The Young Turks - Guns Are Bad Mkay

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

President Biden calls on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, while Vice President Harris comes short of pushing for Executive Actions if Congress fails. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm Anna Casparian. It's Wednesday, which means joining me for the first hour is John Ida Rola, host of the damage report, and well-known Daddy Dragon. John, it's always fun to have you on the show. I know you miss me last week. You make it fun. I definitely did. And there was a There was a lot that I was very surprised by on Wednesday. But yeah, I've come to rely on our Wednesday get-togethers. It's a good time. We share laughs. Sometimes we cry. Unfortunately, we do have some pretty heavy topics to share with you guys in the first hour today. But in the second hour, we're gonna have a little bit of a debate. Is Megan McCain trolling us

on the issue of qualifications to host on the view? Or is this a moment of real self-awareness for Ms. McCain? We'll talk about it. It's a debate. Obviously, that seems like a lighter story, but there's an interesting debate regarding identity politics, you know, beneath the surface, which we'll talk about as well. Later in the show, we have more details regarding the identity of the Boulder shooter. We don't share his name, but we are going to share some of his social media posts with you. We still don't have a firm motive, but it is important to kind of know what his history is. And I disagree with Bernie Sanders on something that I want to really emphasize on the show today. So we'll discuss that as well. Well, John, you're going to be talking

about that topic with me. So I'm really curious where you stand on the issue. But don't give too much away. Save it for the show. We'll get to that story later. But for now, why don't we talk a little bit about what we can expect from the executive branch regarding action in response to mass shootings? White House press secretary Jen Saki claimed that the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, they're really considering executive action on gun control in response to not one, but two mass shootings that happened in the span of one week. Of course, the first being in Georgia in three different spas where women were murdered by a mass shooter, many of whom were

of Asian descent. And then the shooting that unfortunately happened this week at a King's Super's grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. Now, for any of you who take what press secretary Jen Saki has to say at face value, you should probably stop doing that because there is really no indication that there will be any executive action in response to calls for gun control. Let's start with Kamala Harris' incredibly awkward interview on this topic. Let's take a look. The reality is you guys just don't have the votes. So what's your move?

Well, on the issue of gun violence, let's just be very clear. We are seeing tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. We are now learning the names of the 10 people in Colorado, including that police officer who ran into fire in terms of gunfire, a father of seven children. We are looking at in Atlanta, and all of those folks, all of them, at the grocery store in these establishments going about their lives. And gun down and slaughter. The personal stories are heartbreaking. The personal stories. But Gail, here's why I mention it.

Here's why I mention it. Yes. Because I'm going to tell you something. I've been working on this for a long time. I actually thought that Sandy Hook would have been the thing that moved Congress. How, you win, when 26 and 7-year-old babies were slaughtered. And they did not act. And they did not act.

It is time for Congress to act. So, she did. So she just finished saying that after Sandy Hook where 20 children were slaughtered in this mass shooting, Congress did not act. And then she immediately pivots to Congress must now act. And the question really is, you heard in the beginning from Gail, you don't have the votes in the Senate where you need 60 senators to vote in favor of gun control legislation. You don't have the votes. So what's what's your tactic? now? And really the questions, are you going to pursue or is the Biden administration going to pursue executive action? And the answer is no. We have more evidence of that in just a second. But John, what do you make of this? Yeah, I love that she could, like the thing that she said about Sandy Hook is totally true. I think a lot of people thought, well, that's too much, right? Like, we can't have this. High school students could get totally shot up. But these are younger

kids, that should be the thing. And then it didn't. And I don't know if everyone did this, but I started to wonder, okay, well, what about hypothetically, what if they shot up a couple of churches or a synagogue or, and then you play that game and then you realize after a while, oh wait, no, there's nothing. There is nothing that would actually be like, Lauren Bow would be like, it's gone too far, something has to be done because these are not thinking rational human beings. And so you can acknowledge that and you could, like we're, I just said that, but it can't lead you to then say, so let's try it again. Let's hope that some Republicans will be reasonable. Or let's hope that Joe Manchin, who's like, like legally married to a pump

action shotgun that he'll be reasonable on this or like it's not just the Republicans. Obviously the Republicans are the worst, but there's several Democrats that are only a slightly better. And when it comes to actually passing something, it's indistinguishable. They won't pass it. And so the answer then is, what are you going to do that doesn't have anything to do with them unless what you're going to do is get rid of the filibuster, which you're not going to do. And even if you did do, I don't know if you'd be able to get this past. So what is Biden going to do? So, Anna, what is Biden going to do? Biden is going to do nothing. We do have a video from Biden, which we'll get to in just a second. But we're not done with Vice President Harris yet.

In the next clip, she is asked to just please answer the question about possible executive action. So let's take a look at what she had to say. We heard from the head of Mom's Demand to Action earlier in the broadcast who said the president has it in his power to do something right now. And the president has said he is prepared to sign legislation. But he can also take executive action. I don't think the president is excluding that. But again, I want to be clear that if we really want something that is going to be lasting, we need to pass legislation.

