[FULL SPEECH] Defending the 2nd Amendment: Michael Knowles at Mira Costa

what do you want all right thank you all for coming out it really means a lot to the club into just the name of being a proud member of democracy it means a lot to us that we get to have open discourse as such and it is with my honor that I am able to present mr. Michel Noel's best-selling author of reasons about Democrat which consists of 200 empty blank pages I would also I would also like to take this time to thank the Young Democrats for coming up and wanting to engage in this course we get a brown spot a round of applause for the Democrats and for the Model UN could you please remain silent until asked to ask question thank you thank you very much don't know don't overpower us come on all right so everyone if we can fill up the front rows I'll be fantastic is with my honor and respect to present to you Michael J Knowles there will be a Q&A session after speak thank you very much thank you all for coming out it is really nice to see all of you just to begin I have to apologize if I sound a little congested or stuffed up you might have heard the president told his supporters that we would get sick and tired of winning this has little the downside is that that has literally happened to me I am literally sick and tired but uh well troll persevere nonetheless I am very very impressed with MiraCosta high school I really have to tell you I googled the high school when I heard about this invitation and I guess it's listed now in US News and World Report as one of the best high schools in the country it's a number 300 I think it's number five in California I actually believe it now though because I have to tell you I don't think that it Harvard or Yale right now speaker would be invited to defend the Second Amendment and to defend gun ownership but MiraCosta high school clearly appreciates intellectual diversity and different opinions so I think that is really cool before we get started on our topic tonight I do have one very important question and I'd like to pull the audience on is it Laurel or yanny absolutely ridiculous that is rude that's going to be the most contentious point of the whole day it's obviously Laurel [Applause] well alright maybe we'll get more to that in the Q&A I suppose now we can get on now that we've gotten past the contentious topics like Laurel or Yanni we can get on to a much less debatable topic which is guns now I did notice that this lecture is happening today immediately following a lockdown drill which seems a little coincidental though I don't know I'm not calling it a setup or anything but a difficult a more difficult task perhaps to defend the Second Amendment and the private right of gun ownership when we see all of these headlines in the news awful shootings lockdown drills there seems to be a great fear around the country of politicians and activists talking about it but I think that we can still do an okay job of that a guns have been in the news a lot recently obviously there was that terrible shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February and this is brought up a new round of calls for gun control from the mainstream media from at least half of the politicians in the country from a lot of activists they're saying never again no more no more we have to ban guns now and we'll analyze a few of these points today of course we know whenever something bad happens we say no more never again but we know we live in a fallen world it's an imperfect place bad things will continue to happen suffering will continue to happen we want to be able to reduce those bad things that happen and try to mitigate them but the question is with would gun control actually stop awful incidents like that would they do anything to prevent those terrible tragedies that we see on television I don't think there's a lot of evidence for that we can analyze all of the evidence that there is and a very frequently the shock of events like that causes people to say we have to do something we have to do something but we want to make sure that we're doing the right thing and what we're doing something that will actually solve a problem rather than just take away people's rights right now in in Chicago there is an art installation it just went in as part of this gun control movement which is it's like those city bikes those bicycle racks that you see in certain cities except it's a ar-15s they're plugged into each of them and the message of this art exhibit is clear the message is that in the United States of America it is easier to get your hands on a gun than on a bicycle and the trouble with that art installation is it isn't true as somebody who has purchased both guns and bicycles in my life I can tell you definitively it is much harder to get your hands on a gun but but actually I'll go further than that and this is the heart of today's discussion because in the United States of America actually it should be much easier to get your hands on a gun than on a bicycle this sounds crazy this sounds radical but the reason for this is clear there is no constitutionally protected civil right to ride a bicycle there is however a constitutionally protected civil right to keep and bear firearms now we know that this is an individual right we hear it in the Second Amendment a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed this is the second amendment in the Bill of Rights the framers and the founders thought that this was so important that it would be number two it would be second most important only to free speech freedom of the press freedom of assembly right after that is the right to guns why did they think that these framers were not stupid men we're talking about Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin James Madison Alexander Hamilton these are pretty smart fellows and they all thought that this right was so so important so why did they include it well to begin they didn't just invent the right out of whole cloth the the Second Amendment doesn't read the right the people shall have a right