I'm Pro-Gun (2nd Edition) | Change My Mind

what's an assault rifle uh like one of them really large guns let me ask you are you aware of what the differentiation is between automatic and semi-automatic no people either have the right to protect themselves or they don't and there is no data to say that stripping people have the right to self-protection would make us safer so for this week's installment i've changed my mind we decided to revisit the very topical issue of gun control in the second amendment matter of fact we returned to ut dallas where we conducted our last segment on this topic to see if anything had changed [Music] now we're going to get to the two fully unedited interviews in a second that's the whole purpose of change my mind to see what real conversations in real time uh how they unfold but two things that really struck me first number one in a day full of conversations it seemed that none of the even highly educated students knew anything about basic proper firearm classifications or terminology well i know fully automatic is the one that is like restricted or an assault rifle like what why does someone need that assault rifle or uh you know an automatic machine gunner ars the same assault rifle that was used in the recent florida shooting and two everyone wanted to talk about florida obviously but shockingly not a single student not one had ever heard of the far deadly or sutherland springs shooting which took place in their own backyard remember the sutherland spring shooting that was right here in texas you know what happened there right does the name stephen williford mean anything to you no do you remember the sutherland springs shooting does the name stephen williford mean anything to you okay you remember the sutherland springs i've heard of it just now with the other girl from me yeah for me absolutely terrifying how could they not know of a shooting with 26 deaths another 20 injured which occurred only four hours away in which the shooter was stopped by an nra certified instructor with an ar15 a national hero mind you stephen williford but i repeat myself on with the conversations okay so what was your name again muad mawad yes right um i've asserted my position i think pretty hopefully pretty clearly um changed my mind so what do you think about australia 1996. what about australia when they uh buy back yeah i think it's terrible really why i think i think a gun ban stripping citizens of the right to protect themselves i think that's an immoral act but i mean what if you look at the statistics behind that the decline of you know shootings deaths by gun it's probably much less than we have per day here know what no it didn't it didn't have a statistical effect on uh on violent crime or even gun crime matter of fact it came about the online articles that that say yeah otherwise we've written plenty of them as well over to eladora with kiter.com and uh something more fascinating there's an overall decrease in violent crime there's an overall decrease often in gun crime um and in new zealand where they didn't have a mandatory buyback you saw the same kind of overall trends uh so yeah i think it's i think it's horrible um i think we both admit it's a ban okay right yeah yeah so it was considered a buyback which has been proposed here it was a mandatory buyback that's a gun ban so i guess my question to you would be um would you like to do that in the united states i would love to to be honest personally just ban guns honestly like what i mean i understand there's it's fun shooting a gun i've been to a gun range before there's a nice adrenaline feeling when you're shooting at a target like you know and it's just satisfying when you hit the middle of the target it's just like any other sport shirt per se but um i feel like we would gain so much more as a country in the long run if you're thinking of a bigger picture like less possibilities of psychos killing people like in las vegas or just most recently where 17 people died in a school right i mean honestly like if i were to give up my my favorite hobby playing soccer if that meant that hundreds of people wouldn't die i would gladly do it any day because i love my country that much great what do you believe the second amendment is about the right to bear on the right to bear arms to protect yourself and that's pretty much what i know i'm really ignorant on this if i'm honest oh really oh okay okay well listen i appreciate you sitting down um i don't mean to be contentious but you mentioned it as a hobby so um the first amendment okay right the right to freedom of speech do you believe that's absolute do you believe that you should have the right to speak freely without having that be infringed upon by the government okay and why do you believe that uh because just being able to express your beliefs uh publicly and having that as you know a freedom is is essential to the development of democracy in a country but where do you get that from who in what sense like what do you mean well where do you get the the right to the freedom of speech you said you believe that that is fundamental you believe that's very important to a democracy or to like a constitutional republic i just i just gave you a hint there in that uh constitution yeah yeah okay so so you're right because you know the freedom of speech is not absolute it doesn't exist across many other countries including free countries including australia by the way you don't have the right to free speech in australia okay so you believe the right to freedom of speech is absolute because of the constitution the first amendment amendment number two is what the right to bear arms okay so did the australians amend their whatever constitution they have when they had that buyback i can't speak to the specifics of all elements of the australian constitution okay now i do know again that uh where i come from for example in canada you can be jailed for speech that's offensive or you can be fined so we decided to do things differently from many places in europe and certainly australia as it relates to freedom of speech as well as the second amendment but i think it's important you just said you believe freedom of speech is absolute why because you accept the premise that these rights as recognized by the constitution are fundamental human rights so when it comes to the life and of our citizens yes do you not believe that we have let's say any let's like what if just you know in general like does when it comes to protecting the lives of citizens and immigrants and anyone who lives in america when it comes to that do you believe that there should be some flexibility in our constitution to protect our people so first off a couple of couple of key issues there right you would have to uh open it wide and now also nothing is absolute so your freedom of speech is an absolute so you would have to be comfortable with that secondly it's based on this premise that we would save lives by removing the second amendment which i don't agree with but let's go with with number one um do you see what a problem that is if you just say well let's hold on a second because we think we can be safer let's give up this fundamental right to protection uh as recognized in the second amendment can we acknowledge or maybe find common ground there that that'd be a real problem because it's the same constitution that affords you and i the right to do what we're doing right now i mean i understand that wholeheartedly but if we're thinking of the bigger picture here where like i mean i've seen things on social media where people believe that teachers should have guns and i mean so do you just as a human being do you think that the amount of shootings that we have every day in our country would decrease if we had a buyback like just thinking you know basic common sense okay so we've now i want to make sure that we're clear here we've hopscotched past the idea of human rights it seems like that's not an area you're super comfortable with because now you're talking about stripping someone of their fundamental right to self-protection is having a gun if it saves someone