No, the president is excluding that, though. The president is excluding that. His statement yesterday, in response to the Boulder shooting, made it abundantly clear that he's relying on Congress with this broken, filibuster-ridden Senate process to pass gun legislation. The thing is, they both know it's not going to have. happen. They know that the filibuster is a problem. They both know it. They both know it because when it came to something as important as passing a $15 an hour minimum wage, they were not only running into a brick wall on the Senate filibuster, right? When it came to passing something to

reconciliation, they weren't even willing to overrule the Senate parliamentarian who is not a democratically elected person and whose opinion doesn't really matter if the vice president decides to overrule. My point is, they're not willing to do what's necessary when it comes to the Senate filibuster and they're not willing to take executive action. So with those two things in mind, how about don't do these interviews because you have nothing interesting to say. Okay, that goes for Harris and Biden on this particular topic. If your answer to the American people is we have the power to do executive action, but we're going to sit on our butts and do absolutely nothing and wait for the Senate to fail as it usually does, I don't want to hear about

about that. Don't care. It's not an interesting conversation to have, okay? And you're not tricking anyone by going on a long diatribe about what happened during the shooting. We know, we know what happened during the shooting. We know. We don't need you to recount it for us. We need to know if President Biden is going to do his job and try to do something unilaterally because right now the Senate is broken. They're not going to pass gun control. They're just not. Well, Anna, he's going to take strong action by signing something other people do. If they do it, we'll see if they do it. They're not going to do anything.

No, of course, I'm saying like, that is not action. That is literally signing off on something someone else did. You're just signing, that's what you're doing. And let's say that in theory, okay, no executive action for some reason that they won't define, like they won't even say why they won't do that. don't do that, but let's say they're not going to do that. They're going to wait for legislation. Okay, then if you're going to come forward, as Anna said, you could fill the time better, not by telling us what happened with the shootings. We know what happened. That's why we're pissed,

and now we're pissed at you because you're helping to block change. Instead tell us all of what Biden and you are going to do to somehow force it to work, what you're going to do to make Joe Manchin act right. Because if all you're doing is signing in, up until the signing, all you're doing, is sort of sitting in the background and watching to see what happens, then you are the exact opposite of a leader. You're not even the leader the extent that some in the Senate would have to be for that to work. And on Harris in particular, it is now a couple of months into Biden's administration. He has done some really bad things. He's done some good things. But unless I'm wrong, and feel free to correct me, she was supposed to be better than him. He's a super, he's from

the 1880s Democrats, she's more progressive younger and all that. Do we have an example of anything that she has made him better on, some influence that she has exerted that has put him better in line with the current state of the Democratic Party? Like presenting her to do interviews is fine. But if all of this next four years is going to be her holding the spot so that she could run for president someday too, isn't she at some point going to have to demonstrate how her being there was better than Buttigieg or Klobuchar or whatever? No, I don't think she has to demonstrate anything because the second you have valid, I'm sure we'll see it in the comment sections of this video.

The second you try to speak truth to power to Kamala Harris specifically, they'll come for you with all sorts of allegations that weaponizes identity and it's absolutely disgusting. And look, to be fair to Kamala Harris, she's not the president, okay? Kamala Harris and the vice presidential role in particular, I don't want to say that it's a useless role. It's not useless. She could have had a tremendous amount of power in overruling the Senate parliamentarian should she have chosen to do that. And as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, she does have power. But in terms of executive action, the only person who can do that is Joe Biden. And since I promised you, what did Joe Biden have to say?

minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save the lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act. We can ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines in this country once again. The United States Senate, I hope some are listening, should immediately pass the two House pass bills that closed loopholes in the background check system. It's just not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. He said the U.S. Senate and I hope some are listening.

You hope some are listening. You hope you're the president. You're the president of the party that's in charge. Make them listen, quite literally, like get on the phone with them. Don't hope that they watch this address, but then also use pressure. And I understand, I have no misconceptions about Kamala Harris being able to pass executive action. on her own, but she's in the room with him. She's supposed to be influential.

Vice presidents have been in the past influential. Dick Cheney was influential. He had no on the books more power than Al Gore did, but he was very influential. She could be that. She could be advising him. I'm sure that she is. I just wonder what the advice actually is. For him to say, I hope they listen, it's time now to pass the legislation.

That is what they have said over and over and over. And the only thing has changed is the number of people who've been shot and killed. That's it. And look, let me also be clear about one other thing because there are statements or parts of Kamala Harris's statement that are true. So for instance, in a perfect world, which we don't live in, you would pass legislation through Congress and get it signed by the president because that is far more difficult to reverse than passing some sort of gun control through executive orders. As we know,

an executive order can very easily be reversed in an upcoming Republican administration. So I agree that the best, I mean, in an ideal world, that would be the best option. But the problem is under the way that the Senate is structured right now with that legislative filibuster that ensures that you need 60 senators to vote in favor of that legislation, it ain't going to happen. Okay, in fact, it would be a heavy lift even if they did away with the filibuster, because unfortunately you have conservative Democrats like Senator Manchin saying that he's against passing the House version of gun control, which calls for closing the gun show loophole, which calls for universal background checks, and, you know, all the things that we've

been talking about, not just, you know, throughout this week, but for years, literally for years, mass shootings have become more and more common. The rate of mass shootings have increased in the United States. But the one other thing I want to bring up is, I just, I want these lawmakers to stop treating us like we're stupid, right? Because we know that it can't pass through the Senate with how the Senate is structured now. And then you have like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who's like, oh, I'm gonna bring it up for a vote. You betcha. I'm gonna to bring it up to a vote, knowing that it's going to fail. This is what we know. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for his part vowed to address the epidemic of gun violence, noting that

he has already committed to bringing universal background checks legislation to the floor of the Senate. That's all fine and dandy. You can go ahead and do that, but he knows it's going to fail. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden know it's going to fail. So how about we address what the heart of the problem is here and what makes the Senate ineffective, essentially useless in passing the legislation that we need. And that's the legislative filibuster. That is going to be a problem throughout this entire presidency. And the idea that they think we're stupid enough to believe that, you know, it's really not the executive branch's responsibility here. There's going to wait for Congress to fail again on this is insulting, ridiculous, and I can't stand it.