to keep and bear arms in fact it says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed that this is an important difference because what the framers of the Constitution are saying is that there is already a right to have guns Americans have a right to have guns and we are not going to infringe on it as a government the United States inherits this right from the English Bill of Rights from 1689 but this comes out of a tradition and a political tradition in the West and in America now the Second Amendment reads the right of the people to keep and bear arms this is also important phrasing because it doesn't mean the right of the government or the right of the states some people especially gun control supporters they want to pretend that the Second Amendment only protects the right of individual states to have certain firearms and to regulate them or of the United States as a whole of the nation state to keep and bear arms but the framers are very precise in their wording and I'm very sensitive to this I was very precise in the wording of my book I you have to use words very very carefully and the framers used the words very very carefully they said the right of the people because in the Constitution different rights are reserved for the states for the federal government and for the people we have a system of checks and balances which we'll get into a little bit more later but in the Second Amendment easily could have read the right of the states to have guns shelled not be infringed or the right of the federal government but this one is reserved to the people and this makes perfect sense because in order for the Second Amendment to protect anything at all it has to protect individuals rights to own guns a lot of times you see in the news or activists or politicians they harp on that first part of the second amendment the well-regulated militia Clause and they say well it all it does is protect the right of a militia to have guns or your right to have a militia and and this argument fails it fails for a very simple grammatical reason I listen you're at one of the best high schools in the country you seem like smart people you can tell the difference in grammar structures between a clause that is operative and a clause that provides justification those are the two clauses the well-regulated militia first part justifies the second Amendment it explains why the Second Amendment exists but the only part of that Amendment that actually defines a right is that second part the operative Clause the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed that is what operates the justification gives a little explanation for that so it says a regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State that's one explanation another explanation could be they're really loud and they scare away bad guys guns being really loud and scaring away bad guys the right of the people shoulde not be infringed but frankly that first part could read anything at all it could say pop-tarts being delicious and nutritious the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed that second part remains true regardless of what the justification Clause says and the wording seems a little weird to us because we don't write like that anymore we don't write our laws like that anymore but at the time of the ratification of the Constitution this was a common practice it was in state constitutions all over the place a right would be explained a little bit for future generations like us but that wouldn't limit entirely limit the scope of that right the right remains as it is defined but even if we grant this part even if we talk about that militia part the gun control argument still fails for a few reasons one of them is the definition of a militia so unlike standing armies if you enlist in the United States military they will issue you a gun militias are a little different than that in that frequently in militias you bring your own gun it's BYO G sometimes not all the time but sometimes militias can be BYO G so in order for the militia to be able to constitute itself people need to have a gun there are a few other definitions of militia how do we know what the framers thought a militia meant at the time of the amendment well we know from the laws of that time there was the militia act of 1792 the militia act of 1792 defined the militia not as some radical group of people not as state-run entity the militia was defined as all white men between the ages of 18 and 45 and I will point out life expectancy at this time was 36 so that includes a lot of people that includes approximately nine years after most people died that's a lot of people now of course in the United States in the intervening couple centuries we have expanded American political rights to include many more groups of people they've and sended racial lines and sex lines and so but today the militia wouldn't only mean white men between certain ages for one we live a lot longer too but we get an idea of what the framers meant by militia so now we know what the Second Amendment protects it protects the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms now the question is why does it matter and this is the question you hear all the time if you're ever debating gun rights with somebody you see it on the news you know those news shows where it's just two Talking Heads screaming at one another occasionally you can hear someone make this out they say why do you need an ar-15 to hunt deer why do you need an ar-15 to hunt and the answer is well the answer is actually you probably shouldn't hunt deer with an ar-15 because it isn't powerful enough should use a more powerful gun but we'll get back to the ar-15 later on the point of the Second Amendment the Second Amendment does not exist to hunt deer the framers didn't just really hate deer or something they weren't sitting around they'd say okay Madison we've got to protect free speech and we got to kill all those deer I hate them I hate that this deer that is the Second Amendment of the Constitution that's not what it's