's a terrible budget. We say he's
00:05:13.520
not a conservative anymore. Hillary Clinton was running. She was campaigning on gutting the Second
00:05:19.600
Amendment. And the thing they all used to do, they would say, look, I defend the Second Amendment. I
00:05:23.820
don't want to repeal the Second Amendment. I just want to, but I just want to. It's very clear they're
00:05:30.260
laying their cards on the table. Other people have called for this too. The so-called conservative
00:05:34.020
commentator, Brett Stevens, has called to repeal the Second Amendment. Many other people have as well.
00:05:39.480
It is a very good thing that Donald Trump won that election because this would be on the chopping
00:05:43.280
block. Hillary would have appointed left-wing justices or apparently even moderate Republican
00:05:47.800
justices, and they would have gutted this thing. There is a call among the political class,
00:05:52.320
not among the people. The American people oppose gun control, but among the political class,
00:05:56.480
there is a call to gut this very basic constitutionally protected civil right.
00:06:02.680
Here's what Stevens wrote in the New York Times.
00:06:04.520
Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters
00:06:10.160
demonstrated in Washington and other major cities around the country this past Saturday.
00:06:15.740
These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation
00:06:22.200
to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.
00:06:26.620
I don't know where to begin dismantling. Just about everything he just said is not true. It is unreal.
00:06:34.320
Rarely in my lifetime have I seen this type of civic engagement. Schoolchildren have demonstrated.
00:06:38.860
Hmm. Maybe that should tell you something. Maybe it should tell you something that this entire
00:06:43.940
movement is being led by 11-year-olds. They're literally 11-year-olds giving speeches. What are
00:06:49.440
11-year-olds known for? Are they known for their vast knowledge? Is that something? No. They're
00:06:54.720
students because they have to learn. They don't know anything. That's fine. We were all students once,
00:06:59.660
but they don't know anything. Perhaps they shouldn't be leading this movement. Then he says,
00:07:03.520
these demonstrations demand our respect. No, they don't. They don't demand our respect. This whole
00:07:08.560
thing was organized out of Hollywood. It was, I believe, Justin Bieber's manager. I forget his
00:07:13.120
name. And George Clooney funded this thing to the hilt. That producer and manager's wife was the one
00:07:19.580
running it and collecting donations and managing the whole thing. These don't just happen. When there
00:07:24.600
are massive nationwide protests and big PSAs and campaigns and a lot of money flowing in,
00:07:29.680
usually you can tell that's not coming from 16-year-olds. 16-year-olds don't have a lot of clout
00:07:34.140
for money. But Twitter is verifying them. This is true collusion. This is collusion among the
00:07:41.000
activist forces of the left to use these school kids like little puppets. There was that meme going
00:07:46.700
around of David Hogg as a little puppet on the hand of CNN. And CNN says, so David, should we repeal the
00:07:52.520
Second Amendment? That is what's going on. And by the way, this is an important message for
00:08:02.500
everybody. Follow the memes. This came to me last night when I was giving the talk at Yeshiva.
00:08:07.760
There are all these memes just making fun of David Hogg. Follow the memes. It shows you what's really
00:08:12.780
happening in the culture, the undercurrents of the culture. Not the things that are on the TV or on the
00:08:17.980
news or in movies, but the undercurrents of what's happening in the actual popular culture.
00:08:22.580
The American people do not support this. And they certainly don't demand our respect. They're
00:08:26.560
trying to rob us of our constitutionally protected civil rights. They are not passionate, wonderful
00:08:33.660
believers in the American dream. They are dismantlers of the American dream. They're arrogant,
00:08:38.180
ignorant dismantlers of the American dream. We shouldn't give them any attention. We shouldn't
00:08:42.100
give them any praise. He then goes on and says, these demonstrations reveal the broad public support
00:08:47.880
for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of school children and others in our
00:08:52.460
society. This has two major errors here. First of all, what he's implying is gun control. What he's
00:08:57.160
really saying is broad public support to get rid of guns, ultimately to repeal the Second Amendment.
00:09:00.880
That does not exist. Every time there's a very public and reported on shooting event,
00:09:07.940
then support for gun control jumps up. And then shortly thereafter, it drops right back down.
00:09:11.920
Majority of Americans broadly do not support gun control. But then look at how he phrases it. He says,
00:09:17.020
legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of school children, as though someone opposes that.
00:09:23.740
Who opposes legislation to minimize the risk of slaughtering school children? Nobody does.
00:09:30.020
But as Marco Rubio pointed out a few years ago, there isn't any legislation that has been proposed
00:09:35.220
that would have prevented these shootings. There isn't one piece. There are tens of thousands of gun
00:09:39.160
control laws on the books. The federal government has failed to enforce those laws and has failed to
00:09:43.580
do its job many times. So we should give it more power. Is that the idea? Gun confiscation does not
00:09:48.620
work. People don't give away their guns. Didn't happen in Connecticut. Didn't happen in Australia.
