April 14, 2023 • 52 mins
From the nation's capital to the woods of Georgia and beyond, Jordan Klepper talks with lawmakers, militia members, and more to solve America's gun crisis once and for all. This special originally aired in June, 2017. Watch more at https://www.youtube.com/comedycentral.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy CENTRALOW.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey there, this is Jordan Klepper and you're about to
hear my special from a few years back, Jordan Klepper
Solves Guns. Spoiler alerts. I did not solve guns. It
was a hyperbolic comedic premiss meant to highlight the uniquely
American problem of gun violence. It's a no hour long
documentary special inspired by some of my Daily Show field pieces,
where I attempt to get at the heart of the
(00:26):
gun controlled debate in America by talking with people on
both sides, including Senator Corey Booker and my dad's cousin Pete.
You can watch the full video version on Comedy Central's YouTube,
and be sure to catch me hosting The Daily Show
all next week at eleven ten pm Central. On Comedy Central.
I mentioned a warzone. I'm going to embed in a
(00:47):
country with over three hundred million guns, a country where
in twenty fourteen, thirty three thousand people died due to
gun violence, A country whose citizens are twenty five times
more likely to be murdered by a gun than any
other civilized nation, to America. You ever shot it back up, back, back, back,
back back, good the country I'm talking about. Is America
(01:14):
good go? We don't have a permit ship gun turs
American as apple pie and short changing female workers. We
buy them in bulk, tattoo them over our abdomens, and
use them to kill more people than any other developed country.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
All out panic Sunday morning after a gunman opens fire.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
It was a pretty nasty fight that preceded the deadly shooting.
Besides that, gun ranges are rare in our area. But
it has happened before, and America is only getting gun
here after electing the most pro Second Amendment and least
First Amendment president in recent memory.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
The NRA has led the fight time and time again
to protect our fundamental.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Freedoms, leading the charge the National Rifle Association by supporting
Trump's campaign with thirty million dollars, the big liest amount
spent by any outside group, and they don't mind bragging
about it in one of their classic green screen rams.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Gun owners made this election happen. You were the special
courses that swung this election and send Donald Trump and
Mike Pence to the White House.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
With the twenty sixteen campaign behind them. The NRA has
set its sights on a homegrown enemy the anti Second
Amendment political and media elites, the government elite, bureaucratic elites.
But who are these mysterious elites who want nothing less
than to rip guns away from hard working Americans?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Me?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Woe am I? I'm Jordan Klepper, I'm enlightened, I'm progressive,
and I feel like I was put on this earth
to enact righteous change. AKA. I'm a twenty seventeen comedian.
I have four brown rice cooker, twelve gay friends, and
five podcasts. I tweet blogs, mean think pieces and tumble
gifts powerful thought provoking gifts. Follow me on Instagram. As
a television personality, I've repeatedly recorded on america obsession with guns.
(03:01):
Despite my incredible efforts, guns are still a problem. Apparently
five minute segments aren't enough to solve America's gun crisis. Thankfully,
Comedy Central has given me an hour long special. But
today I don't just report on America's gun crisis. I
solve the motherfucker. It's time somebody solved guns. Ie stopped
(03:26):
the thirty three thousand gun deaths that happen in America
every year. But first I need to define the problem guns.
What is a gun? If you ask an NRA lobbyist.
Speaker 6 (03:36):
He might say the gun is a symbol in American
politics as much as it's a real thing. It's also
a symbol.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, the gun is a symbol of a dick. If
you got a little one, you go and get a gun.
It's like the corvette for paranoid people. But how does
that symbol impact a mother from the South side of Chicago.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
I'm seeing gun violence and homes. I'm seeing gun violence
in school. It's not a suburban problem or a city problem.
It's an American problem.
Speaker 8 (04:04):
Na one More.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
America is clearly divided.
Speaker 9 (04:08):
The most violent places in this country have the strictest
gun controls.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
But the pain of gun violence is being felt across
the country. In twenty sixteen, my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan,
once known mainly for its booming cellery industry, micro breweries,
and the country's first outdoor pedestrian mall, came to prominence
for something much more horrific.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
A prosecutor says, uber driver Jason Bryan Dalton gun down
and killed six people Saturday in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Speaker 8 (04:37):
We are a.
Speaker 10 (04:37):
Community that is much more than this episode of violence.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
My family is from Kalamazoo. It's where I learned to
wear a tie in shorts. This just got personal. Our
country has three hundred million guns, or technically speaking, a
shitload of guns in the hands of one hundred and
ten million gun owners. My goal get those guns out
of those trigger happy hands. I needed someone in power
(05:03):
who shared my outrage when hearing that ninety two people
die every day from gun violence.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
There is enough blood, there is enough death.
Speaker 8 (05:13):
Enough killing going on.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
We have all the evidence we need that we need
to do more. Doing nothing is unacceptable.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
That was my guy. Senator Corey Booker has fought to
keep guns off the streets of Newark and battled Congress
to pass common sense gun reform. We'd figure out how
to get rid of guns over international pancakes. Let's say
this plate is America. Something on this plate will kill you.
(05:44):
Bacon slash guns. Right, Americans love bacon slash guns, but
too many Americans die because of bacon slash guns. So
how do we stop dumb people from eating bacon?
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Well, first of all, as you are ridiculously condemning when
you call people dumb and you insult their intelligence. All right, Dad,
I don't want to take away their bacon or their guns.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You're a Democrat, right, I am a Democrat, a liberal.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
I am a guy that could be considered a liberal
in my views.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Okay, so much so between you and me. Yes, getting
rid of the Second Amendments.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Well, we're not going to get rid of the Second Amendment.
It's something that we don't.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Want to do because you can't do it.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
No, in order to make people safe, we don't need
to throw out one of our constitutional amendments.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, but I mean, come on, how many constitutional amendments
do we have?
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Well, we've thrown out some of the past, which I'm
really happy we did.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, you got to update these things, and this is
maybe the second oldest one. You think I'm walking around
here with an iPhone two.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
That's the fear tactics that often people want you to
believe that somebody's going to try to get rid of
all the guns and somebody's coming after their guns. That
is not a necessary thing.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Lord bacon slash guns placed. Booker, like many other Democrats,
felt like his hands were tied. Last June, in response
to the Pulse nightclub shooting, Senators filibuster to expand background
checks and prevent gun sales to peace people on the
terrorist watch list, while House Democrats staged to sit in
which resulted in shit. All efforts to pass any meaningful
(07:09):
regulations continue to get shot down by Republicans and the
gun lobby, insisting these liberal elites are coming for your guns.
Speaker 5 (07:18):
The tactic has been, not only are we going to
not pass background check laws or close the terrorist loophole,
but we're also going to take those agencies that could
be helping us, the CDC ATF, and we're going to
cripple them.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
One agency that's being crippled is the ATF's National Tracing Center.
Police nationwide use the Tracing Center to track firearms, solve
violent crimes, and catch criminals before these weapons can be
used again. I met with former ATF agent David Chipman
to see the front line of America's war on gun crime.
Speaker 11 (07:49):
Why are we here, Well, we're here because we're in
a location that's vastly superior technology wise than ATF's Tracing Center.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
This is the forefront of our battle against guns. This
place with a guy masturbating over there at that computer.
Speaker 11 (08:06):
The technology at the Tracing Center is like this library
thirty or forty years ago.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So like the Library and the first Ghostbusters. Please tell
me the Tracing Center at least now has women in it.
Speaker 11 (08:18):
There are women at the Tracing Center. The reality is
because they don't have computers, because they have.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Just they what they don't have computers.
Speaker 11 (08:26):
It's against the law to have computers that house a
searchable database that might be construed as a registry of guns.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
In America, that's right. The country's only federal facility that
helps police officers trace and solve gun crimes is literally
forbidden to use computers to search gun records. Thanks to
the lobby and power of the NRA. A nineteen eighty
six federal law made it illegal for the Tracing Center
to use searchable databases of any kind, in what legal
(08:53):
scholars have called one of the most just plain dickish
laws in history. So instead of solving murders using base
computing tools, the Tracing Centers roughly fifty employees process over
three hundred and seventy thousand requests a year, scrambling through
walls of boxes and going blind scanning microfiche machines from
the seventies in twenty seventeen. Oh yeah, they also have
(09:14):
so many boxes they fear their floor could cave in.
They keep records in steal storage spaces outside and they
receive about two million new gun records a month, and
you better hope they aren't in an Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker 11 (09:27):
So if ATF receives any information from a gun dealer
in an Excel spreadsheet which is searchable, they have to
go through a complicated process of dumbing that information down.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Do you guys actually have to make it harder for yourselves?
Speaker 11 (09:40):
Yes, a law enforcement agency needs to spend tax dollars
making a document dumber.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Why do Americans make it so hard on ourselves to
fix this gun problem?
Speaker 11 (09:52):
The NRA raises a lot of money based on fear.
They can make people scared that the big bad government
agents like me fly in black helicopters, that if we
had computerized gun records, then the government would take the guns.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
We are so fucked. As I dramatically portrayed moving through
this children's library with an ease and grace unknown to
ATF agents, it became all too clear. Because of the
gun lobby in America today, it's easier to find gun
the book than gun the gun. And that's satire, right,
(10:33):
and that's irony, and that's coincidence? Is it metaphor?
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Problems is when it comes to getting legislation passed, there's
a lot of people out there that are just pressured
by the NRA not to take a step out and
do what most Americans want them to do.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So what can we do a guy like me, just
a regular guy who's a celebrity on TV with millions
of followers. What can a little me do?
Speaker 5 (10:59):
Go for and seek the truth and then tell people
about it.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Maybe if we get the Tracing Center some computers, that's
at least a step in the right direction.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
It is a not a step that would be a
leap into the twenty first century. That's necessary.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I love me a good leap.
Speaker 8 (11:19):
Down down.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
In a window list cargo van packed full of progress,
I made my way into West Virginia hoping to solve something.
I can see you, but I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
What are you're even doing here?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Drop it off some computers here for the Tracing Center,
just to try to upgrade some of their technology. Can
I just leave it here there? Somebody? It's some good stuff, okay,
right out? So we're not going to ban guns, and apparently,
(12:24):
when it comes to using technology to help deal with
gun crime. The bureaucracy was thicker than I thought. The
government was beholden to the NRA, and the NRA's power
stemmed from one off, debated sentence written at a time
when guns were muskets and lightning was witchcraft. The Second Amendment.