else's life i mean why not why not i mean why not you know like take that step as a country take that step as a country yes removing someone's right to protect themselves protect themselves from what so explain to me since so the second amendment so you all right um no no you're gonna do your thing okay so yeah second amendment you are do you want me to explain what it is no yeah sure so the second amendment was designed to allow citizens to protect themselves uh cells both from internal and external threats that means the right to protect obviously in their home property but mainly to protect themselves from a tyrannical government because they fled a trinical government they fought them off right these were basically unorganized uh militias who was a militia it's everyone you and i are the militia and the only way to ensure that there can be a well-regulated militia meaning a capable militia is that all citizens have the right law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms that's what it was designed to do you're proposing giving the government the very fail-safe it's designed against to protect against the tyrannical government you're saying let's give the government the authority to strip people of rights that's like a feat a feedback loop of just a violation of human rights on a scale that i don't think you might know you personally do you think having the right to free speech is more important than having the right to a gun no i think you're both people we think they're both equally important yeah so you think like for the development of our country it's essential to have guns and free speech and you think they're on the same level in a scale i think the right to own and keep fighting it's more like a right thing yes for you okay well i mean why why is it just america that we have tens of thousands of deaths per year it's not i mean it is on it if you look at statistics no we're not even 25. oh really yeah we're not even top 25 when it comes to firearm deaths we're not even we are the most armed populist but we're not even the top country for mass shootings matter of fact we're behind norway and france even though more people here have guns i don't know i think we've never heard of these statistics before honestly i don't know where you get yours from because all of the ones that i've seen okay show that america is always topping that list okay uh well let's say we're able to show you statistics afterwards let's assume that those are correct okay um it still can get to the question let's assume let's assume none of them are correct what gives you the right or what gives anyone here the right to strip someone of their ability to protect themselves so why don't we dissect that a little what are we protecting ourselves from i know you mentioned it from internal and external threats so what are those threats tyrannical government okay yeah okay and then of course the ability to protect yourself from anyone who wants to do you harm from evil people who are willing to commit uh harm i mean i don't i don't know why that that should you know have anything to do with being able to own an assault rifle assault rifle or you know an automatic machine gun or anything like that okay first off a couple things there um what do you um what's an assault rifle uh like one of them really large guns okay um yeah there's a lot to unpack there no no it's not i'm just going to automatically yeah i know i mean you mentioned a few things what kind of where do you get your news from forgive me or your sources what do you usually read cnn uh cnn twitter cnn twitter and a lot of professors probably here probably right um everything that you have said here and i said respectfully is incorrect about the australia buyback the statistics about that about uh the second amendment now about assault rifles and automatic weapons none of the shootings that you've discussed that we've discussed here involved automatic weapons certainly not florida these are not automatic weapons automatic weapons are already heavily regulated they're basically all but unattainable for the actual las vegas guy use yeah he's used to semi-automatic okay so semi-automatic and switch that word what about that why do people need to have this i'm sorry i didn't know but do you wanna explain what the difference is because that's really important don't you think because you you said here's something and i i appreciate you sitting down but you sat down here and you were willing to strip people of their rights you were willing to say listen it's time to progress as a country which i'll get to in a second um will cause countless more muggings murders rapes of innocent people the likes of which you've never you've never even been able to comprehend and didn't take into account you were willing to remove the right of those innocent civilians to protect themselves based on completely faulty data and knowledge of things that simply aren't so there's a huge difference between an automatic weapon that's a machine gun and a semi-automatic weapon a semi-automatic weapon is every handgun pull the trigger once it goes bang that's a semi-automatic weapon that's most hunting rifles that's nearly all handguns that are used for self-defense so my point is if if and i say this respect because a lot of people have sat down so this is not an insult but almost everything that you just said is is incorrect as a premise and you were using that or going up based on that knowledge um to justify the stripping of someone's ability to protect themselves that is deeply so wonderful to me so i obviously went to the extreme of just banning guns what if we you know improved our regulation or improved our our way of giving people access to these guns okay so we've got enough so you would say now let's not ban guns so i'm yeah with respect because you know you got to please everyone so let's just say we want to you know just take another step do you think we're at a you know a good state where we're at right now i don't i don't want to let's just say with what i just said would you acknowledge now that okay just banning guns could have some real serious ramifications and maybe you spoke a little too quickly on that that might not be a good idea i'm sorry what so would you agree with that maybe that's not a good idea to just ban guns sure okay so what kind of regulations would you like to see and why just making it probably more difficult for people such as the las vegas shooter the orlando shooter and things like that to get access to guns like that can and cause such you know huge calamities to our country um how would you do it what do you think i'm asking you you're supposed to change my mind i mean i'm just saying like we're not in a good place where we're at right now with regards to guns really and from the statistics that i've seen i don't know what which ones you have and i really love to look at the ones afterwards and from what i've seen and what i've been convinced through that data is that america is not in a good place with regards to data from cnn and twitter and professors is wrong um uh okay so you've i'm assuming you've probably never purchased a firearm no i haven't okay so if you purchase a firearm right now they run a background check okay okay okay you're a criminal if you're a felon you can't get a gun okay you've committed violent misdemeanors you can't get a gun okay domestic abuser you can't get a gun legally declared mentally unfit you can't get a gun get or own meaning you cannot obtain you cannot purchase it okay okay okay so these already exist if you go to purchase a firearm again all these twitter memes and stats don't believe them i mean it doesn't mean anything it's actual like links to articles and very very factual it's not just like someone i mean i could show you what i've read like totally just now the point i'm making here is a lot of this would be very easily refuted by yourself if you'd ever purchased a firearm you would know it's not you know it's not true because you've gone through the process everyone here who's ever purchased a firearm has gone through that process and knows