Speaker 1: Recording in progress. Recording in progress. All right, y'all, welcome
Speaker 1: to politics, will prop This is a fun episode. I
Speaker 1: got everyone's favorite huh connect here, Robert Evans. I swear
Speaker 1: to you, you would be the greatest plug, Like if
Speaker 1: you lived in the Inner city I have been occasionally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd be the greatest plug because number one, you're fearless,
Speaker 1: and number two, it's like you you seem to be
Speaker 1: able to get your hands on anything. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know I I I used to be a lot more
Speaker 1: fearful of that sort of ship like it was a
Speaker 1: nice maybe this is just being a white guy, but
Speaker 1: leaving the Deep South for California and the West Coast,
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, suddenly I'm way less scared about
Speaker 1: driving drugs around in my car. That's pretty true. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna open up the woll before I before
Speaker 1: I go to this story, I want to ask you
Speaker 1: a question just off the head that I feel like,
Speaker 1: I feel like it would be a fun exercise right
Speaker 1: now off the head. Can you think of as many
Speaker 1: like nickname terms for guns? Right now? Just off the head?
Speaker 1: How many nicknames can you think of? Just rabble them? Off? Heater?
Speaker 1: A strap, a piece. Uh, I mean nicknames and not
Speaker 1: like just like a side arm um a bang stick
Speaker 1: um boomstick um yeah, blicky Berner, chopper, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Shopper, Yeah, yeah, I just burner and heater,
Speaker 1: I feel yeah, that's those there's your cousins. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: burner a heater. I just think, uh, there is. I
Speaker 1: don't know there's anything besides like sex and guns that
Speaker 1: has more nicknames. Yeah. I've always been partial to strap.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but that's the one that I
Speaker 1: find most satisfying. I think strap helps. I think strap
Speaker 1: like in a lot of ways. I also feel like
Speaker 1: the slang you turn you use for your gun has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with like the year you graduated
Speaker 1: high school. Yes, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that, you know what I'm saying. So like, yes,
Speaker 1: strap is like, yeah, you listen to nineties rap, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. That's why exactly that strap. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Yeah, you know, don't make you
Speaker 1: have to grab my strap, go rat tat tat tat.
Speaker 1: If it's chopper, it's like, well, you you've listened to
Speaker 1: Southern rap, you know, what I'm saying, like you were
Speaker 1: in the trap music, so you know anyway, and then
Speaker 1: there's blicky, which is what I name. That's why I
Speaker 1: haven't heard that one. Blicky Blacky is what the young
Speaker 1: boys use. You know, Yeah, it's blicky. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of times. What is what is the etymology because
Speaker 1: all the others heater obviously it's hot, right a strap
Speaker 1: you like strap a gun on? You know, uh, the
Speaker 1: pieces obvious, Like what is what is a blicky? I
Speaker 1: have no idea, Robert, Okay, you have no idea where
Speaker 1: it came. Bro I just heard the little home he
Speaker 1: say it. You hope to say it because I never
Speaker 1: know with with the kids sling, I never know if
Speaker 1: they're just working with us, right, like if there is
Speaker 1: trick the old people into thinking blicky was a thing. Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: producer here, producer here, Blicky means a pistol. To blick
Speaker 1: someone down is to gun them down. The term blicky
Speaker 1: has been used by every top forty rap artist you've
Speaker 1: ever listened to in the last five years. Oh okay, okay,
Speaker 1: to blick That makes sense because so they turned a
Speaker 1: verb into an adverb or a verb into anna it's
Speaker 1: like calling it a gap because it's like like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot about get Yeah. That makes so many slings.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of slag for guns. Yeah, because of
Speaker 1: the obvious love affair that all of America has for God. Boy,
Speaker 1: we sure do love guns. God we love these things.
Speaker 1: We love guns more than maybe any other country has
Speaker 1: ever loved, like a thing that isn't bread or some
Speaker 1: sort of dipping oil. Yes, I was gonna say there
Speaker 1: anything that's not food or condiment or yeah, because the
Speaker 1: way Americans love guns is like is like the way
Speaker 1: French people love their bread, or like in Thailand they
Speaker 1: love that like chilly oil that they put in stuff,
Speaker 1: or like like it's it's like it's it's a kind
Speaker 1: it's a comprehensive love that is normally reserved for food stuffs. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is that a food stuff that is like such
Speaker 1: a like a stand in for your national and cultural identity,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like like kimchi is a
Speaker 1: stand in for what it means to be from this
Speaker 1: part of the world. It's feel like that. It's the
Speaker 1: same way like hummus. Right, Like there's this massive conflict
Speaker 1: over hummus in in in Palestine with the Israelis anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get into that, but like it's there's
Speaker 1: a there's so much identity wrapped up in food and
Speaker 1: in America it's like guns. Yeah, yeah, it's not like
Speaker 1: this is our this is our Nigerian jall off Rice
Speaker 1: is our guns. This is a glock nineteen. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is a glock nineteen. We just loved him things, um,
Speaker 1: which is just a matter of observation, not of evaluation anyway.
Speaker 1: So sentences the politics, it must start with some sort
Speaker 1: of connection to uh inner cityhood living. I'ma tell y'all story,
Speaker 1: and then get into what we actually want to talk about.
Speaker 1: And I would imagine in Robert, in some way, shape
Speaker 1: or form, you may have a similar sort of memory.
Speaker 1: M hmm. Maybe not the same, but similar. So I
Speaker 1: grew up you people heard this many times. You've heard
Speaker 1: this many times. I grew up in east side of
Speaker 1: South Central and then over to area called the San
Speaker 1: Gabriel Valley, predominantly Latino area. But what comes with being
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways as a person of color
Speaker 1: is we still went to church every Sunday, right, and
Speaker 1: in going to church, you know, our churches were very
Speaker 1: different than sort of white Western evangelical that was worried
Speaker 1: about like purity culture and you know, nationalism and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. They was just like, don't join a gang
Speaker 1: and don't get nobody pregnant. That was the extent of
Speaker 1: our youth ministry. That being said, we went off to
Speaker 1: youth camp. Right, So we did summer camp like every
Speaker 1: other little white wonderbread you know church. We did youth
Speaker 1: camp like everybody else. The only difference is youth camp
Speaker 1: cost too much. But every year I know this now
Speaker 1: as an adult, every year that like summer camp place
Speaker 1: used to do a week that was a third of
Speaker 1: the price. Right, So that now all the inner city
Speaker 1: churches can go, which I didn't know that I thought
Speaker 1: I was. I thought I thought it called the same
Speaker 1: as everybody else. I used to wonder why we would
Speaker 1: go to youth camp, and it just bed like it
Speaker 1: would just be like a bunch of just rival gangs,
Speaker 1: rival neighborhoods, because we just we were the inner city churches.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that's how it work. That's just
Speaker 1: how it works. So anyway, where youth camp, uh you know, dudes,
Speaker 1: is like stacking on each other like you're stacking is
Speaker 1: like showing gang signs whatever. Right, But either way, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone's having different experiences. Some people are having a good time,
Speaker 1: some people aren't. Some people not involved in none of
Speaker 1: this stuff, whatever the case. Maybe this is the way
Speaker 1: sort of youth camp went. So there was one year
Speaker 1: that there was these boys that I met that you know,
Speaker 1: went to another church like cross town whatever, who decided,
Speaker 1: most of them decided that they just ain't like me,
Speaker 1: right for whatever reason, I just happened to be their target, right,
Speaker 1: which I know you understand that did somebody just decided
Speaker 1: I don't like you don't know why they just don't.
