NRA: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

the aftermath of the shootings in Orlando everyone has had their own ideas on the root of the problem and it will not surprise you to hear where the worst of those ideas came from I've been talking about it for a long time and I've been saying it's going to happen we are taking in thousands of people into our country we have no idea where they come from we have no idea who the hell they are okay there is there is a great deal wrong with that not least the fact that we know exactly where this shooter came from because he was born in Queens about eight miles from where Donald Trump was born presumably when a racist fairy brought a butternut-squash to life now for their part Democrats chose to focus less on the shooter and more on the weapons he used even springing a surprise filibuster on the floor of the Senate Democrats led by Chris Murphy of Connecticut held the floor for nearly 15 hours pushing for new regulations to stop people on the terror watch list from buying guns and to expand background checks after nearly 15 hours Murphy said we had gotten signals that his two measures would get a vote wait is he absolutely sure he saw those signals or was that a hallucination brought on by ammonia poisoning after holding his pee in for 15 hours to be fair though those proposals are actually coming up for a votes but before you get your hopes up there may be a bit of a problem let's not kid ourselves the Republic the Republicans control the House of Representatives there is never going to be any gun control that passes that's true closing the gun show loophole in this Congress is incredibly unlikely even regulating the gun show Paul Ryan puts on every day is pretty much a lost cause at this point which means here we are again after another mass shooting with weak legislation doomed to failure and there is clearly a disconnect between public opinion which favors two very degrees a number of different gun control measures and any practical action in Washington and it is pretty clear what is standing between those two things and it's the National Rifle Association like Peter but for guns and effect and to be fair to be fair to the NRA it's not surprising they take a hard line on gun legislation they're an advocacy group it's what they're supposed to do what is shocking is just how successful they've been at it just look at the last big failed attempt at gun control known as the manchin-toomey amendment there were high hopes for that partly because it didn't really do much it just called for background checks at gun shows and for online sales but mainly because joe Manchin who co-sponsored it had some credibility regarding firearms as your senator I'll protect our Second Amendment rights that's why the NRA endorsed me and I'll take dead aim at the cap and trade bill holy that is a guy so comfortable with guns he basically just used one as a hole-punch his office's three-hole punch must be terrified and Manchin mountain did everything he could to appease the NRA he even inserted several of their direct requests into his bill including allowing firearms dealers for the first time since 1968 to sell handguns across state lines which is a weird provision to put in a gun control bill it's like letting Jose Cuervo convince you that the seventh step in Alcoholics Anonymous should be tequila shots but despite all that the NRA turned on Manchin and the bill and then punished him by running ads like this in his home state Manchin is working with President Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg concerned yes the NRI stabbed mansion in the back although it would have been more on brand of them to shoot him in the back and then argue it never would have happened if his back had had a gun and the thing is whenever any potential regulation comes up the pushback is always the same and there's just no evidence that these gun laws would prevent these students there is at least an absence of certain proof as to the efficacy of gun ownership laws in the past to think that somehow gun control is or increased gun control C is the answer in my view that would have to be proved oh yes it's the old I'm not doing anything until you can prove it arguments the same argument favored by climate change deniers and fathers of the baby on Maury happy Father's Day and that brings us the point is that brings us to perhaps the most ingenious and insidious NRA tactic because they don't just manage to block legislation concerning guns they've managed to block information concerning them too for instance one of the major funders of academic research the Centers for Disease Control has been hamstrung in studying how best to prevent gun violence for the last 20 years in 1996 the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to put this restriction into the CDC's budget none of the funds made available may be used to advocate or promote gun control now the CDC was already banned from advocating for gun control laws or indeed any form of legislation but the 1996 Dickey amendment named after both its sponsor Jay Dickey and after the fact it was an extremely Dickey thing to do had a chilling effect on the CDC funding any gun research at all CDC funding into gun violence research has plummeted 96% since 1996 to just $100,000 of last year's five point six billion dollar CDC budget the only other things that have dropped 96% in the last two decades are like Oh searches and tickle-me-elmo related stampedes and it's not just the CDC struggling to collect reliable gun related information for decades the NRA of successfully lobbied to prevent the ATF from having a database that is electronically searchable by name when tracing the origins of firearms so for instance this is what they have to do with documents from gun shops that have gone out of business workers here are left with an antiquated system to trace 350,000 guns a year requiring them to review by hand tons of paper records and 500 million entries on microfilm many of the records are