Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 391 | Boulder Shooting: When 'White Supremacists' Aren't White

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

How do Christians think through these issues? Another mass shooting — this one in Boulder, Colorado — was originally called an act of white supremacy until it was reported that the shooter isn't white. Plus, talking to Cam Edwards, host of the "Bearing Arms" podcast, about the more technical side of things: What gun was used? What category is it in? What laws do Dems want to pass, and would those laws have prevented the tragedy in Boulder? What are some real solutions to this disturbing problem? --- Today's Sponsors: Kitty Poo Club: Give yourself the gift that keep on giving the whole year: a Kitty Poo Club subscription. Right now, save 20% off your first order when you set up auto-ship by going to KittyPooClub.com & using promo code 'ALLIE'. Carly Jean Los Angeles is a Los Angeles-based capsule clothing company. They do the hunting for you & provide clothes that are effortless, easy, and flattering on any shape, size, age, or season. Go to CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com & use promo code 'ALLIE' to save 20% off anything in their online store. --- Past Episode Mentioned: Ep 389: Anti-Asian Crimes & Our Obligation to the Truth https://apple.co/3cj1kuo --- Show Links: Denver Post: "Boulder Shooting: Gunman Kills 10, Including Police Officer, at King Soopers" https://dpo.st/39bOMmA New York Post: "Police Identify 21-Year-Old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa As Suspect in Boulder Shooting" https://bit.ly/3cgCgnK Center for Inquiry: "Who Are Mass Shooters? Mass Shooter Demographics" https://bit.ly/3sntdqD Statista: "Number of Mass Shootings in the United States Between 1982 & March 2021, By Shooter's Race or Ethnicity" https://bit.ly/2P3X4WH FrontPage Mag: "51% of Mass Shooters in 2019 Were Black: Only 29% Were White" https://bit.ly/39eDH4d --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone is having a great week so far. We are unfortunately talking about another mass shooting today. I am going to again remind us how I believe we as Christians have to respond to something like this and what our main focus should be in the importance of adhering to the truth. We're also going to talk to a gun expert, a Second Amendment advocate, Cam Edwards, about the gun that was used and some of the policies that are being proposed, the importance of the Second Amendment, but how we talk about real solutions to these kinds of problems, because we also have an obligation to have those kinds of honest conversations, too. So first, let me tell you a little bit about what happens. Then we'll talk about the victims and, again,

kind of orient ourselves around what is most important. On Monday, a shooter, killed 10 people at a supermarket in a suburb outside of Denver, Colorado. It was, according to the Denver Post, this is the headline, Boulder shooting. Gunman kills 10, including police officer at King Supers. The shooting started sometime after 2.30 p.m. in the parking lot of a King's grocery store. A witness reported, he just came in and started shooting. Another witness said, he let off a couple shots, then was silent, and then he let off a couple more. He wasn't spraying. The Denver Police Department sent about 30 people. They came in fire trucks, ambulances, armored vehicles, helicopters, and regular police cars. They even used drones to respond to the shooting.

Police surrounded the building and called for the shooter to surrender. Soon after, a man was led out of the building with a bloody leg wearing nothing about athletic shorts at the time. He wasn't, it wasn't known if he was the shooter and the picture. of the shooter being arrested or like this article says we didn't know as the shooter at the time, but a picture of this guy being arrested was kind of one of the first things that we saw on social media. There was also a video of someone there showing what was happening and we saw people lying lifeless on the ground. Just terrifying. Absolutely horrifying. If you were someone who witnessed this, if you were connected in any way to one of these victims,

this is going to stick with you for the rest of your life. This is going to traumatize you for as long as you're alive. Even just the people in this community, this is going to be such a difficult thing for them to overcome. And actually, it won't be overcome, by the way. It's not really something to be overcome, but just something to have to deal with when you look in the face of this kind of evil and tragedy. And strangely, this has happened a lot in a 30 mile radius of this area in the past 20 years. There have been several mass shootings. And so that in itself is very peculiar. That in itself is worth noting. I don't know what's actually behind that. We're actually going to talk to Kim Edwards a little bit about that and some of the policies that could be in play and why this is happening in particular

in this area in Colorado. But it's just so sad. And as we did on Monday when we talked about the Atlanta shooting, I highly recommend, by the way, going back and listening to that episode because we talk a lot about the stuff that we're going to talk about today, but in particular or in relation to what happened in Atlanta. And that episode was a lot longer and a lot more thorough talking about the importance of reacting both in truth and in love. And so I recommend going back and listening to Monday's episode. If you haven't already, we'll link it in the description to this podcast. But here are the victim's names. We don't know as much about them yet as we knew on Monday about the Atlanta victims that were shot last week. And so I don't

