The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 128 - Don’t Bring A Knife To Leftists’ Gun Fight

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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.

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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 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

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, 0.56

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. 1.00

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 0.75

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. 1.00

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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 0.94

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 1.00

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 0.93

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,

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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 0.88

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. 0.94

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 0.54

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.53

00:33:27.280 squalor on the street and propose a threat to themselves and to society. One other thing to notice 1.00

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 0.77

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 0.99

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. 0.86

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

00:37:19.900 industry. Excuse me.

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.99

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

00:43:26.280 Michael Knowles Show. See you then.

00:43:56.280 James Jones.

00:43:56.700 Thanks, Michael.

00:43:58.080 James Jones.

00:43:58.440 James Jones.

00:43:58.740 James Jones.

00:43:59.880 Jack disguise.

00:44:00.500 James Jones.

00:44:01.100 James Jones.

00:44:05.100 , James Jones.

00:44:05.500 James Jones.

00:44:06.180 waktu伏dad.

00:44:07.180 James Jones.

00:44:08.320 James Jones.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 27, 2018

Ep. 128 - Don’t Bring A Knife To Leftists’ Gun Fight

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