Speaker 1: So once they decided that, uh, any anything I ever
Speaker 1: did was funny, a joke, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1: Right now now at my church, I mean, we got
Speaker 1: some gees, you know what I'm saying, Like, we got
Speaker 1: some brothers that are like not even paying that no
Speaker 1: attention because they know if it go down, like we
Speaker 1: will mop the floor with these dudes. So like, don't
Speaker 1: even you don't even need to acknowledge the fact that
Speaker 1: they cracking jokes about you, because if it comes down
Speaker 1: to it, I'll beat the ship out of these boys, right,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like the attitude of my little
Speaker 1: like sort of seventh eighth grade group of guys. Anyway,
Speaker 1: last night, of those gotten waight before I say that,
Speaker 1: of those guys, there was like one or two of
Speaker 1: them that, like I actually made friends with right that
Speaker 1: we were cracking jokes. They loved hip hop like I did, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be, I kind of made friends
Speaker 1: with two of them. At one point at the end
Speaker 1: of the last night, I was headed to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and it's camp, right, so it's like a big old
Speaker 1: shared bathroom sit wastion, right. So I was headed to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and I could see the group of dudes
Speaker 1: behind me kind of walking a little further behind me
Speaker 1: right now. As I was headed to the bathroom, the
Speaker 1: two that were my friends caught up to me, right,
Speaker 1: and we're just talking whatever whatever, Hey where you you know? Hey,
Speaker 1: so you know when y'all bust leaving whatever whatever. So
Speaker 1: we're just talking about that, and then he whispers, don't
Speaker 1: go in the bathroom, and then just kept talking, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was like what and he was just like
Speaker 1: he's just like real quick, not like don't go in there.
Speaker 1: Don't go in there. So I was like, he goes,
Speaker 1: but if you are, he just whispering. If you go in,
Speaker 1: just go right back out, right. So so I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: they're gonna jump me. They're gonna jump me in the bathroom, right.
Speaker 1: So at first I was like, I scared of these
Speaker 1: folkso said, that's my first thought, right, But then but
Speaker 1: then I looked behind me and I was like, it's
Speaker 1: actually a lot of y'all, you know. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: with none of I wasn't with none of my boys. Like,
Speaker 1: I was just walking by myself. So I was like,
Speaker 1: by the time any of my friends get here, I
Speaker 1: probably have had a couple of concussions. So it's like
Speaker 1: the way fights work, if you're fighting experience comes from movies,
Speaker 1: is that is that if you're one person and there's
Speaker 1: multiple people, you're going to lose the fight, right, Like
Speaker 1: it doesn't really even matter like training whatever. Every now
Speaker 1: and then you get somebody who's like a freak at that,
Speaker 1: but you're generally you're just gonna get your ass feats. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're not going to attack you one on one. They're not.
Speaker 1: It's not in a single file that they attack like movies. No,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get piled on, You're just gonna get wailed, yes,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, it's urinals, it's toy Like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: a nasty stuff can happen? A yeah, I'm not going
Speaker 1: in there. So that's what I did. I just went
Speaker 1: in and went out right, And I did look back
Speaker 1: until I was far enough away, and I saw Autumn
Speaker 1: dudes looking out the other door and then looking back
Speaker 1: at their homies that the guys that that gave me
Speaker 1: the clue, right, And I can't hear what they saying,
Speaker 1: but I could see them kind of being like basically
Speaker 1: like what the funk man, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and then being like, oh, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: right whatever, just then playing it cool like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like whatever, you know. All that to say, even though
Speaker 1: that they're a group of people decided that this is
Speaker 1: the way we felt about this dude, there's no way
Speaker 1: of telling that if everybody actually felt that way, because
Speaker 1: it's possible that more than just those two dudes was
Speaker 1: like why are we why do we even care about
Speaker 1: this fool? Like what what difference does it make what
Speaker 1: he's doing or not doing you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: But the rules are you just can't speak up because
Speaker 1: even if you do, even if you like, I'm down
Speaker 1: for the them, down for the set, But like I
Speaker 1: just I don't. I don't. I don't know why we
Speaker 1: why we're so worried about that. Actually, I think I
Speaker 1: kind of think some of this is stupid. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, But you're not gonna say nothing. You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to say nothing it. But but what what
Speaker 1: happens is oftentimes you're not the only one that feel
Speaker 1: that way. Matter back, most of y'all feel that way.
Speaker 1: And then what the Homie Jojo with the Homie Jojo
Speaker 1: said is sometimes some of the stuff like that the
Speaker 1: set gotta do is because just because you're O g like,
Speaker 1: got his feelings hurt from some girl, and now y'all
Speaker 1: gotta beef with this block. But it's really just because
Speaker 1: you're ology just got his feelings heard from some girl,
Speaker 1: and like, but nobody's saying nothing, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because you gotta follow whatever that person was saying to
Speaker 1: do because they in charge. Yeah, I mean no, that
Speaker 1: like everything works that way, like to a degree, Like
Speaker 1: that's like, uh why a lot of Like you can
Speaker 1: you could get on Twitter and see like what the
Speaker 1: what the rage machine is like going after every day
Speaker 1: and half the time it's like it's shipped like that.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody somebody had a beef with somebody else,
Speaker 1: and so now everybody's angry at like a whole group
Speaker 1: of people, right, Like I mean, it's it's it's history too.
Speaker 1: It's like it's the fucking it's World War One, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody wanted to go in, but like somebody fucked with
Speaker 1: like somebody else's friend, and so now we all got
Speaker 1: to get in, ye and now we all like it's
Speaker 1: it's snowballs. Like one dude gets fucking clapped, and like
Speaker 1: because of that, it winds up being twenty million people
Speaker 1: get fucking clapped. Like that's the way the people work, right,
Speaker 1: It's the way that people were. The psychology isn't any
Speaker 1: different when it's like a neighborhood as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: the Hollands allern Empire, right exactly. And also the way
Speaker 1: that the n r A has a death grip on
Speaker 1: the right wing. There we go, there's where we're at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Yeah, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about this, uh this research that from Michael's Dr Michael Siegel, Yes,
Speaker 1: Siegel from Tough University did where he surveyed the way
Speaker 1: that he's like right wing Republican and r A you know,
Speaker 1: gun supporting people actually feel about restrictions on the Second Amendment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that and why ain't nobody saying that, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a that's a broad topic, right because
Speaker 1: it relates um, an awful lot of I mean, this
Speaker 1: is something that that gets brought up, perhaps not enough,
Speaker 1: but like a ton of different restrictions. Like when when
Speaker 1: you talk about stuff like assault weapons bans and whatnot, um,
Speaker 1: like bands on specific weapons or even things like maccaps,
Speaker 1: it gets a lot more controversial. But there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that like gun owners are broadly supportive of
Speaker 1: and the like, which like universal background checks, and then
Speaker 1: there's stuff that gun owners are supportive of depending on
Speaker 1: how you bring it up to them. Right, the red
Speaker 1: flag laws have been heavily politicized, um, and so if
Speaker 1: you say, like, do you support red flag laws, and
Speaker 1: a lot of gun owners heads, they'll think about whatever
Speaker 1: it is. Fox News warned them, red flag laws were were.