So that's where I'm at on that. Yeah. No, and I get that you're frustrated that literally nothing is happening in the legislature, but that is the price of not angering Mitch McConnell, and then his retribution would be for literally nothing to happen. Well, let me just give you a statement for Mitch McConnell, we'll wrap this story up, because he has put out additional threats about democracy. Like, if you nuke the filibuster, we might have democracy in the Senate. We can't have that. So here's a recent statement that he made during the ruthless podcast and conservative podcast. He said, if they turn, meaning the Democrats, the Senate into a simple majority body, the Senate is lost. It may not be the panacea they articulate, anticipate it would be.

It could turn the Senate into sort of a nuclear winter where the aftermath of the so-called nuclear option is not a sustainable place. I don't know about you guys. I believe in democracy, okay? So I don't know like what those threats mean. I would venture to say they're empty threats. He's now pivoted to pointing to the fact that Democrats were in favor of the filibuster during Trump's term. Yeah, they were. It should have been, it should be nuked. The filibuster in the Senate stops the passage of important legislation. We're supposed to live in a democracy. If you want to pass HR1, if you want to, you know, possibly pass the infrastructure bill that's the upcoming bill from the Biden administration, there is some indication they can pass that

through reconciliation. But why do we have to go through like this second plan B method? Let's just have a Senate that works, get rid of the filibuster. Otherwise, all these discussions we have about policy is useless. It's just useless. We're talking about unicorns and butterflies and rainbows. I don't, I'm not interested. I want to talk about what the reality is and what we can do to fix it. Anna, it's fun to lie though. Like earlier today when Kristen Cinema tweeted that she believes it's important that we make women's pay equal to men's. And that's why she has legislation that she supports to make that happen. That will be filibustered. And then she won't do anything about it. It's just fun to lie sometimes. Yeah, all right. Well, we got to take a

quick break. But when we come back, we're not done with Democrats. I have more to share with you regarding Senator Joe Manchin and how he is going to be the cop. that stops it when it comes to common sense gun reform. See you soon. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies

that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-Boh-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows.

But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as, consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training

or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. Hey, guys. Hey guys, welcome to our first social break of the day. You know, thank you so much for supporting the show. Thank you for watching live.

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It's going to be awesome. First of all, if you're not already on our Twitch channel, you can go to Twitch.tv slash to find exclusive Twitch-only programming there. You can find Happy Half Hour there, which airs tonight. And based on what Brett says, he will interview a moose and a reptile on the program today, which sounds like a lot of fun. Alex Jones is worried though. He's very concerned about reptile people, reptilians coming after us.

So be careful, Brett. Moving on to some member comments, effecto says, considering executive orders on gun control, just like they were considering raising the minimum wage. Exactly, it's just the, don't insult us. Like, that's the thing that gets under my skin. Just be honest, you guys aren't going to do anything. So don't do these interviews, stop with a chest thumping. It drives me crazy.

Craig Cray-Souffle, an executive action regarding gun control is like Congress voting for Medicare for all, though I still have hope for the latter. I think eventually we will get to a place where they vote for Medicare for all. Or, you know, they might vote for it. know if it's going to pass. But I think eventually we're going to have a health care system that makes a lot more sense, mostly because younger people are pretty militant about it. And that actually gives me a little bit of hope. Eclectic Michelania says there are over 10 million reasons that Congress and the White House won't do anything meaningful about gun reform. To be exact,

over 10 million reasons, the number of dollars spent on pro-gun lobbying in 2020 alone. and that's according to opensecrets.org. Eclectic, thank you for doing the work that most high paid, you know, cable hosts won't do. I really appreciate you sharing that info with us. For now, we got to get back to the show, but I love your comments. Keep sending them in. I'll read more later. Hey, Friends, welcome back to TY, Anna and John with you.

We've been talking about the possibility of of gun control legislation on the show so far. And we're not done with that topic just yet. And we should focus on what Joe Manchin is saying, because not only does he want to serve as an obstacle in fighting against wealth inequality and income inequality, he also wants to be an obstacle in saving people's lives. So even if Democrats muster enough common sense and courage to get rid of the Senate filibuster so they can pass common sense gun regulations like universal background checks and closing the gun show loophole, Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, still wants to be a problem. Remember, there's a 50-50 split in the Senate right now.