00:09:53.720
So much wrong about what he's saying. Now, ultimately, he is putting forth this idea that forget all of
00:10:00.560
the gun control. You're right. You're right about the gun control. That won't work, which is why we need
00:10:04.300
to repeal the Second Amendment. This is how he goes on in the column. That support is a clear sign to
00:10:11.640
lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons,
00:10:16.960
increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive
00:10:21.900
background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective
00:10:26.860
and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment. To that, I say, I mean,
00:10:32.520
he's making a lot of suppositions that aren't true, such as the broad American support for gun control
00:10:37.260
that doesn't exist. But to this, I say, at least he's honest. At least John Paul Stevens is being
00:10:43.860
honest. The left used to hide this. They used to be buttheads. They were the buttheads. I support the
00:10:49.520
Second Amendment. But, but, you know, oh, no, I support free speech. Look, I support free speech.
00:10:56.640
But, and then they say, and then whatever they say just contradicts what they previously said,
00:11:01.240
because butts negate sentences. Oh, no, I support the Second Amendment. I just want to
00:11:06.140
got the Second Amendment. Here is Hillary Clinton exemplifying this tactic.
00:11:10.820
When he's gotten a tough question from a reporter, when he's challenged in a debate,
00:11:16.420
when he sees a protester at a rally, imagine, if you dare imagine, imagine him in the Oval Office
00:11:25.700
facing a real crisis. A man you can't bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.
00:11:36.140
It's a lot of Hillary. It's long, long Hillary. She did the, look, I don't want to take away your
00:11:41.940
Second Amendment. That's what she says. I don't want to take away your Second Amendment, but I don't
00:11:46.540
want people to do this. She did the same thing with abortion. We have to get to that in one second.
00:11:50.760
But before we do that, we have to thank another sponsor. And this sponsor, this is providential,
00:11:55.600
as frequently as the case, a providential sponsor that I've, let me ask you this. How great would
00:12:02.580
it be if when you went on a business trip, you got the kind of support that astronauts get when they
00:12:08.000
go on a business trip of outer space? Having a whole team of people, a mission control, making
00:12:13.780
sure that your business trip goes smoothly. Now, as you know, fortunately, we have Upside.com. Upside is a
00:12:19.640
mission control for your business trip. I think if we didn't have that, probably, you know, I'm on a
00:12:24.460
trip right now. I'm giving these speeches in New York. If I didn't, if we didn't have Upside.com,
00:12:30.840
then I think probably it would just be like me telephoning sweet little Elise in the middle of
00:12:35.020
the night saying, hey, all my flights are canceled. She, Mac, I don't know what to do. I can't do
00:12:38.700
anything from over here, Mac. You need a team of people to support you. So Upside will be your mission
00:12:44.640
control. They will look out for you every step of the way. They will handle any problem
00:12:48.640
that might pop up. They have a team of specialists working 24 seven to make sure your flight, your
00:12:53.380
hotel, and your car rental all go off without a hitch. I have all of these things on this trip,
00:12:58.100
and I hope they go off without a hitch. But if they don't, luckily, there's a team of specialists
00:13:02.200
who can fix that. Upside.com monitors your trip around the clock, proactively keeping you posted on
00:13:08.800
everything from if it's going to rain, if there are alternate flights home, in case you want to squeeze
00:13:14.080
in one more meeting, or in my case, one more round of drinks at every single bar in New York. If you
00:13:20.220
wanted to look, sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes it's very important to business to go around
00:13:24.680
one more time to every single bar in Manhattan. If you need to do that, you need someone to look for
00:13:30.060
alternate flights home. Have you ever experienced that level before on a business trip? Of course you
00:13:34.140
haven't. Not until you've used Upside. Trust me, once you've experienced a committed team looking after
00:13:39.820
every detail of your trip, you can never go back. That's actually, I think, why Ben is having me use
00:13:44.560
Upside, is so that I never come back. I think he wants to be a team that keeps me in New York. They
00:13:50.000
say, oh no, that's okay. One more meeting is fine. It's a really wonderful service. For easy booking,
00:13:54.680
competitive prices, and a team that always has your back, go to upside.com slash covfefe. C-O-V-F-E-F-E.
00:14:01.820
It will add a lot of covfefe to your business trip. Book your next business trip. Sign up today
00:14:06.000
for your free account and get a free pair of Bose headphones on your first business trip. Those are
00:14:11.920
very nice. Those are nicer than these little earbuds that they give me at the Daily Wire.
00:14:16.240
They're really good. Don't say I never did nothing for you. Upside.com slash covfefe. C-O-V-F-E-F-E.
00:14:23.260
There's a $600 minimum purchase required within 90 days. He's psyched for complete details.