For over two hundred years, it's been consistently upheld by
elected officials, and in two thousand and eight, the Supreme
(12:46):
courtdinarily ruled that it's still granted all citizens the right
to have guns a well regulated militia being necessary to
the security of a free state, the right of the
people to keep in bare arms shall not be infringed
twenty seven words, and come a placement so strange it
may be responsible for thousands of deaths a year. Militias
(13:07):
may have been in vogue in seventeen ninety one, but
are they actually relevant today. The Southern Poverty Law Center,
which tracks extremist groups, estimates there were two hundred and
seventy six active militias last year from forty two in
two thousand and eight. Okay, so militias are booming, and
they're clearly among the biggest proponents of the Second Amendment.
(13:29):
I found one of those militias in the deep red South,
the Georgia Security Force. We the people are bloodthirsty. We
the people will have no mercy. We are the predators,
you the prey. Where the government failed, I would triumph.
I would infiltrate the dark heart of the gun debate
(13:51):
and convince militias to give up their guns. If I
could do that, then the rest of the gun owners
would surely follow, and once and for all, gun would
be Saul Jordan. The Georgia State Militia is led by
(14:28):
Chris hill Or, as he prefers to be called General
Blood Agent. Yes, sir, what would it take for me
to convince you that you don't need a gun anymore?
Speaker 12 (14:41):
You probably have to check my polts.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So the only way I'm gonna get your gun is
to pry it out of your cold dead hands.
Speaker 12 (14:49):
Absolutely, or after I run out of AMMO. Yeah, you
want to come and take it? Sure would disarm one
bullet at a time.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Fine, My master plan of asking nicely had failed our hands.
Speaker 8 (15:03):
Well, this group of.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Forty odd members who met once a month, we're serious
about one thing, training and keep saking their training two things.
I need to earn their trust. So what is behind
this need to have giant firearms.
Speaker 12 (15:19):
We are going to stand up for the second member right.
We are not going to yield one iota. I personally
feel like the government has breached its contract with the
people the House. They constantly put bills on the floor
limiting the type of firearm you can have, or limiting
the magazine capacity of these weapons, or creating gun free zones.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Do you really feel like the government is limiting your
access to guns? And I think I tripped over four
on the way here.
Speaker 12 (15:45):
If I want an automatic weapon, fully automatic, I should
have a fully automatic weapon.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Should you.
Speaker 12 (15:50):
It's to protect myself from harm and more importantly, to
protect our country from tyranny. I feel safe knowing that
there's people like us that if there's a gunman and
it's not in a gun free zone, there may be
somebody there that can kill the individual that's attempting to
harm other people.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That sounds great, but it's been shown that a good
guy with a gun does not stop a bad guy
with the gun. You're not hanging out in those malls,
You guys are out here in the fucking middle of nowhere.
Speaker 12 (16:18):
What I guess that depends on what demographic you're looking
at because some people talk about it and some people
are going to be about it.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
We're going to defer to ban kiss Well. I'm more
confused than ever. I need to understand the methods of
these man scouts, so I took in an intense lecture
by Blood Agent.
Speaker 12 (16:38):
He has got the unit, Russian Infant Regulars equipment AK
forty seven's RPGs, things of that nature. Not fed the cow,
but shit like that.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
As the group prepares to go on a top secret
reconnaissance mission, I realized they were never going to give
up their guns to some buttoned up East Coast liberal.
I have to make an effort to fit in, to
become one of them. Does everybody here get a cool nickname?
Speaker 9 (17:12):
Yes, sir?
Speaker 12 (17:12):
If you don't have one, will help give one for you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Could I be a cold brew or if that's taken
a French press.
Speaker 12 (17:20):
Colbrew works better?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I think you like that? Yes, sir, feels very bold
yet smooth finish. Oh yeah, definitely, I have my name.
Time to gear up, right, I'll change Yeah?
Speaker 8 (17:31):
Okay, hey guys.
Speaker 12 (18:00):
Oh my god, he's got a camouflage.
Speaker 11 (18:02):
Time.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I got the hints. No Blood Agent, they though I
have adopted their wardrobe choices, it still feels like openly
carrying a weapon is less about safety and more about intimidation.
Speaker 10 (18:14):
Is threatening you in any way right now?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yes, you're wearing a rifle? Do you not think this
is an all threatening.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
No, it's not being banished.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
You're freaking Santa clausing it right out at me right now,
so that you're pointing it at me by wearing a rifle.
Speaker 10 (18:28):
So a law enforcement points surf weapons that you ever
you see them.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
But they're also wearing badges that are like, we are
law enforcement. I'm trying to see these guns. It's something
other than weapons of war, but it's tough since they
are trapped to combative men in full dress camo. Is
that like the new Town gun or that the Aurora gun?
(18:53):
Is it the Orlando gun?
Speaker 9 (18:54):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
No, similar? This is Tanner Wite, Hanna White. Yes, what
are you gonna do with it?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, we're gonna blow the hog's head Jordan's.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Cards. Look out for the gun.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
All right now. They have the severed head of a
pig that they're prying open with a knife so they
can fill it with explosives to shoot it with a gun.
Can tannerite, it's not explosives. It's like the founding fathers
did it.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
No, they used that powder and cannon balls. Right, So.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I'm failing to connect, and the line between training and
camping is getting blurrier by the second. Somebody poured gas
lead on the fire, right, Yeah, that's a that's a
that's a bad move. I am desperate to plant the
seed of sanity by any means necessary. You want to
hear a scary story, Yes, there's a babysitter, but the
(19:54):
child she was babysitting to bed. It was a quiet night.
Suddenly the phone rings unexpectedly and she picks it up.
On the other end of the phone, somebody tells her
that most gun accidents happen inside the house. Okay, that
(20:15):
if you have a gun inside the house, you're more
prone to be open to an accident inside the house.
This is hopeless. All they want to do is shoot
stupid guns at a stupid pig's head. This idea that
(20:40):
good guys with guns would make our country safer proved
questionable when, after a full day of training, a dozen
Georgia good guys struggled to blow up a pig's head
with over two hundred rounds of ammo spirits are a
little bit down. Then we're gonna re prop the pig
back up because it fell down, and they're gonna try
to shoot it again. Three types of truck, the fourth,
fourth time, fourth time, the truck. These Second Amendment purists
(21:13):
won't give up their guns even a little. I have failed.
Looks like I'm in for a long night. Spending the
night with the militia is a heroine experience. It's open
and one I hope to never have is that the
(21:36):
flowerless chocolate cake put it on the bed. One of
them call themselves kill zone. You want to hang uh nohing,
(21:57):
So the tracing center won't accept my tax to duct solution.
This is all I can afford, to be honest. It's
just from the eighties, and the militia refuses to be
swayed by my Shelley esque tails. You heard the scary
story of the gun show loophool no reading one of
my favorite liberal fact blogs. I hit this, if just
one in every one hundred voters shifted from Trump to Clinton,
(22:21):
Hillary would have been president. And that's from Nate Silver,
who statistically has never ever been wrong. Bingo changing one
person's mind could be just as effective as swaying millions.
And that's not a lowering of expectations. It's just being smart.
I don't need to change all gun owners' minds. I
just need to change one. I need a place with
(22:41):
minds that could be easily swayed. And then it hit me.
I was from there, Michigan, a blue state gone red.
It is time to head home, surver it discover.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
How are you, sir? Welcome home? So here we are.
We're here Kalamazoo.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Bobby, tell me this, what is the gun debate like
here in Kalamazoo.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
We've had a tragedy in our community.
Speaker 10 (23:08):
What we're trying to do in Kalamazoo is figure out
how you move forward.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
This tragedy will not define us, it will not divide us,
and it will not defeat us.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Even in the months following the mass shooting in Kalamazoo,
the community and legislators were having difficulty addressing gun violence.
Speaker 13 (23:28):
Right now, a lot of the legislators are worried about
what the NRA is going to say about that type
of legislation, even though the vast majority of voters support it.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Is the NA that much of a boogeyman here.
Speaker 13 (23:37):
The TERA spends a lot of money on elections, and
they don't just do that in the federal level, they
do it at the state level too.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Michigan ed Helms was right. The gun debate tends to
focus on national policy, but many battles are being fought
more on the local level. In places like Michigan, state
legislators need to raise between fifty to one hundred thousand
dollars in campaign contributions every couple of years just to
stay competitive. One big donation can make or break a
small race, giving well funded national groups more power to
(24:04):
influence local politicians than their constituents. I've been trying to
get people to get rid of guns. Is that gonna
happen here in Kalamazoo?
Speaker 13 (24:11):
Now people use guns in their daily lives Here in Michigan.
I think you're really missing where the real conversation is.
It happens in the middle.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Okay, So if I was going to find this middle,
where would that be?
Speaker 13 (24:22):
Go talk to some gun owners, say what they think.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I came up with the idea all by myself to
talk to some Michigan gun owners. From everything I've seen
on television, I expected gun owners to act like this.
Speaker 13 (24:33):
Seventeen seventy six, will convince.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Again if you'd try to take our firearms. Do you understand?
Instead they acted like this kind of normal. But where
is that malleable mind I could convince to give up
their gun. I need a fool proof structure that boils
down the stories of Middle Americans and makes them sparkle.
(24:56):
Seven moderate gun owners.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
My name is Sheila Gary.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I'm a gun owner.
Speaker 9 (25:01):
I own three shotguns.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
I own three pistols. My hobbies are listening to music, mottle,
rail roading.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I will choose one and change their mind about guns.
Welcome to the moderate. It's like our first guest is
coming on up. It's a beautiful Anderson Castle. It's a
falling six degrees. I'm looking for someone to fall in
love with my ideas. Gary, thanks to be true. Thanks
for pulling the trigger and coming on up.
Speaker 14 (25:32):
Very good.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
David, thanks to be too. Thanks just going on just
every just everybody, just just it's a fucking called get great,
Get in there.
Speaker 8 (25:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Welcome to Historic Henderson Castle and Historic Kalamazoo. Excited about
you guys, one on one, get to know you. We're
gonna talk about life, love, guns, mostly guns, mostly be
talking about guns. Hi, tell me who is David the
gun Owner.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
David the gun Owner is a kid that grew up
in a household that had literally a firearm in every corner.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Did you grow up in Mogadishu, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. Wellsboro, Pennsylvania,
very rural.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Built my first firearm with my grandfather.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I built a savings account with my grandpa, so similar.