Speaker 1: But if you say, like, hey, if some dude like
Speaker 1: beats the ship out of his wife and kids, should
Speaker 1: he be able to buy a gun? They'll be like,
Speaker 1: of course not right, So yeah, yeah, And I'm one
Speaker 1: of the most important things that the n r A
Speaker 1: has done over the last there I mean, it's been
Speaker 1: like forty years, but it's really escalated since since about
Speaker 1: two thousand. Um. One of the most important things they've
Speaker 1: done is flatten any kind of discussion about gun control
Speaker 1: to confiscation of all guns versus nothing right um and
Speaker 1: if you can this is this is not the n
Speaker 1: r A pioneered this, and we talk about this in
Speaker 1: an episode of a three party on Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: coming up. They're not the only thing that this has done. Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea is that the right wing recognized early on
Speaker 1: and and really started moving towards us in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies that the best thing to do was to build
Speaker 1: single issue voters whose single issue was something they would
Speaker 1: not compromise on and that the Republican Party would make
Speaker 1: central to their um to their actives. And abortion is
Speaker 1: one of these right um. Guns is another. And the
Speaker 1: beauty of a single issue voter is you don't have
Speaker 1: to improve their lives. You don't have to like fix anything,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be good in any aspect of governing.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is stand with them on
Speaker 1: that single issue. Are you exactly exactly? Um? And you
Speaker 1: know that is disastrous, has been disastrous for the concept
Speaker 1: of democracy. It's been disastrous for like the potential future
Speaker 1: of the human species. But it's very smart politics, Like
Speaker 1: this is objectively good politics. Brilliant. Yeah, you've you've you've
Speaker 1: already gotten to the punch line at the show, which
Speaker 1: is great. Um. So let's let's uh, let's uh reverse
Speaker 1: engineer the point that Robert just made, which is the
Speaker 1: point of this episode, which is you create a person
Speaker 1: into a single issue voter. Either you down with us
Speaker 1: or you not down with us, right, and it works,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. So, like you said, there are four
Speaker 1: laws that, according to this research, uh, that would probably
Speaker 1: drop gun deaths by and they say that like sevent
Speaker 1: of gun owners would actually support this if it's presented
Speaker 1: to them correctly, like you said, the permit requirements, red
Speaker 1: flag laws, uh, universal background ground checks. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea of like if a person has a history of
Speaker 1: violence probably probably shouldn't. Yeah, man, if you're sucking hitting
Speaker 1: your kids, like right, that's not a you have. You
Speaker 1: have a right. People who are program control don't like
Speaker 1: to talk about it this way, but you do. You
Speaker 1: have a human right to own a firearm. So of course,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about restricting people's human rights, which you
Speaker 1: are with gun control, you have to be careful about
Speaker 1: how you do it because among other things, that can
Speaker 1: the consequences of that can extend beyond guns, because that's
Speaker 1: the way that like jurisprudence works. But it's pretty well
Speaker 1: established that if you do violence to people, you can
Speaker 1: lose certain rights, and broadly speaking, we all seem to
Speaker 1: be fine with that, Like that's just this is just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like this is what what for some reason why
Speaker 1: of democrats don't know how to talk. But when they
Speaker 1: say things like common sense laws, like the fact that
Speaker 1: when it comes out of a mouth it sounds condescending,
Speaker 1: but it's what it is. It's like, no, for real,
Speaker 1: like we do this all the time. If you violate
Speaker 1: certain social codes, you kind of don't get those rights
Speaker 1: that are expected of those who participate in society. You know,
Speaker 1: and if if I could have notes for them. Like
Speaker 1: one of the things would be, when you're trying to
Speaker 1: talk about this, don't use terms. If you call it
Speaker 1: a red flag block right, right, then the right wing
Speaker 1: media can take that and describe define a red flag
Speaker 1: law the way they do, which is like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: going to define being conservative as like, you know, a
Speaker 1: red flag and one, and then they're going to take
Speaker 1: your guy if you if you instead say we should
Speaker 1: take guns away from people who hit their spouses and kids, right,
Speaker 1: it's hard to argue with. Yeah, and it gets to
Speaker 1: the core of what you're trying to do, right, yes, um, yes,
Speaker 1: but what but what radicalization does is what you explain
Speaker 1: is you boil it down to a sense of what
Speaker 1: we're getting to. You boil it down to a sense
Speaker 1: of identity. This that this thing is a stand in
Speaker 1: for who we are, right, So to abridge that is
Speaker 1: to abridge me as a person, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: uh a lot of times even in in like in
Speaker 1: a city outreach, when we tell you, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, you're trying to get this kid did off
Speaker 1: his flag, and it's like you're asking me to drop
Speaker 1: who I am, you know, and then, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of work into understanding. I understand where your brain
Speaker 1: goes with that. I understand the history of your relationship
Speaker 1: to this thing. However, it does not have to be
Speaker 1: this way, right, Yeah, he means so, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: about your boy Harlan Carter. Yes, we're again. We're doing
Speaker 1: like a three part of our Bastard's about him. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: hardly about him specifically. Yeah, he is. He is one
Speaker 1: of the most important people to know about to understand
Speaker 1: how we got here. He really he's like I think
Speaker 1: he's one of those names that like, yeah, bro, like
Speaker 1: you make a movie about him where it's like his
Speaker 1: effect on the life we live now. The fact that
Speaker 1: there isn't more constant on him is either a proves
Speaker 1: his brilliance or b is like, oh, y'all, we missed
Speaker 1: a biggie, you know, because of who he is. Now,
Speaker 1: I could do I got notes on him, but you're
Speaker 1: about to do that. Terms like seems like this is
Speaker 1: a promo for what are the ones you got coming
Speaker 1: up now? Since apparently you're doing that, Uh, and you
Speaker 1: can run I could do a quick overview. You can
Speaker 1: do a quick overview' up to you yeah, I've just
Speaker 1: done it. Um, So yeah, let's let's let's have you
Speaker 1: hit it and um. Because I'm interested in talking about
Speaker 1: him in the context of like he he he what
Speaker 1: he did to the n r A to take it over,
Speaker 1: and it's not obviously his his part. Part of what
Speaker 1: I think is important about the story of Harlan Carter
Speaker 1: is that like he hits both the militarization of the
Speaker 1: police and the birth of American gun culture as exists, um,
Speaker 1: which is crucially important. But like the way he the
Speaker 1: way he whipped things together in the n r A
Speaker 1: is um it was. It was some fucking hood politics,
Speaker 1: it really was. Yes, yeah, so pre nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: n r A was not the n r A that
Speaker 1: we know of. You know, started off at the end
Speaker 1: of was the Civil War, right the war, and in
Speaker 1: the Civil War it was like all right, you got
Speaker 1: these like hotheads that kind of don't really know how
Speaker 1: to shoot, you know what I'm saying, And like, okay, listen, man, teacher,
Speaker 1: how to shoot. You know what I'm saying, take care
Speaker 1: of your weapon and of a fundamentally good place, which
Speaker 1: is that boy. I wish I wish our Northern inner
Speaker 1: City kids were better at shooting Confederates. Yes, yes, that
Speaker 1: was just which is a noble goal. Yes, was just like, look, man,
Speaker 1: it's how you out a gun. You feel the uh
Speaker 1: you know, it is how you as what you do
Speaker 1: is I take care of your gun. Just normal gun safety,
Speaker 1: you know, and basic marksmanship, basic marksmanship, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And and obviously like the idea of like
Speaker 1: none of them were like what we would call Second
Speaker 1: Amendment absolutists. Like no, the Second Amendment. What no one
Speaker 1: talked about. It, no one talked about was that it
Speaker 1: was a it was there had not, there was not
Speaker 1: up until fairly recently, like within the twentieth century, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court like basically didn't touch the Second Um. It
Speaker 1: was it was not like a big part of this
Speaker 1: is that everyone like guns were not restricted very much
Speaker 1: in many places in the West, right because they just weren't.
Speaker 1: An individual firearm was not yet particularly threatening, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And then into the Black panthers, right right,
Speaker 1: there's a go ahead, Yeah no, no, no no, police, give
Speaker 1: your bed, and then I'll say the thing I was
Speaker 1: gonna say into the Black Panthers, which was like just
Speaker 1: like what happens with everything America does. Once black people
Speaker 1: realize it's like, oh wait, we could do that too,
Speaker 1: then everybody goes wait, hold on now, wait wait wait, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on now. Right? So uh, an interesting example this
Speaker 1: seeing how we're in our our mid term and you
Speaker 1: know out here in Cali we just sent off our
Speaker 1: our our primary ballots. Uh. Funny thing about the end
Speaker 1: of mass slavery in the beginning of reconstruction. The weird
Speaker 1: middle between that and the Black codes was once we
Speaker 1: got the right, we had rights to vote, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Once we was finally set free, and
Speaker 1: what did we do? Well, we voted right and caused
Speaker 1: some problems. And that was the problem because we started putting.
