- We've learned in our conversation
about this country's staggering number
of gun-related deaths,
that it's based on a surprising amount of non-gun factors:
God, media, and crazy people.
Wow, that's a (audience laughs)
God, media, and crazy people.
That's a pretty busy graphic.
Can we streamline that
and yet also represent all three constituencies?
There you go, all right.
(audience laughs)
I'm gonna go out on a limb here
and say that this conversation is taking place
between parties of good faith,
and that all of us on any side of the debate
are anti-massacre.
If some common sense firearms regulations
might cut the number of these killings, why not try?
- We have many, many laws pertaining to guns already.
We ought to enforce those laws.
- We already have laws banning murder,
but we still have murders.
- Drunk driving.
Do we go to the Ford Motor Company
and tell them, "Stop making these automobiles
because people get drunk and kill people in cars?"
- No, but we do enact stricter blood alcohol limits,
raise the drinking age, ramp up enforcement and penalties,
and charge bartenders who serve drunks,
and launch huge public awareness campaigns
to stigmatize the dangerous behavior in question.
And we do all those things
because it might just help bring drunk driving rates down,
I don't know, by two thirds in a few decades.
(audience clapping) So, if we stop
calling snap votes during happy hour,
that number gets even lower.
Like magazine sizes, smaller magazines for guns
make these crazy people have to reload more.
- Changing a magazine, I can do that pretty quick.
- Yeah, but you're Fast Fingers Graham.
(audience laughing)
The foremost gun enthusiast
slash speed origami champion in the world.
(audience laughing)
He made that in three seconds.
How he uses his heavily calloused gun hands
to make such delicate paper art.
(audience laughing)
Why, it's a mystery.
(audience laughing)
All right, magazine restrictions won't help.
How about we keep all the guns
except weapons designed purely
to efficiently shred enemy soldiers.
- We had an assault weapon,
so-called assault weapons ban for 10 years.
The Justice Department and others who studied it
said it made no difference.
- That original assault weapons ban was ill-conceived
and didn't work properly.
- Well, you know what to say if at first you don't succeed,
(beep) it. (audience laughing)
Again, none of these will ever be perfect.
We're not looking for some magic
flying solving projectile.
We're looking (audience laughs)
for a series of steps from different areas
that over time can improve the situation
as opposed to what we have now,
which is legislative riders snuck into appropriation bills
that prevent the ATF
from inspecting gun dealers' inventories
and bills that make it harder
to put disturbed individuals on do not buy lists,
and laws exempting gun makers
from any legal accountability for their product.
I mean, for people, for God forbid,
McDonald's doesn't tell you
how hot their hot steaming coffee is.
(audience laughing)
That happens and you're taking the money train
to McPunitive Damage Town.
(audience laughing)
But an epidemic of gun violence,
oh, we can't, our hands are tied.
We can't do anything.
We are a nation of overreactors to everything.
We have step by step childproofed this entire country.
20 years ago, a guy threw a rock over an overpass
and it hit a car windshield
and now every overpass in the country is like a habit trail.
It's just got a giant 13 people thing.
Football stadiums have giant nets
behind the goalposts so you don't get hit
by the ball you're supposed to be watching.
(audience laughing)
We can't do anything about this?
How about we make assault rifles available,
but only at shooting ranges.
Make guns less sexy
so they won't be considered so cool by young people.
The next Jason Bourne movie stars Woody Allen.
How about that?
(audience laughing)
You're not not really a gun person.
It's not so much the killing,
but the loading and the cleaning.
It's just, (audience laughing)
it's a lot of work.
Or even better, creative sound editing
to take away the cool gun factor.
(bell ringing)
(elephant trumpeting)
See?
Those silly sound effects completely dulled my desire
to get caught in a violent
and bloody three-way Mexican standoff.
(audience laughing)
And if you don't like any of those solutions,
please, we'd love to hear yours.
There are no bad ideas.
- I refuse to play the game of assault weapon
because that's any weapon.
It's a hammer.
It's a article came out this week,
the massive number that are killed with hammers.
(audience laughing)
- Okay.
If you wanna regulate hammers,
(audience laughing)
we could try that.
Would it be possible also to regulate bags of hammers
or anyone as dumb as that?
(audience laughing)
But aside from hammer control,
which by the way was a great MC Hammer album,
(audience laughing drowns out speaker)
do you have any other ideas for reducing gun violence?
- The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun
is a good guy with a gun.
- So, the school principal with a gun
is gonna stop a guy with an assault rifle
and a bulletproof vest?
You know, I don't think Principal Belding is as badass
as you think he might be.
(audience laughing)
Here's the problem.
Technology has democratized carnage,
and it's very weird to me
that gun enthusiasts won't even entertain,
let me amend that.
Some gun enthusiasts won't even entertain the idea
of common sense law enforcement-supported small boar,
so to speak, moves to try and reign in this violence.
What's really going on here?
- We have constitutional freedom
to the right to keep and bear arms in this country.
- Yeah, yeah, for a well regulated militia,
not a personal arsenal free for all.
There's all sorts of stuff you can't have already:
tanks, F-16 fighter jets, surface to air anything.
(audience laughing)
When that constitution was written, people had muskets.
(audience laughing)
So, okay, you can have all the muskets you want.
(audience laughing)
You can even have assault muskets for all I care.
Jazz it up with a bayonet.
Go (beep) nuts.
But why is it that there is no other issue in this country
with as dire public safety consequences as this,
that we are unable to make even the most basic steps
towards putting together a complex plan of action
to slow this epidemic spread?
What is really going on here?
- I think you, like a lot of people, Joshua,
are worried that the federal government's
gonna come after our guns.
- Now, we're getting somewhere.
So, this isn't really about the constitution
or efficacy of regulation or intruder defense.
It's about how perilously close some people in this country
feel they're living to a tyrant's rule.
- It's something we've seen happen
time and time again in history
with Stalin, happened in Cambodia,
and then, of course, the Third Reich.
No one saw that coming until it was too late.
- Hitler took the guns.
Stalin took the guns.
Mao took the guns.
Fidel Castro took the guns.
- How many-
- Hugo Chavez took the guns.
And I'm here to tell you, 1776 will commence again
if you try to take our firearms.
(audience laughing)
- Holy (beep). (audience laughing)
No one's taking away all the guns.
But now I get it.
Now I see what's happening.
So, this is what it is.
Their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future
prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present.
(audience laughing)
We can't even begin to address 30,000 gun deaths
that are actually in reality happening in this country
every year because a few of us
must remain vigilant against the rise of imaginary Hitler.
(audience laughing)