barely legible so for example these are records that we received as a result of Hurricane Katrina we're too dry these out in the parking lot that is clearly absurd because that does not look like a present-day record of gun ownership it looks like the manifesto from a Spanish galleon that sank in 1610 so how the has the NRA managed to accomplish all of this because the truth is they're not that large an organization they claim they have a membership of around 5 million but that is 3 million fewer members than Planet Fitness and the members of Planet Fitness have almost no power but most of them don't even have the power to actually go to Planet Fitness and that is true that is true while in January that place is nothing more than a storage facility for great the colored exercise bikes and while the NRA does spend a lot of money lobbying they are frequently outspent by even the N AR or National Association of Realtors a group of wily bastards who've somehow convinced all of us we need to live indoors like a bunch of nerds but the real power of the NRA is in its members who are highly motivated and can be mobilized quickly just look at the website of the NRA s political action committee you will find alerts for practically every piece of legislation around the country and not just write your Congressman alerts alerts like the following bills are scheduled to be heard on June 14th at 9:00 a.m. in room one to six of the state capital because they know their members often show up and one of the reasons they're able to rally their base so effectively is they have an appealingly simple message it's all about a single issue there's no four-point plan that they have to defend and I would point out they only have to say no so they're not for anything they're against something a single issue one word no exactly it's a lot easier to drum up support when you're just flatly against something there is a reason that TLC insisted upon no scrubs and not the implementation of a national registry of potential scrubs aka Buster's that would scream the scrub like tendencies or affiliations with known scrubs they knew no scrubs is a lot catchy oh and the truth about politics is it's about showing up remember the manchin-toomey amendment what a national poll at that time found that 88% of people supported universal background checks and yet Manchin's office maintains that of the calls it received they ran two hundred to one in opposition to the bill and that is why it is important to actually call your Congressman you can't just hit them up on Twitter or Facebook because you won't get a personal response or even worse you'll get a very personal response indeed put it away Carlos put it away and remember remember the Dickey amendment which has effectively kept the CDC from studying gun violence it is now opposed by both the American Medical Association and Jay Dickey the man who sponsored it in the first place and yet whenever a member of Congress tries to kill it as Nita Lowey did last summer this is how it goes let's support research to prevent gun violence protect our communities and save lives thank you the question is on the LOI amendment all in favor say aye all opposed say no no seem to have it the amendment is not agreed to it's it's like watching a committee of dear voting against investigating the effects of oncoming cars let's stand still I like our chances and those headlights are shiny and if you're thinking well I'm sure after Orlando if someone tries that they'll succeed because we're all paying attention now well here's the thing about that representative Tony Cardenas tried to overturn it again just this Wednesday with an amendment to a mental health bill and this was the result those in favor will say aye all those opposed say no opinion chair the noes have it are you kidding me that happened four days ago and I'm guessing that you're hearing about it for the first time now to be honest we felt only found out about it yesterday and we've been working on this story all week and look the Dickey amendment is emblematic of a chokehold the NRA has over even basic gun data and it should obviously be overturned but the hard truth is NRA members seem to care more consistently about preventing gun control than most of us do about passing it because while you might be focused on gun control right now they will focused on it two weeks before Orlando and they'll still be focused on it two weeks from now so this is where I would usually say call your senator and representative and tell them you want to repeal the Dickey amendment and you should absolutely do that if you want to but you are going to need to do more than that you're gonna need to call them again and remind them to repeal it then call them on their birthday and say happy birthday and also get rid of the Dickey amendment call them on Arbor Day and say happy Arbor Day whatever that is by the way what's going on with that Dickey amendment call them on days where there wasn't a mass shooting and I know those days are getting fewer and farther between and say hey it's me again what the up with the Dickey amendment because repealing it is not asking much it's not gun control it's enabling us to have an informed conversation about what that could look like and if a when a proposal you like is on the table you're going to have to make all those calls again because remember it doesn't take much to outnumber the NRA Planet Fitness men outnumber them but it is time for us to learn what those members haven't if you want to see serious changes you actually have to show up every day

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 9,292,441

Rating: 4.6368608 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight nra, john oliver nra, gun control

Id: _ECYMvjU52E

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2017

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[u/L131]

Did they upload this in response to the Vegas shooting? If so, nice.

[u/[deleted]]

Isn't this video old, cause I remember seeing this before.