Sick of listening to Chris and Jay talk about guns yet? No? Great! Here’s another swing at it. Chris and Jay were going back and forth via text, Jay drug Chris back onto the podcast to try to talk through their differences.

Too long won’t listen: Jay thinks the level of societal gun violence should drive gun policies, including removing millions of guns from society. Chris thinks he has an individual right to his guns, irrespective of societal mayhem (or not).

043.mp3 (1h 1m 25MB)

If you’d like to call into the show, you can leave a voicemail at +1-402-577-0117. Consider giving us $1 a month on Patreon so we can waste your money instead of our own. :)

Transcript (via OpenAI Whisper):

We can talk about anything you want, It’s JFluance’s Ignorance. Welcome to JFluance’s Ignorance, episode 43. If you have any thoughts or feedback for us, you can leave us a voicemail for the show at 1-402-577-0117. Thank you. Alright, we got it. Welcome back to JFluance’s Ignorance. Are you familiar with the format? Did you hear the gunshots behind Brian’s house? No, we were. Oh, yeah, you were. Yeah. Yeah, you were gone. Is that what he said? Brian said, what the hell was that? Oh, I wonder what that was. Yeah, I don’t know. I thought maybe it was 50 cal. I, because I think we tried to figure this out via text and Discord and it’s not working. So I want to see if I can do it in person if it actually works to do it in person or not. So I have a hypothesis that your stance on gun rights is entirely independent on, independent of what violence may or may not be happening in society. That there’s no level of, oh my God, the streets are, you know, crazy and everyone’s shooting everybody every day or there hasn’t been a gunshot fired in Omaha in 50 years, right? That on either end of that insanity spectrum, that that’s irrelevant to you, that your guns are in your safe, they’re not hurting anybody and therefore the level of violence in society doesn’t matter. Is that fair or is that not fair? This is what I’m trying to understand. I’d say that’s fair. Okay, so I think where we differ there is that my take on it is that guns like other things, if we have a proven track record that they’re hurting society broadly, more than they’re helping society broadly, then we have to figure out what to do about trying to solve that problem. So if it’s smoking and, you know, smoking is hurting people’s health across the board, then we should do something about that. And if it’s guns and people are getting killed, we should do something about that because it seems unfair to me that if I’m trying to live a gun-free lifestyle and guns are hurting me, like if guns are everywhere in my neighborhood and everybody’s getting shot all the time, then one way to try to fix that is to try to get rid of all the guns in the neighborhood and that that’s just better for the neighborhood overall. Does that perspective make sense? So like if, so when I look at 307 million Americans or 280 or whatever it is, 380? When I look at 380 million Americans, if the gun violence was below a certain threshold for me, then everybody can have guns and that’s fine. And if it’s above a certain threshold for me, society writ large is better off without them. There’s no ceiling above that where you’d say, all right, people that are good need guns to defend themselves, where you’d basically give it back to them. Like, oh my God, shit’s out of control. We can’t get the cops to help these innocent people that are dying. We need to let these innocent people have guns back so they can defend themselves. I think your microphone’s getting blocked by your sweatshirt. I want you to be heard well. Uh-oh, lost the magnet. I think what you’re asking is, if there is gun violence in my neighborhood, don’t I have a right to defend myself with a gun? Right? That’s the question? Yeah, and I’m supportive of that. I think that if I’ve been robbed, like, if I had been robbed or had someone shoot at me, then I personally would feel like, oh, okay, well, I need the option to use a gun to defend myself because that’s the only thing that’s going to be effective. So I think that if you’re being stalked, if you’ve had your life threatened, that you should totally have access, if you want it, to defend yourself with firearms. I think that’s a good thing. I think we could have a legal system where people who have a credible threat can get access to them without a general, you know, the entire society is awash in firearms. And I think right now, Americans just have a general society that’s awash in firearms. So who determines what’s a credible threat in your ideal system? Yeah, I think judges would have to decide. So if you disarm society, like in the UK or in Australia, where I can still have hunting long guns, but I have pistols, but then I’m running for public office and I’ve got people threatening my life, or I’m a Muslim and I have people threatening my life, or you’re my friend who posted a bunch of stuff making fun of flat earthers and he had a guy threatening his life to the point where he had to go to the sheriff and be like, okay, this is crazy. I’m getting death threats, you know, via email and phone calls and stuff. He’s actually stalking my family, you know, then the sheriff and judges or whatever could say, oh, okay. Well, yeah, you can have a gun if you need a gun. That’s what I’m thinking. Yeah. So what if they have a legitimate threat and the judges deny him the opportunity to defend themselves? So I can imagine a case where I’m in fear of my life and then the judge denies me access or the sheriff denies me access or something and I go get a gun anyway. And now I’m breaking the law by having a gun for self-defense. I can imagine that scenario. Yeah. And do you think they’d be justified in that particular case to actually have one even though it was against the law? I think it’s the right thing to do, but I think… So there’s some pretty severe, even in like maybe liberal cities, you know, today that have a lot of anti-gun laws. Like if you get caught without like a license or basically this permission that you’re talking about, there could be some pretty severe penalties like five years in prison, 10 years in prison for just like the first offense. So are you saying that you’re kind of okay with doing that to innocent people that really just want to defend themselves? They have no intent to use it for bad. The only crime is physically having a firearm and that’s it. Nothing more than that. And they have no evidence that they want to do anything more than that. They haven’t done anything more than that. And you’d be okay with society saying, we made this law and we voted on it and everybody that has one of these should go to jail for five years, no matter what your situation is. Yeah, so say I’d been raped and I decided that a firearm was the best way to defend myself against further assaults. And under my system, the sheriff or a judge or whatever has to agree with that because generally speaking, people don’t have guns. They just don’t exist in society. So they deny me. So I get an illegal gun. And then what is the penalty because I’m caught with an illegal firearm? Yeah, that’s an excellent question. I think like in the UK, you simply can’t get them unless you know criminals who have them because criminals often have them. You know what I mean? And I’m not talking about, oh, yes, technically I’m a criminal because I have a gun, people. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about like literally, you know, people who are stealing cars and robbing people and, you know, robbing shops and assaulting people and they have guns, right? And my understanding is, I mean, what I’ve been told, is that in the UK, guns exist. You know who have them like pistols. You know who have them. It’s the guys that are running racketeering operations or, you know, enforcement operations, protection schemes like the mob or whatever. You know, so they’re out stealing cars and while they’re stealing cars, they’re not, they decided they’re not going to go to jail. You know, they’re going to shoot at the cops if the cops catch them doing it and they’ve got guns because they rob shops, they rob other people, they assault people, you know, and they’re the ones with the guns. Like literally, yeah. I know the argument in the US is, oh, well, you know, if you criminalize guns, then only the criminals have, you know, you’re making criminals out of people who aren’t trying to do anything. I get it. But what I’m saying is, when the society writ large is de-armed in terms of there’s just not millions of guns around all the time, then yes, they still exist and it’s the criminal elements that have them, not because they’re, the point I’m trying to make is, it’s not because they’re now criminals because they have the gun. I’m talking about, no, these are actually the bad people that are doing the bad shit that are, you know, on their way back to jail again or not or swore they’d never be taken alive again or whatever. And they’ve got the guns and the people know that, right? The people who live there know that. They know, they probably don’t know them well, but they know, oh, okay, yeah, you know. The same guys that are selling the illegal drugs also have guns and you can probably buy an illegal gun off them and if you get caught with it, you’re in, you know, big trouble in the UK, you know, because generally speaking, citizens don’t have, law-abiding citizens don’t have guns, which means, you know, their mass shooting rate is almost zero and their, when violent crime happens, it doesn’t happen with guns and the death rate’s a lot lower is my understanding. And that could be attributed to other things as well, but, so, so I think, I think for me, if you can just flip a switch and in, I know you can’t, but in the hypothetical scenario where you could de-arm America like they de-armed Australia and 40,000 fewer young people die every year due to firearm incidents, that that’s just a healthier society to live in. Well, the 40,000 number I think that you’re getting is, you know, half of those are suicides. The majority of those are probably gang violence and really kind of, really atrocious parts of the country that are probably fairly dangerous to live in like Detroit, various parts of St. Louis and Tennessee and things like that. And if they didn’t have guns, wouldn’t the gang violence be less bad as far as how fatal it is? I guess, theoretically, if you could snap your fingers and have them all go away, I would agree. Right. So the process of making them all go away, you know, starts with, yeah, you’ve got to, I mean, maybe people will turn them in, maybe they won’t, right? Like I’d probably just turn in my guns except for the one that I didn’t cop to and I hid somewhere and hopefully I don’t get caught with it or whatever for emergencies, you know, for deep cover emergencies where I still own a gun because… So back to the original question though, would you be okay with sending that person that has a legitimate reason to defend themselves but they were denied that, they’d get it anyways? And let’s say they were, the incident happens where they didn’t even shoot anybody to kill and kill them with the gun that they got but maybe the other person, maybe they just drew it, right? And scared that person off and that person was like, I’m not going to mess with this person anymore because they have a gun. But as they were walking home that day after this event occurred, they just get stopped or someone sees them with it just by accident. The person gets thrown in jail for five years. Are you okay with doing that to an innocent person? I don’t know that having a gun needs to be five years in jail. Like what would it be? What would be the reasonable… So what if having an illegal firearm was a month in jail… You’d be okay with that? …for the first offense? Maybe that’s what I’d be okay with. But you’d still be okay with a month in jail for doing nothing wrong? In my mind, there’s a balance to be struck between having millions of guns on the street and all the gun violence that we have as Americans and then all the mass shootouts of guns or a society where there’s 99% fewer guns everywhere. So to get to my goal, which is less gun death, no mass shootings, kids don’t have to be in school learning active shooter shit because that almost never happens. It’s still going to happen, but it’s going to be a hundred times… I mean, we have a mass shooting incident every day in this country. And a lot of those are gang-related just due to the specifics of how they define it. Yeah, so some of them aren’t even out there because they do get stopped and those things aren’t reported either. Yeah. The fatality of assault with guns is just insane. And guns are insanely good tools of what they’re designed to do, which is kill people, right? They are optimized for… Defend people is technically what I would say they’re designed for. Sure. How do you defend yourself? By killing the bad guy, right? Or, you know, killing a bear, you know? Do you see what I’m saying? I’m all for Alaskans having guns. That’s fine. You have to defend yourself from polar bears and shit. Yeah. I get it. I’m not saying there aren’t places in the country where guns… I’m not talking about no guns. I’m talking about millions fewer guns… And even what I’m saying… …and it being a healthier society. So, yes, to get back to before we get too far afield from it, you asked me, I’m putting that woman in jail for a month. For defending herself from getting raped. Correct. Yeah. That’s kind of fucked