Speaker 1: It was like all black governments because there was more
Speaker 1: of us. And we was like, well, you're telling me
Speaker 1: I get to say as to who in charge, Well,
Speaker 1: I want my uncle in charge because he ain't gonna
Speaker 1: with me. That man never owned me. Right, So it
Speaker 1: worked right, and once it worked, just like hold on
Speaker 1: now wait this this this working too good. So they said, okay,
Speaker 1: now we can't have everybody vote. You can vote if
Speaker 1: yo grandmama could vote. Right, it was like Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: fother what we're doing here. It's like it's like I
Speaker 1: get it. That's like very sneaky, but yes, yes, it's
Speaker 1: like oh so okay, I see what you did. Dare
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying? Uh so, so take that
Speaker 1: theory about like, oh crap, it actually works. Was the same, Well,
Speaker 1: the Pathers realized it's like, wait a minute, we have
Speaker 1: to right to bear arms. Yeah, and all thanks to
Speaker 1: the First Civil Rights Act there were that's what like
Speaker 1: because initially after emancipation, there was like a whole a
Speaker 1: year or two where it was like, well they still
Speaker 1: don't there's nothing that guarantees these people rights even though
Speaker 1: they've been emancipated. And then Congress was like okay, fuck
Speaker 1: you like yes, yeah exactly and yeah. So after that point, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was like not it didn't start with the
Speaker 1: panthers because there's like, um, what was it that it
Speaker 1: was in nineteen nineteen when there was like that series
Speaker 1: of like mass lynchings and stuff like. Yeah, of like uh,
Speaker 1: black communities being like, we have a right to bear
Speaker 1: arms and all these people want us dead. We should
Speaker 1: probably we should get some guns. Yeah you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying so like like, don't think we pacifist. You
Speaker 1: feel me like, yeah, I'm a passive fists. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: There's if you've had like members of your family murdered
Speaker 1: in the woods by mobs, you're you can't really be
Speaker 1: a pacifist. No, you're gonna carry guns, saying so do
Speaker 1: something right. So, yeah, so you know we you had
Speaker 1: open cary laws. He was like, all right, well you
Speaker 1: say we could have them. So we've been to have
Speaker 1: them and they say, wait, wait, hold on, hold on,
Speaker 1: we want y'all to have them. Yeah, that's whoa what
Speaker 1: made you think you guys? Wait, you had this right.
Speaker 1: We didn't think this through. So so you know, the
Speaker 1: n R change day tune wants the uh wants the
Speaker 1: panther started actually listening to what I had to say.
Speaker 1: And there was there's an article that just came out
Speaker 1: today as we would record this in Salon that was like, um,
Speaker 1: let me, I haven't pulled up here because it was
Speaker 1: a pretty incredible, pretty incredible title and an example of like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: maybe rethink the way you're framing something. Um, where is this? Okay? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's this article in Salon when Ronald Reagan's racism
Speaker 1: saved lives, armed black men ment immediate gun control. Now
Speaker 1: they deleted that tweet and I think renamed or maybe
Speaker 1: even cut the article. I haven't checked, but like, oh my,
Speaker 1: guess you could just not say that. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot you can say about guten control that isn't that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't need to make that point, hey man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe not, maybe not say everything ogging you know, it's
Speaker 1: this thing that keeps like you you catch this and
Speaker 1: again not to say that obviously it's not racist to
Speaker 1: like look at children getting a massacred in the school
Speaker 1: and being like the funk we we have to be
Speaker 1: able to do something like not making that claim in
Speaker 1: any way, but you do. There is this strain of
Speaker 1: like liberals who will repeatedly bring up like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if we just gave every black man an a R fifteen,
Speaker 1: there'd be a gun control and it's like, guys, that's
Speaker 1: not really that's still pretty the thing to hit, you know,
Speaker 1: like pretty racist, Like I don't know if you know
Speaker 1: that need to make that point, yes, yeah, man? So yeah,
Speaker 1: so income to panthers day change a story. There's this coup,
Speaker 1: like a literal coup in nineteen seven seven with this
Speaker 1: guy Harlan Carter, who essentially radicalized he took over the
Speaker 1: leadership Bohich, I wish I wouldn't know what that look
Speaker 1: like like practically, like how did that actually look? I
Speaker 1: can tell you that you can. You don't go into
Speaker 1: much detail about this and the the show, but yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's the way the n r A worked is
Speaker 1: like and and it's not like specifically the n r A.
Speaker 1: The n r A is like a type of organization
Speaker 1: that there's like a legal framework for in the United States.
Speaker 1: And it's one example of that. Um, Like people will
Speaker 1: bring up a lot that, um, they didn't cancel their
Speaker 1: their membership meeting and I think it was Colorado after
Speaker 1: the after column mine. Um. And a thing that like
Speaker 1: the n r A defenders will note and kind of
Speaker 1: like its defense is that like, well, it's legally required
Speaker 1: for us to hold a voting meeting and to give
Speaker 1: people X number of days of like warning about like
Speaker 1: where it's going to be, so we couldn't change the meeting,
Speaker 1: but like we canceled a bunch of anyway whatever. There's
Speaker 1: like a type of structure for an organization at the
Speaker 1: n r A is. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: means is that you have this like managing council basically
Speaker 1: a board of directors, right, and you have some like
Speaker 1: elected officials who are run the n r A and
Speaker 1: as a general rule, they're in charge of of like
Speaker 1: what the n r A does and says, right, But
Speaker 1: you also have a group of lifetime members, and the
Speaker 1: lifetime members get a vote, right, And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you can get enough lifetime members to like
Speaker 1: agree to motions in the room during this yearly meeting,
Speaker 1: they can pass motions and whatnot without the board of
Speaker 1: directors type organization or the elected officials wanting that or
Speaker 1: saying that. Right. It's kind of like, you know, you
Speaker 1: could like it's almost like they have kind of a
Speaker 1: republic democracy sort of set up. But there's also this
Speaker 1: you could the people, you know, the people who are
Speaker 1: lifetime members can do a um um can do like
Speaker 1: a what's the fucking term when you like just pull
Speaker 1: the electorate on something and make the make a law
Speaker 1: based on that. UM. I don't know, it's like a plebiscite, right,
Speaker 1: So if you can, if you can whip and this
Speaker 1: had not really ever been done before, right, like it was.
Speaker 1: It was like it was kind of like a procedural
Speaker 1: thing where like, oh yeah, technically they could like all
Speaker 1: vote and just add things to like the n r
Speaker 1: A charter directly and like dismiss the board. It's possible,
Speaker 1: But like it never mattered, right, Like it mattered was
Speaker 1: who was on the board and who was like the
Speaker 1: the elected leaders at that point and whatnot. And so
Speaker 1: it was very much like there's this kind of like
Speaker 1: gentrified aristocracy that was running the n r A, and
Speaker 1: Harlan Carter and this other fucking dude who was a
Speaker 1: popular editor for a bunch of different gun magazines got
Speaker 1: together and whipped a bunch of votes right like they would.