Let's trying to find some common ground on things that
don't involve killing something.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I like comedy.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Great, you see any style I have?
Speaker 5 (26:35):
Not, even though you're all over YouTube.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Biden didn't even sit and watch any of that. I
did look up your bio to know that you are
from Kalamazoo.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Great, but you didn't see any of the videos. No Ah,
none of my videos.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
I thought it went very well. I'd love to talk
to him more about this.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Bye.
Speaker 8 (26:56):
Rick.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Hi, Hi, I'm Rick.
Speaker 14 (26:58):
I'm from Detroit, Michigan, and I run a blog called
Legally Armed in Detroiter. My relationship with firearms started approximately
eleven twelve years ago. I was surprised by two nineteen
twenty year olds who were armed with the gun. I
went and I purchased a firearm. Then I made a
decision to become a firearms instructor.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Definite vibe going on with Rick. Maybe we'll get a
chance to talk a little bit later. There are a
lot of fully loaded minds here that I could see
myself going to the range with.
Speaker 15 (27:33):
Literally, I've taught thousands of women how to shoot. The
self confidence that they get out of learning something new
doesn't necessarily have to be a firearm too.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Men get self confidence after sure, absolutely they do. I
hit it off better with some than others. I don't
like the words a salt weapon. Every weapons are assault weapon.
Speaker 14 (27:51):
If I wanted to take your life bad enough, that.
Speaker 15 (27:56):
Is a weapon.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
There is one mind here I know I'm going to
relate to because I'm literally related to him. That Pete,
What up? Pete's a great guy. I've noted my entire life.
How's the houseboat?
Speaker 9 (28:15):
The duck boat is very good. You don't have a houseboat, Nelson.
He has not been around the family much lately. His
whole career has taken him away from the area, and
so he's kind of out of touch.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I know Pete the cousin. They're about Pete the gun owner.
Speaker 9 (28:30):
I have three guns they're all shotguns, and I strictly
use them for hunting.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Pete listens, which is great because I like to talk
to and at people. I think you consider yourself open
minded when it comes to guns.
Speaker 9 (28:44):
I would be willing to discuss.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
That's almost a yes, it's group day time. I really
need them to show me why they deserve to have
their minds changed.
Speaker 16 (28:57):
Entery is.
Speaker 15 (28:58):
It's a great program. They're the ones that are going
to go and fight for our rights.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
If you don't know.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
How a gun works, you're scared of it, or whatever,
let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
I brought three copies of the Constitution, just in case
I don't know what we were going to encounter today.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
The simple truth is we have to take care of
the drug drink.
Speaker 11 (29:16):
More people die from heroin overdoses than they do from
gunshots in this country.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
It's like machine gun fire out there. This is perfectly quiet.
Speaker 10 (29:24):
Your wife wouldn't even know you were shooting upstairs.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
I live in New York. There's no upstairs. Do you
want to take a little walk outside?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
We can't.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
I had a chance to talk with Jordan.
Speaker 14 (29:33):
If there was some give and take back and forth,
some good exchanges. I'm armed unless I have a reason
not to be. Fundamental safety is the responsibility of each
individual and not law enforcements. If he was willing to
share where he's coming from and see where that conversation goes,
I'd be open to it.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
This is really hard. Unfortunately some of you have to
go home tonight. I think Ian you have a heart
out at seven for a parent teacher conference. Yes, either way,
it's goodbye. And that was the time where I have
to choose one of you whose mind I will change,
(30:21):
and I choose Pete. Pete, will you be my moderate?
Speaker 9 (30:31):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Why do I choose Pete? He seems moderate and open
to discussion, but I try to change that. Doma yours?
Good luck with that. Great Now he's my cousin and
I'm less likely to get shot by a family member. Really,
is the pencil guy still here? Everybody else? Thank you?
Speaker 8 (30:59):
Pete?
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Come just yuck?
Speaker 8 (31:00):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I had my moderate pace up. Now I need a
surefire tactic to repair his pro gun opinion. Luckily, I
have to look no further than the one organization that
consistently holds sway over many gun owning brains, the NRA.
The New York Times has labeled them the most effective
civil rights group in the US today, which is a
(31:34):
real fuck you to everyone at the Human Rights Campaign.
Their tactics highly localized political pressure, a buttload of fear Americana,
and patriotic manipulation delivered in front of a green screen
by a man in a suit.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
The ultimate check and balance in this country is the
American people.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
But perhaps the NRA's biggest asset. They're intense year round lobbying.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
Everyone says, oh, they run a grassroots lobby, There really
aren't very many of those. Not the real deal. The
NRA is the real deal.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
What are their tactics?
Speaker 6 (32:06):
You use everything you can. Lobbyist is someone that is
hired by someone else to represent their interests. There was
a lot of people who feel like the systems against them,
and they're hiring the NRA and me as a lobbyist
to represent their interests and play the game for them.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
What do you do after being a NRA lobbyist cosby apologist?
What what better way to change as stubborn family member's
mind than hiring a real life lobbyist to do it?
So the next day I flew in Mark Anderson, a
Florida based certified lobbyist with over fifteen years experience to
convince Pete to give up his guns. That's a nice soon,
(32:49):
thank you. Pete has opinions I need him to lose,
and Mark has a case I need him to make.
Heading to Great Lake Shipping Company steakhouse where Kalamazoo's deal makers,
big wigs and little league teams rub elbows up with
these cameras up on these tripods and I'm gonna let
(33:09):
you guys b I gave Mark some facts about Pete
and I told him to try to get Pete to
give up his guns through whatever it is lobbyists too.
Speaker 16 (33:19):
Well, Pete, it's nice to meet you. I'd like to
get to know you a little bit more and just personally.
Can you tell me a little more about yourself? Why
do you have a gun?
Speaker 9 (33:26):
I have guns for Dug Conning.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Enough with the chit chat. It's time for the big guns. Statistics.
Speaker 16 (33:33):
Guns are designed for one thing, and that's to kill.
A woman's risk of being murdered increases five hundred percent
if a gun is in the home. When you look
at the states and the cities and even some of
the countries that have gone through this by making them
less available. They have seen a significant decline in the
number of gun deaths in their country.
Speaker 9 (33:53):
Statistics are great, but sometimes you need a little more information.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I recognize these glazed overlooks from every family get together.
Pete isn't buying it.
Speaker 9 (34:04):
Well, Mark, there's one thing that I don't know if
you know. It's yes, guns are designed to kill things,
but they're also fun. My daughter and son in law
duck hunt with me. We have lots of memories of that.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Well. The good thing is that we're going to start that.
Speaker 16 (34:22):
We're talking to each other, right, I'm not going to
get you to believe that guns are bad.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Twitter, We gotta spice this up. You can't just throw
in the towel like that. Mark's blah blah blah approach
had failed. Now it's on me to make Pete give
up his guns. I'll have to bump up the game
to lobbying two point zero. Pete needs to literally face facts.
So I'm going to take those stats and put them
on something no gun supporter can take their eyes off of.
(34:49):
A god damn race car. Guns aren't bad. The writing
isn't just on the wall, it's also on two sides.
The hood and the roof of the past car of fruit.
Pete should have no problem seeing that I was the
(35:11):
Dave Earnhardt Junior of Reezon good old number thirty three thousand,
five hundred and ninety nine gone deaths per year, nine people.
Speaker 16 (35:20):
There's a stat on the other side.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
What is it?
Speaker 16 (35:27):
I actually haven't been able to see it.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Good violence kis more Americans?
Speaker 8 (35:34):
The terrorism p t percent of fire arms that.
Speaker 16 (35:37):
You had when I left Florida it was seventy seven degrees, Pete.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
What the heck it changed your mind?
Speaker 8 (35:50):
No?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
What don't you like?
Speaker 8 (35:54):
Dask Gunner?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
No, sir, seriously, no Nascar shit?
Speaker 8 (36:01):
Any ready? How much does it cost?
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Fuck? He wasn't open to negotiation. Hopefully the folks at
the Rentel car agency were. Apparently. In today's America, it
is a herculean task to get anyone to shift their opinions,
even your own flesh and blood. As every third op
(36:35):
ed will tell you, we are a fractured country. More
than eight and ten Americans say the nation is divided.
But how difficult is it for the average American to
legitimately change what their brain thinks? To find out, I
went to Emory University to meet with doctor Stephen Hammond,
a psychology professor who specializes in functional brain imaging. Let's say, hypothetically,
(36:58):
I have a cousin named and I'm trying to change
his mind, but it won't change, even though it should
because I have all of the facts and I'm on TV,
for God's sakes.
Speaker 10 (37:09):
It's actually very, very difficult to change someone's mind, especially
if you're trying to do it on a short term basis.
Because people developed their beliefs over almost a lifetime.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
What about within like an hour special.
Speaker 10 (37:21):
Well, you probably don't want to give them charts and
figures and those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
As a liberal, those are my weapons of choice. I
come with a gun loaded with Malcolm Gladwell tidbits and
a New Yorker think basis.
Speaker 10 (37:32):
When people are confronted with information that doesn't match their beliefs,
their political beliefs, the first response is an automatic threat response.
So unfortunately, that tends to shut down rational thought.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Even if that informations on a snazzy Nascar I don't
think that makes too much of a difference. Okay, so
that's a thousand dollars and you just never get back
shit with selfless bravery usually shown only by astronauts and
radiation scientists in disaster movies. I shall sacrifice my body
for the betterment of our country. It's time to get
(38:05):
a good look at my thinking machine.
Speaker 10 (38:12):
How are you doing there, Jordan, great, We're just about
ready to start.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Doctor Hammond showed me a series of images that gauged
my response to both pro and anti gun sentiment. It's
like watching only the boring parts of a clockwork orange
So what is this?
Speaker 10 (38:29):
These are visual areas, So these would be lighting up
when you're looking at visual things like pictures.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
What are these?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Those are eyes?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Eyes? Okay, I'm just still getting used to what I'm
looking at, but yeah, I knew that. Oh, I see it.
Speaker 10 (38:44):
One thing that's interesting for you, though, is when you
were looking at the pro gun people, there's not a
whole lot of activity. It's almost like you're not engaging.