up, don’t you think? So… So, societally speaking, yeah, it’s fucked up in that one circumstance. But if the choices are 20,000 people die or… You know, and I could just be wrong because it could just be that roving gangs of… What’s it called? Human traffickers? Are just swooping in and grabbing everybody like crazy because they know they don’t have guns. Right? I just don’t think that’s reality. I think the reality is that we have such a level of gun violence in this country because guns are fucking everywhere. They’re just everywhere. And if they weren’t everywhere, the country would be better off. So, how do you get to a place where they’re not everywhere? And the side effect that is fucked up, you’re right, is that in the instance that we’re talking about, yeah, she spends a month in prison. Or jail, sorry, not prison. But she spends a month in jail for having, for breaking the laws around a system that failed her. It failed to protect her in the first place. And then it prosecuted her for having what you call a tool that was deemed illegal by the process that was in place at the time. You know what I would actually think is more just in that case? What’s that? So since she legitimately needed it, the judge denied it to her, then she actually ended up using it for that purpose. I think the judge that denied her that right to do it legally shouldn’t spend that time in jail. Well, the judge’s job is to enforce the law, right? So you should put the politicians that passed the law in jail, not the judge that… What about the people that voted for the law? Yeah, I don’t think anyone should vote. I think it should be what I say. I’m pro-authoritarian and I’m the king. So, and here’s the thing, and this is why I can’t remember what we were talking about. I think it was actually maybe even in this chain on Discord where I said, I don’t understand why anti-gun people focus so much on the guns, right? Why is it the guns in this case that’s what’s causing the issue? You know, like why is it… Because if someone’s an aggressive asshole, I’d prefer they came at me with a knife or a baseball bat. Or a car. Or a car. But they prefer all those things. But if they did, why would it not be the baseball bat or the car’s fault? Or why is it that… Why do you hate baseball so much? I know, I don’t. I wouldn’t blame the baseball or the guns. That’s the thing. I feel like I’m the only one that’s kind of being consistent in that regard. Not I, but the… So, and this is what I’m saying too. Yeah, the difference to me is that there’s…

I think stopping, well, I guess you could kill me a bunch of different ways. Let’s see. What my fear is, if everybody’s got a gun, right, then I could just be shopping or walking the dogs or whatever. And a neighbor that has decided he hates me, could just shoot me, right? Whereas, if he didn’t have access to a gun, he’d have to like, you know, dent his car to kill me. On the street. Yeah. Free, free. So, and here’s the thing. And he’s not going to kill 50 people in a shopping mall. There’s this one thing that I personally don’t ever feel like I have a right to do. I feel like I don’t have a right as a third party to tell people the decisions that they should make. And case in point, I think we’ve talked about this before. These dogs were sleeping until you showed up and now they’re making all the noise. They’re like joining the company. Every time we try to talk, I swear to God, the dogs like want to be involved. I’m sorry. I cut you off twice now. I apologize. I’m going to shut up. I apologize. It’s funny because I think Chewie’s like looking at me. So every time I take a breath to start talking, he’s like, I need to, I need to do this again. I think that’s what’s going on. But so and like I said, I think I might have mentioned it. Oh, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Can I have it? Can I have it? Oh, thank you. What a good boy, Chewie. You let me have it. Do you have anything quiet you can chew on? No, you don’t. I bet you do somewhere. I could give him chew snacks, but then they then we have the whole two dog chew snack situation where he’s always trying to take dude’s chew snack. So so that’s kind of your perspective, right? Somebody would need a gun to do this. Right. What where I think we kind of mess up as a society with gun control ideas is that it’s usually a lot of people that live in a nice neighborhood that or, you know, that how tall are you, like six foot three or something like that? Yeah, you’re you’re probably generally speaking, not walking down the street worried that somebody is going to come and kill you with their fists on the street. Right. Correct. So case in point. So my wife, her mother and her sister and her daughter. I could I could beat the fuck out of them with my bare fists if I had the fucking flu and they were all just standing there. Right. It’s not fair to me as a person like that to say to them, I’m not going to I’m going to prohibit you from having these tools to defend yourself, to equalize yourself against other people. And I’m not going to criminalize you for doing that. And I’m not going to throw you in jail for doing that. And to me, they are not the problem. I am not the problem. And I think this is how gun owners generally look at this. Right. The way that I do is that their guns are not causing any of these issues that are a part of society today. And therefore, taking them away from them is not helping the issue. Like it’s to them, it’s to me and to them, it’s not a numbers game and it’s not even about guns themselves. It’s about the right to defend yourself. No, and I’m all for women that want to bear arms. That’s great. Minorities want to bear arms. That’s great. I think because I’m 6’4 and I look like maybe I could fight somebody, I’ve never been in a fight in my life, so I’d probably get my ass kicked no matter who it was. But, you know, I’ve taken a few classes in Krav Maga and stuff, you know, and I’m just a physically big dude. So I’m intimidating when I come into a room, not like a real… No, I get it. And if someone’s scared of me and I’ve threatened them, absolutely they should have the tool to minimize my… Because I’m an aggressive asshole, if they want, you know, to train with it. And I think, you know, anyone who’s going to have a firearm should be very comfortable using it, in my opinion. But if they want to train with it, they absolutely should. You know, I think smaller people and women, because, yeah, I’m a humongous guy, right? So if I’m pissed at you in a bar or something, rightly or wrongly, or I’m drunk or I’m high on something or whatever, absolutely, just the fact that I’m physically bigger shouldn’t give me power over someone who feels intimidated. And this is a double-edged sword, I get that, just as a counter-argument