But alerting thousands of people to what may or
may not have happened 30 minutes ago or 30 blocks away is in fact dangerous.
And so one has to ask, what is the true purpose of this bill?
Why do the Democrats wanna use the power of government to bombard your cell
phone with active shooter alerts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It's because they want you to be afraid of the Second Amendment.
It's because they want you to be afraid of responsible gun ownership.
And they hope that if they program you and bombard you long enough that you'll hate
your own Second Amendment rights or that you may tattle on your neighbor.
>> So that's Matt Gates who is freaking out about the fact that the house was
considering something called the Active Shooter Alert Act of 2022.
It is expected to still pass, what it would do and
why he hates it is that it will create a communications network to allow the public
to be informed during an emergency involving an active shooter.
So they wouldn't automatically do that,
they have this JAO thing that would have to happen.
But in effect, if there was an active mass murder going on nearby,
they would let you know about it in the same way that the emergency system can let
you know about other things that are happening.
Wild fires, natural disasters, amber alerts, and things like that.
The issue with that is that you would then get a message when there's a mass
shooting.
And when you intersect that with the fact that they're mass shootings constantly in
America, it might result in a lot of messages.
Now, if you like to pretend that gun violence isn't a problem and
you certainly don't want anything to be done about it.
It would be incredibly inconvenient if people were constantly being reminded of
how often someone takes a gun and
starts trying to kill as many people around them as they can.
Thus Matt Gates freaking out about that.
Now, this isn't the only,
I think fairly reasonable thing that the Republicans have been opposed to recently.
We're gonna get into some of the other votes that have happened.
But Anna, what do you make of Matt Gates trying to make sure that people stay in
the dark about how much gun violence is actually going on around them?
>> Well, I mean, it's very on brand for the Republican Party, which has fought
aggressively to gut our public education system, which has done absolutely nothing.
In fact, has stood in the way of doing something about the fact that higher
education has become increasingly unattainable for students in this country.
Meaning that one opportunity that used to be available to people of all different
socioeconomic statuses are now primarily reserved for people who come from wealth.
They love to keep people in the dark because an ignorant electorate is
an easy electorate to manipulate and they wanna be able to manipulate you.
And he's right about what he's saying there, understand he's right.
He knows about the prevalence of gun violence in this country.
He knows how destructive loosening our already lax gun laws really is.
He knows about how terrified Americans would be if they were just a little
more informed about how close to home that gun violence really is.
So he's terrified about information getting to the electorate because that
might mean that it would be an empowered electorate who would demand change.
Something that people like Matt Gates and
other lawmakers like him don't want to engage in.
The system's working out real well for people like Matt Gates, okay?
He's getting his closed-door briefings on what's happening in the country,
what's happening in the world.
He gets to trade individual stocks on that insider information.
He gets more and more wealthy by the day, through the elected office he sits in.
I mean, he wants to keep you in the dark, okay?
And it's not just about Democrats, it's about his own voters.
He's terrified and he would have it informed base that would demand more of
him and that's what this is really about.
>> Exactly, yeah, we're in favor of people knowing what's going on.
If they don't wanna be in that group, they can do that.
We'll see how popular it is.
80% by the way of House Republicans ended up voting against that system.
Also, 88 Republicans voted against setting up VA benefits for toxin-exposed veterans.
Some did support it to their credit but support the troops unless they've been
affected by environmental or industrial toxins, in which case screw them.
3.5 million veterans were exposed to toxic burn pits since September 11.
This is actually one of the things that John Stewart has done advocacy around.
He agreed to this news with just a tweet that says, excellent,
what's not excellent is having 88 House Republicans who believe damn them,
we don't care what happens and they can just go and die.
The House also passed an amendment to monitor white supremacists in
the military and law enforcement, not a single Republican voted for that.
Not exactly shocked.
>> Of course not.
Those are the people they rely on.
Of course, they're not gonna vote in favor of that.
>> Yeah.
>> That's their base.
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