have quite as much information, but I still want to read the names of the victims. Eric Talley was 51. He was a Boulder police officer. He responded to the shooting. He was the first one to the scene and was fatally shot. Apparently, he was very beloved by this community, had been a police officer for many years. By the way, I am so thankful for law enforcement. I'm so thankful for their willingness to put themselves in harm's way to try to preserve as much life as possible. So thank you so much law enforcement officers who truly are heroes in so many ways and do such an amazing and courageous job. They sacrifice in a way that most of us just would not be willing to sacrifice. and those of you who are married to or our sons or daughters of police officers, thank you as well,

just for your own personal sacrifice, your emotional sacrifice as well that you put into this. And I'm just praying for police officers who have to deal with this kind of tragedy. And even just like the spiritual and emotional toll that that puts on someone to be seeing this kind of tragedy consistently. I just can't imagine it. And so definitely thinking about and praying for the family of Eric Talley as well as the families of these other people who were shot and killed. Kevin Mahoney was 61. Terry Leaker was 51. She was the King Supers, which is a grocery store. We don't have that where I am. And so I wasn't, I had to look up what exactly it was. King Super's employee who had worked at the store for me. more than 30 years. That's another thing I just want to note because we're trying to center humans on

this. People who consistently remain in the same job. And I don't know this person, Terry Leaker, but I imagine if you have had the same job at the same place for a long time, that means that you're a very dedicated and loyal and hardworking person. I love people who take their job seriously and who no matter what sphere they're occupying, seek to cultivate it and seek to make it better and whatever ways they possibly can, and they just stick with something, and they stay committed to, they stay committed to that. To me, those are like the salt of the earth people, the best kind of people. You know, when you go to a grocery store, you go somewhere where maybe you're not necessarily expecting some kind of positive interaction, and then you can tell that the cashier or whoever

that you are talking to just loves their job and has a good attitude and is dedicated to the job. that they have, how that just brightens your day. It changes your outlook. It reminds you also of what's important. And so I'm just so thankful for people who are dedicated to their job for this long. Again, I don't know anything about this particular person, but I think the fact that they were dedicated to this job where they were for this long says something probably about their character and integrity. Ricky Ols was just 25, a front end manager at the King Super's grocery store. Jody Waters, 65, Lynn Murray, 62, Suzanne Fountain, 59, Trilona, Bart Kowiac, 49, Nevin Stanisik, 23, Denny Stong, 20. And so we've got some older people,

we've got some younger people really just in the prime of life, just starting out. Who knows what kind of plans they had. Of course, they could have never foreseen something like this. And I just think about especially these young people, 23, 20, 25. And I'll try not to tear up just thinking about their parents. Like I cannot imagine the pain, of course, of losing anyone in your life, but losing a child. I just cannot imagine what their families are going through right now. And so we need to remember them. We need to be praying for their family that the peace of God, that the comfort of God would surround them. This is just devastating. And it's sad that we have to have this conversation again just two days after we had a conversation about what happened last week in Atlanta. These people,

as we have to remember, as we have to focus on, were image bearers of God, people that he fearfully and wonderfully made in their mother's wombs whose lives had meaning and purpose no matter how much money they made, their accolades, their popularity, their number of followers on social media, whether or not they were married or had kids, simply because God made them and put them on this planet, their lives had value. They have souls that are currently living forever in one of two places. That sets them and us as human beings apart from every other creature in the universe and it is through Jesus Christ alone that our souls find redemption and hope. And like we said on Monday, if this kind of news depresses you, if it shocks you, if it discourages you, that's because

it's supposed to. It should. Death, even as one of, even as the most common experience that every single human being that has ever existed shares is shocking. Because we know inherently, as we talked about on Monday because God has placed eternity in the human heart that it is not supposed to be this way. We're not supposed to have mass shootings. We're not supposed to have lives taken unjustly. We're not supposed to see evil prevail. And the fact that we do, the fact that we do see all this evil and it feels like sometimes wickedness is winning, it does not disprove the existence of a good, all-powerful God, but rather stirs in. us this longing for his return and for him to finally and fully exact perfect justice.

He is not standing idly by as horrifying events occur. His wrath, again, as we talked about two days ago, is being stored up. It's being built up to be unleashed on all evil, on which day he will wipe out all wickedness. He will wipe away all tears. There will be no more tragedy. There will be no more sadness at all. No more, no more shootings, no more cancer, no more terrorism, no more hate, jealousy.

slander, malice, no more sin, no more problems. Just perfect joy and peace forever and ever and things like this. They just renew our hope that's not placed in something in this life, a faith in things that are yet unseen, but we know are there. That's what Hebrews 111 tells us. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The Holy Spirit gives us, a conviction that there are things there, there's a hope there in something that we cannot yet see. The Bible, Jesus himself, gives us absolutely no indication that there will not be great, evil, and trouble in this world. Jesus actually promises us in this life, you will have trouble.

That's an assurance. But take heart, I have overcome the world, he says. So he says, take heart. I have overcome the world. Not take heart. Things will probably be pretty easy. Take heart. If you follow me, I'll make sure that things go smoothly for you and you'll never have to endure tragedy.