that there are strict regulations um so we've gone from okay maybe banning all guns to how do we make it more difficult for people to purchase well we already do those things so what else would you do why do people get guns like people that commit these crazy crimes like why is that still happening you're not you're 19 times more likely to be knifed than ever shot i feel like you're 19 i'm just throwing fake statistics but i feel like you're much more likely to survive getting stabbed than shot but the point is why do people go out and stab i mean there's crazy people out there yeah well i mean what can we do as a country in your opinion uh stephen right stephen yes sir okay appreciate it i just googled you uh so um like what do you think we can take what's our next step because we're obviously like this just happened like a week ago you know i don't believe that you think it's just like something we should overlook well no i think i think i think you've overlooked a lot of data okay i think you've overlooked empirical evidence and i think you're you're wanting to pass legislation through an emotive response right now and i appreciate where you're coming from i think it's an empathetic place and i would hope that you believe where i'm coming from is an equally empathetic place it's just a different solution um i believe that you want to save more lives okay now what you've proposed to save more lives we've started with literally completely stripping people of guns which is uh very extreme i believe that's what the left wants to do though so i appreciate you being honest um to okay maybe there's some legislation there that we do or don't know what it would look like um let me i've talked about this quite a bit today our goal is to save lives how many lives are lost you said we're in a really bad place with guns in our country we're all right now are we not no are you gonna say we're not no i don't think we're okay listen i think every i think we are no i'm not gonna say perfect i think a shooting is an absolute tragedy is there room for improvement or you think that we're just like at a flat line there's always room for improvement certainly i mean when there are 39 incidents uh sorry yeah go ahead yeah it is called freeze up a lot my mouth might be getting blue now i've been out here for so long um uh sorry we were talking is a room for improvement um i think a man who had 39 reports two tips to the fbi blew away a chicken this is a guy you're talking about florida who legally should not have been able to purchase the firearm okay but legally you also can't go by crack right people find ways around the law yeah okay no matter what that's inevitable that's inevitable okay that's inevitable now as far as we're not in a good place in our country as it relates to firearms that's not true overall violent crime has been decreasing pretty consistently over the last several decades i don't believe that what if i said i don't like this i don't believe i'll show you statistics afterwards but um i mean you can even if you would like to after this google violent crime statistics they've been consistently decreasing and the assault weapons ban which was uh in place between 1994 and 2004 had no discernible effect at all on crime okay um how many but let's look at something that hopefully we can just agree upon because you're saying maybe i don't agree on your stats um i'll show them to you afterward and hopefully we can find some comments on that let's find something that's absolute absolutely we can agree upon how many lives do you know are lost to firearms each year in the united states i know it's in the thousands yeah uh if you include suicides it's 30-something thousand okay if you don't it's anywhere from 12 to you know in the teens of thousands depending on the course okay so that sounds about right uh something like that something like that yeah so that's let's let's take the the highest total thirty thousand okay okay including suicides i don't really think it's fair to but let's do that um what if i were to tell you that 500 000 to at meaning a minimum to over 3 million lives each year saved by defensive use of firearms the united states that's according to the national safety council in cdc exponentially more lives saved through law-abiding citizens who own and keep firearms protecting themselves then lost safe from like what like what's the criteria for that meaning live saved meaning fact of crime stopped from them using a firearm and by the way that doesn't necessarily include all statistics of most of the time if you own a firearm you simply show that you brandish the firearm and criminals will move along down the trail but innocent lives being saved this is according to the cdc national safety council through defensive use of firearms a low end of 500 000 listed potentially to over three million so if we're talking about we're not in a good place in our country more lives with would you at least entertain the idea that perhaps a way to save more innocent lives from being lost is encouraging uh firearm education and responsible firearm ownership considering the discrepancy it's exponentially more likely that an innocent life is saved in the united states by a firearm so let's say there's that that ratio of there is that's prevented versus that's caused by gun violence do you think that would decrease if there were more limitations on access to guns no how so well there's no evidence to suggest that it would i know but i'm saying like just i've got it listen i've got to base my opinion based on on two things first off on the second amendment and the constitution and how it's recognized okay okay because if you don't recognize that then you don't have any rights and i don't have any rights it sounds to me like you enjoy some of the rights but you don't necessarily agree with other rights then you have to base it on undeniable statistical empirical data and we have that that's what forms my opinion not how i feel or react based on a horrible tragedy and and no one here is saying that it isn't when that occurs um but you just don't you don't hear about those stories a lot that makes sense i mean i don't honestly like at the end of the day like i feel like if you just look at it from a common sense perspective because you have your statistics and apparently i have mine and and i mean honest like when you think about it like he just hit your camera oops okay oh a tolerant dude and uh real quick i really respect what you're doing here thank you very much i love that despite our extremely you know just our extreme disagreement in certain things i i really respect that you're you know you're not even hiring your voice and i really really would like to shake your hand but it's a fist bump let me hold your hand and get it warmed up no i really respect this thank you very much no listen and i'm not offended by anything you said so i really appreciate it and here's the thing and i like you i wanted to offend me uh that's fine no i mean i mean i want to learn first of all and i i've shown you where my perspective i hope you you understand where i'm coming from i understand where you're coming from and i think you're i think here's the thing i think you're you're an empathetic person who wants to save lives right um and i'm just trying to tell you that that first off you can't save every life right that's where i believe you're coming from i don't i don't believe in describing a motive you know you see this right now at the cnn town hall why don't you care about the lives lost no why don't these people care about the lives saved i mean a good example we don't hear about remember the sutherland spring shooting that was right here in texas you know what happened there right does the name steven williford mean anything to you no okay this is so i have a show it's called lotto with potter okay stephen williford was someone i interviewed on my show okay this is after the remember the southerland springs shooting i haven't i've heard of it i don't remember killing far more people than the one in florida okay uh deadly shooting in southern springs uh just outside