So Kamala Harris, as vice president, would be the tie-breaking vote. But Democrats would need every single Democratic lawmaker in the Senate to vote in favor of gun control legislation, even if they get rid of the filibuster. And what Senator Manchin has to say in response to that is, quote, no, I don't support what the House passed, not at all. So what he's referring to is two different bills that were passed by the House, of course, mostly Democrats in the House. And if you read the legislation, it is nothing extreme. It's the most common sense legislation that if you look at polling, even Republican voters agree on. Just closing gunshow loopholes, ensuring that there's universal background checks. But Mansion says, no, no, it's

far reaching. I'm not into it. And instead, I'm going to go ahead and promote my failed legislation from 2013. He says, I'm still basically where Pat Toomey and I have been. They co-authored this legislation together. The most reasonable, responsible gun piece of legislation called Gunsense, which is basically saying that commercial transactions should be background checked. Commercial, you don't know a person. If I know a person, no. So what he's saying there is there should be exceptions made when it comes to private sellers. And I disagree with that wholeheartedly.

So let me give you more detail into what the House bill would do. So you guys kind of understand the difference. And then, John, I'd love to hear your thoughts. So the version that the house passed would expand background checks beyond mansion to me, which failed to advance in 2013, to include transactions between private parties at gun shows or over the internet and would close the so-called Charleston loophole by extending the time a licensed gun sale can go through before required background check is completed. Right? So it's a little broader, but not by much. I actually went back and read what Toomey and

Mansion had proposed in 2013. And to be fair to them, there are good provisions in their proposal, but it does not deal with the possibility of a private seller selling guns to an individual who has no business owning guns. And that's a big problem. Why needlessly have that ridiculous loophole. But John, before I give more detail, what do you think? I mean, I would ask you your question. Why then have that needless loophole? Well, you know, Manchin is- To not anger conservatives? Yeah, but here's the thing. That's not a good enough reason. So if you have two routes to selling, you have commercial and you have private, and right now you can pretty much get whatever you want in a lot of states in either way. Let's say in theory you were to close one off,

even though, anyway, let's say you close one off, then they will just go for the private sellers. And maybe, since it's going to be on the individual, maybe some individuals will be like, I don't know, willing to forego sales because they get a bad vibe or something, maybe, but will all of them? And so what does that mean? Like instead of just going to a store, you have to email three guys. Like that's supposed to be the thing that protects us from a mass shooter, is that hopefully we, these individual gun sellers are like detectives and they're checking out each of the people and deciding whether they need to look into it or something. It's such an obviously flawed idea that I think would be proposed by someone for whom stopping mass shootings is at most a

thing that you occasionally talk about being like a laudable goal, but isn't actually a goal of yours. And it's not like we have to move past this point of thinking that everybody shares the same goals, less shootings. We don't. Like right now in the In the chat, I can see this, people who come in, every time there's a mass shooting, they come in to argue for why there shouldn't be any gun control. None of them seem like there's some other thing they want to do that would stop mass shootings. It seems like the goal is just not having the gun control, because that's what the actual end goal is. And I would argue from Joe Manchin, a guy who shoots its stuff in campaign ads, stopping mass shootings is not on his top list of priorities. No, of course it's not. But I don't think it's on the top of the priority list for most lawmakers to be fair.

It's just that some of these lawmakers are worse than others in terms of like being openly disgusting and transparent about it. But for the commenters who have that point of view in the comment section, I guess my question is, are you comfortable with the fact that you're a criminal? Because you being a criminal is the only way you wouldn't qualify to purchase a gun through a background check. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? If you're a law-abiding citizen, if you're not beating your wife or beating your partner, what are you worried about? Why is it a problem for you to go through a background check? Why is it a problem for anyone who wants to buy a lethal weapon to go through a background check to ensure that that person doesn't have a violent pass that could lead to another one of these mass shootings? Like, why is that a problem? Like, that's the thing that gets to me because if you aren't a criminal, you have nothing to worry about. No one's coming after your guns. No one's coming out. I mean, it's the most milk-toast legislation. Like I want, but I want them to answer the question. I want them to answer the question. Let me know. Let me know. Are you a criminal? And if you're a criminal, I mean, okay, sad day,

sad day, you shouldn't have a gun. Can I briefly speculate? Sad day. I think it's because we're talking about something that is grounded in the real world, whether a person lives or dies and how legislation might influence that outcome. For many of them, I think some of them, sure, probably criminals or have passed domestic violence charges or whatever, but for many of them, all of this is just fun times. It's just stuff we like to think about. And it's good of the government's coming. It's all this stuff that isn't attached to reality. It has nothing to do with anything real or outcomes in the real world. It's, I don't like the idea of that or I've been convinced by some a hole on, you know,

AM radio that if this happens, then someday something else will have. It's all pure, it's stuff that's floating freely in their minds about ideology or philosophy or whatever. It has nothing to do, like we said before, with actually stopping shootings because that is not the goal. And one other important component of the Mansion To Me legislation is that it would do away with state laws that would prosecute individuals who are traveling across state lines with a weapon. And so I'll give you an example. Let's say you're driving from Florida to California and you decide what, you know, Florida has the lax gun laws. You might be a legal gun. owner in Florida, but California has different gun laws. So traveling across this country, across state lines, you know, you could be breaking statewide gun laws based on what you're doing and just having possession of that gun. Of course, with Toomey involved in this legislation,