He says, no, no, no, no. Your confidence, your peace, your assurance doesn't come from any kind of guarantee that things are going to go easily in this life, but that he has already overcome the bad and that we wait patiently for his full and final ultimate victory. And yet so many times we think of the existence of evil as something that excludes the existence of God. When God so clearly over and over again blatantly shows us throughout Scripture that life is really hard, that evil doers seem like they're going to win. But he says over and over, and of course I'm paraphrasing here, look how I show up. I mean, we see God show up over and over again in the New Testament, or in the Old Testament,

rather, New Testament 2, in a way that looks like he is stacking the odds against himself and then just knocking them down. Read the story of God's people and you will see from beginning to end, God using trouble and sin and injustice and what appear to be insurmountable obstacles to give himself glory and then declare victory. And that's exactly what we see in the ultimate sense in the book of Revelation that Jesus will once and for all over, come, what seem like unconquerable enemies of Satan and sin and death? And Jesus is the only answer to those things. He's the only answer to evil, both then and now.

He alone opens eyes and gives understanding. He alone changes the heart of stone to a heart of flesh. And that is essentially, ultimately, what is the issue here? Is a heart of stone? Matthew 1519 says, for from the heart or for out of the heart, evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander. All of these things flow from the hearts, which can only be changed by the God who made it. So as for this person who committed this shooting, we pray Jesus would soften his heart and save him. As for these

victims' families and friends in this community, we pray God would be glorified that he would save them, that he would equip churches in the area to show them the love of Jesus. Like I said earlier, there's been a high number of mass shootings in this area alone in the past two decades, Columbine High School, Deer Creek Middle School, YWam Facility, Aurora Theater, Arapaho High School, Thornton Walmart, STEM School, the Boulder King Supers, this last case. And we should absolutely ask ourselves, like, what is going on here? While we also pray for what we know to be the only real fundamental answer, God changing people's hearts and reviving communities with His Holy Spirit. I'm not saying that that means that we can't talk policy or that we can't talk, you know, solutions in the here and the now.

But ultimately, we know that that's what it is. Like, that is the answer. So when we react to things like this, as Christians, our responsibility is to one, center the the gospel and the hope that we have in Christ, to put the humanness of this tragedy to the forefront by remembering the victims and their families. And then we have to bind ourselves to the truth. And this is the hardest part, seeking to understand what really happened and refusing to get caught up in popular narratives and emotional narratives based on no knowledge. And that's where I want to start. I want to look at some of the reactions that occurred on Twitter right after the

shooting and before we had really any knowledge of the facts. So these are all accounts with thousands, some of them hundreds of thousands of followers. These are not just random people. They've all got their little blue check mark. This is from George Hahn. When a white guy with an AR-15 shoots and kills a bunch of people is the motive really relevant. Spoiler alert on the motive. He was having feelings, anger, inadequacy, invisibility, impotence, i.e. not special. This is from Mina Harris. The Atlanta shooting was not even a week ago. Violent white men are the greatest terrorist threat to our country. Rosanna Arquette says, call it what it is, white supremacist domestic terrorism. D.L. Hulie says a white armed mass

murder has a better chance surviving an encounter with the police than a black dude holding a phone. Don Winslow says, description. Police have taken him into custody, He was white. Dylan Park. A white man walked into a grocery store in Boulder, killed 10 people and was apprehended by the police and walked out of the building completely on harm. Right down the road, police killed Elijah McLean while he apologized for not doing anything wrong to different Americas. I will say, by the way, what happened to Elijah McLean was absolutely wrong. We'll talk about why. That doesn't work as a comparison here. Amy Siskind always has excellent takes. She says the shooter was. taken into custody. In other words, it was almost certainly a white man again. If he were black or brown, he would be dead. Julie DeCaro says extremely tired of people's lives, depending on whether a white man with an AR-15 is having a good day or not. Hamal Javieri replied to her and says it's always an angry white man, always, Julie DeCaro says, and they are always angry about women. Tay Anderson says, he lists a bunch of recent mass shootings and includes Boulder at the bottom and says that this is a white male shooter just like the other mass shootings.

Well, here's the problem with that reaction. According to the New York Post, police identify 21-year-old Ahmad al-Aliwi Alisa as the suspect in the Boulder shooting. According to that article, Elisa's now deleted Facebook page says that he was born in Syria in 1999 and then came to the U.S. in 2002, the Daily Beast reported. His account included postings about Islam, such as the faith's prayers and religious holidays and his apparent suspicion that he was under surveillance. If these, he posted, if these racist, Islamophobic people would stop hacking my life phone and let me have a normal life, I probably could. The Muslims at the Christchurch mosque, he also said in a Facebook post, were not the victims of a single shooter. They were the

victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them. Now, here's what's very sad and interesting about this, according to the New York Post. Elisa's identity was known to the FBI because he was linked to another individual under investigation by the Bureau. Law enforcement sources told the New York Times. Now, if we want to talk about a common thread in a lot of these shootings, it has to do with it is that these people are so often known to the FBI. Now, I know that there are probably a lot of instances where the FBI actually does stop these things from happening.