00:14:27.140
It's kind of disclaimers, but it's a really great service. You're really going to enjoy it,
00:14:30.860
and you get some free headphones. That's pretty cool. Okay, Hillary did this same tactic,
00:14:34.900
the butt tactic. I don't want to take away your Second Amendment. She did the same thing with
00:14:40.400
abortion. She said that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And this never made any sense,
00:14:46.180
of course. If abortion is morally similar to murder, then it shouldn't be legal. And if abortion
00:14:51.940
is just a procedure, it's just like removing a zit or something, a clump of cells, then it shouldn't
00:14:58.780
be rare. Why should it be rare? Either it has moral weight or it doesn't have moral weight,
00:15:04.080
but you can't have it both ways. That is what the left has tried to do on guns for years and years
00:15:09.020
and years. They've said, look, I totally support the individual right to keep and bear weapons that
00:15:15.080
can blow people's heads off. I respect that constitutional right, but you shouldn't.
00:15:21.640
But you shouldn't. That's what they say, because you can't have it both ways. Either you believe that
00:15:25.920
this is a right that people ought to have and that ought to be recognized, or it makes no sense.
00:15:30.900
If you don't believe that ultimately a free people needs the right to arm themselves against a
00:15:35.800
government that could turn tyrannical, as liberal democratic governments have done many, many times
00:15:41.060
over the last two centuries. Either you believe that they need that right, or it is insane to let
00:15:46.800
people have guns. If you don't think that that's the point, then you're going to allow people to have
00:15:50.980
these killing machines just to go duck hunting or something? Of course not. It is a right. You have to
00:15:57.120
deal honestly with it and with some philosophical clarity. Finally, it seems people are doing that.
00:16:02.820
The alleged comedian, Michael Ian Black, he's not a butthead. He's not playing this just to just game.
00:16:07.960
He just called to repeal the second amendment. He tweeted, quote, I'll say it. Assault weapons aren't
00:16:13.600
the problem. Handguns are the problem. By all means, ban AR-15s and the like, but handguns kill far more
00:16:19.120
people. The solution is to repeal and replace the second amendment. Make gun ownership a privilege,
00:16:24.060
not a right. Yes, having the ready ability to take someone's life is dominion over that person.
00:16:30.620
Gun ownership should be viewed as slavery by another name. At least he's honest. He's completely
00:16:36.840
wrong, but at least he's honest. It is true. Handguns are involved in many more deaths than
00:16:42.360
assault weapons or whatever made up scare name the left that comes up with. They are involved in many
00:16:48.820
more. Now, of course, two thirds of the time, those are suicides of middle-aged men. And for the
00:16:53.980
remainder in major cities, 80% are involved in gang crime, inter-gang crime. But he makes a good
00:17:01.720
point. Banning the AR-15 won't do anything. Here is David Hogg at the March for Our Lives over the
00:17:07.380
weekend. I'm going to start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to
00:17:12.160
know how much Marco Rubio took for every student's life in Florida. $1.05. Okay.
00:17:25.020
The cold grasp of corruption shackles the District of Columbia. The winter is over. Change is here.
00:17:34.880
The sun shines on a new day, and the day is ours. Inaction is no longer safe. And to that we say,
00:17:41.060
no more. 96 people. 96 people die every day from guns in our country, yet most representatives have
00:17:53.080
no public stance on guns. And to that we say, no more. To David Hogg, I say, no more. I agree with you,
00:18:05.600
David Hogg. No more. I can't take it anymore. That is like the cringiest thing ever. I think when he
00:18:12.280
gets up there, he thinks he's Martin Luther King. He is getting out. He says, oh, this is going to be
00:18:16.300
my phrase. This is okay. No more. Yes. To that I say, like, listen, I didn't know Martin Luther King.
00:18:23.100
You are no Martin Luther King. Here's the big difference. Martin Luther King wanted to defend
00:18:28.200
American civil rights, and David Hogg wants to deny American civil rights. That's the subtle difference.
00:18:33.800
There are other differences, too. I've been to the mountaintop, Martin Luther King. Well,
00:18:38.920
we say no more. No more. You can't have your rights anymore. I was asked a question last night
00:18:43.740
during the Q&A at Yeshiva University. And this was a conservative guy who I take it watches the show.
00:18:49.920
And he asked a question that I think a lot of young conservatives are wondering, and they kind
00:18:54.240
of get sucked into this. They say, don't we have to do something? We have to do something. We see
00:18:58.880
these images of dead children on TV. Oh, we have to do something. There's a problem. I can see it
00:19:05.160
with my own eyes. And we have to do something. Can't we just compromise? Isn't it a crisis?
00:19:09.120
Isn't it like, how do you? And there's this anxiety that builds, that the media has constructed,
00:19:13.660
that the media have constructed. This anxiety of, oh, gosh, we can't, if we don't, what do we,
00:19:18.500
do we defend the status quo? The end of his question, he said, or do you think the status quo is just fine?
00:19:24.100
I don't think the status quo is just fine. I think the status quo is not very good. I think
00:19:29.140
the problem with the status quo is we have too many gun control laws on the books.