to even my own position. I feel like you have the right to defend yourself, whether it’s against other people or animals. I think two weeks ago, I saw something in the news where this lady, there was like a dog, a stray dog that was kind of running towards them and she had a firearm and she pulled the firearm out and ended up shooting her daughter by accident. She shot her daughter? By accident. Holy fuck. Where was it? In Nebraska? I can’t remember. It was, gosh, it was probably two weeks ago I saw this article. Oh my God, that’s fucking terrible. My point is, is that I’m not trying to say that people shouldn’t be accountable for what they do. I guess what the only thing is, I’m trying to say is, is that I don’t think that personal ownership of a firearm, there’s anything wrong with it. I think that guns do have a beneficial purpose and blanket taking them away from people does get rid of that beneficial purpose. And people should be accountable for their own actions. So what’s wrong with my argument saying, hey, everybody can own an airplane, everybody can fly an airplane. But to do that, you have to be trained and certified to fly an airplane. Like, is that okay? Oh, yeah, I mean, for sure. Okay, so why can’t we have that for, why can’t we have like airline training for people? Well, because I actually don’t think that guns are that complicated, plain and simple. And I don’t know. They could kill me. If you don’t fucking know what you’re doing, you’re gonna kill me. Yeah, but even if you are licensed, you could die from those people. You could, but that’s the whole point is… So there is a moment of maybe, maybe a line that’s crossed that I don’t really think about enough to say, here’s the line, you know, like the airplanes, you know, cross the line. And, you know, there’s a certain amount of training that’s required to get back over the line safety wise. But at the same time, if I’m just carrying a gun in society, it’s not the equivalent to a pilot flying over a neighborhood. You know, I’m not inherently causing risk to people simply because I have it on my person, which is what is being criminalized here, right? Like, how is that not? If you’ve got a pilot who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing flying over my house, versus a person standing in a shopping mall, that doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing, with a weapon, how are those not both the same level of threat to me? Well, they’re just simply not. I mean, I’m kind of surprised that you would consider them the same. People that are ignorant and defy firearms. There’s several things with this. There’s people that are completely dumb and ignorant that carry them every day anyways, and you don’t even know the difference. Right? They go out the mall, this ignorant person that doesn’t know how to use it. Even cops can even fall into this category. They go to the mall, they never have to draw it, they never have to use it. They go back home for the day and they haven’t harmed anybody, right? Yeah, the guy could just fly over my house and not hurt me. It’s possible. Right. And that’s basically it. The potential that they’re going to hurt me, if they’ve got a pocketknife versus a gun, is a thousandfold, right? They get startled, right? They get startled. Somebody has a heart attack and they crash through the front of the grocery store in their car, right? Because they had a heart attack and they pinned to the throttle. Bam. Anyway, so this person pulls a gun and they’re like, oh, Jesus Christ. They pull their gun out and it goes off and I die, right? Yeah. I wouldn’t have died if they had a pocketknife. That’s true. Yeah. And that is a scenario that’s bad, right? But I would say the worst scenario that society would allow is to disarm good people. And now, because they’ve been disarmed, that’s an asshole with evil intention, no matter what they got, a baseball bat or a knife, to that one person that they do harm that could have otherwise defended himself. I think that that’s an evil that society perpetuates onto the victim itself, right? And criminalizing somebody for owning a gun is no different than criminalizing somebody for just having a bag of weed on them. It’s not something that’s harming other people in and of itself. I’m not. Yeah. And that’s it. The argument I’m making is not like, yeah, I think weed should be legal. I don’t think flying a plane over my house should be legal if you don’t have the training to do it. Because that’s the risk. The risk is you’re going to crash the plane into my house, or the risk is they’re going to be startled or something and pull their gun out. Or they’re going to be like, oh, check this out, buddy. This is the thing I got. And bam, and I’m dead. Yeah. And to me, flying a plane is not really a right. Where I do think that defending yourself is a right. And that’s kind of where I draw the line. I envision speech as a right. Even though speech may also cause harm to other people, we don’t say, hey, you need to go through this certification process so that way your speech really has less of a chance of hurting people, or we’re not going to monitor your podcast because we want to monitor this so we can just ensure that you’re not harming people. I think that that’s kind of the difference that I’m trying to convey. So there are times when a hand grenade could take out three guys with guns that are trying to rob somebody. That’s a hand grenade. Is that going to work? I mean, I don’t think this hand grenades have a self-defense purpose. But I mean, if you want to go that route, I don’t think the bazookas do either. But in case in point, one thing that I never understood why we criminalize, I think I do know why we criminalize them, which is like the switchblade knives here in Nebraska. And you know what I think it is, is that it’s not that they, it’s not because, you know, they need certification to know how to operate them, or they’re at risk of, you know, accidentally cutting people. It’s just that people get scared by them. They think to themselves, oh, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if they didn’t have this option to get this knife out really fast, and they had to get it out a little bit slower than the people that they’re going to victimize us. You know, it’s going to be less, you know, it’s like, oh my god, I’m so scared of this type of knife. Let’s, let’s criminalize it. I mean, what, what is the point in doing that to other people, I guess, is where I draw the line. And I think that, you know, we, people that generally speaking don’t understand guns, or they’re, they’re just afraid of people making their own choices. It seems like that’s kind of not a legitimate purpose to say to somebody, no, you can’t defend yourself against this bobcat, even though, or