possibly mansion as well, they want to provide protection to people who do that. So basically, who cares about state's rights, who cares about state laws, if a Floridian can't do without his or her gun for a day or two, they should have the right to travel across state lines with their ridiculous weapon. I mean, the addiction to guns is amazing. It's like, oh, I gotta get my fix. I gotta have my gun with me at all times. Okay, all right, great. So let's just be clear about something, okay? This country doesn't value people's lives. In story after story, that we do, it doesn't matter if they're cops, it doesn't matter if they're children, it doesn't matter who it is, okay? This country has shown us over and over again, based on the actions

of our lawmakers that they value profits over people's lives, and they value the feelings of gun manufacturers and the profits of gun manufacturers more than people's lives. So every time we get involved in that ridiculous debate about abortion or reproductive rights, I'm not interested in hearing it, because the side that's arguing that this is about protecting human life, I don't hear. I don't hear loud protesting. I don't hear any campaigning on the necessity of saving people's lives by passing common sense universal background checks to ensure that lunatics don't get their hands, legally get their hands on these guns. They don't care about that. And that leads to far more living, breathing humans getting slaughtered in this country

on a regular basis. They're so disingenuous and I'm tired of politicians using human beings and groups of people as nothing more than props. And speaking of props, let's move on to Senator Mitch McConnell, who loves to do what Republicans do, just deflect from the issue of gun control and focus on something else. Senator Mitch McConnell thinks that, you know, gun control should not be the focus of what Congress should do in response to the mass shootings that we're experiencing in this country. The real problem here is mental health. Let's watch. The real challenge here is mental illness and identifying people who are likely to do this kind of thing in advance is very, very difficult. With regard to the gun legislation over in

the House, I don't think it would address this issue. But if the Senate, Majority Leader, Senator Schumer, wants to bring it up. We'll be happy to debate it. But I think the focus ought to be on identifying people in advance who have the capacity and the interest in carrying out these atrocious attacks. So understand what he's saying there, right? First of all, it's clear that he's deflecting from the fact that we have laxed gun laws that puts guns in the hands of people who clearly shouldn't have them. And he's using this other scapegoat, right?

People who have mental health issues. But he's not talking about improving mental health in America, funding mental health programs so people can get help. What he's talking about here is we need to find a way to identify who has mental health issues. And then we ban them from getting guns. And then that's it. End a story.

End a day. And, you know, Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey in the gun control legislation. that they co-authored together in 2013, it failed in 2013, wanted to make an exemption in HIPAA regulations to ensure that people suffering from mental health issues would not have their privacy protected so they would pop up in background checks should they try to purchase a gun. Now that's a really difficult issue to tackle. And I think that progressives need to think about the ramifications of that as well. But again, understand this is a deflection And more importantly, it's not about solving a problem, it's about further persecuting people

who have mental health issues when who's the arbiter of what type of mental health issue would bar someone from buying a gun. Who gets to decide that? I think privacy issues should be considered. And more importantly, what if these are people who have mental health issues that can be treated through a robust Medicare for all universal health care system. How about that? But of course, that's not what they want to do. They just want to find ways to be even more punitive to people who are suffering for mental illness when they've been historically punitive by gutting mental. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our

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extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans. That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. Health programs across the country. I think I think you raise a great question about who should be the one to decide. I mean, presumably you would want experts in mental health in conjunction with people who know about guns to do it, but they're certainly not going to be the ones who decide. The people who write the legislation will be the ones who decide. And if it's a bill that's intended to be made in some sort of bipartisan cooperation with the Republicans, then it's

going to be the Republicans who are going to decide. And where do we think they're going to err? Which direction? I mean, we don't even need to speculate about how severe mental illness would have to be for them to think it's okay to take your guns, let alone, or even just to block you from getting new ones. When we know that, for instance, if you have had multiple instances of domestic violence, they don't want you to be blocked from owning guns. That's the whole answer. That's all you need. I don't care if someone who routinely attacks their spouse has mental problems that can explain it. The behavior should be enough by itself. But it's not for Republicans. So how demonstrably crazy would a person have to be for that to outweigh

clear documented violence in the home that we know is a great predictor of killing someone eventually. And by the way, it's not like if you were, if you were just going to approach us from the point of view of evaluating what a person might do with a gun, first of all, no one ever talks about it, but you could switch from a system of them looking to your background and you getting the gun so long as they don't find something that knocks you out of contention. You could switch that to a system where you actually have to demonstrate your sanity and stability in conjunction potentially with a psychiatrist or something. We're never going to do that. But yeah, I just, it's not just mental illness. We would ideally like to weed out people that hold certain, I mean, there are certain political movements, extremist movements of this country that are routinely affiliated with political violence, even recently. If someone joins, you know, the like the proud boys or the three percenters or the boogaloos or whatever,

do we need to prove that they're insane if the organizations are made to commit acts of political violence? This conversation is not just a distraction. That would be bad. It could be a distraction that's not purposefully limited in scope. It's both of those things. Yeah, yeah. It is purposely limited in scope. But this isn't the first time that you've seen Republican lawmakers immediately go to that scapegoat of, oh, it's mental health. That's the issue. It's mental health. They just use it as a way to deflect from having the discussions and the