of uh san antonio texas okay um sorry southerland springs sutherland yeah okay southerland springs yeah sutherland sorry i said southern first because that's steven williford sorry okay yeah okay so this is a very deadly shooting that occurred at a church this was within the last uh four months now i'm sure you've seen all the press obviously after florida boycott the nra gun control now cnn town hall stephen willoffer to some we interviewed on our show okay the reason i interviewed him on our show this lowly little podcast was because no no one else was really even calling him no one else really wanted to hear his story do you know who stephen williford is no he's the man who stopped the active shooter with an ar-15 okay it was a man shooting up a church an evil man shooting up a church and stephen williford who is a hero shot him with an ar-15 and stopped it so media didn't even interrupt so i guess are you saying like everyone should get an ar-15 no i'm not saying everyone should get an ar-15 but what i'm saying is you say you have your facts and you have your data and then you acknowledge that perhaps you're misinforming some of these issues you mentioned cnn okay why didn't cnn have stephen this was a more deadly shooting carried out against the church here in texas stephen williford he wasn't some kid who happened to be maybe even a different wing of the school or wasn't even there that day this was the man who personally stopped the active shooter you don't even know his name should then maybe maybe illuminate that there's a bias in in today's media that isn't giving you the full story and if you don't believe me on anything you can go watch my interview with stephen williford and you can go google the suddenly spring shooting and stephen williford it was an unbelievably deadly shooting and he stopped it with an ar-15 mean i still go back to my initial thing like more guns equals more deaths by gun like you can't tell me that's incorrect it is incorrect how i just i just i mean like no i mean i get it more lives are saved by firearms more lives are saved by defensive uses of firearms and there is no statistical data to suggest you know you started with well you started with let's just get rid of the second amendment i mean maybe let's get into automatics okay then maybe semi-automatic so again either way and i think we found here is no matter any way you slice it for you to change you have to do away with the second amendment and ban guns it's not about automatic it's not about a bump stock semi-automatic now it's all guns people either have the right to protect themselves or they don't and there is no data to say that stripping people have the right to self-protection would make us safer as a matter of fact there is some data to suggest otherwise new york chicago places with california lots of places very strict gun laws that's the most violent gun crime in the in the country okay i understand i guess it makes it look like i'm saying that guns don't protect people guns are this and that and like they're all they bring is harm but i'm saying that i still believe until i look at the statistics that you're talking about i still like fully believe that sure more access to guns is in it lead to more psychotic people getting you know through the system that we currently have i mean at least you would have to agree that we need some type of change with regards to regulation you can't tell me we're fine and we're doing okay and like i certainly do away with some things for example i would do away with uh um 30-day waiting periods for firearms oh yeah i'll do away with that um yeah you know i would i would do away without with people not being able to purchase suppressors for hunting i believe more safety so you just think we shouldn't limit the type of audience that gets access to guns no we already do we already don't think we don't need any more of a limitation like okay so let me ask what what ways or what you know what avenues can we take to ensure that things like las vegas won't happen again never ensure that things like las vegas or at least that bad all you can do here's the thing then we talked about this on the program not long ago human beings commit horrible acts of evil okay you can never stop them from doing that you ban your ban guns in australia violent crime is the same in the uk violent crime has gone up people find a way look at uh we're actually okay so i mean and you more than shootings in france look at nice look at what's what's happening look at the terrorists that's the most can't stop it does does uk have more gun deaths than we do i'm pretty sure they don't they have more violent crime now here here's something else that's also important comparing violent crime statistics across countries is very difficult because they have different standards for violent crime if you look at the united states uh of places with the strictest gun laws have some of the worst gun crime now uh as far as i don't i'm not so concerned with just gun crime i'm concerned with violent crime okay violent crime there is a statistical correlation between violent crime increasing and populous as being unarmed being stripped of the ability to protect themselves you even look at states states where people carry firearms or people are more likely to carry arms freely they are less likely to be targeted less likely to be attacked there is often lower violent crimes there are plenty of statistical correlations there no one is saying that we are perfect but i think human evil i think we both acknowledge evil is part of the ammunition you have some evil in you so do i people have evil in them people have good in them i believe all people have all of the above so people will commit people who get overrun with evil they will commit acts of evil it comes down to what's the best way to prevent that either you believe in disarming all good people and also doing away with the constitution and the rights that afford us everything else such as the ability to peaceably assemble and speak freely or uh you believe that allowing good people to protect themselves i don't know the solution okay i don't know i guess we'll agree to disagree to some extent i understand i'm glad i'm glad i'm glad you educated me a little bit on like the the positive side of guns but i still feel like the fact that there's you know 17 18 year old kids that got killed it's terrible i mean i feel like something that's terrible but what about the millions i mean why don't you get you know the nra or millions of mothers who protect their children at home when dad's gone and someone breaks in or the women who protect themselves from being raped right you're talking about 500 000 to over 3 million so you can't just look would we you can't legislate emotionally do you feel less uh empathetic to that woman do you feel less empathetic to the child who was protected by a firearm i don't think so and just as i don't feel less sympathetic to those lives lost yeah so let me ask you this before we go if you were able to uh research these things and if the facts that i presented bore out and you said okay that checks out would that perhaps uh change or educate your opinion on firearms in the second amendment a little differently not completely probably but to an extent possibly yeah to an extent all right sure let me let me let's this is actually probably there's a whole lot no we don't do this right now okay yeah but uh so you're ready okay all right sorry here um okay here if you want to write this down here let me let me do this uh write down if you write down these notes sorry everyone i'm actually giving just real quick we'll continue i'm giving him some notes on stats to research on his own because he's actually he's really open and and hunger for knowledge and i appreciate that so i'll take some time with him google cdc lives saved guns cdc or you can google how many guns saved per year yes um austria you can google australian buyback [Music] actual effect or australian buyback so violent crime so let me ask you why are there articles that are suggesting that uh well you know what it's exponentially