this, this wandering dog. And I do know that there’s consequences to that. But there’s also consequences to just blanket saying to good people, no, you’re not allowed to defend yourself without approval from us. Because I do think that there is benefits to gun ownership. Benefits that I don’t think that we should just blanket say you can’t do. Australia, like you said, I think they did a good job of getting rid of guns, right? But now it’s one of the rape capitals of the world. Okay, editor’s note here. I didn’t find any statistics saying that Australian rape rates are markedly higher than the US, certainly not the highest in the world. I searched all over, we went back and forth in Discord for a couple days trying to figure stuff out. He sent me some links. I sent him some links. I did find Ted Cruz claiming a bunch of ridiculous shit in 2016. And a bunch of journalists like the Washington Post saying that there’s absolutely no factual basis for Ted Cruz’s crazy claims in 2016, etc. So anyway, when we talked about it a couple days later, he’s like, I don’t even remember saying that. And I was like, yeah, it’s in the recording. And he said, Oh, well, never mind, then I just, you know, we can look at the stats. So just ignore that and apologies to our Australian listeners. If there are any shame on us, write in and tell us you hate us from Australia. Thank you. I’ll add various links to the show notes. So I mean, and now the all those victims out there have no way to defend themselves. And if you go to California, where they’ve kind of like outlawed guns and all these other things. People at one point tried to turn to using pepper spray to defend themselves. And then lawmakers are like, well, what if these people use this pepper spray to to commit crimes? Oh my God, we got to make it illegal. And now you can’t even defend yourself in a lot of places like San Francisco against violent behavior with pepper spray. Okay, so I have no idea what the rape statistics are in Australia. But I’m confused because I thought in your model and your way of thinking, it doesn’t matter what the level of violence is in a society about whether or not you have the right to a specific tool for self protection. But the rape statistics say they are insane in Australia, I have no idea. If they are insane, right, and you think these women should have guns, if they choose to, to protect themselves from rape, I’m confused because there you’re making a hey, society is worse off because they don’t have access to guns argument. Society is worse off because we do have access to guns. And you’re saying that’s irrelevant. But in Australia, because of the rapes, it is relevant. And I’m confused. I’m looking at it more like an individual basis, though, what I’m trying to say is, what rights do people have as an individual. And I’m not trying to say that a person has a right to a gun. That’s kind of like, not my focus. I’m not trying to be obsessed about guns, what I’m trying to say that people have a right to do is to defend themselves. And they have a right to the best tools available to defend themselves. And if I if I missing my left arm, for example, and I need a gun with a brace on it, you know, for my right hand to operate it effectively, I have a right to do that. And things like the NFA would say, well, you can’t do that. That’s, you know, two years in prison, I just don’t think and that’s what I’m trying to say is, it’s not necessarily about guns, it’s people have a right to defend themselves. Okay, so say I have a, I’ve invented a thing, where the best tool to defend myself is this thing on my wrist, and I press the button, and everybody within 100 feet of me drops the ground. But I’m wearing it, so somehow I’m not affected. Is that okay? Because that’d be a better tool to defend yourself with, right? You’re going to incapacitate everybody in 100 feet. You have the right to do that, if you feel threatened? Oh, no, of course not. I mean, you can’t indiscriminately kill people. I mean, that’s what I’m against. What if they just went to sleep? What if they just went, dropped? Oh, that’s it? They just went to sleep? Oh, that’d be a great tool. What would be wrong with that? Well, you’re being attacked by one person and you disabled 50 people, maybe that’s not great. And there’s no harm to them otherwise? But regardless of if they’re trying to help you or hurt you or whatever, bam, 50 people, boom, hit the ground. Well, for starters, I love this tool. Do you have a right to that? I think that we should develop this tool because I definitely think that that would be a safe way to actually deal with a piece of shit. Right? I mean, so what? You put 199 people and just get to take a nap on the mall floor to stop this guy that wants to kill 20 people? Fuck yeah, I’d take that 100 times a day. Put me to sleep to get this other guy to sleep. Whatever. I think that’s a great tool. That’s legitimate self-defense. But if it killed everybody, that would not be legitimate self-defense. No, you don’t get to drop a nuclear bomb, in my opinion, and kill everything around you. There’s nothing that says you have a right to not be scared and therefore you can just do whatever you want to to resolve being scared. I don’t think that we have a right for that. You have a very focused… You have the right to the best discriminant tool for self-defense available, which is firearms. Yeah, and it doesn’t even have to be lethal. I mean, I think that you should have a right to things like pepper spray. So yeah, and that’s one reason why I say, generally speaking, I don’t understand why we focus on the guns. Why not just focus on the behavior? If we have gang violence out there and they’re using guns, why not just put the gang people in prison? Why not get those individuals with the bad behavior out of society? Why do we think that removing their tools is going to just make them not use other tools? And granted, I think you’re right. Maybe they’re less lethal tools. Yeah, they’re less lethal tools. That’s my point. But I mean, I don’t want my hands to be cut off with a machete or my… I don’t want to be strapped down and have my tongue cut out with a spoon because it’s simply less lethal, right? I think that it’s that behavior that needs to be eliminated, not the tool. Because the tool can be used for good and bad at the end of the day. So should women that are getting raped, I assume it’s mostly women in Australia, they should have guns if they want them? Oh, fuck yeah. Kill them motherfuckers all day long. They do not have a right. If you are going to rape a woman, that woman has every right to force you up to death to not do that, in my opinion. She has a right to defend herself and say, no, you can’t do this. Oh, you want to keep doing it? Well, I’m going to stop you.