00:19:33.280
We have far too many gun, tens of thousands of gun control laws on the books. There are other
00:19:37.820
problems as well, which influence these killings and these shootings. But no, we should, the problem
00:19:45.200
with the status quo is not that there are not enough gun control laws in the books. The problem is that
00:19:49.780
there are too many because the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And it's
00:19:54.080
infringed on a lot. Conservatives should not bring a knife to leftists' gunfights. Actually, probably
00:20:00.940
they should bring a knife because statistically speaking, knives are much more likely to kill you
00:20:05.360
than assault weapons or rifles of any kind. So maybe we should bring, we should bring those assault
00:20:10.040
knives. But we shouldn't bring a knife, broadly speaking, we shouldn't bring a knife to the leftists'
00:20:15.120
fight over guns. There is no gun problem in America. Their promise, their premise rather, is that
00:20:20.680
there is a major gun problem right now. It is escalating. It is reaching a fever pitch. Their
00:20:25.740
premise is total BS. It is not true. There is less of a gun problem now than there has ever been in
00:20:32.520
American history. There are many other problems. There are problems of criminality. There are problems
00:20:37.280
of certain punishment, not punishing people in a certain way. There are problems of not having the
00:20:42.980
facilities to deal with deranged people and with lunatics. Those are plenty, there are plenty of
00:20:47.240
those problems. There's a hollowing out of the culture. There are problems of despair. There
00:20:51.160
are problems of suicide. There are problems of irreligiosity, which contributes to all of that.
00:20:55.940
There is not a gun problem in America, and we shouldn't compromise on anything. Why should we
00:21:00.400
compromise? They're like, they are, they used to be like screaming little children on this issue.
00:21:05.420
Now they actually are screaming children. We talk a lot on this show about the difference between the
00:21:10.540
signifier and the signified, the metaphysical and the physical. They have become the metaphor.
00:21:14.400
They are actually just screaming 11 year olds and David Hogg and shrieking at you without knowing
00:21:20.020
anything. Why would we compromise on that? Say, well, look, they want this and we want to defend
00:21:25.260
our civil rights. They want to take away all of our civil rights and we want to defend our civil rights.
00:21:28.740
So let's only take away some of our civil rights. No, no. Why would we do that? Especially when all of
00:21:34.400
their premises, all of the statistics they're citing aren't true. Let's just go through some of the
00:21:39.800
numbers here to explain how there is not a gun problem in America. In 1980, there were 10.8
00:21:45.640
willful killings per 100,000 people. Within 13 years, that number dropped to seven homicides by
00:21:54.540
firearm for every 100,000 Americans. By 2013, that figure dropped again by 50%. Violent crime has
00:22:01.020
decreased by 49% since 1991. There was a high mark in 1980. It's been declining for decades since. The
00:22:08.740
overall homicide rate is way down since 1980. In 1980, 10.2 people were murdered per 100,000
00:22:15.600
Americans. By 2014, that number had fallen to 4.5 people per 100,000 Americans. Wherever you look,
00:22:23.700
some statistics, they vary a little bit. You can see 10.8, you can see 10.2, but they do agree on this
00:22:28.380
major trend that has gone down. And here's what the lefties are going to say. Well, we had a federal
00:22:34.480
assault weapons ban. That's what did it. And I'm going to explain to you why that is absolute bunk
00:22:39.660
and nonsense. Plus, we also have to explain how Marlon Brando destroyed Hollywood, single-handedly
00:22:44.720
destroyed Hollywood on this day in history, and actually destroyed acting. Ironically, we'll go
00:22:49.160
into that too. I want to tell you about all of that, but if you're not on dailywire.com, I can't.
00:22:55.340
My hands are tied. What do you want me to do? If you go to dailywire.com, you'll get me,
00:23:00.260
you'll get the Andrew Klavan show, you'll get the Ben Shapiro show. You can ask questions in the
00:23:03.340
mailbag, and the mailbag's coming up on Thursday, so make sure to get your questions in. Everybody
00:23:07.340
can watch, but only subscribers can ask the questions. Again, I know none of that matters,
00:23:13.320
but you can get the most important vessel of all, the Leftist Tears Tumblr. Now, I'm on the road.
00:23:20.320
I didn't want to take so valuable a possession with me on the road lest something happen. It would
00:23:25.000
probably be confiscated at TSA as a weapon of mass destruction or as a way to fight weapons of mass
00:23:30.160
destruction. So I have to keep my Salty Leftist Tears in this vessel. Now, that's fine, but here,
00:23:34.700
you know, when I drink it, it's still salty, so that's good. I mean, they're always delicious.
00:23:41.860
There's room temperature. I don't want to, I like my Salty Leftist Tears either hot or cold. Room
00:23:47.280
temperature? Why would I, I don't even know if this is safe. And, you know, we're broadcasting from
00:23:51.520
National Review. I want to thank my friends at National Review for having me. I don't know what sort of
00:23:55.980
radiation they're being subjected to right now, or that I'm being subjected to. Don't put yourself
00:24:00.480
at risk like I'm putting myself at risk. Go to dailywire.com. We'll be right back.