decreased does someone have my phone here let me show you something really quickly because this even happens with me by the way i do this professionally okay um and like i said someone who works in the media and someone who was on mainstream media for a long time fox news cnn did it for a long time it's not always very honest uh i even get caught in the sense that uh mass shootings i knew these numbers were wrong okay so this is something that's been going around it's been retweeted by people at cnn this has been retweeted and posted tens of thousands of times right gun massacres fell during the assault weapons ban okay okay but here's the thing they're using gun map i was going that doesn't make sense because i've looked at this number at least 50 times i've used it and sourced it what they did was they took six plus deaths okay the standard used is actually four plus so we've been used for a long time it changes its discus completely those were the standards that originally set so you have to look at the source it comes from lewis claravis now i can show you uh what it is from and then i do have to let other people come in here yeah but this is what is actually used as a government standard standard for mass shootings as a matter of fact looks like it went up now here's the thing i'm being fair if you look at that right i don't think that the assault weapons ban necessarily increased gun crime because there's a statistical it was going up regardless and now it's been going down a little bit so i'm not going so far the other way and said look the assault weapons ban increased gun crime i think that's a more balanced point of view um but it certainly didn't decrease it that's ewing using the legal standards anyone can create a statistic and then they just say well hold on a second i'm going to include six plus well why don't you include four plus that's what's been used to compare across different countries those are the studies that have been used so often people will tweak that data to change the number little tricks like that of course that's the assault rifle ban that your assault weapons weapons was 94 to 2004 and the definition of a massacre is four plus it was four plus yeah then why did six plus decrease or is that just like a well hi then then you have to get into again you look at the numbers how many more uh the reason they included four plus was because there's a lot between four and six do we care less about those lives is that not considered a massacre so that's no i'm not saying that you do but my point is that people are dishonest and tweak the data all the time and so that's why i think it's important i mean overall i mean it's not just that like you know yeah but the undeniable fact is violent crime you have to look at violent crime not just gun crime overall violent crime and you have to look at how many lives are saved um and then i would also recommend that you purchase a firearm just even if you return it go through the process i think you'll change your point of view even more i think you'll realize it's significantly more difficult than you think um i know my opinion changed i'm canadian okay uh dual citizen was raised in montreal when i first purchased a fire i mean i was told it's easier than buying a it's easier than buying a pack of cigarettes it's not true so if you can it's pretty easy it's pretty easy compared to it's not that easy other countries it's much easier well compared to other countries that don't allow it on firearms period of course uh but in canada we're sitting we invented the mass shooting in canada we had three at schools just in my hometown of montreal anyways right [Music] would you mind scooching in a little bit just so i just otherwise it's gonna i'm gonna throw out my shoulder i got you so let me um is that a bird i don't it's pretty loud okay let me reassert my position just to make sure there's no miscommunication here i am an avid supporter of the second amendment and firearm ownership i come from a country where that's not a legally recognized right like canada i'm open to new ideas and having my mind changed okay well um i believe that you have your right to own a gun like that's not a problem now i just think that the ease of accessibility of having a gun is the problem and like this culture that we have surrounding um owning a gun is like a bit problematic and i mean that's my position i think you have a right to own a gun okay but not military-grade uh like things that cause mass shootings okay how would you define military grade assault rifles what's an assault rifle so like uh ak-47 okay now why would you differentiate between say an ak-47 and a ruger mini 31. like pistols no that's also it's a common hunting rifle right i'm not sure what you're asking but i guess i'm asking because you're the one who's proposing i assume a ban on military standard you just use a term assault rifle right we don't need to have them like among citizens i suppose people who have military training could have those because they're under jurisdiction they've been trained they've had background checks et cetera but regular citizens such as a 19 year old boy it doesn't make sense that he had that gun legally sorry couple things you do have to go through a background check to legally purchase a firearm perhaps it's not exclusive to the military and um again i think it's important for you to define uh what military spec would be so you mean things like ar15 yes i've forgotten the name sorry i apologize um uh an ar-15 is not a military right okay they use m16s um an ar-15 is not an automatic weapon so i think it's important when people are proposing gun control legislation to it's important for me to understand what it is that you're proposing right so when you say x guns shouldn't be in the hands of citizens um i i would really like to just so i'm not misrepresenting your point of view and and so i can know whether i appropriately agree or not what kind of firearm specifically would you uh remove from law-abiding citizens or bar them from in in-house so ar-15 right what kind of gun is that an ar-15 is a is a rifle right so i would believe this is an automatic rifle right semi-automatics would be something that don't need to be in the hands of citizens okay so so no handguns i mean the thing is that like handguns and pistols have different like caliber compared to semi-automatics or automatic guns and semi-automatics the thing that that kid used like it was much more of a severe type than say just a handgun no no virginia tech was just committed with handguns um let me ask you are you aware of what the differentiation is between automatic and semi-automatic no by the way i'm not trying to be a smart smart assist at all but a lot of people have sat down and said this they don't know and that's honestly it's because of the disservice from the media and deliberately conflating them so a fully automatic weapon machine gun would be you know pull the trigger it keeps firing until the magazine is empty a semi-automatic would include all pistols um it's pull the trigger once a bullet comes out right right that's most hunting rifles so that's why i say you know the ar-15 by the way use the caliber 223 which is really a glorified varmint caliber it's actually not the most powerful caliber out there it's not even close most hunting rifles that people use to take down deer are actually significantly more powerful as well as being semi-automatic okay many well the vast majority of mass shootings are carried out not using uh rifles at all just using run-of-the-mill handguns which happen to be semi-automatic so um does any of that i guess change your point of view because you were under the presumption that these were military style rifles and semi-automatics knowing that you would effectively be removing the only way you could do it is saying okay a ban ban on all firearms or what about a ban on certain firearms rather than all okay well that comes back to how do you determine which firearms let me do this i guess first because then we can get into it seems to me that um like you said you're you don't know a whole lot