Speaker 1: They spent like the entire year beforehand going around to
Speaker 1: people going around a different lifetime members, prominent folks within
Speaker 1: the n r A community, people who were like kind
Speaker 1: of celebrities within that world, and getting them to get
Speaker 1: their friends on board. And then they like rented a
Speaker 1: bunch of hotel rooms during the event and spent days
Speaker 1: like getting all of their people in line for the
Speaker 1: big voting meeting um, and then when it happened, basically
Speaker 1: they just put enough people who agreed with them in
Speaker 1: this massive room where they were doing what was supposed
Speaker 1: to be kind of a pro forma vote thing to
Speaker 1: like decide on you know, a couple of minor is
Speaker 1: not not even mine. It. There was like they wanted
Speaker 1: to the n r A old Guard wanted to put
Speaker 1: together like a sporting center in Colorado, which these guys
Speaker 1: didn't like because they saw it as like a move
Speaker 1: towards the n r A is just a sporting organization,
Speaker 1: is supposed to a Second AMENDNAC organization. So they got
Speaker 1: all these people together in the room and like mobbed
Speaker 1: them and fucking it was um. You know, they basically
Speaker 1: swarmed them and had so many people there that they
Speaker 1: were able to vote out the old Guard and like
Speaker 1: vote in a bunch of things, including a statement that
Speaker 1: the n r A was a Second Amendment advocacy the
Speaker 1: organization um and like it took it over. Harlan Carter
Speaker 1: was running the n r A by the end of
Speaker 1: the meeting. He walked into the meeting having resigned from
Speaker 1: the n r A like a year ago, and he
Speaker 1: left the meeting in charge. Crazy look and and that
Speaker 1: that is like that is a master class in how
Speaker 1: to do politics. What you just laid out. That's a
Speaker 1: master class in policy. He did the thing that the
Speaker 1: right always does, which is they like look at what
Speaker 1: the letter of the rules and then figure out a
Speaker 1: way that those haven't been used yet so that people
Speaker 1: won't expect them to like take power in that way. Yeah. Yeah, dude.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that food did that. Um little story
Speaker 1: about him. When he was a teenager, he shot a
Speaker 1: little Mexican boy, got away with it, Casiano. Ye, when
Speaker 1: he was seventeen. When he was seventeen, he shot a
Speaker 1: little fifteen year old. He used to lead the US,
Speaker 1: the US border patrol. He started Operation wet Back. You
Speaker 1: heard me, he started Operation wet Back, right. So, this
Speaker 1: militarization of our borders, Yeah, it's the birth of like
Speaker 1: the idea not just of like a border patrol, but
Speaker 1: of a border patrol that's militarized and that can act
Speaker 1: anywhere near a border, So not just the southern border,
Speaker 1: but anywhere within a hundred miles of a border, which
Speaker 1: is like two thirds of the US population. There's just
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court ruling today on Bivens, which is like
Speaker 1: a this kind of precedent case that basically the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court said, actually, we don't think the federal government can
Speaker 1: regulate what what the Border Patrol does in anyway. That
Speaker 1: was essentially their claim that like, well, yeah, border patrol
Speaker 1: like bust into your house. They don't need a reason.
Speaker 1: Um wow, yeah, Like it's it's a pretty fucked ruling.
Speaker 1: We'll see how exactly it shakes out. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get into too much detail because I'm not a
Speaker 1: lawyer and the ruling just came out, but like he's
Speaker 1: the start like all of these fucking problems that we
Speaker 1: have with CBP, which is easily like our worst law
Speaker 1: enforcement agency. Um, start with Harlan Carter. Yeah that man,
Speaker 1: I gotta think about that. Yeah, it's pretty not great.
Speaker 1: That's dope. But yeah, the you know, slanging tanks two cops,
Speaker 1: And obviously we have this like you know, you we
Speaker 1: have this bloated spending in our military, you know, for
Speaker 1: for like wars they're not fighting, right, and you just
Speaker 1: got all this like yeah like insurgents fighting surplus stuff
Speaker 1: that you gotta try to get your money back from
Speaker 1: and you just sell it to cops, right, So when
Speaker 1: you sell it to cops, and then what we talked about,
Speaker 1: you know who we we I know, I still get
Speaker 1: messages to this day about the behind the police thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like that's a super dope like recruiting video.
Speaker 1: If it's like, dude, you want to you want to shoot,
Speaker 1: You want to shoot a desert eagle, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. You want to drive a tank, but you're
Speaker 1: afraid to go overseas to fight a war. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could die over there. These people don't shoot back, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So it's such a great, uh
Speaker 1: recruiting thing. But anyway you could trace that back to
Speaker 1: this full Harlan Carter. Harlan Carter. I wish somebody would
Speaker 1: have slapped a ship out of him at some point.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the kind of thing where like
Speaker 1: he grows up his dad is. So this is one
Speaker 1: of the things. The US Mexican border, as as it
Speaker 1: is now in like the way that it is conceived
Speaker 1: of and thought of by people, Maybe it's like a
Speaker 1: hundred ish years old, right, yes, because it used to
Speaker 1: just be like this area where people lived and technically
Speaker 1: it was the border between two countries. But also like
Speaker 1: it took fucking if you were like in the government
Speaker 1: in Austin in Texas. It took like days or weeks
Speaker 1: to get out there. Right like that, they were not
Speaker 1: like realistic concerns about immigration for a while because it
Speaker 1: was just like not within the state's capacity to really
Speaker 1: worry about too much. This starts to change in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. Um. And one of the first, like
Speaker 1: one of the thing that Harlan's Carter's dad is a
Speaker 1: part of because he's one of the very first border
Speaker 1: Border Patrol agents. There's this city called the Rado, which
Speaker 1: is where he grows up and where he kills Raymond Casian.
Speaker 1: It's like a border town and it's primarily Mexican. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's so because it's primarily Mexican. It's run by Mexicans,
Speaker 1: right because it was Mexico two decades ago. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: like and and and nobody really thought much about it,
Speaker 1: but he thought about it. The Border Patrol sends a
Speaker 1: guy in and he's like, holy fuck, all these Mexicans
Speaker 1: are in charge down here. Um. And like the Border
Speaker 1: Patrol is friendly with the local police who are Mexican.
Speaker 1: We got to change that. So they like clean house
Speaker 1: at the Border Patrol. They send in guys in the
Speaker 1: Border Patrol like does drive by shootings of the police station. Um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's fucking gay shit. Um. And they take over,
Speaker 1: like they take over the town in order to like
Speaker 1: force a white spacis kind of like system over it, right.
Speaker 1: And Harlan Carter's dad is the one doing that right
Speaker 1: at the same time that he murders a Mexican kid, um,
Speaker 1: claiming that he thought the kid had stolen his mom's car.
Speaker 1: Like this kid is out by a swimming hole by
Speaker 1: the way when this happens. So that's like Harlon Carter,
Speaker 1: like this was not like an accident. Harlan Carter was
Speaker 1: a was a conscious soldier of white supremacy, um, going
Speaker 1: out of his way to to do it better. Um.
Speaker 1: And he was good at what he did. Um, which
Speaker 1: is not great, not great at all anyway anyway, he
Speaker 1: means so in r A and they're gonna take it
Speaker 1: from our cold dead hands. Thanks Charleston Heston, you know, um,
Speaker 1: which you know brings us again more to the to
Speaker 1: the modern era where it became such a again an
Speaker 1: identity flash point as far as like you know, it
Speaker 1: was almost like like you said, this single person voters
Speaker 1: thing you could almost see this like mad. It's like
Speaker 1: this mad like almost like hungry, hungry hipposts. It's just
Speaker 1: like mad grab for what issue is gonna belong to?
Speaker 1: What people? So like this identity around guns, it was
Speaker 1: just like Reagan and him was like dips, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm saying like that was ours, right, Yeah, after he
Speaker 1: started gun control in California, after he started gun control
Speaker 1: of California, which is like just the most bizarre things.
Speaker 1: So anyway, um, it brings us to why in the world,
Speaker 1: like how do you how do you get to a
Speaker 1: place where surveyed of Republican gun owners who think that
Speaker 1: there are some laws that actually makes sense, but won't
Speaker 1: nobody say nothing? Why can't we get our elected officials
Speaker 1: to do what your people is asking you to do?
Speaker 1: And it's easy to just be like, well, it's the
Speaker 1: n r A, because it kind of is. But what
Speaker 1: what do they got? Like why y'all so scared of them?