I know there's only so much they can do before infringing on people's rights, but I don't know. I don't know what the solution is there, but it seems like so many times these shooters, their information was known to the FBI. They were known to be a threat. And then they were still able to commit some kind of crime like this. ABC 7, Colorado grocery store shooting suspect IDed as manned 21 victims between ages 20 and 65. The suspect purchased the assault weapon, and we'll talk about that phrase in just a minute with Kim Edwards. Just six days before the shooting on March 16th, a law enforcement official briefed on the shooting said the suspect's family told investigators they believed Elisa was suffering from some type of mental illness, including delusions.

Relative described times when Elisa told them people were following or chasing him, which they said may have contributed to the violence. There is an article on heavy.com that his brother was interviewed and also said, look, he always thought that people were stalking him. He had mental health issues. He was paranoid. He was very short-tempered. He was always thinking that people were out to get him because he was a Muslim, which his family said is not something that's true. and that this was this was an issue that he had. He was mentally unstable and his family knew this and apparently knew that he had been, this is his sister-in-law saying this, told police officers that he had been playing around with a weapon

that she thought looked like a machine gun about two days earlier and they were worried about this. And so we get this information that this guy was an outspoken Muslim, that he was worried about Islamophobia, that he wasn't actually a white guy. If you look at the pictures of him, he actually, He doesn't even look like a white guy. And then we see the same people who said immediately this was white supremacy. This is just an angry white male. Typical.

This always happens. We see the same people who said that backing up once we got more information. Amy Siskin. Let's mourn the victims, but not glorify the killer with the attention of having his name widely known. Oh. Okay. Got it. Mina Harris.

I deleted a previous tweet about the suspect in the Boulder shooting. I made an assumption based on his being taken into custody. alive and the fact that the majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are carried out by white men. We'll fact check that in just a second. Tariq Nishid, who really does not need our attention, but he is another example of all of this. He said the fact that this dude gunned down to him people and the police didn't shoot him, that means he's white. We ain't going to start playing games just because he was born in Syria.

The suspect is white enough to benefit from the privileges of whiteness. Let us remember Proverbs 29, 20. Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. There is more hope for fools who, people who are truly just intellectually deficient. There's more hope for that person than for these people. Let me just say. We've all been hasty in our words. I have certainly been hasty in our words. And that means that I have also been guilty of that kind of worse than foolishness behavior. We see this. so much though, so much. And some of these tweets from these progressive activists and journalists with hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets. And so it's almost on purpose to try to shape the narrative before we actually have the information to try to gin up some sort of outrage because they know that a lot of people who follow them, we're not going to fact check them. They're not going to keep following the story. They're just going to confirm their biases and they're going to go along with the narrative. They're going to find a way to make sure that this is

still about white supremacy, no matter what the facts actually say. Now, for the question, are mass shooters usually white? That's very, it's very difficult to actually know that because of the way mass shooting is defined. It is defined as killing four or more people. Now, why is it the number four? Why isn't it five? Why isn't it ten? Why isn't it three? Well, there's some speculation about that. If you go down from four to three, the number of mass shootings that happened per year, if you were to qualify it that way, go up. But so does the profile of the shooter. Because murders where three people or three or more people are killed happen almost on a daily basis in Chicago and L.A. in these major cities that have very serious gang violence.

So those kinds of mass killings, those kinds of murders of more than one person happen all the time. and they're not typically a white shooter. So that doesn't really go along with the narrative. Now, according for the Center for Inquiry, there is a conversation about this. They've got some stats. They talk about familicides. They represent the most common form of mass murder.

They're principally defined as a close victim offender relationship. According to a study by Fredel, perpetrators of this kind of crime are typically white, middle-aged males who target their spouse or intimate partners. or children or other relatives. And then you've got felony killings. They're distinguished by motive. Murder is used to achieve some primary criminal objective, typically involving financial gain. This is according to the same study by Fredel due to their general lack of sensationalism. So again, it's not being reported very often. Felony killings are not widely publicized,

despite representing the second largest category of mass murder perpetrators of felony mass murders tend to be young, black, or Hispanic males with extensive criminal records. I mean, you probably don't even know, except for maybe you heard about it when I talked about it on Monday, that there was a mass shooting at a Dallas nightclub just last week in which eight people were shot. Thankfully, not all of them died. But you probably didn't even know about that because the perpetrator was not white. And the victims weren't either, by the way. And so it didn't perpetuate any kind of interesting narrative for a lot of the people that are in the media. And so it's just not talked about. So this article goes on to say, despite their extreme visibility, public mass

killings account for the smallest proportion of all mass murders. Formally, these incidents are defined by attack location. Public mass killers are a heterogeneous group and are frequently delineated into several subtypes. Public murders are often stereotyped as middle-aged white men who have suffered a series of failures in different areas of life, though some research indicates a disproportionate number of immigrants commit public massacres, according to that same study by Friedel. These public mass shootings are what most people wrongly consider as typical of mass shootings. The fact of the matter is, according to the statistics that we have, like, this really isn't a white problem. It's not just a black problem.