for that's not what it's for at all the Second Amendment very simply is to protect Liberty against tyranny that's what it's for the Second Amendment is not for hunting it's not for target practice it's not to shoot tin cans in your backyard it's not even to protect yourself against muggings and burglary guns can be used for all of those purposes that can be very useful for all of those purposes but primarily the reason the framers enshrined the Second Amendment is as a hedge against tyranny the framers of the Constitution believed that an armed citizenry would be able to protect Liberty in the country and without an armed citizenry it would be very difficult to protect Liberty because well we've seen this happen a lot when various governments have taken away the right of people to have guns they can become more oppressive they can become more tyrannical if a citizenry has guns they can protect not only themselves and their property and their family they can protect their cities they can help protect their states they can help protect their whole country against threats both foreign and domestic we saw this shortly after the founding of America we beat the British we sent them crying back home and then they came back just a couple decades later and invaded again but an armed citizenry can protect against threats foreign and domestic and we we know that the framers thought this because they said this repeatedly George Washington said a free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined the Washington also said the Constitution should never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms Jefferson said this when he was drafting the Virginia Constitution Jefferson said no free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms if only he could see our debates of gun control today he would be horrified and rolling over in his grave but the framers were very clear on what they thought at the most extreme end of this this means that the Second Amendment exists in case the United States citizens have to take up arms against a foreign invader or even against their own government that's a radical statement but the framers were fairly radical people in certain ways it's to protect even at that point to take up arms against your own government if push comes to shove if we absolutely must as a last resort now it's funny because when you're having the gun control debate with somebody this is the point at which their argument flips so the argument first begins they say why do you need an ar-15 to hunt deer it's so so powerful nobody needs a gun that powerful and then when you explain to them the reason for the Second Amendment they say that the ar-15 is not powerful enough they say there's no way those guns are powerful enough there's no way that you could fight off your own government you're crazy you say wait a two seconds ago you were just saying that the guns are too powerful so yeah but that was then this is now the guns aren't powerful enough so okay all right let's indulge in this because they bring up the zombie apocalypse scenario this is the zombie apocalypse the United States government which we all enjoy has turned tyrannical you know there going to they're gonna come around and they're gonna go to house to house and take all of our stuff and start oppressing us now we should point out this isn't totally unbelievable this isn't it might be unlikely for now but we've seen this happen in western democracies very frequently even over the last hundred years in just the last hundred years Western liberal democracies have turned tyrannical multiple times in the 20th century it happened in Germany it happened in Italy it happened in France it happened in Spain that is not a good track record for unarmed citizens in Western democracies so to say it could never happen here is just ignoring the historical record certainly it could happen here we hope that it doesn't happen here now the other part of this argument is that there's no way the American citizens armed with their formerly powerful now not very powerful guns there's no way that they could fight off the government and I would like to just point out a couple of geographic and historical examples here to begin the United States is absolutely gigantic so it's a gigantic country so first if the zombie apocalypse happened there's a fair chance that certain Americans would defect from their newly tyrannical government and would help out the people servicemen and police that sort of thing even so just consider the case of the war in Afghanistan Afghanistan is roughly the size of Texas it's roughly the size of one US state we have been at war in Afghanistan we have brought the full night the United States military as well as our coalition of allies to fight in Afghanistan and we have not successfully been able to maintain order in that area for 16 years Afghanistan is just a few months away from being the longest war in the history of the United States and we have not been able to successfully occupy a country the size of Texas so if the zombie apocalypse happened and the United States turned to radical I think we'd be ok because that country is 150th the size of the United States as a matter of the states the country is much much larger than that now of course it probably won't get to this point it's unlikely I would agree with that I think the framers agree with that but it's not unlikely because things could never get this bad the reason that it's unlikely is because we have an armed citizenry the very fact of an armed citizenry is a good indication that politics is not going to devolve and get truly horrific because whatever those would-be tyrants those would be authoritarian say I think I'm gonna start oppressing people today they look around they say oh there are 300 million guns in this country more guns than people maybe I better hold off that that's a good indication those are just the facts of the Second Amendment those are just the observable facts why it was written what it means what it protects now some people still want