But when you're looking at anti gun messages, we found
there's a lot of activation here when people are having
positive and also when they're thinking about their own group.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
So what do you do when you confront somebody who
is wrong with information that is obviously right?
Speaker 10 (39:08):
I think the first step would be to empathize with
someone else. What if I weren't a liberal, What if
I were a conservative? What kind of things would be
important to me?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Probably be really into guns. I want to have a
gun in my home, Probably want to sleep with the gun.
I probably would go to church every now and then.
I'd have a bald eagle. Can you own bald eagles?
I don't know. So what I'm understanding here is it's
important for me to see this issue from the other side,
to take don't don't know, Okay, I get to talk
(39:42):
to the camera. That's my audience. I need to see
this issue from another side, the conservative point of view.
I'm gonna have to get gun as far.
Speaker 8 (39:52):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
The only way to solve guns is to change my
own mind. I must learn not to fear the old steel,
but to love it. I need to find a gun sherpa,
someone who's sheer gunness will pass through and obliterate my
preconceived notions like a hollow point ar something or other.
Does someone exactly like this?
Speaker 12 (40:14):
All right?
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Time for blaize ops, simple mechanics.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Drill today to MAGSI five rightful to MAGSI five pistol.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
This is Pat McNamara, retired US Army Special Ops Turn
tactical marksmanship instructor some of that, with a YouTube following
almost as impressive as mine. If anyone could make soft
liberal me gun as fuck, this is the dude.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Fucking rule, burn it down.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I look at that like a lion. You gonna help
me get my blaze up?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yep, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna gas it
up and burn it down.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Okay, what does that mean. It's just it's a slang term,
gash it up and burn it down.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, yeah, you'll catch on.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
That's uh shoot some guns all right.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Hey, real quick fundamentals. Yeah, we need to make sure
that we're gripping this correctly.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
So Pat took me through the basics of gun safety. Well, yep,
all emphasis on.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
That guy right there.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
He was like my own personal red State don Quixote.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Let's put some eyes and ears on and go get
our blaze on.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Let's get our get our blazer.
Speaker 5 (41:22):
Yeah, right on, rock and roll, blaze on.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
It's intense right now, we'll get a rock and we'll
get a roll. There's some sort of blaze. Ops that's
about to happen.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Gun slinger, that's right, just because you have a gun
doesn't mean you're armed. It's a responsibility in conjunction with
buying that firearm to get training so you know safe
operation of it, and you could apply the fundamentals you
go to press out nice and slow at the trigger.
A typical course of mine is twenty folks, everything from
top level l EO's law enforcement officers to the assistant
(41:56):
manager of the botanical gardens librarians, to a lot of
it guys.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Could you make me a man? Pat Mac?
Speaker 1 (42:02):
I could probably turn you around. Yeah, yeah, I had
to take a little work, just a little bit. I
am all right ready for that.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I can't help but have second thoughts, no doubt. Pat
Mac is a cool guy who I totally want to
make my best team. But am I seriously trying to
become one with a semi automatic? Professor Hammond's thesis about
empathizing with the other side is foolish. I hate guns
and that's a rock hard fat Oh my god, what
(42:36):
is this feeling?
Speaker 8 (42:40):
Miss?
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Miss?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
You don't have to keep saying, miss.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
We're gonna get the heart thumping a little bit. We'll
get a boogie on over to that fast rope climb
it come back, load up, the rifle. Five hits on
the forest deel, set it down, Load up the pistol,
five hits on the close steel. I'll demo it real.
Speaker 8 (42:57):
Quick for you.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Oh you ready, I'll come along a right, stand by
right With my heart plumping in more ways than one,
I could feel the Second Amendment taking hold of me.
(43:19):
Is this what all the hype is about? Our gun's fun?
My blue liberal brain is flooded with hot, red blood,
and I can't help but feel conflicted. Yeah, yeah, I
(43:42):
feel it. Burn it down?
Speaker 8 (43:44):
Yeah up.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
I don't know how to handle this new feeling that
I have. I shot a gun and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 8 (43:53):
You liked it?
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, it's a feeling of power, it really is.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Do I need to feel guilty for liking that? I
don't think.
Speaker 8 (43:59):
So.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Three thousand people die every year because of gun violence.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
It's a lot of deaths.
Speaker 5 (44:04):
Yep, not as many as cars.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Well, we regulate cars.
Speaker 8 (44:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
What do you think of universal background checks?
Speaker 1 (44:14):
I don't see any issue with it.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
What about like a waiting period? Is that a too
long to have a three day waiting period?
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Nope, it's not.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
No shit. I don't know how we can close this
divide between the left side of the country who supports
universal background checks on the other side of the country.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
That supports universal background checks.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I felt an incredible wave of realization. Have I not
been listening? Was there agreement? What about a background check?
Speaker 12 (44:46):
Yeah, if it's been adjudicated and a person is seen unfit,
then yes, I would agree to that now.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
And I know there are issues with the Tracing Center.
Do you promote making it easier for ATF to get
the job done?
Speaker 15 (44:55):
What if they have to do the fix the system?
What good is it going to do if the right
information isn't in it.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I'm a lifelong member of the NRA, but I'm not
sure that everything they do is in the best interest
of everybody at hand.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Oh my god, there was common ground on both sides.
Speaker 11 (45:11):
I carried a gun for twenty five years every day,
and I believe it helped me make the public safe
and help keep me safe.
Speaker 13 (45:17):
Most people agree on most of the issues. It's just
when it gets to Lansing or DC somehow it all
falls apart.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
We have much more in common than we do that
divides us. Really, I profoundly believe that.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Shit, there is one person I need to see again.
Hey Pete, Hey Jordon cousin. Pete had been the subject
of my attempt to change a gun owner's mind. Now
(45:50):
I want to know if we too share more than
just partial DNA. If you had to break down what
I'm not hearing you say, what am I missing?
Speaker 9 (45:57):
Most of the legal gun owner have no issue with
background checks, waiting periods, and regulating gun shows.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
We're not that different, correct, Maybe we actually aren't that divided.
Why had I been blaming these gun owners because I
was listening to the loudest person on the block who
represents like half of America.
Speaker 8 (46:19):
Right.
Speaker 6 (46:20):
Technically, it's five percent of the gun owners in this
country are members of NRA, that's all. But in a democracy,
five percent of activists can be a very powerful number
of people.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So out of one hundred and ten million gun owning Americans,
only four million actually belonged to the NRA. A lot
of Americans agree on common sense gun regulations, but the
NRA and gun manufacturers distort the debate to make people
feel like they disagree more than they actually do. In fact,
(46:54):
much like the non gun owners, eighty seven percent of
gun owners and seventy four percent of NRA members support
criminal background checks for anyone buying a gun. So who
does the NRA actually represents? You See, if the NRA
was a dick, it'd be a very small dick that
talks about how big their dick is but never whips
(47:15):
it out because it's a small dick. Today, I'm prepared
to come face to face with that tiny penis. Yeah,
(47:38):
I'm looking for the National Rifle Association. You are who
you looking for? I'm television's Jordan Klepper. Your television is
Cloye who. I've been traveling across the country talking to
a lot of different Americans, and uh, it turns out
the NRA doesn't seem to represent a lot of their
own ideals. So I just wanted to have a meaning,
(47:59):
a little chin with some NRA folks. Okay, well you have.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
To I don't.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Well that didn't work either did tweeting or emailing or
even voicemails. So screw up. If you can't beat them,
steal from them. A small group that affects big change.
Their strength is the devotion of their members aka people
giving a shit. I finally know how to solve guns.
Make you solve guns totally counts doing nothing means thirty
(48:33):
three thousand people died to gun violence next year. Imagine
lowering that by just three percent or one thousand lives.
Imagine the impact that would have on the families and
the communities. Do you know what I'm saying, America? If
we pull together, really work hard, really fucking work hard,
next year, we could kill thirty two thousand people. So
here's an idea forget less guns, think more people. Saving
(48:58):
lives doesn't mean becausin he can't go hunting with his
daughter in Michigan, or that Pat Mac can't go shooting
ars while deadlifting kettlebells in North Carolina, or blood agent
can't shoot at a pig. He's gonna miss. Saving lives
starts right here, No, not here, maybe hopefully here. This
(49:19):
is tomorrow. A mother from Chicago who.
Speaker 7 (49:21):
Got tired of seeing violence in my neighborhood. So I
decided to end it, even if I had to do
it myself. So I got a lawn chair, got some
hot dogs, got a few friends. I went out to
the corner. I started feeding people when giving out hugs,
and it's almost stopped gun violence in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
I work for those hugs.
Speaker 7 (49:38):
They're absolutely free.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Give me one of those.
Speaker 8 (49:40):
I'm on here.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
You're leaving good money on the table. Tomorrow is just
one American. One person. Is this percent of the population.
I'm not really sure how to say that number, but
it's a pretty small percentage for the impact she's having,
and Tomorrow is not alone and working to save lives.
Lad Heads Up a group that was created in response
to the Orlando mad shooting.
Speaker 11 (50:01):
One Pulse for America is a Facebook group that posts
daily action alerts to pressure lawmakers to enact life saving
gun reform.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Follow them on Facebook. Community outreach is important, and so
is education. This is Chante and Nancy from Lipstick.
Speaker 14 (50:15):
If you want to educate and empower women and girls
to refuse to be used to take.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
A life, I'm gonna keep running. There's the National Network
to End Domestic Violence.
Speaker 8 (50:24):
This is KIM.
Speaker 11 (50:26):
Three women every day are murdered in domestic violence, overwhelmingly
with a gun. It's our job to reduce that number.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Across America. There are tons of organizations that are actively
working to lower gun violence. Whether you're a gun owner
or not, there are things you can do to affect change.
Do lazy to google it?
Speaker 5 (50:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Thought so. That's why I created Jordan kleppersolves dot com
to hold your hand through the process of contacting organizations
making a difference in your area. Saving Americans is something
we can all get behind, but maybe it's more easily
digestible with green and a cartoonishly patriotic message delivered. Buy
some guy in a suit. What makes America America? Americans do?
(51:09):
And since more Americans make America more American, thirty three
thousand dead means less America. Let's make more America. Let's
keep America more America. Let's keep fighting in America, preferably
with something other than guns. So go online and do something.
(51:34):
And while you're there, maybe check out my YouTube videos.
