Speaker 1: Asked on Fox News why gun deaths in the United States are so much higher than
in comparable countries, Congressman Steve Scalise blamed the defund the police movement
and unfortunately the Fox News host in question, John Roberts, didn't even attempt to push
back.
So there is a lot behind this.
And we've been talking about the the senseless I mean, just bizarre justifications and explanations
that Republicans and the pro-gun right have given for why we have mass shootings in the
U.S. and you don't see them in other countries.
They've talked about COVID, even though every country had covered video games doors.
They haven't gotten to windows yet.
But maybe they will.
But this is a good question.
Why?
Why is this a problem here?
And almost nowhere else, at least in terms of Western countries here is Steve Scalise
attempt at explaining it.
Speaker 3: Look, look, let me move ahead to what's going on in this country, because in
terms of the developed world, the United States far and away leads every other nation in the
developed world in terms of gun violence.
Speaker 1: Hey and good for Fox.
They put up a chart showing how insanely higher the rate of of gun violence deaths is in the
U.S. than in any other country.
Good for Fox for at least doing that.
Speaker 3: Look at this graph.
The U.S. way out in front with four deaths per 100,000 people.
The next closest nation is Cyprus, way behind it, just below 0.7 deaths per 100 people.
What do you think is responsible for that discrepancy?
Well, in a lot of those countries, first of all, I mean, you look at America in the last
couple of years, you've seen this crazy defund the police movement, but you've also seen
a movement that's been going on for a few years in big cities where the DA's aren't
even prosecuting criminals until it is a shooting or a violent crime.
Speaker 1: And what what is this guy talking about?
First of all, defund the police is a slogan.
Almost no departments have substantially defunded anything.
Some have reallocated funds.
Some have increased funding to police.
But think about another thing.
The police departments in many of those other countries on the list are already more like
the police departments that the reform the police movement wants anyway.
So think about that.
They're saying the defund the police movement is responsible.
It's a slogan that's accomplished almost nothing.
But if it did, all it would do is make police departments look more like the police departments
in Italy, in France, in other places where not necessarily all officers have firearms
or you don't necessarily have an armed response to every 911 goal.
But the idea that there are mass shootings, the mass shooters who they say are mentally
ill, are deciding whether to go and do shootings based on what days are doing it.
It's completely incoherent.
Speaker 3: Letting criminals back out on the streets.
And then inevitably what you see is higher rates of crime.
Speaker 1: And it's it's completely absurd.
These mass shootings were not criminals that had been left out, but left back out on the
street, let back out.
Speaker 3: What you're also seeing is more and more American citizens, law abiding citizens,
are buying guns to defend themselves.
Speaker 1: But the question was, why do we have so many shootings?
And he's saying, well, all these citizens are buying guns to defend themselves.
He's not trying to make that point, but he's almost inadvertently making it more guns,
makes it more dangerous.
Speaker 3: It's happening in every demographic group you can imagine where you have large
increases in people buying guns, because if they can have faith that their local police
department that's been defunded can arrive quickly.
Speaker 1: At this this guy's disgusting.
As you know, barely any any defunding has taken place.
And it's just it's a slogan.
And blaming the epidemic of gun violence on a slogan that, first of all, is very new.
Defund the police as a as a widespread slogan, which, by the way, almost no one on the left
supports.
I mean, quite literally, almost no one, you do polling.
Most of the left wants to reform the police.
They don't want to defund it.
That's what you're blaming it on.
And what about all the mass shootings that have taken place before?
That became a slogan.
Now I tweeted something similar.
How do they explain it?
I tweeted, quote, It would be interesting to figure out why a country like Italy, for
example, has essentially no mass shootings.
They have economic problems.
They have diversity.
You know, sometimes the right likes to say, well, homogenous countries have less violence,
like countries like, you know, they often point to.
Norway or whatever.
Italy is a diverse country.
What?
But they have almost no mass shootings.
What could be the reason?
And the great Betsy Brandt, who played Marie on Breaking Bad, responded.
No one knows, of course, tongue in cheek.
The guns are the difference.
And people jokingly responded and said, Well, Italy has fresh pasta.
Italy doesn't have doors.
Of course, that's a joke.
But in all seriousness, Italy has doors and they have video games and they had COVID mandates.
They have everything other than as many guns as we have per capita, and they don't have
toxic American gun culture.
It's both things.
So any sensible person can see it's pointing very strongly to the guns.
Deal with everything else.
Sure.
But you've got to deal with the guns as well.
Now, in addition that the the pointing fingers at the defund the police movement, you know,
the Uvalde, Texas PD Department, a PD police department was well funded.
And in fact, the police department there had 40% of the city's budget.
So think about that.
40% of the budget in Uvalde is police.
They have everything they need to go in and stop a shooter.
And they stood outside for an hour.
So at least as far as that's concerned, defund the police are a non-factor.
And Steve Scalise is doing what they all do, just running interference.
That's all they want to do.
They're not going to stop.
They don't want to deal with guns in any serious way.
And this is what you get, by the way, four or five or six mass shootings over the weekend.
I mean, we can't even keep track at this point.
They didn't all make national news every day.
Could just be the mass shooting show where I just talk about all that we would need multiple
hours a day to fully cover every mass shooting in the United States