to get rid of gun rights that's a fair point that's they're perfectly entitled to that opinion they can admit the Second Amendment is there it protects the individual right to keep and bear arms the reason it's there is to protect Liberty from tyranny I don't care I don't want any part of that get rid of the Second Amendment gut it amend it repeal it I want gun control okay that's fine fortunately our framers were so thoughtful they had such foresight that they realized that people might want to amend their constitution over time so they included an amendment process to the Constitution Article five of the Constitution makes very clear how people can get rid of their rights if they want to get rid of their rights or they can add new rights if they want to add new rights what this doesn't mean is that people can just start passing gun control laws those those laws can be quite unconstitutional they can't just go around and pass a law and say we're gonna confiscate everybody's guns and we're gonna confiscate this gun or that gun that would be unconstitutional but they are perfectly entitled to go around and convince their fellow citizens that they want to get rid of their gun rights and they can repeal that amendment that is perfectly fine except I wouldn't do that I would recommend if somebody wanted to repeal the Second Amendment probably not a good idea I think the benefits of gun ownership in the United States public gun ownership far outweigh the costs of gun ownership even big guns even scary guns even guns like the much maligned and dreaded ar-15 I told you we would get back to the ar-15 we're back at the ar-15 the ar-15 is all over the news it is constantly pushed on the news it's pushed as the worst weapon in the entire world by gun control advocates they say we just have to get rid of the ar-15 you hear this at rallies people are talking about this all the time I think the reason they do this is because the ar-15 is scary-looking and what they say is the ar-15 is an assault rifle we don't need assault rifles the air 15 is an assault rifle the trouble with this is that the ar-15 is not an assault rifle the people I think they are able to convince people that it's an assault rifle because it has AR and people think that stands for assault rifle it doesn't stand for assault rifle a R stands for Armalite rifle that's the name of the company that manufactured the ar-15 so it doesn't mean an assault rifle when people are talking about an assault rifle they're talking about a gun that's fully automatic you pull the trigger once and a spray of bullets comes out and like a machine gun and I think maybe it would be a good idea to limit the exposure to those kind of guns good thing is we did ban those guns 84 years ago machine guns have broadly been banned for public use for 84 years good thing I mean control advocates can be very happy about that but the ar-15 is not an assault rifle it's not a machine gun you don't just pull the trigger once in a spray of bullets comes out the ar-15 is in many ways just like a regular hunting rifle you have the gun you pull the trigger once one bullet comes out you can take a hunting rifle same thing by the mainstream media and gun control activists they focus on the ar-15 because it's scary also because it has been used in very public incidents very widely reported shooting incidents in recent times and I think finally because the ar-15 is so popular it's one of the most popular guns in America and so gun control advocates say if we can ban the ar-15 we'll take a huge dent out of the gun market in America but the ar-15 is actually used in relatively few shootings each year so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you want to reduce the prevalence of guns in the country or the prevalence of crimes involving guns it doesn't really make sense to ban the ar-15 in fact according FBI data from 2011 the number of people who were killed that year and each year from rifles of any kind not just the ar-15 but the ar-15 hunting rifles different caliber rifles all of those people are 323 a relatively small number of people killed each year to put that in context five times as many people are killed each year using knives so are we going to have knife control are we going to start instituting assault knife bans no more knives the federal government's going to storm into your kitchen take your butter knives because statistically that's much much more dangerous than an ar-15 we know that one and a half times as many people are killed each year with baseball bats and hammers how about baseball bat control should we go in there the time is now we need to ban baseball bats there's not even a constitutional right to keep and bear baseball bats you could get rid of those in two seconds but be very easy to put this in context more than twice as many people are killed each year by hands and fists and feet' as are killed by rifles of any kind including the ar-15 and I have long said this is a lethal weapon this should be registered with the federal government I don't I'm not exactly a hulking adonis of a man maybe this one wouldn't be but fists are very dangerous fists are very very dangerous should we have fist control in this country I don't maybe that's some it worth considering knives hammers bats fists those all kill more people each year than the dreaded ar-15 the really strange part with gun control activists focusing on a rifle such as the ar-15 is that far and away the more many many many more people are killed each year by handguns than with ar-15s over 19 times as many people are killed each year with handguns as with ar-15s what why is this why are they focusing why does it seem that the gun control argument always distracts it always focuses on something that isn't quite true or as misleading from the actual heart of these issues it's because the ar-15 looks scary and it looks terrifying you when you explain these facts to gun control activists you usually get the same response but we have to do something we and this is this argument is actually pretty compelling