debates that need to be had on gun control. And then when everyone is done paying attention to this mass shooting and our short attention spans are focusing on whatever the flavor of the day is tomorrow, Republicans move on. They're like, we did our job. We deflected. Everyone's forgotten already. There'll be another mass shooting next week, but we'll just recycle the same talking points, and then do absolutely nothing. Do absolutely nothing. That is the likely outcome. They don't care about mental health, even if they did, based on what Mitch McConnell is saying there, He doesn't want to actually provide services to people who are suffering for mental health issues. He just wants to, you know, if he's forced to do it, limit their ability to purchase

guns. And again, there are big questions about how they determine who is and is not suited to purchase a gun. Like it's just, they have no real solutions. In every facet of governing, they have no solutions. They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they have no solutions for its replacement because they don't care. They're not interested in legislating. The Republican party, especially people like Mitch McConnell, are far more interested in the accumulation of power. That is all he has done in the Senate. In fact, he's working on solidifying his power in his own state even after he retires. That's a story that we shared with you guys a few weeks ago. That's who Mitch McConnell is. Doesn't care about representing you or your best interests, okay?

He could care less about you, couldn't care less about you. But he certainly does care about maintaining power for the GOP, and he's done a great job at that. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll share some details on who the Boulder shooter is. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Ray Turner, aka the bearded dragon has curious comment in the super chat section, Dragon Daddy, good call on TDR earlier regarding getting Fran and JR into role playing. I thought that our post game yesterday was raunchy, but apparently the real raunchy stuff is happening over at TDR. So I guess check it out if that's your thing. It's not raunchy. It's just a little bit of role-playing. There's a dungeon master. That's basically it. Okay, John, you're not helping your case. There's dungeon master. It's something raunchy about that. There's role-playing dungeons. Hey, go down there and you take some risks.

Christopher writes it and says 33 states are passing 165 plus voter restriction laws. Yes, red states and Republican-led state guns. governments, but can't pass responsible gun laws. It has never been about our rights or safety, just their donors and power. Absolutely. Nicole writes in and says, I'm a liberal and I love guns. And guess what? I believe in gun control. I believe your average Joe shouldn't be able to buy an AR-15 or even a handgun. I wouldn't say I love guns, but I'm right there with you, Nicole. Like, I'm not in favor of banning guns. I like you guns. And they should be. You're more limited than they are. I don't enjoy it.

Like I don't like the kickback. It makes me nervous, but I understand why people, law abiding citizens want guns. I get it, you know, and I, anyway, I don't think that law abiding citizens should be punished for the actions of bad actors. But the problem is, what are we going to do to ensure that owning a gun is not like an absolute, it's not an absolute right. There are no absolute rights. There are limitations to it. There are limitations to the freedom of speech, for instance, right? So if we're having this absolute interpretation of gun rights that leads to people dying, it just doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, Peter Hamby says, like I've always said, the GOP will rake in money, even if their families are caught in mass shootings, gun shows, gunmakers and the NRA want genocide. What they want is to protect the interests of gun manufacturers. That's what they want. We're the type of country that values profits over literally everything else, including human lives. Well, I would add, and getting people scared for the future of their guns is useful in and of itself. Having that be a thing that people are focused on like Dr. Seuss is useful.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a good point because I think part of it, like Republicans have also used it as part of their culture war messaging, right? These are the types of issues they latch on to, including reproductive rights and things like that. So we're constantly fighting each other rather than focusing on solutions and focusing on the fact that Republicans actually do not have the best interests of Americans in mind economically or otherwise. All right, well, with that said, we got to get to the show. Let's, I'll see you guys there. You know, I'm going to be able to be.

Welcome back to TYT, Anna and John with you. And if you're watching this live, please share this stream, like this stream, you know, the algorithm likes it and it's a great way of getting the word out about TYT. You know, there's algorithm stuff going on that's unfortunate. I know some of you guys have written to me personally to say that we're not popping up in your feeds anymore. And that makes me really sad because we work really hard on this show. So please help support us by liking and sharing the stream.

Now let's move on to the shooter from Boulder and what we know about him so far. We're learning more about the 21 year old male who decided to carry out the latest mass shooting, this time in Boulder, Colorado at a King Super's supermarket store. Now, we're not giving you his name. We don't believe in doing that, but we will give you some of the information we know about his past, the trouble he's been in. the trouble he's been in with investigations in the past. And also, I want to be clear that even today, we still don't have a clear motivation for the shooting. But once that's confirmed or clarified by authorities, of course, we'll share that with you. But here's what we do know

about him. As I mentioned, he's a 21 year old male. He actually immigrated to the United States from Syria. He's been living in the United States for quite some time now. The gunman was armed with both a military-style semi-automatic rifle and a pistol when he walked into the King's Super store on Monday and opened fire. Also, a police affidavit said that last week he bought a Rugger, is, am I saying that right? Ruger, right? Ruger. Ruger. Oh, yeah, Ruger. Ruger, my back. So he bought a Ruger AR, a semi-automatic pistol, essentially a shortened version of an AR-15-style rifle, which fires the same small caliber, or same small caliber, high velocity ammunition first developed for battlefield use. Really great that,

you know, ordinary civilians have access to these weapons. It's great, they really do need it. And so the FBI, John, has investigated him before. They were familiar with his name because he was convicted in 2018 of misdemeanor assault against another student in a classroom and told the police at the time that it was in retaliation for insults and ethnic taunts. He is Muslim. Fellow students recall him as having a fierce temper that would flare in response to setbacks or slights. Yep. We should have guns.