Do your thing.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
searching The Daily Show wherever you.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Get your podcast. Watch The Daily Show week nights at
eleven ten Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes
anytime on Faaramount Plus.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
This is a Comedy Central podcast.
You're listening to Comedy CENTRALOW.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey there, this is Jordan Klepper and you're about to
hear my special from a few years back, Jordan Klepper
Solves Guns. Spoiler alerts. I did not solve guns. It
was a hyperbolic comedic premiss meant to highlight the uniquely
American problem of gun violence. It's a no hour long
documentary special inspired by some of my Daily Show field pieces,
where I attempt to get at the heart of the
(00:26):
gun controlled debate in America by talking with people on
both sides, including Senator Corey Booker and my dad's cousin Pete.
You can watch the full video version on Comedy Central's YouTube,
and be sure to catch me hosting The Daily Show
all next week at eleven ten pm Central. On Comedy Central.
I mentioned a warzone. I'm going to embed in a
(00:47):
country with over three hundred million guns, a country where
in twenty fourteen, thirty three thousand people died due to
gun violence, A country whose citizens are twenty five times
more likely to be murdered by a gun than any
other civilized nation, to America. You ever shot it back up, back, back, back,
back back, good the country I'm talking about. Is America
(01:14):
good go? We don't have a permit ship gun turs
American as apple pie and short changing female workers. We
buy them in bulk, tattoo them over our abdomens, and
use them to kill more people than any other developed country.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
All out panic Sunday morning after a gunman opens fire.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
It was a pretty nasty fight that preceded the deadly shooting.
Besides that, gun ranges are rare in our area. But
it has happened before, and America is only getting gun
here after electing the most pro Second Amendment and least
First Amendment president in recent memory.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
The NRA has led the fight time and time again
to protect our fundamental.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Freedoms, leading the charge the National Rifle Association by supporting
Trump's campaign with thirty million dollars, the big liest amount
spent by any outside group, and they don't mind bragging
about it in one of their classic green screen rams.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Gun owners made this election happen. You were the special
courses that swung this election and send Donald Trump and
Mike Pence to the White House.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
With the twenty sixteen campaign behind them. The NRA has
set its sights on a homegrown enemy the anti Second
Amendment political and media elites, the government elite, bureaucratic elites.
But who are these mysterious elites who want nothing less
than to rip guns away from hard working Americans?
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Me?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Woe am I? I'm Jordan Klepper, I'm enlightened, I'm progressive,
and I feel like I was put on this earth
to enact righteous change. AKA. I'm a twenty seventeen comedian.
I have four brown rice cooker, twelve gay friends, and
five podcasts. I tweet blogs, mean think pieces and tumble
gifts powerful thought provoking gifts. Follow me on Instagram. As
a television personality, I've repeatedly recorded on america obsession with guns.
(03:01):
Despite my incredible efforts, guns are still a problem. Apparently
five minute segments aren't enough to solve America's gun crisis. Thankfully,
Comedy Central has given me an hour long special. But
today I don't just report on America's gun crisis. I
solve the motherfucker. It's time somebody solved guns. Ie stopped
(03:26):
the thirty three thousand gun deaths that happen in America
every year. But first I need to define the problem guns.
What is a gun? If you ask an NRA lobbyist.
Speaker 6 (03:36):
He might say the gun is a symbol in American
politics as much as it's a real thing. It's also
a symbol.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, the gun is a symbol of a dick. If
you got a little one, you go and get a gun.
It's like the corvette for paranoid people. But how does
that symbol impact a mother from the South side of Chicago.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
I'm seeing gun violence and homes. I'm seeing gun violence
in school. It's not a suburban problem or a city problem.
It's an American problem.
Speaker 8 (04:04):
Na one More.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
America is clearly divided.
Speaker 9 (04:08):
The most violent places in this country have the strictest
gun controls.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
But the pain of gun violence is being felt across
the country. In twenty sixteen, my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan,
once known mainly for its booming cellery industry, micro breweries,
and the country's first outdoor pedestrian mall, came to prominence
for something much more horrific.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
A prosecutor says, uber driver Jason Bryan Dalton gun down
and killed six people Saturday in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Speaker 8 (04:37):
We are a.
Speaker 10 (04:37):
Community that is much more than this episode of violence.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
My family is from Kalamazoo. It's where I learned to
wear a tie in shorts. This just got personal. Our
country has three hundred million guns, or technically speaking, a
shitload of guns in the hands of one hundred and
ten million gun owners. My goal get those guns out
of those trigger happy hands. I needed someone in power
(05:03):
who shared my outrage when hearing that ninety two people
die every day from gun violence.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
There is enough blood, there is enough death.
Speaker 8 (05:13):
Enough killing going on.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
We have all the evidence we need that we need
to do more. Doing nothing is unacceptable.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
That was my guy. Senator Corey Booker has fought to
keep guns off the streets of Newark and battled Congress
to pass common sense gun reform. We'd figure out how
to get rid of guns over international pancakes. Let's say
this plate is America. Something on this plate will kill you.
(05:44):
Bacon slash guns. Right, Americans love bacon slash guns, but
too many Americans die because of bacon slash guns. So
how do we stop dumb people from eating bacon?
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Well, first of all, as you are ridiculously condemning when
you call people dumb and you insult their intelligence. All right, Dad,
I don't want to take away their bacon or their guns.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You're a Democrat, right, I am a Democrat, a liberal.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
I am a guy that could be considered a liberal
in my views.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Okay, so much so between you and me. Yes, getting
rid of the Second Amendments.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
Well, we're not going to get rid of the Second Amendment.
It's something that we don't.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Want to do because you can't do it.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
No, in order to make people safe, we don't need
to throw out one of our constitutional amendments.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, but I mean, come on, how many constitutional amendments
do we have?
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Well, we've thrown out some of the past, which I'm
really happy we did.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, you got to update these things, and this is
maybe the second oldest one. You think I'm walking around
here with an iPhone two.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
That's the fear tactics that often people want you to
believe that somebody's going to try to get rid of
all the guns and somebody's coming after their guns. That
is not a necessary thing.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Lord bacon slash guns placed. Booker, like many other Democrats,
felt like his hands were tied. Last June, in response
to the Pulse nightclub shooting, Senators filibuster to expand background
checks and prevent gun sales to peace people on the
terrorist watch list, while House Democrats staged to sit in
which resulted in shit. All efforts to pass any meaningful
(07:09):
regulations continue to get shot down by Republicans and the
gun lobby, insisting these liberal elites are coming for your guns.
Speaker 5 (07:18):
The tactic has been, not only are we going to
not pass background check laws or close the terrorist loophole,
but we're also going to take those agencies that could
be helping us, the CDC ATF, and we're going to
cripple them.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
One agency that's being crippled is the ATF's National Tracing Center.
Police nationwide use the Tracing Center to track firearms, solve
violent crimes, and catch criminals before these weapons can be
used again. I met with former ATF agent David Chipman
to see the front line of America's war on gun crime.
Speaker 11 (07:49):
Why are we here, Well, we're here because we're in
a location that's vastly superior technology wise than ATF's Tracing Center.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
This is the forefront of our battle against guns. This
place with a guy masturbating over there at that computer.
Speaker 11 (08:06):
The technology at the Tracing Center is like this library
thirty or forty years ago.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So like the Library and the first Ghostbusters. Please tell
me the Tracing Center at least now has women in it.
Speaker 11 (08:18):
There are women at the Tracing Center. The reality is
because they don't have computers, because they have.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Just they what they don't have computers.
Speaker 11 (08:26):
It's against the law to have computers that house a
searchable database that might be construed as a registry of guns.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
In America, that's right. The country's only federal facility that
helps police officers trace and solve gun crimes is literally
forbidden to use computers to search gun records. Thanks to
the lobby and power of the NRA. A nineteen eighty
six federal law made it illegal for the Tracing Center
to use searchable databases of any kind, in what legal
(08:53):
scholars have called one of the most just plain dickish
laws in history. So instead of solving murders using base
computing tools, the Tracing Centers roughly fifty employees process over
three hundred and seventy thousand requests a year, scrambling through
walls of boxes and going blind scanning microfiche machines from
the seventies in twenty seventeen. Oh yeah, they also have
(09:14):
so many boxes they fear their floor could cave in.
They keep records in steal storage spaces outside and they
receive about two million new gun records a month, and
you better hope they aren't in an Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker 11 (09:27):
So if ATF receives any information from a gun dealer
in an Excel spreadsheet which is searchable, they have to
go through a complicated process of dumbing that information down.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Do you guys actually have to make it harder for yourselves?
Speaker 11 (09:40):
Yes, a law enforcement agency needs to spend tax dollars
making a document dumber.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Why do Americans make it so hard on ourselves to
fix this gun problem?
Speaker 11 (09:52):
The NRA raises a lot of money based on fear.
They can make people scared that the big bad government
agents like me fly in black helicopters, that if we
had computerized gun records, then the government would take the guns.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
We are so fucked. As I dramatically portrayed moving through
this children's library with an ease and grace unknown to
ATF agents, it became all too clear. Because of the
gun lobby in America today, it's easier to find gun
the book than gun the gun. And that's satire, right,
(10:33):
and that's irony, and that's coincidence? Is it metaphor?
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Problems is when it comes to getting legislation passed, there's
a lot of people out there that are just pressured
by the NRA not to take a step out and
do what most Americans want them to do.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So what can we do a guy like me, just
a regular guy who's a celebrity on TV with millions
of followers. What can a little me do?
Speaker 5 (10:59):
Go for and seek the truth and then tell people
about it.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Maybe if we get the Tracing Center some computers, that's
at least a step in the right direction.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
It is a not a step that would be a
leap into the twenty first century. That's necessary.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I love me a good leap.
Speaker 8 (11:19):
Down down.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
In a window list cargo van packed full of progress,
I made my way into West Virginia hoping to solve something.
I can see you, but I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
What are you're even doing here?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Drop it off some computers here for the Tracing Center,
just to try to upgrade some of their technology. Can
I just leave it here there? Somebody? It's some good stuff, okay,
right out? So we're not going to ban guns, and apparently,
(12:24):
when it comes to using technology to help deal with
gun crime. The bureaucracy was thicker than I thought. The
government was beholden to the NRA, and the NRA's power
stemmed from one off, debated sentence written at a time
when guns were muskets and lightning was witchcraft. The Second Amendment.