they say what do you want to do you want to do nothing you just want to sit there and do nothing you want more people to die you want students to die you want all of the you you want to do nothing but I want to do something so I'm good in your bed that's basically how the argument goes nobody wants to do nothing but we don't want to do something if doing something is doing nothing other than taking away our rights we don't want to do something that won't solve the problem we don't want to do something that not only won't solve the problem but will actually take away people's constitutional civil rights and make other crimes perhaps worse there is a an interesting fact of gun control they see we need one more law we need just this law just this new law this new law we have something on the order of 20,000 gun control laws on the books already it's not that we don't have any gun control in the United States we have something on the order of 20,000 it's actually hard to count how many we have because we have a federal system so different cities different states different the federal government has these different different laws but there's very good news here despite the media coverage mass and school shootings are way way down in recent years more children are killed by swimming pools and bicycles than by mass shootings over the past 25 years ten students per year are killed by guns in schools that's out of a country that has 56 million students nationwide children killed in school shootings are down 75 percent since the 1990s there is no epidemic going on actually all of the statistics all of the news is moving in the right direction that's a very good thing there is no evidence that the enactment or repeal of gun control laws has had any effect on that during that time this doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything we could allow teachers to exercise their constitutional rights we could arm schools we could have new mental health policies which would probably be the most effective one thing we shouldn't do is infringe on the Second Amendment as a matter of public safety there is no evidence that's it the gun control saves lives on the contrary there's a surely some evidence that other crimes in crease we know that this country has more guns than people even the countries that have instituted mass gun confiscation have failed where tried we in Australia there is no evidence that mass confiscation first of all it didn't work because only a fifth to a third of the people actually gave away their guns so most everybody kept their guns anyway there's no evidence that this had any effect on homicide or on suicide same thing in South Korea and Japan we also know that 2/3 of all gun deaths each year are suicides mostly committed by middle-aged men and we know that gun confiscation policies has not been shown to have any effect on reducing the suicide rate as a matter of constitutional law the framers are clear as a matter of history we see what happens when countries take away the right to keep and bear arms and this brings us to our favourite contradiction I'll leave it here and then we can take some questions you'll very frequently hear people say especially today they'll say this White House I won't mention that the occupant I won't mention them you know but they'll say they really don't like him and they'll say this guy he's an authoritarian he's an oppressive person he's just waiting to oppress the entire country and that's why we should give them all of our guns you just said they're what ya know there are awful people they want to kill us and enslave us and but that's why we should give them all of our guns even before this most recent presidential election you would hear people say on the issue of police brutality they would say the police are bigots they're unfairly targeting certain demographics this is awful they're racist their oppressive their brutalizing people that's why we should give them all of our guns that's why the police should be the only people to have any guns this doesn't make a lot of sense the framers knew better they knew that centralized government cannot be counted on to protect Liberty they knew that an unarmed citizenry would be ripe for oppression and so they instituted checks and balances we have checks and balances between the three branches of government in our country we have checks in the federal government we have checks and balances between the the federal government and the state government and ultimately we have a check and a balance between the people between the people of this country and all of their governments that's a really good thing it served us very well for the entire history of this country and I hope it continues to serve us well in the future I know we're running late on time so let's open it up to questions [Applause] [Music] all right here's our first question we might go into next the passing period but if you want to say you're more than welcome to so long as the administration doesn't get mad at me yeah hi I'm I'm like so I I really liked a lot of the stuff you were saying actually because as a Democrat I do have a lot of opinions and ideas on gun legislation in general and I know that the media and mass news does often place it to the extreme but one thing that I'm just little confused about is you were saying that the Second Amendment to put limitations on it would require an amendment process but I know that there are limitations on the First Amendment that we have that don't go through that same amount of process furthermore I know that people like me on the Left don't necessarily want to completely eradicate the Second Amendment but the types of legislation and restrictions that we want to place on it would keep guns out of the hands of certain people and from what I've been hearing of you saying there haven't been many concrete solutions on taking away guns from the hands of people that should not be having these guns and from the areas that I've been researching and looking into these people are able to gain the