It's not just a Hispanic problem. It's not just an immigrant problem. like we see this across all demographics and yes some of the most sensationalized stories have been of disgruntled young white men but statistically these shootings that we are seen are just the definition of mass shootings in general are not committed by any one group in a way that is that characterizes the entirety or even a majority of mass shootings this is according to Statista. Between 1982 and March, 2021, 66 out of the 121 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters by comparison. The perpetrator was African American and 21 mass shootings in Latino

and 10 when calculated as percentages. This amounts to 54% of mass shootings by a white person, 17% by a black person and 8% by a Hispanic person. Now, if we look at the proportion of the population that this represents, we've got white people making up about 60 plus percent of the population. So this 54% of mass shootings, it goes in line with that population size. We've got black people making up 13% of the population. And they make up 17% of these mass shooters, according to this definition. And so that's a little bit more than their population size. And then being Latino, taking up 10% of mass shootings or 8% of mass shootings.

Latinos, Hispanic people actually make up a much larger proportion of the population than black people do. And so that number, the 8% is actually much lower than the population size of Hispanic. So just looking at proportionality there. So front page mag just looked at the shootings in 2019. And so they looked at the different percentages of white versus black when it comes to mass shootings in 2019. They say the 51% were black, 29% were white. They talk about the different scenarios in which this happened. Of course, the narrative is that it's only one kind of disgruntled white person.

The fact of the matter is, is that, this particular article says mass shooters are not necessarily a white problem or a black problem. Looking at the data from the mass shooting tracker, widely utilized by the media as of this writing, of the 72 mass shooters in 2019, perpetrators in shootings that killed or wounded four or more people whose race is known 21 were white, 37 were black, eight were Latino, and six were members of other groups. So it all depends, too, on which outlet that you're looking at that looks or that, how they define mass shootings. When we were looking at the other article,

when we were looking at Statista, and we were looking for the Center for Inquiry, we were looking at a large span of mass shootings. This particular article was only looking at 2019 and actually found that numerically, there were more black people who committed mass shootings than white people. Three mass shooters were Asian,

two were American Indian, and one was Arab. These numbers are, if anything, vastly understated as many as half of the mass shootings that took place in 2019, thus far remain unsolved. But they often took place in black areas and unfortunately claimed black victims. So if this sounds confusing to you, that's because it is confusing. The outlets report different mass shootings in different ways using different definitions, using different kinds of statistics that either talk to raw numbers or either talk to proportionality.

I think what it tells us is that unfortunately black communities are typically victims of gang violence and do claim three or more lives very often. That's not always qualified as a mass shooting. But when you look at the numbers and you look at the percentages, we see that different kinds of mass shootings are kind of unique to different kinds of communities and that it's not in particular a white problem or it's not in particular a black problem. It's really just a murder problem, a violent crime. problem that unfortunately has spiked in many ways over the past year or so. And so again, to try to make the narrative about whiteness or about white supremacy that it's always white people that are committing these crimes, it's just it's not accurate in the same way that, I mean, we've talked about. Unfortunately, black men take up a disproportionate percentage of the homicides committed

in this country and homicide victims in this country. And yet when a homicide happens. I don't think that it would be right for us to say, well, we probably know the race of the shooter. We probably know the race of the people involved. I don't think that's right. And yet it's okay, I guess, for all these blue check marks on Twitter to assume the race of the shooter, even though the numbers don't actually back up their assertions. Representative Ilhan Omar said the shooter's race or ethnicity seems front and sinner when they aren't white. Otherwise, it's just a mentally ill young man having a bad day. Narratives drive our responses to awful crimes. is not true. Like that is the most gaslighting statement I've ever heard. It is the opposite that is true. It's the

opposite that is true. We almost immediately know the race or we assume the race when the perpetrator is white or when we assume the perpetrator is white or when the perpetrator might look white. Otherwise, it's actually very hard to find the race of the perpetrator in these situations. She also says, so he's Muslim as trending. Did I miss? He's Christian trending for last week's Atlanta mass murder. Yes, you did miss that. You missed that. Op ed's in the Washington Post about how purity culture somehow influenced the Atlanta shooter to do what he did, not the inherent dangers of prostitution and exploitation, not the objectification of women that is rampant in that industry and in the pornography industry, not mental health, not the isolation that we have shoved onto people for the last year who

were already mentally unstable. But the general theology of sex, purporting, by some churches that the guy in Atlanta may or may not have been under the influence of at some point in his life. Like there were all these think pieces making that connection and salon also, for example, as we talked about on Monday. But when it comes to this, like, are we not allowed to talk about the shooter's theology that he actually directly purported in his Facebook page? What about his motives? Like, what about his mentality? We had all of this sophistry. We had all this analysis when it comes to the Atlanta murder and how Christianity plays into it and being against CRT, critical race theory plays into it and how whiteness plays into it.