about firearms i'm not an expert necessarily by any means i was raising canada how much of an expert can i be on firearms but i've learned quite a bit in becoming a responsible firearm owner what do you believe the second amendment is i think it's a right to defend ourselves okay right uh self-defense um in the case of uh you know in the case of a need of self-defense right but mass shootings those aren't self-defense well no but that's that's a crime right right i'm saying but before we get into that that's a crime and we both agree listen no none of us no one here is advocating for mass shootings i want to make sure we agree on that and i appreciate you sitting down and keeping it civil we've had people come by and scream and knock the camera so i want to make sure you understand i am very anti criminal behavior thank you um but you said the second amendment is for defense i think we need to fundamentally uh find out where we agreed first before then we determine where we disagree okay so the second amendment you believe is is for defense but how so defense against what attackers um i believe i was i was talking to some people out there and they said that like in case the government goes against you you can use um guns as a like as a self-defense as well and was that the first time you heard that concept so you you'd never heard before about the second amendment being a safeguard against a tyrannical government yeah okay that's why it was written right uh that's that's that's the whole purpose for it so um with that context you have to understand at that point they were basically uh ensuring just like the first amendment your freedom of speech remember you can run off right now and say i hate him he was mean he's terrible and you have the right to say it i would prefer that you didn't but the constitution says you have that right the constitution also ensured that the citizens had the right to arm themselves um by the way the same kind of armaments that the military had at that point um that's what it was for it was for protection against both internal and external threats government and of course to protect your your farm your family your property that's why it exists so that's what the second amendment ensures okay um i guess since that was the first time you've you've heard that but uh can we i guess agree on that as a starting off point i suppose i think my only issue with it is that there's like a very a very like it's a culture like defense of guns and having guns is a very american culture like why isn't this a problem in say australia where they had enacted a gun ban a ban on assault rifles i believe and then they administered a buy-back program where over 650 000 guns were bought back and their homicide rates and suicide rates by gun violence dropped significantly a couple of things i'd like to unpack there uh two things said why do we have this culture in the united states right i'll acknowledge for example where i'm from in canada it's different than the united states so why is there a gun culture in the united states um because you have other societies who kneeled for royalty who didn't fight off a trinical government we left and in order to make sure that you're free to practice your religion in order to make sure that you're free to speak by the way that's also not a right in australia or canada freedom of speech doesn't exist anywhere else outside of the united states not to its full capacity a lot of people don't realize that they go hand in hand we were the country who fled the world's greatest superpower one century only to become the world's greatest superpower the next century that's never happened to that degree and that's because we're a country founded on the idea of private citizens being able to own firearms we fought off a tyrannical government we didn't submit to them so that will change the culture just as you see a different culture in japan versus germany right there are cultural differences when you're a culture born through violence and i would say virtuous violence um i mean i would say it certainly was virtuous violence to fight a war to end slavery when we agree you can commit acts of violence that are morally virtuous and you can commit acts of peace that are morally reprehensible you can peacefully sign a warrant for millions of people to die and that has happened so that is why there's a fundamental mistrust of government we fought off a government and we wanted to ensure that we would be able to do that in the future because george washington um actually george mason said who is the militia which in the second amendment said why it's it's the whole people george washington fought off militias you know there are all kinds of warring militias in this country the easiest thing he could have done would have been all right fan guns no more malicious george washington didn't you know why because he said i need them to keep us in chat our founding fathers understood since they just fled and fought off tyranny that it can happen within one generation it can happen within less than a decade so that's why it's ingrained into our culture it's a different culture um you may not agree with it but that's what the second amendment exists does that answer maybe your question as to why it's culturally different right but i believe maybe the culture was different back then like the context is different now okay well let's let's get to that because i wanted to get to your second if you mentioned australia uh so you mentioned a buyback buyback program it was a mandatory buyback yeah so it's a gun ban um it's interesting to me then you said well and then gun suicides and gun crime went down her guns bites by gun related suicides and gun related uh homicides okay but they didn't completely ban guns because they did um i think if i'm not mistaken they did enact a new permit system right but it's a mandatory buyback right you could say it's like if i put a ban on all epiletted black coats right now and it's a mandatory buyback where you have to turn that in or i'm going to send government men with guns by the way ironically to your house to take your jacket that's a ban right right you don't have a choice the matter then you can say afterward well we're going to make you get this tax stamp and we're going to make you go through this process and you can get your your pretty black jacket back you wouldn't say oh okay that's that's that's a real respect for my rights there mr government i appreciate it it's pretty pretty rough so it was a mandatory buyback then you mentioned that there was a decrease in uh gun homicides and suicides first off there's conflicting data there that it didn't affect you at all but there's certainly no conflicting data that did not affect violent crime so uh the question becomes if someone kills himself with a gun or someone kills himself with a knife you're 19 times for example more likely to be knifed my concern is with violent crime it's not necessarily a gun and it shows you that it doesn't matter what you do with guns violent crime remains unchanged right now what does change for example in the united states is that there are far more defensive uses of firearms that save far far more lives than they take so the question becomes i think because you're you're empathetic um you're kind of i i don't say this i don't want to be air game i think you're learning some historical context for the second amendment hopefully and i would encourage you to go read it don't take my word yeah no seriously like levar burton don't take my word for it don't you hate it when he does that and reading rainbow and then some six-year-old that's like i'm supposed to take a six-year-old's recommendation so don't take my word for it so then that now it comes back to the issue if it didn't necessarily work um understanding why we have a second amendment now are you still comfortable with stripping people of their rights to protect themselves i don't think that's the issue with like i think i guess like yeah talking to you it boils down to like this really intense culture around guns and having them and like the context has