00:24:15.400
So we see this trend broadly by, by your count, anywhere from 10.2 to 10.8 willful killings per
00:24:21.140
100,000 people in 1980. Number way, way down. Drops by 50% just from 93 to 2013, just within
00:24:27.500
those 20 years. Violent crime, way down since 1991. The overall homicide rate, way, way down.
00:24:35.280
By 2014, we're looking at 4.5 people per 100,000 Americans. So lefties might say, well,
00:24:41.880
there was the federal assault weapons ban. They just made up that term. I don't know what's an
00:24:45.300
assault weapon. I think all weapons are assault weapons, aren't they? But it has, it has dropped.
00:24:50.900
That's true. They make a good point. However, let's look a little more carefully because it
00:24:55.300
seems so clear, doesn't it? But all shallows are clear. Federal assault weapons ban expired 14 years
00:25:00.540
ago. Nevertheless, the trend continued. It was enacted in 1994. A decade later, it was expired. It
00:25:08.540
wasn't renewed. But the trend in the drop in crime continued to drop. So there is no evidence that
00:25:15.640
the so-called assault weapons ban has had any effect whatsoever on murder or crime rates. Even
00:25:21.080
the Washington Post admits this, by the way. So even the Washington Post, where democracy dies in
00:25:25.300
darkness, admits on the Wonk blog and a piece in 2015, we've had a massive decline in gun violence in
00:25:30.720
the U.S. Here's why. Now, some of their explanations are more compelling than others. For one, they note
00:25:36.300
the increase in cops that we've hired. There are more police officers on the beat. Gun violence,
00:25:42.020
murder, crime, they all start to decline around the time of the assault weapons ban. But the so-called
00:25:46.820
assault weapons ban, the so-called assault weapons crimes didn't really change. I think the reason
00:25:51.460
that people see that coincidence is that also at this same time in 1994, President Clinton signed
00:25:57.600
sweeping crime bills. And there were other crime bills all throughout the United States and major
00:26:02.080
cities, New York in particular, that funded law enforcement agencies nationally,
00:26:06.000
added 100,000 officers nationally at a time when law enforcement agencies were already expanding.
00:26:12.040
Economist Stephen Levitt estimates larger police forces reduced crime by five to six percent.
00:26:18.180
Gun violence declined with crime generally at this point. Now, I will say, I take social science with
00:26:25.360
a grain of salt. It's a dismal science and it can be easily manipulated. I will cite it when it suits
00:26:32.000
my purposes, as now. But you do have to take it with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it seems pretty
00:26:38.120
compelling. The Washington Post also points to the adoption of computers as helping this trend. So
00:26:42.840
computer modeling, particularly New York's CompStat, comparative statistics system, allowed police
00:26:47.980
departments to identify neighborhoods that needed more policing than other neighborhoods, and it made
00:26:53.200
them much more effective. The Brennan Center for Justice ran a study that says that this reduced
00:26:58.320
homicide by 11 percent. Again, take it with a grain of salt, but it seems compelling.
00:27:03.780
Then the Washington Post gets a little wonky. A third answer they suggest is less booze.
00:27:09.280
American alcohol consumption declined 21 percent from 1980 to 2000. That number has since increased,
00:27:15.020
presumably because of my 21st birthday. That has started to go back up again. Booze does get people
00:27:20.360
rowdier and more aggressive. If you've ever been to college or at a bar after 2 a.m., you have
00:27:25.020
witnessed this. Perhaps you've participated in this yourself. The Brennan Center for Justice gives
00:27:29.480
this credit for 5 to 10 percent drop in crime. Who knows? That's obviously a little bit less hard
00:27:34.720
to track. When you're looking at cops actually arresting more people, it's a little bit easier.
00:27:39.440
There was that famous line from the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, who said,
00:27:44.100
prisons fill despite dropping, no, crime continues to drop despite prisons filling. You say, well,
00:27:50.740
maybe there's a, maybe something has to do with each other. Maybe the one, oh, I don't know. I don't
00:27:56.380
know. I'm not a statistician. Another suggestion that the Washington Post makes is that there's less
00:28:01.260
lead. So, and this is actually a widely held hypothesis. It's total nonsense. But the idea is
00:28:08.620
that lead makes humans more aggressive. If you are exposed to lead, you know, in lead paint or whatever,
00:28:13.880
as a child, it will affect your brain and make you more aggressive. So they thank the Clean Air Act for
00:28:20.360
reducing lead in the environment. It's mostly just that they want to talk up environmental regulations
00:28:26.680
and the Clean Air Act. Jessica Reyes, an economist from Amherst College, estimates that the reduction
00:28:32.320
of lead in the environment has led to a 56 percent reduction in violent crime. This is absolute nonsense.
00:28:39.160
Phil Cook, an economist and sociologist from Duke, points out the hole in this theory, which is that
00:28:44.580
it assumes that the kids in the 80s were worse than the kids in the 90s, right? They were worse
00:28:49.140
when there was more lead in the environment than there was, than when there was not as much lead
00:28:53.580
in the environment. But that doesn't correlate with the crime statistics. So you would have to
00:29:00.820
see a generational shift. But actually, when the crime dropped in the 90s, even just a brief glance
00:29:06.320
at the data showed that it was not associated with one particular cohort of people over another.