But with this, it just has to do with guns. Like that's how quickly the narrative changed. At first it was whiteness and white supremacy, white domestic terrorism. Now we found out that he is actually a Muslim who was afraid of Islamophobia. And now it's all about guns. He was, like I said, explicit about his beliefs on Facebook. His family said that he was paranoid. He always thought that people were targeting him because he's Muslim, but we don't talk about that. Democrats, the same Democrats who said that it was whiteness are now only talking about

guns. They don't want to talk about motives. They don't want to talk about mental illness. They don't want to talk about any kind of belief systems. And by the way, all of the victims of this crime were white. When most of the victims, but not all, were Asian in Atlanta, we were told that it was assuredly, undoubtedly, anti-Asian racism and white supremacy. So what happens when someone who is non-white kills victims that are all white?

Is it not anti-white hate? And why not? Okay. Now we're going to talk about the guns and the reaction that the Democrats are having to all of this and why it is, it's not bringing us to the right solution. And there's so much more that we can talk about in all of this. But unfortunately, we don't have the time to do it. We'll try to pick back up on some more of it tomorrow.

Cam, thank you so much for joining us. Could you tell everyone quickly who you are and what you do? Sure. My name is Cam Edwards. I'm the editor at bearingarms.com and the host of the bearing arms cam and company podcast. Great. And I want to get your insight into unfortunately what happened earlier this week, but specifically about the gun that was used. It's being called an assault weapon and assault rifle. People are talking about an assault weapons. ban? Can you break that all down for us and kind of tell us what's going on? What was the weapon used? And could there be any kind of ban that would have prevented this? Sure. So we don't specifically know what firearm was used, although the affidavit that was released yesterday points to a Ruger AR-556 pistol, which is an AR-style pistol. But apparently there was also a handgun that was found at the scene of

the crime as well. And the reason why folks are talking about, you know, a quote-unquote a solvents ban is because the city of Boulder back in 2018 try to put a local ban on these types of firearms as well as, quote-unquote, high-capacity magazines on the books. That law was actually struck down by a judge in Colorado a couple of weeks ago because it violated these states' firearm preemption law. Now, the guns in question are commonly owned. There are more than 20 million AR-style firearms in this country, and there are more than 150 million magazines. that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. So gun control advocates like to seize on this type of firearm saying that they're uniquely dangerous, that there's no reason for Americans to possess these battlefield weapons of war.

But what we're talking about is the most commonly sold center fire rifle in the country today. These are firearms that are used by lawful Americans for hunting, for recreation, for competition, and yes, for self-defense as well. So talk about what the Democrats are now saying. that they want to do on the heels of this, as far as legislation goes, and do you think any of their proposals would have actually stopped what happened in Colorado? Well, right now they're talking about the two bills that have passed out of the House, H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446. Both of these deal with background checks. And no, they wouldn't have made a difference

because this individual was legally eligible to purchase a firearm. So he could pass a background check and apparently did so when he purchased this firearm about a week or so ago. HR 8 would impose universal background check requirements on every law-bited American. If you were to sell a gun to your neighbor, loan a gun to your cousin, you could be looking at a year in federal prison if you did not conduct a background check beforehand. HR 1446 would allow the federal government to extend the waiting period basically indefinitely. Right now, if you go to the gun store and you go through a background check, it's the national instant check system. And ordinarily, it's pretty instantaneous. You might have to wait a few minutes, but you get a response.

There are times, however, where folks are going to get a response from the NIC system that says delayed. And that means that the FBI is doing more research and whether or not you're legally eligible to purchase a firearm. Under existing federal law right now, the FBI has three business days to conduct that additional research. After those three days are over, the seller of that gun can choose to release that firearm if they want. What H.R. 1446 would do is extend that to 10 business days. And then after that 10-day period has expired, if the seller of that gun hasn't heard back from the government, they still can't release the firearm. They're supposed to petition the Attorney General of the United States for permission to sell that gun. And of course, the federal government doesn't have to provide that permission. So this is really a backdoor way to delay or deny or impose indefinite waiting periods on firearm sales. Which could make it impossible for some people to purchase a gun. And I'm guessing in this legislation, there's no clear reason or there's no boundary that says, okay, your permission or your allowance to have a gun is only limited to, or your disallowance,

I should say, the prohibition on you holding a firearm is not limited to these specific qualifications. So, for example, it's not just for people who have committed some sort of crime or have some sort of mental illness. It's really for any American that permission can be held indefinitely. It's not just for certain kinds of Americans with maybe what would be considered a sketchy background. It can be anyone, right? You know, that's a really good point because the law is clear that it's supposed to only be for those who are disqualified from owning a firearm. If you are convicted of a felony offense or a domestic violence misdemeanor or you've been adjudicated as mentally defective, in other words, you've been involuntarily committed by a judge to a mental institution, then you are disqualified.

