Jon Stewart on the Aurora Shootings and Gun Control

July 25, 2012 | Filed under: Gun Control,News,Videos | Posted by:

In the wake of the shootings in Aurora, opinions vary as to whether the time is right to debate gun-control laws.  As you have probably already noticed, most pundits – particularly those on the right – are claiming it is “too soon” to discuss the nation’s gun policies. On Monday night, Jon Stewart weighed in on the issues noting: “Look, ten years after 9-11 I still can’t fly with a full container of ##@%%##$ shampoo“.

He goes on to add:

“You’re telling me that it’s still too soon to have a conversation about it? You’re telling me that to discuss the epidemic of gun violence in this country, for that there is a waiting period. Yeah, I guess you’d hate to go into a conversation about guns all hot-headed and say something impulsively you’ll never be able to take back. Look: this is the time to talk about all of it. Everything should be on the table. Anything that could possibly help mitigate these terrible events. I’m not even saying gun control would do it, I’m just saying it’s got to be part of the conversation.”

Watch for yourself below.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Comments

  1. John Frazer says:
    October 7, 2012 at 1:25 pm

    If anyone can come up with a palatable way to keep crazies from being able to pull this kind of thing off, I’ll listen.
    If some acquaintances say they were creeped out by a guy they hardly knew, does this go into their permanent federal list of persons prohibited from owning a “dangerous object”? If somebody tells their doctor that they’re having a hard time, and having dark feelings about themselves or others, does this get into the list?
    In the meantime, how does any of this pertain to people who’ve never harmed anyone unjustly, have no record, are normal productive citizens (and that’s a broad category), and go to their own effort and expense to get trained and invite the law to look at them to buy a gun and carry for their own defense?
    It’s pure willing naivete to say that good normal people never ever need the capability to use lethal force for defense. It’s sheer maliciousness to say that anybody who might feel the need to do so, are to be categorized negatively with a broad intolerant brush.

    I completely fail to see what passes for logic when some say that if it’s known that many regular good people are armed, then more nuts and crooks would think it’s in their best interests to unjustly threaten others…
    Not true that if many lawful people own and carry, there are horrific numbers of crimes and accidental shootings. Not true at all that if previously normal good people have a “dangerous object” at hand, they’ll be more likely to go berserk over nothing.
    As gun-rights supporters, we don’t say that it should apply to only the right kind of people; it should apply for anybody. We don’t live in fear of everybody -we want everybody to be considered equally trustworthy. I don’t fear you and all your family & friends and neighbors and co-workers without cause, of being likely yo harm others, even if they own and carry. Those who do fear everyone else need to either get help or get a new set of acquaintances.
    As a “liberal” (“freely allowing” by some definitions), My sensibilities on this subject are informed by my egalitarian principles.
    Tactics to pile on expense to train and buy and carry only hamper the poor, and who more than the weak and vulnerable need an “equalizer”?
    Of 911 calls about an impending violent crime, only some 3% result in the intended victim being spared by police intervention. Of police reports, only maybe 5% result in an arrest. Of those only a fraction in a conviction, and only a fraction of those in anything meaningful. US DOJ numbers show that civilians who use guns in defense are less than 20% as likely as police to use them wrongly or cause undue harm.
    Figures about concealed carry permits are available online from several states and federal sources. Several million out there, for decades, and historically only maybe 5% ever revoked. Of revocations, only maybe 3% for anything like a serious crime, and of those, only maybe 5% for anything involving a gun (of those, a fraction a legally concealed gun in public.)

    Talking about reducing terrible tragedies like this, doesn’t always have to mean punishing or limiting or suspecting without due process and conviction of previous wrongdoing, those of us who didn’t do anything wrong (we, the 97% of the population not responsible for 85%+ of crime).
    As one gun-rights blogger says, anybody who you don’t trust with a gun, you probably shouldn’t trust to walk freely unsupervised in civil society. I might add drive, vote, or raise children, and you lose the right to own and carry weapons far more easily that that last.