00:29:11.040
It was across the board. It happened simultaneously. The drop has that same pattern. So you can't,
00:29:16.640
you can't blame it on the lead. It's a ridiculous theory, but kind of funny. Then they, then they
00:29:20.460
get to their final suggestion, which is the better economy. It was a great economy for the 90s. And
00:29:26.660
the Brennan Center says that a better economy is responsible for a five to 10 percent reduction in
00:29:30.900
violent crime. This also is BS, I think, because economic trends can explain property crime, but they
00:29:37.000
can't really explain violent crime. When economies don't do as well, you see things like theft and
00:29:42.640
burglary tick up, but not really murders and assaults and things like that. Even the Washington
00:29:47.760
Post admits this. The left always has to push this because they love to pretend that crime is caused
00:29:53.140
by money. They think that people are just animals. They think that we're just only motivated by
00:29:58.060
physical things. Winston Churchill and later Ronald Reagan said, when great forces are on the move in
00:30:03.560
the world, we learn that we're spirits, not animals, that there's a moral framework and we aspire to
00:30:07.800
virtue, not just property. The left doesn't believe this. They have a materialist framework and moral
00:30:13.880
framework in view of the world. And so they say, oh, poverty causes crime. Poverty coincides with
00:30:19.540
crime. Criminal behavior certainly causes poverty, but you can't blame it on poverty. It basically is
00:30:26.140
a way of looking at people who are impoverished or who are committing crime and reducing blame and
00:30:31.720
saying they can't be held accountable for their immoral actions. They can't be held accountable
00:30:35.640
for their free will. Their poverty made them do it or their brain made them do it. There's really
00:30:40.260
no evidence of that. Now, here's a story that will illustrate just how made up this whole thing is,
00:30:46.360
this whole March for Our Lives gun control movement, the grassroots movement. Al Sharpton's brother,
00:30:52.500
the Reverend Kenneth Glasgow, was just charged in the drive-by shooting of a woman one day after he
00:31:00.520
participated in the March for Our Lives anti-gun crime protest. He goes on Saturday, he goes,
00:31:07.040
yeah, we need to stop guns. The next day, he does a drive-by shooting. Now, it's unclear if he pulled
00:31:11.700
the trigger. He probably didn't pull the trigger. Either way, he's culpable of murder because he aided
00:31:15.100
and abetted murder. This is the Reverend, the Reverend Kenneth Glasgow. I'd expect no less of somebody
00:31:21.140
affiliated with Al Sharpton. That's charlatan. But it shows all of this for what it is.
00:31:27.420
I think I pointed this out on the show yesterday that all of these protests, the Women's March and
00:31:34.060
the March for Our Lives and the This March and the Immigrant March, they're not about the issue
00:31:38.680
that they say they're about. They're not about women. They're not about guns. I mean, Al Sharpton's
00:31:44.940
brother shows this pretty well. I don't think Al Sharpton's brother wants to reduce gun ownership
00:31:50.480
in America. He probably just wants to reduce legal gun ownership so that criminals can go and shoot
00:31:55.080
people in cars. But it isn't about that. It's just about Trump. It's just about hitting Republicans.
00:32:00.080
They're throwing spaghetti at the wall. They're throwing the guns and the immigrants and Russia
00:32:04.240
and Stormy Daniels and the porn stars. And it's just because they don't like Trump. It isn't earnest.
00:32:10.100
There isn't an earnest national outcry. That kid David Hogg, you know, the next Martin Luther King.
00:32:16.100
David Hogg is now moving on to voter suppression. For some reason, that's his new issue because he knows
00:32:21.620
his 15 minutes are up on this. So he's got to move on to something new. It's just the same old
00:32:26.480
anti-Republican nonsense. Now, looking at where we are here, the gun problem in America,
00:32:34.200
which does not exist. If anything, we should be counting our lucky stars for our success in
00:32:39.320
fighting gun violence in America. We have solutions that we know work. Policing, locking up criminals,
00:32:44.960
giving law enforcement better technology and better money, more money, and locking up crazy people who
00:32:53.180
shouldn't be allowed into society. The left hates the solution of giving law enforcement more power
00:32:57.700
because they don't like cops. The whole thing is that these crazy, awful, racist cops are gunning
00:33:02.680
down innocent black men. So they should be the only ones with guns. That's the idea. They don't like
00:33:07.700
that solution. They can't resolve the cognitive dissonance on those two issues. And then they also
00:33:12.080
don't want to lock up crazy people because it feels icky. You don't want to do that. Civil
00:33:16.400
libertarians don't like that either. But there is nothing compassionate. There's nothing
00:33:20.200
dignified or nothing really pertaining to liberty by allowing crazy people and lunatics to live in
00:33:27.280
squalor on the street and propose a threat to themselves and to society. One other thing to notice
00:33:33.100
is that only 20% of homicides each year occur during someone committing another crime. So the rest of
00:33:40.660
those are interpersonal. They're much more likely to be committed by people who know one another.