For over two hundred years, it's been consistently upheld by
elected officials, and in two thousand and eight, the Supreme
(12:46):
courtdinarily ruled that it's still granted all citizens the right
to have guns a well regulated militia being necessary to
the security of a free state, the right of the
people to keep in bare arms shall not be infringed
twenty seven words, and come a placement so strange it
may be responsible for thousands of deaths a year. Militias
(13:07):
may have been in vogue in seventeen ninety one, but
are they actually relevant today. The Southern Poverty Law Center,
which tracks extremist groups, estimates there were two hundred and
seventy six active militias last year from forty two in
two thousand and eight. Okay, so militias are booming, and
they're clearly among the biggest proponents of the Second Amendment.
(13:29):
I found one of those militias in the deep red South,
the Georgia Security Force. We the people are bloodthirsty. We
the people will have no mercy. We are the predators,
you the prey. Where the government failed, I would triumph.
I would infiltrate the dark heart of the gun debate
(13:51):
and convince militias to give up their guns. If I
could do that, then the rest of the gun owners
would surely follow, and once and for all, gun would
be Saul Jordan. The Georgia State Militia is led by
(14:28):
Chris hill Or, as he prefers to be called General
Blood Agent. Yes, sir, what would it take for me
to convince you that you don't need a gun anymore?
Speaker 12 (14:41):
You probably have to check my polts.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So the only way I'm gonna get your gun is
to pry it out of your cold dead hands.
Speaker 12 (14:49):
Absolutely, or after I run out of AMMO. Yeah, you
want to come and take it? Sure would disarm one
bullet at a time.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Fine, My master plan of asking nicely had failed our hands.
Speaker 8 (15:03):
Well, this group of.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Forty odd members who met once a month, we're serious
about one thing, training and keep saking their training two things.
I need to earn their trust. So what is behind
this need to have giant firearms.
Speaker 12 (15:19):
We are going to stand up for the second member right.
We are not going to yield one iota. I personally
feel like the government has breached its contract with the
people the House. They constantly put bills on the floor
limiting the type of firearm you can have, or limiting
the magazine capacity of these weapons, or creating gun free zones.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Do you really feel like the government is limiting your
access to guns? And I think I tripped over four
on the way here.
Speaker 12 (15:45):
If I want an automatic weapon, fully automatic, I should
have a fully automatic weapon.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Should you.
Speaker 12 (15:50):
It's to protect myself from harm and more importantly, to
protect our country from tyranny. I feel safe knowing that
there's people like us that if there's a gunman and
it's not in a gun free zone, there may be
somebody there that can kill the individual that's attempting to
harm other people.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That sounds great, but it's been shown that a good
guy with a gun does not stop a bad guy
with the gun. You're not hanging out in those malls,
You guys are out here in the fucking middle of nowhere.
Speaker 12 (16:18):
What I guess that depends on what demographic you're looking
at because some people talk about it and some people
are going to be about it.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
We're going to defer to ban kiss Well. I'm more
confused than ever. I need to understand the methods of
these man scouts, so I took in an intense lecture
by Blood Agent.
Speaker 12 (16:38):
He has got the unit, Russian Infant Regulars equipment AK
forty seven's RPGs, things of that nature. Not fed the cow,
but shit like that.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
As the group prepares to go on a top secret
reconnaissance mission, I realized they were never going to give
up their guns to some buttoned up East Coast liberal.
I have to make an effort to fit in, to
become one of them. Does everybody here get a cool nickname?
Speaker 9 (17:12):
Yes, sir?
Speaker 12 (17:12):
If you don't have one, will help give one for you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Could I be a cold brew or if that's taken
a French press.
Speaker 12 (17:20):
Colbrew works better?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I think you like that? Yes, sir, feels very bold
yet smooth finish. Oh yeah, definitely, I have my name.
Time to gear up, right, I'll change Yeah?
Speaker 8 (17:31):
Okay, hey guys.
Speaker 12 (18:00):
Oh my god, he's got a camouflage.
Speaker 11 (18:02):
Time.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
I got the hints. No Blood Agent, they though I
have adopted their wardrobe choices, it still feels like openly
carrying a weapon is less about safety and more about intimidation.
Speaker 10 (18:14):
Is threatening you in any way right now?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yes, you're wearing a rifle? Do you not think this
is an all threatening.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
No, it's not being banished.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
You're freaking Santa clausing it right out at me right now,
so that you're pointing it at me by wearing a rifle.
Speaker 10 (18:28):
So a law enforcement points surf weapons that you ever
you see them.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
But they're also wearing badges that are like, we are
law enforcement. I'm trying to see these guns. It's something
other than weapons of war, but it's tough since they
are trapped to combative men in full dress camo. Is
that like the new Town gun or that the Aurora gun?
(18:53):
Is it the Orlando gun?
Speaker 9 (18:54):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
No, similar? This is Tanner Wite, Hanna White. Yes, what
are you gonna do with it?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, we're gonna blow the hog's head Jordan's.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Cards. Look out for the gun.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
All right now. They have the severed head of a
pig that they're prying open with a knife so they
can fill it with explosives to shoot it with a gun.
Can tannerite, it's not explosives. It's like the founding fathers
did it.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
No, they used that powder and cannon balls. Right, So.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
I'm failing to connect, and the line between training and
camping is getting blurrier by the second. Somebody poured gas
lead on the fire, right, Yeah, that's a that's a
that's a bad move. I am desperate to plant the
seed of sanity by any means necessary. You want to
hear a scary story, Yes, there's a babysitter, but the
(19:54):
child she was babysitting to bed. It was a quiet night.
Suddenly the phone rings unexpectedly and she picks it up.
On the other end of the phone, somebody tells her
that most gun accidents happen inside the house. Okay, that
(20:15):
if you have a gun inside the house, you're more
prone to be open to an accident inside the house.
This is hopeless. All they want to do is shoot
stupid guns at a stupid pig's head. This idea that
(20:40):
good guys with guns would make our country safer proved
questionable when, after a full day of training, a dozen
Georgia good guys struggled to blow up a pig's head
with over two hundred rounds of ammo spirits are a
little bit down. Then we're gonna re prop the pig
back up because it fell down, and they're gonna try
to shoot it again. Three types of truck, the fourth,
fourth time, fourth time, the truck. These Second Amendment purists
(21:13):
won't give up their guns even a little. I have failed.
Looks like I'm in for a long night. Spending the
night with the militia is a heroine experience. It's open
and one I hope to never have is that the
(21:36):
flowerless chocolate cake put it on the bed. One of
them call themselves kill zone. You want to hang uh nohing,
(21:57):
So the tracing center won't accept my tax to duct solution.
This is all I can afford, to be honest. It's
just from the eighties, and the militia refuses to be
swayed by my Shelley esque tails. You heard the scary
story of the gun show loophool no reading one of
my favorite liberal fact blogs. I hit this, if just
one in every one hundred voters shifted from Trump to Clinton,
(22:21):
Hillary would have been president. And that's from Nate Silver,
who statistically has never ever been wrong. Bingo changing one
person's mind could be just as effective as swaying millions.
And that's not a lowering of expectations. It's just being smart.
I don't need to change all gun owners' minds. I
just need to change one. I need a place with
(22:41):
minds that could be easily swayed. And then it hit me.
I was from there, Michigan, a blue state gone red.
It is time to head home, surver it discover.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
How are you, sir? Welcome home? So here we are.
We're here Kalamazoo.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Bobby, tell me this, what is the gun debate like
here in Kalamazoo.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
We've had a tragedy in our community.
Speaker 10 (23:08):
What we're trying to do in Kalamazoo is figure out
how you move forward.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
This tragedy will not define us, it will not divide us,
and it will not defeat us.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Even in the months following the mass shooting in Kalamazoo,
the community and legislators were having difficulty addressing gun violence.
Speaker 13 (23:28):
Right now, a lot of the legislators are worried about
what the NRA is going to say about that type
of legislation, even though the vast majority of voters support it.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Is the NA that much of a boogeyman here.
Speaker 13 (23:37):
The TERA spends a lot of money on elections, and
they don't just do that in the federal level, they
do it at the state level too.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Michigan ed Helms was right. The gun debate tends to
focus on national policy, but many battles are being fought
more on the local level. In places like Michigan, state
legislators need to raise between fifty to one hundred thousand
dollars in campaign contributions every couple of years just to
stay competitive. One big donation can make or break a
small race, giving well funded national groups more power to
(24:04):
influence local politicians than their constituents. I've been trying to
get people to get rid of guns. Is that gonna
happen here in Kalamazoo?
Speaker 13 (24:11):
Now people use guns in their daily lives Here in Michigan.
I think you're really missing where the real conversation is.
It happens in the middle.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Okay, So if I was going to find this middle,
where would that be?
Speaker 13 (24:22):
Go talk to some gun owners, say what they think.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I came up with the idea all by myself to
talk to some Michigan gun owners. From everything I've seen
on television, I expected gun owners to act like this.
Speaker 13 (24:33):
Seventeen seventy six, will convince.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Again if you'd try to take our firearms. Do you understand?
Instead they acted like this kind of normal. But where
is that malleable mind I could convince to give up
their gun. I need a fool proof structure that boils
down the stories of Middle Americans and makes them sparkle.
(24:56):
Seven moderate gun owners.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
My name is Sheila Gary.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I'm a gun owner.
Speaker 9 (25:01):
I own three shotguns.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
I own three pistols. My hobbies are listening to music, mottle,
rail roading.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I will choose one and change their mind about guns.
Welcome to the moderate. It's like our first guest is
coming on up. It's a beautiful Anderson Castle. It's a
falling six degrees. I'm looking for someone to fall in
love with my ideas. Gary, thanks to be true. Thanks
for pulling the trigger and coming on up.
Speaker 14 (25:32):
Very good.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
David, thanks to be too. Thanks just going on just
every just everybody, just just it's a fucking called get great,
Get in there.
Speaker 8 (25:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Welcome to Historic Henderson Castle and Historic Kalamazoo. Excited about
you guys, one on one, get to know you. We're
gonna talk about life, love, guns, mostly guns, mostly be
talking about guns. Hi, tell me who is David the
gun Owner.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
David the gun Owner is a kid that grew up
in a household that had literally a firearm in every corner.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Did you grow up in Mogadishu, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. Wellsboro, Pennsylvania,
very rural.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Built my first firearm with my grandfather.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I built a savings account with my grandpa, so similar.