changed now so we're not as afraid of our government turning on us anymore as you as we were more afraid of mass shootings and people turning on each other i see i think that's very that's very misguided why you're more afraid of a mass shooting than um government overreach yes i suppose so you mean by government overreaches and government takes over infringing upon your rights yeah tyrannical government um i think how old are you if you don't mind me oh really okay 18. well there you go you're a very sharp young lady at 18. um very well spoken uh you just haven't lived through it it doesn't take a lot i mean you understand that can happen very quickly it's still happening across the world right now right tyrannical governments i mean you can see how quickly a government can change look at turkey right right look at iran in the 70s and iran today i mean rights are removed like that like clockwork you see it with australia a gun buyback a mandatory gun by that these people were obeying the law one second and then were fugitives from the law the next because someone decides to change the law this happens all the time in the realm of human history uh major global conflicts it's not that long ago what i mean and the only way we're the only country to say hey we recognize the human condition we recognize that human beings are inherently capable of evil and corrupt but being corrupted so let's safeguard against that and make sure that every individual has the right to protect themselves because that's the fundamental worldview right right do you believe that good people have the right to protect themselves against bad people whether that's government or a gang member well that's not too hard to think about to be honest like i think that argument that um the only thing that um stops the bad guy with the gun is a good guy with a gun i think that's a little bit shaky to think about just because um that doesn't make much sense to me you can't always uh i don't know i just don't i think that argument isn't as valid as it could be i had i had some stats in my head okay sorry these cameras do that to you um okay let me ask you this if i were able to provide you with irrefutable evidence that that is true as well as anecdotal evidence would you consider changing your opinion i suppose but i would have to depend it would depend on the source okay all right let me let me give you the information in the source and i would encourage you to google it afterwards um how many guns do you believe in the united states sorry how many lives do you believe are taken by guns in the united states each year you're gonna say three thousand three hundred thousand aren't you no no no how many lies no no no no that's that's way too high really yeah wait okay taken if you take away suicide it's in anywhere from twelve thousand to sixteen thousand depending which source you use now how many uh lives how many people are saved each year in the united states through defensive uses of firearms i'm not sure are you gonna yeah would you repeat your question please how many defensive uses of firearms would you say occur in the united states meaning live saved people safe protected through legal defensive use of firearms each year so we've just established about you know 12 to 16 000 excluding suicide lives are taken oh okay and how many are saved i'm not sure minimum 500 000 really likely over 3 million each year according to the cdc okay so i'd say that's a legitimate source right it's not cnn this is a cdc uh a national safety council so you're talking exponentially higher numbers of people whose lives are saved for defensive use of firearms than lives are ever taken but that still negates the idea that that people are still able to go out and commit mass shootings uh which i think under the definition mass shooting includes uh four people or more that are killed by the gun that's correct yeah right i imagine i appreciate that you that because now they've tried to tweak the numbers and say it's six or more to make it seem as though the assault weapons ban worked when it didn't the number has always been four or more so i appreciate that you use that um yeah but again it's such an outlier such an outlier mass shooting as far as the statistical likelihood of death in the united states or even when it comes to gun crime uh when you remove suicides it's very very low and then when you remove gang on gang violence it's even lower the statistical likelihood of you being shot is unbelievably low and it is much lower if you have a firearm yourself that you can use defensively okay so then what if we brought the argument that about this uh this kid that had a closet full of guns and was able to go into a school and shoot a bunch of people why is it that kid has guns okay um well first off just there was like 39 uh warnings issued on this kid 39 incidents reported two reported to the fbi they think he blew away like a chicken with a hand guy this kid was not supposed to legally yeah yeah i know that's like if you're if your neighbor's killing frogs you might want to make a phone call um that is people failing to do their job legally can't own a firearm that's why you've never purchased a firearm i would assume right i would encourage you to do so and listen go to a fight go to a firing range learn how to shoot again at the very least if you ever run into a situation where you're near a firearm or have to use it so you have proper safety training i encourage everyone to do that and if you go purchase a firearm you'll see the background check that has already taken place you'll see that you can't purchase a firearm if you're a felon you'll see you can't purchase it if you even have committed violent misdemeanors or domestic abuse or if you've been uh ruled mentally defective you go through this background check i've had to go through it every single time i purchase a firearm are you sure that's the same in all different states yes this is a federal background check now if we're talking about some uh for example these fbi tips or in the case of a military tribunal where someone just wasn't reported that is the failure of someone to do their job that doesn't require new legislation that requires people obeying legislation and then we get into the issue of listen criminals break the law and sometimes people fail to do their job and guess what people fail to do their job in these instances we're in government so again we're talking about the gross and competency of government and the solution is to put more power in the hands of the government by disarming private citizens i just think it's a fundamentally flawed premise um one final thing i find interesting so that's the empirical the evidence far more live saved than taken i would encourage you to go research it okay um let me ask you this if you go and search that and you find that that bears out from the cdc would that change your opinion on the second amendment i'm still not sure it's a very murky issue to be honest well you started off pretty confident now you're not sure so well i think you're gonna change my mind it sounds like we're fighting we're coming like this a little coming closer i suppose i think that it's i still stand that you still can have a right to a gun but it does not need to be nearly as accessible as it is currently i i still haven't heard any any different proposal outside of a gun ban because you said that but then you bring up australia to the gun ban and then you know the second amendment so i would encourage you to look at those sources let's assume those are true i would like to think a sharp 18 year old lady such as yourself would look at that and that overwhelming statistical evidence and say okay this needs to play a part in my decision um but obviously you'll make your own decisions and then we go to the anecdotal you talk about how this idea of a good guy with a gun stopping with a bad guy with a gun i think is just you know you think is incorrect so obviously you mentioned the florida shooting do you remember the sutherland springs shooting you know what was this one it's not this is not i'm amazed it happened