Speaker 1: Like that's that's one of the one of the interesting
Speaker 1: questions that you know, we could ask if our politicians
Speaker 1: are you so scared of him? Like what what they
Speaker 1: got that we don't what you're Yeah, I'm mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a couple of things. So the n
Speaker 1: r A after he takes over, I think a UM,
Speaker 1: the modern n r A. One of the moments that
Speaker 1: people will really say is like kind of the thing
Speaker 1: that like is a useful kind of chapter point in
Speaker 1: the history of the n r A is UM. I
Speaker 1: think it was two thousand when Charlton Heston, you know,
Speaker 1: holds that fucking ancient rifle up from my whole day.
Speaker 1: And again it's at one of those in there was
Speaker 1: justin nr A meeting, right like, it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those yearly members meetings that he does this UM that's
Speaker 1: generally picked as as kind of the moment, and part
Speaker 1: of why is that you have Hart Carter steers it
Speaker 1: towards Second Amendment like absolutism, and they start building on that.
Speaker 1: They become very effective at lobbying, but they're not immediately effective.
Speaker 1: And in one of the areas in which you can
Speaker 1: see them being like less effective than they became is
Speaker 1: that in nineteen ninety four, the Assault Weapons Band passes, right. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of debate over the degree to which it worked. UM.
Speaker 1: There were less mass shootings under it. Actual gun violence
Speaker 1: not really different as result of it like overall, this
Speaker 1: gets into broader questions of like what gun violence actually
Speaker 1: looks like versus what gun violence tends to get on
Speaker 1: the news, because our fifteens are not a particularly common
Speaker 1: gun used in gun violence compared to small handguns, which
Speaker 1: is like nearly the vast majority. But anyway, that's outside
Speaker 1: of the point you saw weapen span gets pass um.
Speaker 1: It is past. A lot of other stuff is happening,
Speaker 1: including you have Waco, you have Ruby Ridge, you have
Speaker 1: the home the city bombing in this kind of period
Speaker 1: immediately before and after the a w B, so a
Speaker 1: lot of what happens with that is tight into the
Speaker 1: militia movement. A lot of the militia movement UM is
Speaker 1: kind of born in the shadow of the assault weapons
Speaker 1: ban UM and the Republicans kind of it. It's it
Speaker 1: takes you know, it's it's law for about a decade,
Speaker 1: UM for a decade, and then it comes up basically
Speaker 1: for renewal in two thousand four. And by the time
Speaker 1: two thousand four comes around. In that decade, the n
Speaker 1: r A has kind of solidified its position as the
Speaker 1: most effective fundraising arm of the Republican Party. UM A
Speaker 1: few years like twelve years after that, they'll give thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars to Domin campaign at the least, right, and
Speaker 1: like you know, it's hard to actually know how much
Speaker 1: they give. The bag is too big. The bag is huge.
Speaker 1: They give a lot funkload of money to George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: And so George W. Bush does two things. One he
Speaker 1: does not his administration there's no attempt to renew the
Speaker 1: assault weapons Ban UM. And then the other thing he does,
Speaker 1: like the next year, there's a push by the n
Speaker 1: r A to put through this like law that makes
Speaker 1: it impossible, basically makes it impossible to sue gun manufacturers
Speaker 1: for what's done with their guns. UM. And there's a
Speaker 1: couple of other things that happened in a similar time frame,
Speaker 1: including Republicans And this is in the late nineties early
Speaker 1: two thousand's strip all funding from the CDC to research
Speaker 1: gun violence, UM and to research like what happens like
Speaker 1: what what what is the health impact of guns? Rit? Large? Right, UM.
Speaker 1: So all of this stuff is happening in this kind
Speaker 1: of decade after the passage of the assault weapons Ban,
Speaker 1: which really accelerates the growth because they have this the
Speaker 1: the a WB is seen as this is proof that
Speaker 1: they're coming for everything, right, like this was the first. Um,
Speaker 1: You'll get a lot of statements like registration means confiscation,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, sometimes not helped by Democratic
Speaker 1: politicians who will literally say they want to confiscate all guns. Um.
Speaker 1: But you get this. That decade is really and Carter
Speaker 1: is dead by this point, but he he builds the
Speaker 1: machine that makes that decade of activism. And this is
Speaker 1: really that that ten year period two thousand and four
Speaker 1: is the most effective period in the n r AS history. Um.
Speaker 1: They're influential after that, but obviously in the last couple
Speaker 1: of years they've started to fall apart as an organization.
Speaker 1: So really Carter builds this machine and he hands it
Speaker 1: off to Wayne Lapierre and from nine to two thousand
Speaker 1: five or six, it really it lays a lot of
Speaker 1: the groundwork for making it kind of impossible to have
Speaker 1: not to have conversations about gun control that are productive
Speaker 1: or to pass laws that are productive. Because in two
Speaker 1: thousand you get Emmerson v. United States, which is the
Speaker 1: first Supreme Court case that makes it that that recognizes
Speaker 1: the second as an individual right. UM. And it's not
Speaker 1: really clear entirely what that means until d C versus
Speaker 1: Heller in two thousand eight, and one of the things
Speaker 1: DC versus Heller says is that like you can't you
Speaker 1: can't just say people can't own a class of firearm, right, um,
Speaker 1: like a handgun, right, Like you can't just say no handguns,
Speaker 1: you know, like like what Canada is at something to
Speaker 1: do right now, Like you're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand and ten the Second Amendment
Speaker 1: gets incorporated. So really that like ten is kind of
Speaker 1: the most important period of actual things the n r
Speaker 1: A accomplishes. And because of rampant corruption on behalf of Lapierre,
Speaker 1: they start to fall apart after that. But the things
Speaker 1: that they've set up, both legally and and culturally, and
Speaker 1: the cultural stuff particularly started under Characas. He was a
Speaker 1: big absolutist. He was a big believer of their coming
Speaker 1: for your guns. This is like part of a communist takeover.
Speaker 1: This is part of like people who are not white
Speaker 1: trying to take over the country and like we need
Speaker 1: these you know that. Um that is is uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what goes down. Yeah, man, thanks for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah that uh, drying of the concrete that like this
Speaker 1: is the discussion. This is the only way we look
Speaker 1: at it. And if you look at this any differently,
Speaker 1: you out the set is is it? It took that
Speaker 1: decade to get there. And I'm even like tripping, like,
Speaker 1: who'se homie that just got like the homie that just
Speaker 1: got like, uh, you know, busted for corruption that was
Speaker 1: leading it. What's the homie's name? Oh fucking Wayne Lapierrea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was Wayne Lapierre. But they still just didn't they
Speaker 1: just read they just read still like he's there's some good.
Speaker 1: There's a good podcast. Asked on what happened in the
Speaker 1: n r A one secon I'm gonna look this up
Speaker 1: because people should listen to it, uh, because it really
Speaker 1: goes into like how fucking corrupt and shitty he is,
Speaker 1: but he's still in charge and that I think that
Speaker 1: I think that is a credit to how effective Carter
Speaker 1: was turning the n r A into an unparalleled like
Speaker 1: political Yeah, we've really never seen nothing like it. That
Speaker 1: like you, no matter what anyone actually thinks or feels,
Speaker 1: you got a total line and you can't you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So and that and the idea of
Speaker 1: like turning an issue into your very identity is a
Speaker 1: power that I feel like, uh for this is like
Speaker 1: why her politics exist because it's like we understand that.