You have lost your right to own a firearm. But under 1446, again, the FBI could just sit on these requests and they don't have to provide an answer. There's nothing in this legislation that would compel the agency to respond. We know right now that a large number of denials are basically false positives, people who might have the same name or a similar name to a prohibited person who get, you know, caught up in the NIC system and they're denied even though they're legally eligible to purchase a gun. This would exacerbate that problem. But one thing we know it wouldn't do is it wouldn't stop criminals from getting a hold of guns because they're not going through background checks to begin with. Yeah. What do you say to the people who say, okay, okay, whatever, we've got to do something.

and we've got to push some kind of legislative gun control because this is a problem that's unique to the United States and we need to save lives. We need fewer guns on the street. And so we've just got to do something to make it harder to purchase guns because America has been dealing with this unique problem for too long. What's your response to something like that? My response is we need to do something that works, not just do something. You know, whether you like it or not, we live in a country in which we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. and a lot of other countries don't. In some cases, their violent crime rates are lower.

In some cases, their violent crime rates are higher. But what we do know is that here in the United States, violent crime until last year, when all of a sudden we saw the biggest one-year crime spike in American history, thanks to the COVID closures, the civil unrest, the moves to defund the police, violent crime in the United States has actually been declining for 25 years. We're at 50-year lows, at least we were in 2019,

even though we have, you know, million-plus gun owners. We have more than 20 million Americans who are exercising the right to carry a concealed firearm. And we do have a right to keep and bear arms. So we need to work within the constitutional boundaries. And that means we need to focus on those who are actually responsible for violent crime. And, you know, the Democrats, they offer this one-size-fits-all solution. Well, if we just pass a gun ban or background checks or gun licensing laws, it'll have some sort of trickle-down effect on criminals. Let's start to focus on the criminals right now. Right. There are nonpartisan policies that can be put in place at the local level that actually focus on those who are most likely to offend, and those who are most likely to be the victims of violence, that don't involve new gun control laws, that actually involve a change in tactics, targeted deterrence.

We need to be working on those programs in places like Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, where, you know, gang and drug-related violence has increased. We also need to focus on mental health, and that's not a dodge. other gun control advocates say, oh, yeah, yeah, always bring up mental health. We have a crisis in this country, including in Colorado, by the way, where people who need help cannot get it. You cannot find an inpatient bed unless you've committed a crime. That's a crisis, and it needs to be addressed. And it's so easy for politicians to say, well, let's just pass a gun control law, because that doesn't cost a lot of money. You don't have to figure out how to pay for it. It's a soundbite solution, but it's not a real solution. So if we're going to get serious about this,

we can't try to ban our way to safety. We actually have to address the real problem. And you would think the Democrats, they must know some of what you're saying, that there are a lot of other problems that can be dealt with before we start infringing on the right of law-abiding people to be able to defend themselves and their families, how they see fit.

What do you think is behind the push constantly to take away the rights of people who are not committing these crimes, who are not committing these mass shooters, are these mass shootings, why do they believe the country is going to be more safe if someone like you or I, who is not going to commit these crimes, don't own guns? I think ultimately for those folks, it boils down to they don't like guns. They don't want anybody to own one because they don't own one themselves.

And so, you know, that's sort of the Second Amendment repeal argument, right, that we have to reduce the number of guns in our country in order to make us safer, even though, as I said, for 25 years, we've seen more guns and less crime in the United States. But there is, I think, a competing point of view on the left that is starting to bubble up. When you look at some of these community activists who talk about the need to reimagine policing, they talk about over-incarceration in this country, well, that mindset is diametrically opposed to the old school gun control ideas of let's put more gun laws on the books that are going to be enforced by police, and that's what's going to make us safer. Right. Because these activists say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

if we put more laws on the books, they're going to be used against young black and brown men. They're going to put, you know, people in prison. And in fact, we see this in places like New York State. A couple of years ago, there was a reporter for Slate, Emily Bazelon, who spent two months in the Brooklyn Gun Court, just watching to see who was going through the door, what they were being charged with. And she saw that 70 percent of the defendants who were facing years in prison we're facing that possibility of a prison sentence for simply possessing a farm without a license. They had no criminal history, no history of violence, but because they possessed a gun without a license that they couldn't get in New York City, they're looking at three and a half years in prison.

So there are folks on the left who are starting to look at this and say, well, this is a really dumb idea. And you're saying this is going to backfire and it's going to make things works. Or a disproportionate number of those people that that reporter saw were black and brown. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, young black and brown men without serious criminal histories who were going to prison because they possessed a gun without a license that they couldn't get in New York City

and a license, by the way, that is not required to own a gun in most of the United States. You know, we keep hearing this talk about the Second Amendment is racist. No, it's not. Gun control is racist. Gun control laws have been historically used to deprive minorities and disfavored Americans of their right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment protects a right of the people, of all the people, to keep and bear arms.