access these guns rather easily so I'm not sure how Ellis you want to combat that without proper legislation laws yeah that is an excellent question I will point out to your question that none of the major gun control laws that have been proposed in recent years in response to recent shootings would have prevented any of those shootings even PolitiFact which is a left-leaning website has admitted that that is true so the question always is what solution does one propose you're absolutely right it's these these rights are not utterly absolute there are some reasonable limitations on freedom of speech at various times and there are some reasonable limitations on the Second Amendment as well but I think of many people in the Democratic Party in particular are trying to place unreasonable restrictions on the Second Amendment we saw this in the recent presidential campaign the Democratic nominee campaigned and said that the decision in DC versus Heller the decision which upheld the individual right to keep and bear arms that was terrible we've got to get rid of that so if one is talking about a reasonable restriction on guns say that we're going to limit the access to a machine gun or to the tommy gun that's perfectly fine but if one wants to put the restriction on the Second Amendment that we want to take away the individual right to that gun which is what Hillary Clinton said that seems to me not just a restriction on the Amendment but to gut the amendment entirely in years past because you're very reasonable in years past there were many more reasonable people on this issue on both sides of the aisle this was not a terribly partisan issue in recent years as the Democratic Party has moved further to the left you're seeing more outward calls for the utter repeal of the Second Amendment the gutting of the individual right to keep and bear arms that is not reasonable that that goes to the heart of it and there is a there is a constitutional way to do that but I think that that party would have difficulty convincing their countrymen to do it and to pass that amendment which is why they try to skirt the issue with laws and with judicial rulings in the interest of time we need to we can't have follow-up set up I'm sorry it's running late so you can tweet me and then I'll answer follow-up that way if you have questions still then get in line hi I'm Tommy so in your words you say that the Second Amendment protects Liberty against tyranny so if you're sort of a if you sort of support like a living interpretation of the Constitution which I know you don't then is the Constitution does it get up on a tiny legs and start dancing around is it really alive or is it a dead piece of paper with words on it well I just I just mean depending depending on if you're a constitutional original list or not you could interpret it different ways if you're a judge but so anyway you're saying there's an implied power against coercion from the government but then you're also saying that the operative clause is totally concrete but so I support a theoretical implied power against coercion from the federal government but in my view there would be more sensible ways and measures of doing that so for instance you could have limits on police weaponry like no armored vehicles and stuff like that caps on prison populations a whole set of measures to prevent government coercion you could also let's say prevent security for office holders from being too strict and in that way you could have this imply to freedom from coercion and you could go about that's a that is a good point and this gets to the heart of the Second Amendment because you say a good way of ensuring Liberty against tyranny is to ask the federal government very nicely to limit their own powers I think that's the implication here we're the police they'll just limit the kind of weapons that they have and the security for our politicians they'll just kind of limit themselves and don't worry trust us we would never take away your Liberty but that does not have a very good enforcement mechanism and we've seen historically in countries like Italy Germany France Spain that when we trust the government to protect our liberties our liberties don't get protected in fact the entire purpose of the Second Amendment is to make sure that ultimately as a last resort we don't need to trust the law enforcement or the political class or our government itself to protect our Liberty because ultimately as a last resort we can protect it ourselves um hi I'm Josh and first of all can we both agree on that like that ar-15 is for sure like deadlier than most pistols and Glocks on the contrary pistols and Glocks kill many many multiples more people per year they kill over 19 times as many people per year as rifles of any kind including the ar-15 but you could say the same thing with like nukes right don't kill it nukes do not kill anybody prettier zero people per year are killed by nuclear weapons exactly but they're weighed that there is what I'm trying to say that I thought nuke where'd it go off or someone were to use them Lauren they're more readily available that you just wouldn't for sure it killed more people I'd actually don't accept that premise handguns are much deadlier it's a reason why you have there's a higher age limit to purchase handguns than to purchase rifles rifles are unwieldly they are kind of big you can't conceal them easily with handguns you can easily conceal them it's why they're used in so much gang crime it's why they kill so many more people per year they're much easier to have to hide to shoot from to get rid of I I don't really accept that premise the ar-15 looks much scarier but in reality it is significantly less lethal than other types of weapons on the market um like my main question I was gonna ask so your equation basically is saying that the more on the people are more like the less acceptable and better like they are to resist in government tyranny why can't we just give the people nukes or whatever mission weapons they want and and turn like a life time