Speaker 1: I understand how that happens. You know. What I'm saying
Speaker 1: is that an issue becomes an identity and to break
Speaker 1: that is very, very very difficult. And another thing that
Speaker 1: the n r A does that Democrats have never understood
Speaker 1: and I don't know if they ever will, is the
Speaker 1: political value of setting the definition. Because they're they're the
Speaker 1: worst at this, They're unbelievably And this is a thing
Speaker 1: I was a debate kid, right, when you when you're
Speaker 1: doing a competition debate, you start with your definitions, right,
Speaker 1: And there's the logical argument to be made. If you're
Speaker 1: having an actual friendly debate over issues with like somebody
Speaker 1: that you care about and you're both willing to like
Speaker 1: learn something, it's very helpful to start with. Here is
Speaker 1: what I mean when I say the first, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: first Amendment. Here's what I mean when I say like government,
Speaker 1: like liberty or whatever. Like, Here's what I mean when
Speaker 1: I say Here's what I mean when I say a
Speaker 1: red flag law. Right, Here's what when when I say
Speaker 1: red flag law. This is what I'm what I mean, right,
Speaker 1: if you're having a good faith discussion, it's useful to
Speaker 1: do that because then you're not arguing against a shadow. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think we've all been in a situation where you're
Speaker 1: like having an argument with somebody you care about, and
Speaker 1: then you realize that you're not actually disagreeing, you just
Speaker 1: are defining different the same thing in different ways. And
Speaker 1: so like that's where the arguments coming up. That happens
Speaker 1: between people of good will. If you're not a person
Speaker 1: of goodwill, if you want to just like fuck the discussion,
Speaker 1: then you And then again, the right does this with
Speaker 1: everything you hop in and you say, a red flag
Speaker 1: law means a law that will allow the police to
Speaker 1: take guns away from Republicans because they yeah, because they
Speaker 1: believe in this or they believe in that, like the
Speaker 1: they'll define you know, that is a a um and
Speaker 1: and this is again part of what's toxic about this
Speaker 1: is that it it makes it impossible to have important discussions.
Speaker 1: So an important discussion about our red flag laws. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're saying we want to take guns away from people
Speaker 1: who are violent, people who make threats. Um, let's make
Speaker 1: sure this law is written in such a way that
Speaker 1: the police cannot just say, well, I think being a
Speaker 1: BLM organizer is you're mentally unstable, so let's go bust
Speaker 1: into this guy's house and take his gun and know
Speaker 1: we got shot. That's a real fear. It's a real
Speaker 1: fear that they might say, oh, if you're trans that's
Speaker 1: a mental illness, you don't get to have guns. That
Speaker 1: is a real legitimate fear. Absolutely, and of course, to
Speaker 1: be to be entirely fair, it's not unreasonable for conservatives
Speaker 1: to be like, well, if if you're gonna make a
Speaker 1: red flag law, I want to know that you're not
Speaker 1: going to define my politics. Is making me like that
Speaker 1: is not an unreasonable fear. But when you just say
Speaker 1: that's what this is, and when you you start fearmongering
Speaker 1: about then there cannot be a discussion about it, right
Speaker 1: because you have defined the law in such a way
Speaker 1: that like this is. And if you're if you have
Speaker 1: more competent people who were Democrats about this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: they would be pushing against them. And I think doing
Speaker 1: stuff more like saying, let we want a law to
Speaker 1: take guns from people who hit their wives and kids. Right,
Speaker 1: we wake a law to take guns away from people
Speaker 1: who threatened mass shootings. Right, clear, that's what we want. Right.
Speaker 1: That's harder to fight than like just saying we want
Speaker 1: a red flag lag to find a like right, this
Speaker 1: is again and this is what the the n r
Speaker 1: A pioneers this and now it's everything right now, it's
Speaker 1: um the like the right is in the process of
Speaker 1: defining support for LGBT rights. It's like support for grooming. Grooming. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, if you say this, then that means
Speaker 1: you're that. And by the time you start arguing with them,
Speaker 1: because some chunk of people are going to get are
Speaker 1: going to like get caught up in that, and we'll
Speaker 1: start like being like, well, obviously I don't like this
Speaker 1: or I don't like that, and so like this must
Speaker 1: not be okay, and so like let's have a discussion
Speaker 1: about what stuff we should be and like then you're
Speaker 1: on their side. Yeah, no matter what, even if you
Speaker 1: think you're being reasonable, you have yielded the floor to
Speaker 1: these files. Um. And that's that's and that's really like
Speaker 1: really that's like that to me, what you're saying is
Speaker 1: dull because that's like that's that's the type of training,
Speaker 1: Like you said, like a lot of us need to
Speaker 1: have to where it's like I'm not gonna let you
Speaker 1: define my terms. And and it's this especially range true
Speaker 1: for black people because you're now all of a sudden
Speaker 1: and I feel like black people is not letting you
Speaker 1: have it. Like you can't define woke. I don't care
Speaker 1: what the funk you say it is. That's not what
Speaker 1: it is. You know what I'm saying. You can't want
Speaker 1: critical race theory. You're just telling each other that's what
Speaker 1: it means. Yeah, we know that's not what it means.
Speaker 1: On what the you talking about? You know that they've
Speaker 1: done with Sorry, Yeah, but like that's incredibly important. What
Speaker 1: you've said, what they've done with critical race theory is
Speaker 1: the same ship. It's the n r A playbook, and
Speaker 1: it it makes it impossible. It makes it impossible for
Speaker 1: you to have a productive discussion, and it makes it
Speaker 1: impossible for them. Two, it makes it impossible for their
Speaker 1: voters to think about stuff like if you actually I mean,
Speaker 1: among other things, yeah, it's it's. Yeah. My biggest fight
Speaker 1: with that is most of the time is like you
Speaker 1: don't even know what it means. So I can't even
Speaker 1: I don't even know what we're arguing over like because
Speaker 1: you don't know what it means. What you're saying is
Speaker 1: not critical race theory. What you're saying is teaching about history.
Speaker 1: You're scared of a boogeyman that isn't really. You're scared
Speaker 1: of a boogeyman that isn't really. You made that up,
Speaker 1: and now you're going to engage with this. It's not happen, yes,
Speaker 1: Like what makes it of is not a thing, and
Speaker 1: you need to like you're just trying to justify censorship,
Speaker 1: Like that's the that's the appropriate response. But they keep
Speaker 1: getting caught up and this is it's amazing. Again. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's important about studying Carter and studying
Speaker 1: the history of the n r A is this is
Speaker 1: a very old set of strat tactics super um and
Speaker 1: it ext it's um in a lot of ways. It's
Speaker 1: like early ship posting, right, but you there's not they're not.
Speaker 1: I amn't seeing the fucking Dems figure out a solution
Speaker 1: to this ship yet. Um. I think I know how
Speaker 1: to deal with it. Um. But it's also like it's
Speaker 1: so much is caught up, so much of like our
Speaker 1: potential to have a future is caught up. In whether
Speaker 1: or not people who are in politics figure out how
Speaker 1: to deal with this bad faith shit. Um and I
Speaker 1: I I don't think they are. And part of it
Speaker 1: is that they have built their fundraising arm around the
Speaker 1: terms that the right has successfully defined to their people
Speaker 1: in a specific way. Right, And so instead of having
Speaker 1: more productive discussions about some of this stuff and more
Speaker 1: productive discussions about like how to protect people, it all
Speaker 1: occurs within this kind of this kind of framework of
Speaker 1: like catch phrases that are good at getting the base
Speaker 1: grilled up and getting fun and good at putting together you.
Speaker 1: It's it's like this ship with like the governor Louisiana,
Speaker 1: right Democrat. There's this anti trans you know, um kids
Speaker 1: in sports law that just like passed. He could have
Speaker 1: vetoed it instead he he neglect He said he was
Speaker 1: not going to veto it, but posted like a tearful
Speaker 1: video about how much he supports trans kids. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like I'm sure he's gonna fund raise off that, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's good, it's gonna be fine, but you could
Speaker 1: do something, Yeah. I I flash to a moment years, years,
Speaker 1: years back during the a bathroom thing. You know, we
Speaker 1: was arguing over bathrooms. I remember it was a lady
Speaker 1: at our chart twiies to go to that past us
Speaker 1: me and me and my wife. I'm like, hey, what
Speaker 1: do you guys think about the bathroom thing? We were like,
Speaker 1: it's fine, I don't care, Like you're my house is
Speaker 1: my house is a gender neutral baute? You ever been
Speaker 1: to a beach? Like those are all? Jena like what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Like this is stupid? And I
Speaker 1: remember the way that she looked at me, like her
Speaker 1: eyes got big and she was just like, dude, I
Speaker 1: like whispering. I totally agree. I don't understand a big deal.