here in texas it was more deadly than florida you know the church was shut up the church was shut up and someone springs outside of san antonio texas this just happened a couple only a few months ago yeah deadlier shooting oh there's um no no no no no there haven't been so many happening and this was one of the biggest uh does the name stephen williford mean anything to you okay um i'm trying to think of how to frame this year i don't want to be contentious at all but i think let me put it this way i think it is a tremendous disservice that has been committed against you from the media and probably this educational establishment for you to be this uninformed on some of these pivotal issues the southern spring is more deadly with a church so it's shot up okay in texas not that far from here and stephen williford you don't know him because he wasn't on the news wasn't the story i'm sure you've probably seen the high school students right from florida going around making the rounds well steven williford is the man who stopped the shooter he stopped the shooter with an ar-15 he was an nra certified instructor okay no town hall we didn't talk about it more deadly shooting happened in your backyard you don't even know about it does that concern you because that was a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun but then that's just one incident happens all no then that's why i'm combining that with the statistical evidence that there are far more lives as i talked about from the cdc so the evidence the preponderance of evidence points to far more life saved than taken and i'm just trying to give you an anecdotal example of a more deadly shooting that occurred recently in a place that's closer to you the media didn't cover but the point is that would be uh concerning to me if this is the first time you're learning that the second amendment is to uh protect yourself against a trinical government i think that's pretty pivotal i'm i'm kind of surprised i didn't taught in american history class i was i was canadian i learned canadian history so i felt it's incredibly boring it's like we said all right give and you know now we have the queen on our money um but they don't teach the second amendment in american history in schools i find that concerning i find it concerning that people think we're in a worse place with guns than ever that um that we have more gun crime than ever um i find a concern that young you're very clearly a very smart girl and i don't say that to uh to to patronize you um but i find a concern that someone is articulate as smart as you isn't aware of how many lives are saved through use of firearms why we have the right to firearms and then in particular a news story that the media really should go gaga over that occurred in your home state where you are studying where a man saved lives with a firearm but isn't it i'm so sorry no no i was just saying that's very i find that very does that not i know it is quite concerning but isn't it more concerning that um i was doing research on this last night but um because i just yeah um according to i think the united united nations and the human development index that um in the united states we were 22.9 times more have 22.9 more homicides per million people than say germany or switzerland which was like 7.7 and like i think nine for both of those so isn't that more alarming as well well i think you're referring to gun homicide right yeah uh because violence related gun-related homicides yeah i see i think what's important to compare first off one thing i do have to say and i'll go along with that just for the sake of us having this discussion violent crime rates are difficult to compare across countries because there are different standards kind of like infant mortality rates right people have different standards for what can you know what actually um is considered an infant um but violent crime is actually higher and has seen a worse trend in places like the uk than in the united states and in sweden particularly uh and in germany things like rape have been increasing well they've actually been going down in the united states these are very alarming uh crimes now if you're just talking about gun crime okay but you're 19 times more likely to be stabbed than shot again these the numbers are so so minimal but the media focuses on it uh i think it's more important to focus on the overall crime trends and violent crime not the tool of the crime because if you're going to attribute all of these issues to an inanimate object and ignore the totality of evidence i think you're looking in the wrong place okay i understand that and also something else i mean keep in mind that um you know we're also the only place out of all those places you mentioned that has freedom of speech or you can't be jailed for saying something offensive so that's amendment number one okay and amendment number two all right don't a firearm so it comes down to i think your fundamental view of human rights and then the statistical data and realities of of gun violence and uh and you know where you line up on that but it sounds to me like you're doing some research um hopefully you continue to do more i i really do encourage you to fact check me after this right yeah no i had like a document there i just like straight up forgot it you can just tweet me and tell me if you think i'm you know like hey you were wrong you suck and i get that all the time but i don't think you probably i know you seem like a very nice person um so would that though if you go when you do this research and everything that i've said here let's say is mostly true does it maybe change your view a little bit um probably not within this discussion like as shortly i can't just radically change my views no i'm not with you discussion but if you go home and do this research and well yeah because then i have more context okay but you know probably not now i'm still no i don't i don't want to that's also why i don't think we should be proposing legislation right now i don't think an emotive response a knee-jerk response is uh conducive towards you know productive legislation in any capacity or even you know productive formation of opinions so i don't want you to knee jerk i don't want you to develop an opinion right now sit let it percolate a little bit go do some research i would encourage you to look up the sutherland springs shooting i would encourage you to google cdc lives saved firearms or cdc defensive use firearms and um you know see where you line up but i appreciate you so much taking the time thank you thank you very much hey did you like this video of course you did unless there's something wrong with you in which case you can comment below what's your problem with this video we want to hear from you and we promise you 100 i give you my word is my bond will answer every single negative comment uh for those who are normal you can leave a thumbs up and subscribe

Channel: StevenCrowder

Views: 21,451,768

Rating: 4.8316813 out of 5

Keywords: steven crowder, stephen crowder, louder with crowder, lwc, mug club, not gay jared, comedy, politics, culture, news, entertainment, funny, right, left, conservative, liberal, libertarian, Change My Mind, Change, My, Mind, Pro-Gun, I'm Pro Gun, Pro, Gun, Pro gun, 2nd Edition, 2nd Amendment, Arms, Assault Weapon, Assault Rifle, AR, AR15, AR 15, Ban

Id: SDlSVE0X3Ao

Length: 59min 14sec (3554 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/WhackDanielz]

Yes. I know Crowder is a Canadian ex-pat living in the States.

Yes. I know there's no 2A in Canada.

Yes. I know our ownership climate is different up here.

None of that changes that this is an excellent video on how to have a rational conversation with staunch anti's, or the apathetic masses. And I think it shows that no matter how much hate and vitriol people spew online, when you're having a legitimate face to face conversation, people are at least willing to be reasoned with.

[u/SurSpence]

I really liked this video, but does anyone have the stats saying that most hunting is done with semi-auto rifles? That just strikes me as really surprising.