of government free be like like a tyrant free government what's the moral line in the sand enjoy that is a good question but I think you've stated a little differently the point that I'm making I'm saying that a reasonably armed citizenry is a hedge against tyranny I'm not saying that there is a direct variation between how armed the citizenry is and how much their Liberty can be protected so if we gave nuclear weapons to everybody we made everybody into like a little rocket man over there in North Korea that we would have a much safer country I don't think that's the case this is why they're there can reasonable restrictions on certain rights but to say that everybody has the right to common arms as the Constitution as the Second Amendment is regularly interpreted to mean is is a hedge against tyranny to say that also you can't have nuclear weapons I don't think that that significantly imperils the United States because of course in the doomsday scenario in the zombie apocalypse the question is would the government drop a nuclear weapon and oppress its people I think that's unlikely I think we've seen in the in the history of wars in the United States and in the history of insurrections in other countries and totalitarian governments that's not quite what happens we have to be reasonable here and not take things to other extremes because politics exists in reality hi thank you for coming to speak to us today first of all um the thing that has to be addressed though that was not mentioned is that the Republican answer to these shootings to these chickens like while they may be small should not be happening regardless has been things like measures arming teachers with baseball bats or arming students with river rocks we had a Pennsylvanian governor's say those kids can show throw river rocks pretty damn fast how is this seen as a reasonable measure to stop these mass shootings and the alternative to that is not convincing based on your argument well I think I think you might be understating the Republican solution to this because if we're talking about solutions there actually has been a solution over the past 25 or so years we know that over the past 25 or so years mass shootings and school shootings have declined precipitously they've declined 75% so whatever we're doing it seems to be working what were some of the policies that led to that well a strong more robust policing helped help that and a law-and-order a reformed criminal justice reform and locking up more criminals there was a famous headline in the New York Times it said crime rate decreases despite prison population filling so they despite maybe those two have something to do with one another so that's one answer and of course the Republicans have proposed allowing teachers who have concealed carry permits to carry weapons this doesn't seem like such a bad idea when a would-be killer sees a sign that says gun-free zone they see in a ripe target if you don't know who has a gun you're much less likely to be reckless in violence the Republicans have proposed arming guards at schools doesn't seem like a bad idea and of course mental health reform this is key in the United States it is virtually impossible to involuntarily commit somebody and that has been the case for decades now and so you have a mentally unstable people on the street and able to access certain weapons obviously in a country with 300 million guns there has been no serious proposal from Democrats to a report in that mental health system it's very hard to say we want to be able to lock someone up against their will I think that's why there hasn't been a lot of political will for that to be done but to say there's no solution as misleading the last 25 years have been a wonderful slate of solutions and it's a very good thing that shooting mass shootings have decreased by so so much in that time so first off I would like to thank you for being but one of the first things that you discussed was that if we look at the evidence of the effectiveness of gun control that gun control is just not effective at all and like I'm just wondering since the bill passed in 1996 a budget bill that contained the amendment the Dickey amendment which basically restricted the CDC's ability to study gun control stating that the study is conducted cannot support gun control so I was wondering if you support the amendment and I am like why absolutely I don't think that the CDC the Center for Disease Control should be investigating our constitutional rights I don't think our constitutionally protected civil rights are a disease quite the opposite I think they're a very good thing this gets to a facet of the left that is I think central to the leftist premise which is they want to study everything as a scientific question as a material question but of course our rights are not scientific or material our rights are philosophical we have natural rights from the natural law and so I don't think we should study that as a disease now there is a very good thing which is as I mentioned previously mass gun shootings have decreased precipitously in the last 25 years during that time we've enacted certain massive gun control legislation the assault weapons ban even though there aren't really any such thing as assault weapons but they use the term assault weapons ban of 1994 a decade later that law was repealed that had utterly negligible effects on gun violence in in that period so while certain people would like a bureaucratic entity to go in and study it as a disease and say this is what science says ban all your guns and get rid of your constitutional rights it isn't that easy and actually all of the historical and philosophical evidence seems to support the Second Amendment and the individual right to keep and bear arms thank you to the Young Democrats once again

Channel: DailyWire+

Views: 66,488

Keywords: michael knowles, daily wire, full speech, 2nd amendment, mira costa, high school, speech, amendment

Id: KmwvvysCwJk

Length: 43min 33sec (2613 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018