Let's trying to find some common ground on things that
don't involve killing something.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I like comedy.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Great, you see any style I have?
Speaker 5 (26:35):
Not, even though you're all over YouTube.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Biden didn't even sit and watch any of that. I
did look up your bio to know that you are
from Kalamazoo.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Great, but you didn't see any of the videos. No Ah,
none of my videos.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
I thought it went very well. I'd love to talk
to him more about this.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Bye.
Speaker 8 (26:56):
Rick.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Hi, Hi, I'm Rick.
Speaker 14 (26:58):
I'm from Detroit, Michigan, and I run a blog called
Legally Armed in Detroiter. My relationship with firearms started approximately
eleven twelve years ago. I was surprised by two nineteen
twenty year olds who were armed with the gun. I
went and I purchased a firearm. Then I made a
decision to become a firearms instructor.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Definite vibe going on with Rick. Maybe we'll get a
chance to talk a little bit later. There are a
lot of fully loaded minds here that I could see
myself going to the range with.
Speaker 15 (27:33):
Literally, I've taught thousands of women how to shoot. The
self confidence that they get out of learning something new
doesn't necessarily have to be a firearm too.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Men get self confidence after sure, absolutely they do. I
hit it off better with some than others. I don't
like the words a salt weapon. Every weapons are assault weapon.
Speaker 14 (27:51):
If I wanted to take your life bad enough, that.
Speaker 15 (27:56):
Is a weapon.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
There is one mind here I know I'm going to
relate to because I'm literally related to him. That Pete,
What up? Pete's a great guy. I've noted my entire life.
How's the houseboat?
Speaker 9 (28:15):
The duck boat is very good. You don't have a houseboat, Nelson.
He has not been around the family much lately. His
whole career has taken him away from the area, and
so he's kind of out of touch.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I know Pete the cousin. They're about Pete the gun owner.
Speaker 9 (28:30):
I have three guns they're all shotguns, and I strictly
use them for hunting.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Pete listens, which is great because I like to talk
to and at people. I think you consider yourself open
minded when it comes to guns.
Speaker 9 (28:44):
I would be willing to discuss.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
That's almost a yes, it's group day time. I really
need them to show me why they deserve to have
their minds changed.
Speaker 16 (28:57):
Entery is.
Speaker 15 (28:58):
It's a great program. They're the ones that are going
to go and fight for our rights.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
If you don't know.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
How a gun works, you're scared of it, or whatever,
let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
I brought three copies of the Constitution, just in case
I don't know what we were going to encounter today.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
The simple truth is we have to take care of
the drug drink.
Speaker 11 (29:16):
More people die from heroin overdoses than they do from
gunshots in this country.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
It's like machine gun fire out there. This is perfectly quiet.
Speaker 10 (29:24):
Your wife wouldn't even know you were shooting upstairs.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
I live in New York. There's no upstairs. Do you
want to take a little walk outside?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
We can't.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
I had a chance to talk with Jordan.
Speaker 14 (29:33):
If there was some give and take back and forth,
some good exchanges. I'm armed unless I have a reason
not to be. Fundamental safety is the responsibility of each
individual and not law enforcements. If he was willing to
share where he's coming from and see where that conversation goes,
I'd be open to it.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
This is really hard. Unfortunately some of you have to
go home tonight. I think Ian you have a heart
out at seven for a parent teacher conference. Yes, either way,
it's goodbye. And that was the time where I have
to choose one of you whose mind I will change,
(30:21):
and I choose Pete. Pete, will you be my moderate?
Speaker 9 (30:31):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Why do I choose Pete? He seems moderate and open
to discussion, but I try to change that. Doma yours?
Good luck with that. Great Now he's my cousin and
I'm less likely to get shot by a family member. Really,
is the pencil guy still here? Everybody else? Thank you?
Speaker 8 (30:59):
Pete?
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Come just yuck?
Speaker 8 (31:00):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I had my moderate pace up. Now I need a
surefire tactic to repair his pro gun opinion. Luckily, I
have to look no further than the one organization that
consistently holds sway over many gun owning brains, the NRA.
The New York Times has labeled them the most effective
civil rights group in the US today, which is a
(31:34):
real fuck you to everyone at the Human Rights Campaign.
Their tactics highly localized political pressure, a buttload of fear Americana,
and patriotic manipulation delivered in front of a green screen
by a man in a suit.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
The ultimate check and balance in this country is the
American people.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
But perhaps the NRA's biggest asset. They're intense year round lobbying.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
Everyone says, oh, they run a grassroots lobby, There really
aren't very many of those. Not the real deal. The
NRA is the real deal.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
What are their tactics?
Speaker 6 (32:06):
You use everything you can. Lobbyist is someone that is
hired by someone else to represent their interests. There was
a lot of people who feel like the systems against them,
and they're hiring the NRA and me as a lobbyist
to represent their interests and play the game for them.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
What do you do after being a NRA lobbyist cosby apologist?
What what better way to change as stubborn family member's
mind than hiring a real life lobbyist to do it?
So the next day I flew in Mark Anderson, a
Florida based certified lobbyist with over fifteen years experience to
convince Pete to give up his guns. That's a nice soon,
(32:49):
thank you. Pete has opinions I need him to lose,
and Mark has a case I need him to make.
Heading to Great Lake Shipping Company steakhouse where Kalamazoo's deal makers,
big wigs and little league teams rub elbows up with
these cameras up on these tripods and I'm gonna let
(33:09):
you guys b I gave Mark some facts about Pete
and I told him to try to get Pete to
give up his guns through whatever it is lobbyists too.
Speaker 16 (33:19):
Well, Pete, it's nice to meet you. I'd like to
get to know you a little bit more and just personally.
Can you tell me a little more about yourself? Why
do you have a gun?
Speaker 9 (33:26):
I have guns for Dug Conning.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Enough with the chit chat. It's time for the big guns. Statistics.
Speaker 16 (33:33):
Guns are designed for one thing, and that's to kill.
A woman's risk of being murdered increases five hundred percent
if a gun is in the home. When you look
at the states and the cities and even some of
the countries that have gone through this by making them
less available. They have seen a significant decline in the
number of gun deaths in their country.
Speaker 9 (33:53):
Statistics are great, but sometimes you need a little more information.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I recognize these glazed overlooks from every family get together.
Pete isn't buying it.
Speaker 9 (34:04):
Well, Mark, there's one thing that I don't know if
you know. It's yes, guns are designed to kill things,
but they're also fun. My daughter and son in law
duck hunt with me. We have lots of memories of that.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Well. The good thing is that we're going to start that.
Speaker 16 (34:22):
We're talking to each other, right, I'm not going to
get you to believe that guns are bad.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Twitter, We gotta spice this up. You can't just throw
in the towel like that. Mark's blah blah blah approach
had failed. Now it's on me to make Pete give
up his guns. I'll have to bump up the game
to lobbying two point zero. Pete needs to literally face facts.
So I'm going to take those stats and put them
on something no gun supporter can take their eyes off of.
(34:49):
A god damn race car. Guns aren't bad. The writing
isn't just on the wall, it's also on two sides.
The hood and the roof of the past car of fruit.
Pete should have no problem seeing that I was the
(35:11):
Dave Earnhardt Junior of Reezon good old number thirty three thousand,
five hundred and ninety nine gone deaths per year, nine people.
Speaker 16 (35:20):
There's a stat on the other side.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
What is it?
Speaker 16 (35:27):
I actually haven't been able to see it.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Good violence kis more Americans?
Speaker 8 (35:34):
The terrorism p t percent of fire arms that.
Speaker 16 (35:37):
You had when I left Florida it was seventy seven degrees, Pete.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
What the heck it changed your mind?
Speaker 8 (35:50):
No?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
What don't you like?
Speaker 8 (35:54):
Dask Gunner?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
No, sir, seriously, no Nascar shit?
Speaker 8 (36:01):
Any ready? How much does it cost?
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Fuck? He wasn't open to negotiation. Hopefully the folks at
the Rentel car agency were. Apparently. In today's America, it
is a herculean task to get anyone to shift their opinions,
even your own flesh and blood. As every third op
(36:35):
ed will tell you, we are a fractured country. More
than eight and ten Americans say the nation is divided.
But how difficult is it for the average American to
legitimately change what their brain thinks? To find out, I
went to Emory University to meet with doctor Stephen Hammond,
a psychology professor who specializes in functional brain imaging. Let's say, hypothetically,
(36:58):
I have a cousin named and I'm trying to change
his mind, but it won't change, even though it should
because I have all of the facts and I'm on TV,
for God's sakes.
Speaker 10 (37:09):
It's actually very, very difficult to change someone's mind, especially
if you're trying to do it on a short term basis.
Because people developed their beliefs over almost a lifetime.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
What about within like an hour special.
Speaker 10 (37:21):
Well, you probably don't want to give them charts and
figures and those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
As a liberal, those are my weapons of choice. I
come with a gun loaded with Malcolm Gladwell tidbits and
a New Yorker think basis.
Speaker 10 (37:32):
When people are confronted with information that doesn't match their beliefs,
their political beliefs, the first response is an automatic threat response.
So unfortunately, that tends to shut down rational thought.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Even if that informations on a snazzy Nascar I don't
think that makes too much of a difference. Okay, so
that's a thousand dollars and you just never get back
shit with selfless bravery usually shown only by astronauts and
radiation scientists in disaster movies. I shall sacrifice my body
for the betterment of our country. It's time to get
(38:05):
a good look at my thinking machine.
Speaker 10 (38:12):
How are you doing there, Jordan, great, We're just about
ready to start.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Doctor Hammond showed me a series of images that gauged
my response to both pro and anti gun sentiment. It's
like watching only the boring parts of a clockwork orange
So what is this?
Speaker 10 (38:29):
These are visual areas, So these would be lighting up
when you're looking at visual things like pictures.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
What are these?
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Those are eyes?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Eyes? Okay, I'm just still getting used to what I'm
looking at, but yeah, I knew that. Oh, I see it.
Speaker 10 (38:44):
One thing that's interesting for you, though, is when you
were looking at the pro gun people, there's not a
whole lot of activity. It's almost like you're not engaging.
But when you're looking at anti gun messages, we found
there's a lot of activation here when people are having
positive and also when they're thinking about their own group.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
So what do you do when you confront somebody who
is wrong with information that is obviously right?