That’s the step that I think needs to be available. I’m not trying to say that’s a good thing. I don’t think that killing people is a good thing. But taking the right away from people to defend themselves is not good for society, in my opinion. And like I said, if you want to take those guns from the gangbangers, you know, or the people that are causing these problems with all the deaths, I mean, I’m fine with taking it away from them. You know, throw them in prison. I’m fine with that. To use due process to be gangbangers. That’s essentially where I’m coming from, I guess. And yeah, like I said, it’s not about guns. It’s about self-defense and the ability to do that and the consequences that come with that. I’m okay with that. Right. I don’t think that currently I have a valid argument to be made that I need to own firearms. So I think in my system of restricted firearm access, I wouldn’t have any. So we could have a system, or is it Switzerland, where they’ve got shitloads of guns, but they’re at the gun clubs where you shoot guns. So you go there, you get your guns, you shoot them as much as you want and you go home. You don’t take them home with you. Well, I thought that they all had their own guns that they had with them that they were kind of required to have because they get it while they’re doing their military service or something. I think they’re all at the gun clubs, though. They’re not armed unless there’s an emergency. This is my understanding. I could be wrong, but that to me seems safer, generally speaking, than just a vision where everybody’s armed to the teeth. But I don’t think that’s your vision. I don’t think you want there to be millions of firearms. I think you want the people who want to have them to be able to have them if there’s no reason they can’t. They haven’t proved themselves to be assholes that they therefore can’t have them, right? Or wait, I can’t remember what you stand on. Firearm regulation in Switzerland allows the acquisition of semi-automatic and with may-issue permit fully automatic firearms by Swiss citizens and foreigners with or without permanent residence. Yeah, I wasn’t trying to make a point specifically about Switzerland. I was trying to say in my version of a safer society where we have a lot less mass shootings and stuff that one of the consequences of that is that I don’t have firearms in my house or carrying them around at the grocery store, but they can exist at a firearms club where I go to shoot my firearms and leave them there. That’s part of my vision. But any woman who thinks that needs firearms for defense wants those and trains on them, I think they should have access to that if they want it and they haven’t done something stupid with it or been violent in the past, right? So if they’ve abused the shit out of their husband previously or significant other or whatever been called for domestic disturbance or they’re always getting drunken disorderly charges or whatever, then no, you can’t have a gun. Own one, period. If I’ve gotten into a bunch of drunken fights at a bar, I shouldn’t be allowed to have guns. Even if you’ve never used a gun poorly. And to be honest, I’d be fair with you, as long as due process is followed to take that right away. If I’ve assaulted people on multiple occasions in stupid bar fights, yeah, I think I’ve lost my right to have a firearm for 10 years. And like I said, I’d agree with that as long as it’s done, due process is followed. The way I come from gun ownership is not, it’s not about the guns to me. It’s about individual rights and limitations on what the government can and can’t do towards individuals. And I certainly would be against putting anybody in prison for a month or a day even, or even hours, or even fining somebody for simply just defending themselves. I just can’t, I can’t envision that being a just society in my opinion. As a side note, I’m not trying to change the subject, but Swiss gun laws are pretty interesting. Swiss gun laws are primarily about the acquisition of firearms and not ownership. As such, a license is not required to own a gun by itself, but a shall issue permit is required to purchase most types of firearms. Bolt action rifles do not require an acquisition permit and can be acquired with just a background check. A reason is not required to be issued an acquisition permit for semi-automatic unless the reason is other than sport shooting, hunting, and collecting, which is kind of interesting to me. Permits for concealed carrying in public are issued sparingly. You also have to get a permit to have a weapon laser, which I think is interesting. Either way, I think Switzerland is one of the safest countries in the world, generally speaking. The vast majority of firearms-related deaths in Switzerland are suicides. Generally speaking, I do think that people that are pro-gun control generally group suicides into gun violence. Generally speaking, I don’t personally, but either way. I think in the first 30 seconds of this conversation, we clarified what I was trying to clarify via text, which was I have this feeling of societal responsibility and if there’s a, quote, out of control gun violence problem, end quote, which I think in some parts of this country we have, that if we can have millions fewer guns in the society, that we’re all better off. I think your take on that is the level of violence in the society isn’t relevant to the decision about whether or not an individual should have access to the most effective self-defense tools available, that that right is unassailable, that whatever the best self-discriminant self-defense tools exist, that individuals should have the right to have those tools on them whenever, for instance. Generally speaking, I think that we should only criminalize criminal behavior, and I think that simply owning something is not criminal. For me to get my society with millions fewer guns, it becomes criminal. Right, which is what I’m saying I’m kind of against. Right. I’m saying it’s part of the problem of my, it’s the structure of my proposal is that, yeah, I make it criminal to get what I want, which is millions fewer guns, leading to tens of thousands fewer gun deaths. I don’t know why I couldn’t figure that out via text, but apparently I couldn’t figure that out via text, so I’m glad we could figure it out so quickly via voice. I