Speaker 1: I don't like whispering, like like afraid to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is Yeah, I don't understand what the
Speaker 1: hubub is about. And I was like, that's that's what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, Like you know, even even even the
Speaker 1: stuff that's being defined to you as such, You're like,
Speaker 1: well that's stupid, you know, Like Okay, so all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, sexual sault sexual salts are gonna happen if
Speaker 1: we have gender neutral bathrooms, Like as if sexual saults
Speaker 1: don't already happen, you know what I'm saying, Like, so
Speaker 1: just this like hole in the logic that at your core.
Speaker 1: You like, we're not even at your core, just like
Speaker 1: in the front of your mind you're like this, well
Speaker 1: that don't even it. That don't bother me the way
Speaker 1: you're telling me it's supposed to bother me. So your
Speaker 1: question is am I tripping or y'all tripping? And what
Speaker 1: I want all my listeners to say, you're to realize
Speaker 1: it's like, nah, you're not tripping. This it's bullshit. It
Speaker 1: really is. And you ain't gotta like, you ain't gotta
Speaker 1: you ain't gotta You ain't gotta tell the line. You
Speaker 1: ain't gotta tell the line if you honestly, especially around
Speaker 1: this thing like don't be afraid to tell you know,
Speaker 1: young seventh grade prop when your gang is chasing me,
Speaker 1: Hey homie, you gotta get out the bathroom because they're
Speaker 1: gonna jump you. And I think that's stupid. Yeah, yeah, well, well,
Speaker 1: kind there's probably more that should be said about this.
Speaker 1: I get like, you know, I I come at this
Speaker 1: from a fundamentally different perspective than a lot of Democrats,
Speaker 1: because I am something of an absolutist in the right
Speaker 1: to self defense and the right to be armed. Fundamentally,
Speaker 1: I don't think the cops should be able to own
Speaker 1: anything that I can't UM, And I'm I'm not wild
Speaker 1: about the idea of a national military, um of a
Speaker 1: standing national military. But uh, like I and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously there's people on the left side of the program
Speaker 1: movement who are absolutely no, no compromise, no law type things.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I tend to think there ship you can do. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not against the idea of fucking
Speaker 1: like waiting periods. Inherently, I think there should be some
Speaker 1: option for like, if you've already got a collection or
Speaker 1: a c h L. Like, why would a waiting period
Speaker 1: apply to you? You already have guns. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's kind of matter. But like, yeah, there's enough people
Speaker 1: who like buy a gun and kill themselves that that day,
Speaker 1: or enough people who like buy a gun that fucking
Speaker 1: guy who shot up that hospital the same day, and
Speaker 1: maybe if you could cool him down right, Like again,
Speaker 1: there's there's stuff I think that can be done and
Speaker 1: and that should be talked about, because even though I
Speaker 1: don't think the overall I don't think the fundamental solutions
Speaker 1: to the fundamental problems that we're talking about today, any
Speaker 1: of them will be done by voting or passing laws
Speaker 1: because it's too big, you know, like fundamentally you're dealing
Speaker 1: with fucking white supremacy here and you're not kind of
Speaker 1: voted out. Um. And also, I don't think you should
Speaker 1: stop people who are poor or or like of normal
Speaker 1: income from being able to arm themselves, which is another
Speaker 1: thing Democrats keep proposing. It's like, let's put a thousand
Speaker 1: percent excise tax in an a R fifteen, so it's
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. Rich people should happen, right, that's the
Speaker 1: Is that what's gonna make Yeah? Yeah, yeah yeah, because
Speaker 1: the kid at fucking Uvaldi just got a credit card
Speaker 1: and bought like a three or four thousand dollar firearm
Speaker 1: and like managed it because he didn't care about paying
Speaker 1: it back. So like maybe well let's talk about some
Speaker 1: other solutions. Um. But um yeah, So I have I
Speaker 1: come I come at this from like a different position,
Speaker 1: but I do think I think it's immoral to be like,
Speaker 1: let's just not talk about doing anything, because I don't like,
Speaker 1: like it's people are fucking like Vivaldi, Parkland, fucking Sandy Hook.
Speaker 1: Like it's fucked up to say, like, well, there's nothing
Speaker 1: that should be attempted here um or or to say
Speaker 1: let's just turn schools into fortresses. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: That's not good for kids, that's good for anything. So
Speaker 1: I think, like I would love it if we could
Speaker 1: do something, um. But also I think it is it's
Speaker 1: it's also immoral too. It's a moral fundamentally if you
Speaker 1: are the Democratic a democratic voter, but if you are
Speaker 1: a Democrat in power, it is immorl to not be
Speaker 1: fucking better at seeing what these people are doing and
Speaker 1: how they get away with what they're doing. Um. And
Speaker 1: the fact that if they haven't for so fucking long,
Speaker 1: and it extends everywhere, it's crt if the anti transplantic
Speaker 1: it's all the same playbook. You have to fucking understand
Speaker 1: what they're doing and and actually fight it effectively, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just use the fear of the fuccory that
Speaker 1: they're doing to drive people to like register to blue
Speaker 1: no matter who. Um. And if they were actually doing that,
Speaker 1: the right wouldn't be winning as often as they are.
Speaker 1: Heep preaching that boy preaching, Now, you're right, man. It's
Speaker 1: like when you're just trying to put your finger on jello.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna be chasing, chasing the gloves, and that's
Speaker 1: basically what democrats doing. They just chasing these gloves, playing
Speaker 1: whack a mole. And it's funny to watch, in funny
Speaker 1: in a horrible way, in a sense that like they're
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, nah, keep chasing us. You know, you're
Speaker 1: just you're just swinging a person around, you know, and
Speaker 1: laughing as you're doing it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, nah nailed it. Yeah, thank you for that, Robert,
Speaker 1: thank you. This was fun. Yeah, dog like dude, I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody know who you already, and you know what I'm saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta book. It's
Speaker 1: called After the Revolution. You can find it everywhere right now,
Speaker 1: including on on on the the Amazons if you, if
Speaker 1: you are so inclined, man, that book is very fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I enjoy, you know, fun in a in
Speaker 1: an entertaining still pretty sad But yeah, it was fun
Speaker 1: in an entertaining, still pretty sad way to write. Joe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, and uh, Sophie right there, get off, get
Speaker 1: off there, Sophie, say what's up there? It is? Sophie
Speaker 1: is the greatest at holding her tongue when she has comments.
Speaker 1: I've never seen him wye so good at it does? Anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: that's the show. It'll probably be. This will most likely
Speaker 1: be the second part because this is over an hour
Speaker 1: and uh, because that boy Rob got hot. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm gonna have I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: a I'm gonna have Matt play some Oregon hits under
Speaker 1: there done. You know what I'm saying. Make you sound
Speaker 1: like a preacher. All right? Anyway, all right, shows over
Speaker 1: means yeah, this is here. Thing was recorded by Me
Speaker 1: Propaganda and East Low Spoil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This
Speaker 1: smug was mixed, edited, mastered, and scored by Matt Ososki.
Speaker 1: I can totally say his name, guys, it was it
Speaker 1: was a stick. He's going by Matt now again because
Speaker 1: he got two legal situations with the name Headlights. You know,
Speaker 1: commen used to be called common sense tip t I
Speaker 1: was tipped Sometimes it happens. Executive produced by the one
Speaker 1: and Only Sophie Lichtman for a Cool Zone Media and
Speaker 1: the theme music by the one and only Gold Tips
Speaker 1: Gold Tips d J Shawan p So y'all just remember
Speaker 1: listen every time you check in. If you understand city living,
Speaker 1: you understand politics. See how next week you Maine, Maine.
Speaker 1: When he means want you, he means