It's a country where there's going to be people with a broad range of life experiences, and some of them are going to have kind of bad lives. Some of them are going to be worse than that. Some of them are also going to be bullied. What sort of gun situation is, Do we want out there for people in that wide spectrum of life experiences, some of whom are going to become violent? Do we want them to have access to weapons that you'd like to have at your side as you're strolling down the streets of Fallujah? And how easy access do we want them to have to that? I don't want them to have easy access. Some very powerful people in this country think that people, no matter how disturbed, no matter how predisposed to violence, should be able to get weapons that we would send soldiers into battle with. And that even questioning, that is crazy and implying that the weapon matters is crazy, even though like it's one thing for us to assert that shooters are probably going to want really effective guns, guns that are designed to kill a lot of people. But we already know that that's what they do. They tell us, they make the case, they persuade that they want these styles of weapons. And that doesn't matter. That doesn't

bring us an inch closer to actually having gun control. The clear, like they keep the pattern over and over and over, they go for these weapons. Because of course they would. If you're going to try to kill a lot of people, you want a gun or a weapon that's really good at doing that. You know, he also had some in great points, John, I totally agree. He also seems to have had some paranoia. That was something that his brother shared with the Daily Beast in an interview. And he, his brother straight out said that he believes that his brother is mentally ill, paranoid and antisocial. Before social media platform, platforms wiped his profiles from the internet, some people were able to get some screenshots

of what he had posted. And he did post things that seemed paranoid at the time, I guess. But now that the FBI was familiar with him, there's a possibility that he wasn't really being paranoid. He said in one post, yeah, if these racist, Islamophobic people would stop hacking my phone and let me have a normal life, I probably could. So when I read about that yesterday, Prior to learning about the prosecution and conviction that he dealt with in 2018, I was like, oh, it sounds like he does have some pretty serious mental health issues, but it sounds like he did undergo some sort of investigation. My point is it doesn't even matter, right?

You're going to have, you're right, John, people with different lived experiences, people who should not have access to these types of guns. And if the FBI, like think about it, the FBI was familiar with him and he was able to purchase a gun. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, I guess we can learn something by looking at his history. Honestly, I don't really care.

Like I care about the context that these people, because there's always going to be people who are, you know, predisposed, whatever. Some people pretend to, like they pretend to care about the identity. Like when it turned out that, ooh, he's got a Muslim sounding name, Marjorie Green suddenly when she ignores other shooters. For him, oh, this is licensed now to talk about it. And so she tweets about it. But she doesn't actually have a different position vis-a-vis him versus the shooter in Atlanta. It's the same. She would not have done anything to stop either of them from getting any weapon that they want. And she doesn't want any legislation in response to it. So she might like

sort of like happily, gleefully, you know, hatefully tweet out a few things involving this person's name. And feel free to search on her Twitter. You can search the names of of white mass shooters, I guarantee their names don't appear there. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It's just, it's like a layup for her social media wise. In terms of legislation, nothing. You can expect nothing. Well, John, let's switch gears. Let's do one more story together because I'm really curious how you feel about this. So censorship's been a pretty big topic lately. And recently, Senator Bernie Sanders had an interview with Ezra Klein and the topic of Twitter banning Donald Trump,

or more importantly, liberals being willing to censor individuals they disagree with, that came up. And Bernie Sanders gave an answer that I disagreed with based on framing. So let's hear what he had to say and I'll explain. Do you think there's truth to the substantive critique of contemporary liberalism here, that liberals have become too censorious and too willing to use their cultural and corporate and political power to censor or suppress ideas and products to defend them? Look, you have a former president in Trump who is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody doesn't believe in the rule of law. This is a bad news guy. but if you're asking me, do I feel particularly comfortable that the then president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter?

I don't feel comfortable about that. Now, I don't know what the answer is. Do you want hate speech and conspiracy theories traveling all over this country? No. Do you want the internet to be used for authoritarian purposes and insurrection, if you like? No, you don't. So how you balance that? I don't know, but it is an issue that we have got to. be thinking about because of anybody who thinks yesterday was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a different, very different point of view. So I don't like giving that much power to a handful of high tech people. Well, luckily he's a United States senator and senators

can do something about, you know, scaling back some of the power that these Silicon Valley companies have. And look, luckily, there are antitrust lawsuits that companies like Facebook are facing right now. That's part of the reason why they've been able to become as powerful as they are, squashing competition, buying up their competition, and ensuring that they maintain the power that they have. But I don't know why the left tends to have this habit of using Donald Trump in the framing

of the argument that Bernie Sanders just made there. What do you mean? Why do people have such a difficult time differentiating between actual censorship, right? So like we don't even have to wait for the future. Leftists have already been censored on a lot of these platforms. What should be done is an actual investigation to see is it based on ideology or is it based on these ridiculous, faulty algorithms that are written with flaws. They're opaque so we don't know how they work.