00:33:45.380
And guess what? They're going to happen whether the guns exist or not. Which is actually why so many
00:33:50.960
violent deaths involve hands and feet and knives and hammers and baseball bats. Because if you want
00:33:57.940
to kill somebody, you're just going to do it. If you want to kill yourself, two-thirds of gun deaths
00:34:01.620
each year are suicides. You're going to do it. You can just walk off a ledge. Dorothy Parker summed it up
00:34:06.740
well, if somewhat callously. Razors pain you, rivers are damp. Acids stain you and drugs cause
00:34:12.400
cramp. Guns aren't lawful. Nooses give. Gas smells awful. You might as well live. There are a lot of
00:34:17.980
options, as she outlines in that poem, Resume. And the problem isn't the guns. The problem are
00:34:23.820
underlying issues such as depression, leading people to suicide, gang crime. We know how to solve some of
00:34:32.140
these. There is this cultural issue of despair. One hopes that there is a cultural resurgence that
00:34:37.600
will take care of that. Public policy probably will not be very effective to do it. For issues of
00:34:42.340
criminality, lock them up. Just lock them up. It worked in the 80s. It worked in the 90s. Now that
00:34:47.720
we've gotten all those successes, this is what the left always does. They get all of these successes
00:34:51.660
because of conservative policy. And then they say, oh, but we don't need to do the policies anymore.
00:34:56.020
We want the effect. We don't want the cause. Crazy. Lock them up. Okay. We have a little bit
00:35:02.220
of time left. It is time for This Day in History. This Day in History. This is a good one. On This
00:35:12.960
Day in History in 1973, Marlon Brando destroyed Hollywood. He ruined it. He really ruined the
00:35:19.700
film industry. I'm not being hyperbolic here. He refused his Oscar for the first time for The
00:35:24.640
Godfather. He did it for political reasons. Now, Brando had been nominated for an Oscar in 1951
00:35:29.840
for Streetcar Named Desire. Following year, he was nominated for Viva Zapata. Following year for
00:35:34.820
Julius Caesar. Following year for On the Waterfront. I could have been somebody. I could have been a
00:35:39.980
contender. I could have had plans. That movie, he actually won for that movie. Then his career
00:35:45.820
totally flopped. 1960s, he had a bunch of bad movies, a bunch of flops. He had won. I actually kind
00:35:51.920
of like the movie Mutiny on the Bounty. It was critically panned. It was unpopular.
00:35:56.520
Francis Ford Coppola, when he cast Marlon Brando in The Godfather, really had to fight for him to
00:36:00.900
get him cast. No one wanted to work with him. He was known to be difficult to work with, and he
00:36:04.620
hadn't had a great previous decade. 1973. This is Brando's comeback. He's given the performance of a
00:36:10.640
lifetime. Just an unimaginably good performance in The Godfather. And he refuses the Oscar and sends an
00:36:17.380
American Indian in his place. Here's what happened. Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
00:36:26.600
Accepting the award for Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Miss Sashin Littlefeather.
00:36:32.320
Hello. My name is Sashin Littlefeather. I'm Apache, and I'm president of the National Native American
00:36:50.140
Affirmative Image Committee. I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening, and he has asked me to tell
00:36:56.600
you in a very long speech, which I cannot share with you presently because of time, but I will be
00:37:03.820
glad to share with the press afterwards, that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous
00:37:11.500
award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film
00:37:33.120
First, interesting to hear the boos. That's how when Brando injected politics, you hear boos.
00:37:40.340
Even later on, in 1978, Vanessa Redgrave gave a speech attacking Israel. You got some boos there,
00:37:46.800
too. Now, if someone has a political speech to give at the Oscars, you'd get cheers. I think if
00:37:52.380
you just give a gracious speech, that's when they boo you now. In the old days, if you brought politics
00:37:56.520
in, it was thought really below the stature and below the glamour of that occasion. Now, that's the
00:38:03.340
whole show. I mean, that is what the entire show is. At the time that Brando did this, the only other guy
00:38:07.540
to decline an Oscar was George C. Scott for Patton. And that wasn't political. It's because he thought
00:38:12.620
the whole thing was frivolous, and he's a real actor's actor, and he didn't want to take part in that
00:38:16.480
silly pageantry. Fair enough. That's actually fine by me. But Brando injected politics into the whole
00:38:22.200
thing. So you had Vanessa Redgrave in 78. In 93, you had Richard Gere using his speech to attack China
00:38:29.180
for abuses in Tibet. That same year, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins attacked the U.S. for not allowing
00:38:36.020
HIV-infected Haitians to come into America quickly enough. I don't know where they pick
00:38:43.480
these issues. I think there's a dartboard in Hollywood, and they say, well, I guess I don't
00:38:48.260
have anything to do to fill my time. I'll just, okay, yep, I'm going to do that one now.