Speaker 10 (39:08):
I think the first step would be to empathize with
someone else. What if I weren't a liberal, What if
I were a conservative? What kind of things would be
important to me?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Probably be really into guns. I want to have a
gun in my home, Probably want to sleep with the gun.
I probably would go to church every now and then.
I'd have a bald eagle. Can you own bald eagles?
I don't know. So what I'm understanding here is it's
important for me to see this issue from the other side,
to take don't don't know, Okay, I get to talk
(39:42):
to the camera. That's my audience. I need to see
this issue from another side, the conservative point of view.
I'm gonna have to get gun as far.
Speaker 8 (39:52):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
The only way to solve guns is to change my
own mind. I must learn not to fear the old steel,
but to love it. I need to find a gun sherpa,
someone who's sheer gunness will pass through and obliterate my
preconceived notions like a hollow point ar something or other.
Does someone exactly like this?
Speaker 12 (40:14):
All right?
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Time for blaize ops, simple mechanics.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Drill today to MAGSI five rightful to MAGSI five pistol.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
This is Pat McNamara, retired US Army Special Ops Turn
tactical marksmanship instructor some of that, with a YouTube following
almost as impressive as mine. If anyone could make soft
liberal me gun as fuck, this is the dude.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Fucking rule, burn it down.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I look at that like a lion. You gonna help
me get my blaze up?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yep, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna gas it
up and burn it down.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Okay, what does that mean. It's just it's a slang term,
gash it up and burn it down.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, yeah, you'll catch on.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
That's uh shoot some guns all right.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Hey, real quick fundamentals. Yeah, we need to make sure
that we're gripping this correctly.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
So Pat took me through the basics of gun safety. Well, yep,
all emphasis on.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
That guy right there.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
He was like my own personal red State don Quixote.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Let's put some eyes and ears on and go get
our blaze on.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Let's get our get our blazer.
Speaker 5 (41:22):
Yeah, right on, rock and roll, blaze on.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
It's intense right now, we'll get a rock and we'll
get a roll. There's some sort of blaze. Ops that's
about to happen.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Gun slinger, that's right, just because you have a gun
doesn't mean you're armed. It's a responsibility in conjunction with
buying that firearm to get training so you know safe
operation of it, and you could apply the fundamentals you
go to press out nice and slow at the trigger.
A typical course of mine is twenty folks, everything from
top level l EO's law enforcement officers to the assistant
(41:56):
manager of the botanical gardens librarians, to a lot of
it guys.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Could you make me a man? Pat Mac?
Speaker 1 (42:02):
I could probably turn you around. Yeah, yeah, I had
to take a little work, just a little bit. I
am all right ready for that.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I can't help but have second thoughts, no doubt. Pat
Mac is a cool guy who I totally want to
make my best team. But am I seriously trying to
become one with a semi automatic? Professor Hammond's thesis about
empathizing with the other side is foolish. I hate guns
and that's a rock hard fat Oh my god, what
(42:36):
is this feeling?
Speaker 8 (42:40):
Miss?
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Miss?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
You don't have to keep saying, miss.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
We're gonna get the heart thumping a little bit. We'll
get a boogie on over to that fast rope climb
it come back, load up, the rifle. Five hits on
the forest deel, set it down, Load up the pistol,
five hits on the close steel. I'll demo it real.
Speaker 8 (42:57):
Quick for you.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Oh you ready, I'll come along a right, stand by
right With my heart plumping in more ways than one,
I could feel the Second Amendment taking hold of me.
(43:19):
Is this what all the hype is about? Our gun's fun?
My blue liberal brain is flooded with hot, red blood,
and I can't help but feel conflicted. Yeah, yeah, I
(43:42):
feel it. Burn it down?
Speaker 8 (43:44):
Yeah up.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
I don't know how to handle this new feeling that
I have. I shot a gun and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 8 (43:53):
You liked it?
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, it's a feeling of power, it really is.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Do I need to feel guilty for liking that? I
don't think.
Speaker 8 (43:59):
So.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Three thousand people die every year because of gun violence.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
It's a lot of deaths.
Speaker 5 (44:04):
Yep, not as many as cars.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Well, we regulate cars.
Speaker 8 (44:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
What do you think of universal background checks?
Speaker 1 (44:14):
I don't see any issue with it.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
What about like a waiting period? Is that a too
long to have a three day waiting period?
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Nope, it's not.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
No shit. I don't know how we can close this
divide between the left side of the country who supports
universal background checks on the other side of the country.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
That supports universal background checks.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I felt an incredible wave of realization. Have I not
been listening? Was there agreement? What about a background check?
Speaker 12 (44:46):
Yeah, if it's been adjudicated and a person is seen unfit,
then yes, I would agree to that now.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
And I know there are issues with the Tracing Center.
Do you promote making it easier for ATF to get
the job done?
Speaker 15 (44:55):
What if they have to do the fix the system?
What good is it going to do if the right
information isn't in it.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
I'm a lifelong member of the NRA, but I'm not
sure that everything they do is in the best interest
of everybody at hand.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Oh my god, there was common ground on both sides.
Speaker 11 (45:11):
I carried a gun for twenty five years every day,
and I believe it helped me make the public safe
and help keep me safe.
Speaker 13 (45:17):
Most people agree on most of the issues. It's just
when it gets to Lansing or DC somehow it all
falls apart.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
We have much more in common than we do that
divides us. Really, I profoundly believe that.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Shit, there is one person I need to see again.
Hey Pete, Hey Jordon cousin. Pete had been the subject
of my attempt to change a gun owner's mind. Now
(45:50):
I want to know if we too share more than
just partial DNA. If you had to break down what
I'm not hearing you say, what am I missing?
Speaker 9 (45:57):
Most of the legal gun owner have no issue with
background checks, waiting periods, and regulating gun shows.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
We're not that different, correct, Maybe we actually aren't that divided.
Why had I been blaming these gun owners because I
was listening to the loudest person on the block who
represents like half of America.
Speaker 8 (46:19):
Right.
Speaker 6 (46:20):
Technically, it's five percent of the gun owners in this
country are members of NRA, that's all. But in a democracy,
five percent of activists can be a very powerful number
of people.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So out of one hundred and ten million gun owning Americans,
only four million actually belonged to the NRA. A lot
of Americans agree on common sense gun regulations, but the
NRA and gun manufacturers distort the debate to make people
feel like they disagree more than they actually do. In fact,
(46:54):
much like the non gun owners, eighty seven percent of
gun owners and seventy four percent of NRA members support
criminal background checks for anyone buying a gun. So who
does the NRA actually represents? You See, if the NRA
was a dick, it'd be a very small dick that
talks about how big their dick is but never whips
(47:15):
it out because it's a small dick. Today, I'm prepared
to come face to face with that tiny penis. Yeah,
(47:38):
I'm looking for the National Rifle Association. You are who
you looking for? I'm television's Jordan Klepper. Your television is
Cloye who. I've been traveling across the country talking to
a lot of different Americans, and uh, it turns out
the NRA doesn't seem to represent a lot of their
own ideals. So I just wanted to have a meaning,
(47:59):
a little chin with some NRA folks. Okay, well you have.
Speaker 5 (48:03):
To I don't.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Well that didn't work either did tweeting or emailing or
even voicemails. So screw up. If you can't beat them,
steal from them. A small group that affects big change.
Their strength is the devotion of their members aka people
giving a shit. I finally know how to solve guns.
Make you solve guns totally counts doing nothing means thirty
(48:33):
three thousand people died to gun violence next year. Imagine
lowering that by just three percent or one thousand lives.
Imagine the impact that would have on the families and
the communities. Do you know what I'm saying, America? If
we pull together, really work hard, really fucking work hard,
next year, we could kill thirty two thousand people. So
here's an idea forget less guns, think more people. Saving
(48:58):
lives doesn't mean becausin he can't go hunting with his
daughter in Michigan, or that Pat Mac can't go shooting
ars while deadlifting kettlebells in North Carolina, or blood agent
can't shoot at a pig. He's gonna miss. Saving lives
starts right here, No, not here, maybe hopefully here. This
(49:19):
is tomorrow. A mother from Chicago who.
Speaker 7 (49:21):
Got tired of seeing violence in my neighborhood. So I
decided to end it, even if I had to do
it myself. So I got a lawn chair, got some
hot dogs, got a few friends. I went out to
the corner. I started feeding people when giving out hugs,
and it's almost stopped gun violence in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
I work for those hugs.
Speaker 7 (49:38):
They're absolutely free.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Give me one of those.
Speaker 8 (49:40):
I'm on here.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
You're leaving good money on the table. Tomorrow is just
one American. One person. Is this percent of the population.
I'm not really sure how to say that number, but
it's a pretty small percentage for the impact she's having,
and Tomorrow is not alone and working to save lives.
Lad Heads Up a group that was created in response
to the Orlando mad shooting.
Speaker 11 (50:01):
One Pulse for America is a Facebook group that posts
daily action alerts to pressure lawmakers to enact life saving
gun reform.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Follow them on Facebook. Community outreach is important, and so
is education. This is Chante and Nancy from Lipstick.
Speaker 14 (50:15):
If you want to educate and empower women and girls
to refuse to be used to take.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
A life, I'm gonna keep running. There's the National Network
to End Domestic Violence.
Speaker 8 (50:24):
This is KIM.
Speaker 11 (50:26):
Three women every day are murdered in domestic violence, overwhelmingly
with a gun. It's our job to reduce that number.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Across America. There are tons of organizations that are actively
working to lower gun violence. Whether you're a gun owner
or not, there are things you can do to affect change.
Do lazy to google it?
Speaker 5 (50:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Thought so. That's why I created Jordan kleppersolves dot com
to hold your hand through the process of contacting organizations
making a difference in your area. Saving Americans is something
we can all get behind, but maybe it's more easily
digestible with green and a cartoonishly patriotic message delivered. Buy
some guy in a suit. What makes America America? Americans do?
(51:09):
And since more Americans make America more American, thirty three
thousand dead means less America. Let's make more America. Let's
keep America more America. Let's keep fighting in America, preferably
with something other than guns. So go online and do something.
(51:34):
And while you're there, maybe check out my YouTube videos.
Do your thing.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
searching The Daily Show wherever you.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Get your podcast. Watch The Daily Show week nights at
eleven ten Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes
anytime on Faaramount Plus.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
This is a Comedy Central podcast.
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