And in that example that you just gave, those people were already willing to break the law that was on the books, that you have to have a license in order to have a firearm. They were already willing to break that law to own a gun. So what is going to be the inhibition that another law would then place in front of them? If they're already willing to break the law to own a gun, they would be presumably willing to break another law to own a gun. I saw a similar argument in the Washington Post. I think it was either right before or right after the election from someone who was on the left. I think that they consider themselves a pretty far left activist and op ed in the Washington Post saying that Biden's gun plan to impose a fee. I think it was like I think it's $10,000 or something to own a certain kind of gun or you have to turn your gun in.

She was arguing that look, this only affects poor gun owners. This doesn't affect rich people. rich people are going to be able to keep their guns. But that particular part of Biden's gun control plan would disproportionately affect poor people who just want to defend themselves. And disproportionately, that means that that's going to affect these black and brown communities. So again, it's gun control that affects those, what are called marginalized communities, not the rich white people that the laughter saying actually represent the Second Amendment defense.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, look, and there's a long history of this in the gun control movement. You can go back to the 1970s when they try to enact bans on so-called Saturday night specials. These are basically, you know, cheap, affordable handguns. And again, gun control advocates have no, no, we got to ban these things because they're the tool of criminals. Well, they're also the tool of lower-income Americans who couldn't afford a $400 or $500 firearm. We see this with the restrictive licensing fees in places like New York City or the subjective issue licensing laws in places like California. where you have to be able to document a specific ongoing threat against your life in order to get a license to carry.

Now, if you're a wealthy individual, if you're a celebrity, now the rules probably don't apply to you. But the average citizen is being told, sorry, you just don't have a good enough reason to protect your life. As you say, these laws, I believe, are discriminatory on their face. They're certainly discriminatory in practice. And, you know, look, I'm a white guy in my 40s who lives in rural Virginia. I have a sheriff who is strongly, you know, pro second amendment. I would imagine that if new federal gun control laws came down, he would be very unlikely to enforce these new laws.

So me personally, you know, I'm probably not going to be impacted by a lot of these gun control laws. But I don't support them because I know good Americans will be impacted by these gun control laws. And the folks we really need to be worried about aren't going to be touched by them. Yeah. To close us out, I get this question a lot. You know, the majority of my audience, they're young women who they might, you know, they might know because they're conservative that the Second Amendment is important, but a lot of them don't carry guns.

They might not own guns themselves. And just in this past year, because of some of the reasons that you listed, some of the unrest and feeling vulnerable, especially those that live in cities, they have started to consider this. But they've also started to wonder. And this is a Christian podcast. And so a lot of Christians are starting to wonder, hang on, why is the Second Amendment? why is the right to keep and bear arms considered a God-given right? Why is it important? Why shouldn't we just all give up our guns and hope that things just get safer? So just to close us out, can you give us kind of your concise argument for why it's so important to defend the Second Amendment as what we believe to be an inherent God-given right? Absolutely. Look, I think that, you know, as a Christian, when we talk about a God-given right, I mean, fundamentally, we have a right of self-defense. that is inherent in nature.

It's not just a human right. We can see this even among the animals of God's creation. But our life is important. And look, as a Christian, I believe that we do need to love each other. We need to love our enemies. We need to walk through this world with love and our hearts. But Jesus told his disciples, before they set out to evangelize the world, get a sword. And if you don't have one, sell your cloak and buy one.

Because he wanted his disciples to be able to protect themselves. He knew that the world was a dangerous place. That doesn't mean that we go out and we wield that sword, we wield that firearm to exert our own power, to exert our own authority and dominion over others. But we use those tools to protect human life, to protect the people that we love, to protect strangers who are in need. And that is why I firmly believe that the God-given right to self-defense and the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is so vitally important.

for each and every one of us. Yes, I am for the right to defend yourself as you see fit for the same reason that I'm against abortion because I believe in the protection of innocent life. People say that it's hypocritical to be against abortion and for the Second Amendment. I think it's completely consistent. I believe in protecting innocent life. And so that would be my reasoning in addition to everything you said. People are made in the image of God and therefore I believe that we have a right and a responsibility to do everything that we can to responsibly protect and defend that innocent life. So thank you so much for talking to us, for giving us your insight. Can you tell everyone where they can follow you? Sure, absolutely. You can find me at barringenarms.com. Also, the bearing

arms cam and company podcast, which focuses on second amendment news and information. We're on YouTube at townhall media, rumble.com at bearing arms cam and company, as well as Apple podcast. Amazon podcast and more. Thank you so much, Cam. Thank you. Okay, guys, thank you so much for listening. There's so much more to talk about here, but I hope I kind of gave you at least an overview of everything that's going on

and like what we need to focus on and the truth behind everything. There's so many more details and we'll wait until they come out to keep talking about some of this and the reality behind it. But we'll be back here tomorrow. and if you've got any recommendations for something that you really want to hear about or you really want analysis of, then please let me know and we'll try to cover that. But I will see you guys then.