00:38:54.820
HIV-infected would-be immigrants from Haiti. That's going to be my new issue. And they just
00:38:59.300
picked these sort of at random. In 2003, Michael Moore ranted about how much he doesn't like George
00:39:03.860
W. Bush. In 2009, Dustin Lance Black lauded the martyred pederast Harvey Milk during his acceptance
00:39:11.360
speech. It was all political. 2013, Michelle Obama, who was never proud of her country until
00:39:16.200
it elected her husband, she showed up for some reason. In 2015, Patricia Arquette went on stage
00:39:21.640
and complained that she should make even more millions of dollars to pretend as she accepted
00:39:26.000
her golden statuette. Now this happens every single year. It just happens on and on and on.
00:39:31.140
And it's interesting. In the case of 2009, you saw this shift of the movies getting way more lefty,
00:39:36.680
way more on the nose with their politics. I mean, you had a movie about a martyred pederast Harvey
00:39:43.260
Milk. You had a whole movie lionizing him as some sort of saint. That, I think, has fed into it,
00:39:49.480
too. The whole ethos of Hollywood, even the business of Hollywood, has become much more left-wing.
00:39:55.460
But Brando started this, and it's very frustrating, because Brando is the great actor of his age. He was
00:40:01.040
truly an amazing actor. He ruined acting, too. This is the point I'll leave us on. This is not
00:40:05.600
frequently noted. He ruined acting, because before Marlon Brando, you had this kind of
00:40:11.100
Laurence Olivier, excellent diction, and what would be called in modern acting, rubber stamping,
00:40:18.260
or some representational acting. There was good stuff, too. But it wasn't organic, as is the term
00:40:25.300
now. So what Brando did is he mumbled a little bit. And his acting came out of the American schools
00:40:30.600
of acting of Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg, which actually previously had come
00:40:36.540
from Russia, from Stanislavski. And this really all begins with Freud. Freud is the beginning of
00:40:42.820
modern acting, because Freud writes of the subconscious. And all of modern acting is about
00:40:47.280
creating an inner life so that subconsciously this will affect your behavior. And you don't need to
00:40:53.260
plan out, OK, I'm going to put my hand here at this time. It happens organically. You're like a
00:40:57.020
sponge. You fill up, and it comes all out. One effect of this is mumbling. So you don't talk
00:41:01.880
with perfect diction like you would doing Shakespeare or something. You kind of say,
00:41:06.200
Stella, I want to see my girl. Stella, I could have been somebody. But Brando did it perfectly,
00:41:11.480
because he's Marlon Brando. Every other modern actor, it just is infuriating, because you're
00:41:16.400
watching the show, and you can't understand a word they're saying. They think they're Marlon Brando,
00:41:19.900
and they talk like they have marbles in their mouths. But it's really awful, because they're not
00:41:23.660
Marlon Brando. So we got to hit him for that, too. He ruined the film industry, and he ruined
00:41:27.860
acting, even though he himself was very good at it. Both of these things, the takeaway from both of
00:41:32.380
these, is they characterize something that is essential about our age, and that is informality.
00:41:37.960
We are allergic to formality. I'm seeing this now as I get ready for my wedding.
00:41:45.520
Styles of dress have changed dramatically. Rarely, people don't even really wear tuxedos in the
00:41:50.340
evening anymore at formal events. Or they think, no, I'll wear this kind of suit, or this thing,
00:41:54.800
or that. We're allergic to it. We think it's icky. It's not authentic. It's not organic.
00:42:00.620
Brando did this at the Oscars. The Oscars are a nice, elevated, glamorous event. You receive a gold
00:42:07.820
statue. You're very gracious. Maybe you tear up. I want to thank my mother, and God, and all this,
00:42:13.160
whatever. And he said, no, I'm going to lower it. I'm going to degrade it. No, it's just an
00:42:18.920
opportunity. I don't like it. Same thing with the acting, right? So now it's going to be more
00:42:23.140
pedestrian. It's going to be more common. And that's not to knock it entirely. There's quite a
00:42:29.840
lot that comes out of that sort of art, art that is common and focuses on the common man. But our
00:42:34.920
culture has lost the sense of formality. And it's really bad. It really debases our civil discourse,
00:42:41.340
I think, because we have all of those manners that you were supposed to learn when you were growing up.
00:42:45.740
People just don't have them anymore. They don't have manners. And manners are important
00:42:50.160
because manners allow us all to live in nice, polite, civilized society. So maybe we can get
00:42:55.760
more of that. I hope we can reverse that trend, that trend that began on this day in history in
00:43:02.220
1973. Okay, that's our show. Get your mailbag questions in. I'll be back again. We've got a good
00:43:06.980
guest for tomorrow, but I can't tell you yet. I don't want to ruin the surprise. And then I'm heading up
00:43:11.560
to Ithaca tomorrow too. So if you happen to be in the area, I know it's a thriving metropolis up
00:43:16.380
there in upstate New York. But if you do happen to be there, I'll be giving a speech on Give Me That
00:43:21.920
Old Time Religion, America's Christian Foundation. Until tomorrow, I'm Michael Knowles. This is The