And yeah, there have been all sorts of things that have been demonetized, all sorts of things that have been taken off these platforms, like people have built their entire careers from creating original content for these platforms. And then before they know it, all of a sudden all this stuff is either taken down or demonetize. So that is a legitimate argument to make. Donald Trump and Alex Jones and people like that, why are people pretending like they fall into the same bucket of censorship? They don't. I don't know. Donald Trump had years and years and years and years and endless, okay, endless years of breaking the rules, the guidelines, whatever. On the day that the Capitol was broken into, okay, by these insurrectionists,

he continued spreading disinformation and misinformation on Twitter. That's why he got banned. That's why he got banned. And look, I'm not angry with Bernie Sanders. I disagree with this framing. I think that there needs to be a distinction between people in positions of power who abuse their power and act as though they're above the rules, above the law. They don't have to abide by anything. And yes, Alex Jones falls under that category as well. I mean, Alex Jones was inciting violence against parents who had lost their children in the Sandy Hook shooting. That's what Alex Jones did. That type of speech, by the way, isn't even protected by the government. Insiding violence is not protected by the First Amendment. I did a long video on that for my previous show,

no filter. Watch it. You'll get what I'm saying. But in this case, I don't have time. But yes, it was a good show. But you can make this argument about censorship without immediately jumping to the very person who should have been banned from Twitter, and that's Donald Trump. Exactly, yeah, it's, it's, oh God, I hate the whole argument because so many people are so either intentionally dishonest about their goals, the words they use, and some are maybe more accidentally dishonest or they lead the conversation in dishonest way. So, Look, I don't agree with some of what Bernie there said there, but I have more of a problem with the framing of the question because that was Ezra Klein? Yeah, Ezra said a bunch of words

as if they have meanings when they don't. Like liberal censor, that doesn't mean one thing. That doesn't mean anything close to one thing. Sensor and cancel have very purposefully by a lot of people been swollen to encapsulate such a broad range of experiences that using the word as as if it has a specific meaning, I think counts as lying now. Because what does it mean to be canceled? It could mean that someone tweeted about you and you didn't like it, and that was literally it. Like one person tweeted, too, you like go to jail for the crimes you committed. All of that is called being canceled or called being censored. Private companies making a decision not to give a book deal to someone. That counts as being canceled. Banned from a platform

counts as canceled. Losing a job, being criticized. Like, they don't. mean anything. And so when you use it that way, you are playing into a very careful, purposeful construction from the right. They came up with the idea of political correctness, and for 20 years that meant that the only thing that counts as censorship or being against free speech, and you know what, we're just going to continue to lump what private corporations and the government does is the same thing and imply that it's the same thing. That now all of that is on the left. That eventually lost some of its cultural cachet, and so they came up with being canceled. And there's another 20 years where that's the only

thing that counts. It doesn't matter how many boycotts the right does. It doesn't matter how many movies they get pulled. None of that matters. It doesn't count because the construct is PC or cancel, which we're going to pretend as a neutral term, but is designed to only count when those on the left are arguably in the center do it. That is like 30 years of American society. We're in like a slightly new phase of it because the cancel thing is slightly new. It's the same thing and it's designed for them to get audiences off of saying they're against it. It's designed for them to pitch themselves to be victims because they were canceled. They will tell you on like the biggest cable shows on TV how canceled they've been. They'll write long tracks in the

books they have published and get paid for about how they've been canceled and all of that. The whole thing is a sham and that's why I hate smart people like Ezra Klein asking questions about trying to be really serious about it as if none of that that I just said is true. And Bernie engaging with it, whether I agree or not, the whole thing is so dishonest. Yeah, and I think that's really at the core of what's so frustrating about that exchange, right? And I don't, and look, I think that Bernie has the right instinct, right? Because we should be concerned about these platforms becoming, well, they've already become incredibly powerful. But look, they can decide overnight to basically,

basically destroy everything that you've built on their platform, right? If they decide that they're going to change their algorithm in one way or the other, you don't know how they did it or what their decision was. Like these are issues when people like rely on these platforms for their livelihood. These are issues and we've been seeing it and experiencing it for a while. That is a legitimate thing to bring up in the framing of your answer to Ezra Klein. But immediately jumping to the worst offender, which is the man who encouraging, people to do what they did on January 6th, I just don't think you're making a strong argument.

And for all the leftists, we're like, oh, it's a slippery slope, it's a slippery slope. I got news for you. The slope has already slipped. People were already being punished for their ideology, whether it was done intentionally or through, like I said, there needs to be an investigation into how these decisions are made. Because if the decisions are made based on political views, I think that is a problem, right? But I think the far bigger problem for now is that we don't understand how these algorithms work. And these platforms are intentionally opaque when it comes to these types of decisions and algorithms. And obviously, I'm not just talking about Twitter here. I'm talking about YouTube. I'm talking about Facebook. I'm talking about everything.

And it obviously affects us, but it affects everyone who wants to put out their own original content without having to rely on signing some deal with mainstream media. But anyway, John, thank you for hosting with me and indulging, allowing me to indulge in my rants today. I'm obviously fired up. Front row seat. Everyone check out. Everyone check out the damage report. It's really good to be back hosting with you. Oh, really fast can I say joining me as co-host for the first time someone you're familiar

with. Wazni's going to be there. What do you know? Tomorrow. That's awesome. No, Waz is like the next hot thing. He's doing shows all over the place. All right. Everyone check that out. Thank you, John. And when we come back from the break, Nando Vila will join us for hour two. Stick around. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad free. Access members, only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at Apple. slash t yt i'm your host shank huger and i'll see you soon