have a podcast chunk I’d like to play for you, unless you said you had something else. No. I thought this was really interesting. I know you have a choice. Okay, so what happens here is I play about a five-minute clip from the Sam Harris podcast called Making Sense. The clip comes from episode 335 called A Postmortem in My Response to COVID. At 47 minutes in his podcast, he gives an airplane analogy, which he says he’s used many times in many different contexts, and I thought it was just a really interesting analogy that he gives about airplanes and how you have to trust institutional safety nets and all this kind of stuff. I thought that was a really interesting chunk to play for Chris, so I played that chunk for Chris. I recommend you go listen to that episode of the Sam Harris podcast, again, 335. You can jump to minute 47 of that podcast if you like, but I played that for Chris, and then Chris reacts to that episode, which you’ll hear now. So let’s get back to Chris reacting to a different podcast. I just thought it was a really interesting airplane analogy. That bit ends with him talking about—and there’s people on the Joe Rogan podcast. There’s an engineer on the Joe Rogan podcast who tells everybody the engine was experimental, that it was never supposed to be part of that specific airplane, and that there’s a huge conspiracy going on where all the airline manufacturers and Congress and everybody else are all pursuing this web of lies around the actual technology and how it came—anyway. So this is all in the context of an hour-long conversation about COVID aftermath, but anyway, I just thought that airplane analogy was really interesting. Yeah, I mean, I did too. In fact, I think one of the things that I have a concern about with gun control is that there’s these intellectuals, I guess, that say, we want to be able to make the choices of when these people or whatever can have certain guns. Yeah, that’s me. Did you just call me an intellectual? Thank you. Yeah, and then we have certain people that aren’t really closely related to airplanes and flights and the business that say, well, these cheap parts that we’re getting from elsewhere shouldn’t be there. But yet, the planes are still safe by people closer to the issue than them making different choices because they have this mundane sort of everyday knowledge that it’s everyday knowledge to them, but not to this person making the judgment call. And I think that people as a whole, as a society, has more knowledge than just a few. But you’re an engineer, right? Like, you know what’s safe or not safe in train signals? Yeah. So I should trust you when I get on the Amtrak, I should trust that you, the expert, made the signaling safe for my Amtrak, right? Well, yeah. Oh, okay. Sorry. So what’s your point? So I’m trusting experts. I’m an intellectual. You just called me that. I’m just going to keep using that. Yeah, but I think the equivalent would be someone seeing something they think is unsafe or hearing about something that’s unsafe, maybe driving down or riding down on an Amtrak train and see a train that’s derailed on the side saying, hey, we shouldn’t allow these derailments. Instead of allowing people that are closer connected to the issue, knowing the reason for those derailments that we maybe do on purpose or whatever, it’s trying to make judgment calls that they’re really not authorized to make, I guess is where I’m trying to draw the line. Oh, you’re making the same point, right? Aren’t you? You and Sam Harris are both saying we should trust experts, right? Yeah, or everyday people, not experts in general. Well, I think somebody who’s been working on the railroad for 20 years is an expert. Maybe more related to this is that, let’s see, how’d the quote go? And I can’t even remember who said it, but it was something along the lines of an ignorant person can put their code on better than an intellectual can do it for them. You know, like everyday average people have mundane knowledge about the life choices that they’re making. And maybe it’s not like Neil deGrasse Tyson knowledge of complicated issues, but it’s relevant knowledge to their own life and they should be able to make those choices in their own life. They should put their own code on basically. That’s what I’m trying to say. They’re experts over their own life, not necessarily experts as a role, but allow people to make choices with the knowledge that they have sort of thing. Because when you don’t, you just kind of try to manipulate things and treat people like chess pieces and they aren’t really chess pieces, I guess. And that’s where I think guns fit into it. You know, people just need to make their own choices. So it’s not really related to guns specifically, just allowing people to live their life without fear of being thrown in jail for not really doing anything wrong. So we’re both saying that we should trust experts in their field, right? We’re both saying that? Experts as individuals. What do you mean? Allowing people to just be experts of their own lives, not necessarily saying, hey, you’re an expert. You need to govern these people. I’m saying that these people have more mundane knowledge as a collective than any one person or expert placed above them. If that makes any sense. That’s a pretty deep topic, I guess. That’s probably a whole other podcast. I mean, if I get on an Amtrak, I should trust that you and your profession know how to keep that as safe as it can be given the realities of safety and budgets and whatever else. But it’s safe to get on that Amtrak or it wouldn’t be running. Right. Yeah. I don’t know shit. I’m trusting the experts that run the trains to know that, generally speaking, it’s safe to be on it. Right. And like you said in that podcast, there’s a lot of things that come together with people with relevant knowledge of the issue. And they may not be these big time like experts, but they could just be the maintainer that’s out there. And you’re trusting that he knows how to take something out of service such that it is safe for the train to go over this equipment that’s out of service. Right. Yeah. And that’s kind of like a moot to him. It’s day to day knowledge. He goes to work that day and he does this 10, 15, 20 times. But it’s something that’s completely ignorant from a regulator who also may be a professional in his own or expert in his own area. What I’m trying to say is that everybody has their own expert relevant knowledge to consequential knowledge, I guess. Like Neil deGrasse Tyson is an expert on galaxies. And I think a lot of people say, well, he knows a lot. I should give him trust. If he’s anti-gun, I should listen to him. Right. And then there’s an everyday person like me who’s not on TV, but feels like in my own life, in my own choices, I feel like it’s important for gun ownership. Nobody would look at me and listen to this podcast and say, well, this Chris Hoover guy, I’m not going to listen to him. They’re probably just going to be like, well, this Neil deGrasse Tyson guy, he’s a physicist who’s really smart. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to listen to him. What I’m trying to say is the everyday average person like myself needs to be able to make those choices as opposed to somebody else, a third uninterested party, making those decisions for him. Relating it back to the gun stuff. Anyways, it’s kind of a deep conversation. That’s probably a whole another hour long conversation. That’s generally how I feel about it. So like I said, it’s not about guns. It’s just about people making their own choices. Yeah. And I’m very supportive of people making their own choices when they don’t affect me or the people I love. That’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Right. And I’m worried that people who make bad choices with guns are a hundred times more efficient at killing me or the people I love or just random people than they would be with a baseball bat. Yeah. That’s my concern. And so then when I back up and look at you know, America is a culture and I look at statistics, then I’m like, well, fuck. Yeah. Clearly we have a bunch of people making a bad bunch of bad choices. Yeah. And I want to make it, I would prefer to make it harder for those bad choices to be made. Yeah. And I guess those bad choices, I guess, are the things that are in question to me. Like there was this one, man, I should follow this, like find this, but it’s gotta be like five, 10 years old, but it’s this guy who basically, he goes and gets a tax stamp for a suppressor. So he can do this experiment to change like a Fram oil filter into a suppressor to see if it works. And so like, if he didn’t go get this tax stamp before he actually puts it on a weapon and fires it, which would provide evidence that he basically had a suppressor without getting a tax permit to do it. Even no matter what he did with it, like, let’s say he just like, I’m literally a scientist. I want to see if this works, but he didn’t get a tax stamp. He screws it on the end. It works. It muzzles the sound. And then he’s like, oh shit, that, that fucking worked. You know I’m going to show this, you know, to everybody. And didn’t cause anybody any harm. He takes it off, he destroys it. But then the ATF sees it and they’re like, you fucking asshole, you broke the law. You know, you’re putting everybody at risk. And then they go and put them in jail for five years or whatever the punishment is for having a suppressor. I mean, I think that that’s garbage laws and, and it’s an individual being put into jail for no reason. And, and that’s, at the end of the day, that last statement, somebody being put into jail for no reason is what I’m against, generally speaking. And some gun laws and offenses fall into that category. I would also put like marijuana owners or disagreeing with somebody in public or, you know, calling a trans woman, a male, you know, like all of these things, I would say we shouldn’t be putting people in jail for, and that is a crime in and of itself. And I don’t know if that’s a good thing to end on or not, but I think that that’s technically what I’m against is creating criminals, criminals where we shouldn’t be, generally speaking. Yeah, I think I’m more sensitive to the potential harm to myself or people I care about, or, you know, kids in elementary school down the street. Yeah, but they aren’t being harmed right now. And we actually have until they are. I mean, I don’t even know what the three things were earlier. Apparently, gun ownership is pretty strong. But, you know, like, as far as I know, those kids aren’t being hurt, or you aren’t being hurt, or I mean, accidents could happen. I’m not saying that that’s not a possibility. But yeah, I mean, we’re in a semi rural, we’re half rural here. I assume most people have guns. I assume the majority of households on the street have guns. And as far as I know, there hasn’t been a gun crime there. On the end of the street, there was a theft. There was a whole incident. They wouldn’t give it to me because I’m not a lawyer. And I’m not one of the victims. But at the end of our street, there was a big fight over an ATV or something. And then someone had a gun. And that’s all the information I know. When did that happen? A year and a half ago. Oh, dang. I don’t know anything about that. Yeah, I called the sheriff and everything. And they wouldn’t even give me the case number because you have to be a party involved or their lawyer. I thought you could do just like freedom and

I probably could. I could probably file a FOIA with the Douglas County Sheriff to find out what the fuck happened on our street. Interesting. Yeah, I don’t even know that happened. Well, yeah, I didn’t know until Stephanie’s like, what the fuck is going on at the end of that? And I’m downtown. I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. I mean, that’s interesting. There was a period where I did see people riding back and forth on an ATV down the street. They were kind of flying. It was like younger kids flying top gear, like going down the road and turn around at the end, flying back. I don’t know if people got pissed off about that or something. No, the only reason it turned into a sheriff incident is because it got violent and there was a gun involved. Yeah, interesting. That’s all I know. So anyway. Okay. Good times. All right. Are we done? Anything else you want on this possible episode? I mean, I don’t have anything else to say unless you have anything else you want to ask. All right. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. Bye. If you have any thoughts or feedback for us, you can leave us a voicemail for the show at 1-402-577-0117. Thank you.