On Guns, Jon Stewart Gives A Masterclass On Eviscerating Strawmen
Accepting to Be a Guest on the Old “Daily Show” Conservatives were on a mission to kill Jon Stewart. Segment interviews were edited to appear like guests trying match their wits against the wise, wisecracking. “correspondents.” His new series has not been seen by me. “The Problem with Jon Stewart,” However, it seems that the host has a new tactic: invite fringe legislators to be straw men.
The new “8-minute masterclass,” Stewart schools, brutally confronts, evisceratesAnd expertly corners Nathan Dahm is an Oklahoma senator who has proposed several bills to exempt his state from federal firearms laws. Dahm is clearly unprepared for Stewart — though in his defense, it’s difficult for anyone to deal with a host who engages in performative emotional outbursts, filibusters, and deflections whenever you try and answer a question.
State senator begins innocently by claiming that “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” The Second Amendment is the only one that can be used. “uses that very specific affirmative language.” Stewart replies, “Oh, it’s also the one right that uses the phrase ‘well-regulated.'”
Do it again. Well-“regulated” merely refers to an orderly civilian military force — rather than a rabble of men — it does not mean “regulation” In the modern nanny-istic sense. It doesn’t refer to the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause. weakenYou cannot alter, or even erase, the clause operative to the amendment. This protects an individual’s rights to “bear” arms — a right that virtually every notable figure from the founding era is on the record defending.
Nevertheless, it is possible that Dahm had been about to speak all of this before Stewart interrupts him. Stewart wants to reveal one of his biggest gotchas by lazily conflating illegal gun crime with gun ownership “I don’t want to ban guns. But you’re saying more guns makes us more safe. So, when? We got 400 million guns in the country. We had an increase, and gun deaths went up. So when exactly does this curve hit, that takes it down? Would a billion guns do it?”
First, remember that not all deaths are the same. “go up.” Gun ownership began to rise in the 1990s when gun murders were at their peak. As more people purchased guns, gun-related murders fell steeply. They reached a historical low in 2014. Gun murders have remained low since the advent of modern firearms. a significant rise The Covid lockdowns and BLM riots were just two examples. There are many reasons crime rates may rise or fall. Major cities might begin adopting looser policing standards, spurring criminality. Perhaps a national, state-imposed shutdown causes millions to feel helpless and is more likely to resort violence.
It is also difficult to measure the impact gun ownership has on crime. There are also daily documented cases Of defensive gun usage, we don’t know how many would-be criminals are stopped from acting by an armed citizen.
Stewart might have had his argument reversed by Dahm. How many guns is he claiming will make us more secure? What is the point of that curve? Do you think it is 300 million or 50 millions less? His calculations show which states have the highest gun ownership percentages. caPitas, such as Wyoming, West Virginia and South Dakota, New Mexico and New Hampshire should have the most gun deaths. Each additional gun should make us safer, so the ideal number should be zero. However, this is not an easy task.
Dahm points out that Stewart’s claim that he would bring order to chaos is subjective. The host leans more into argumentum passiones. “We have 50,000 gun-related deaths,” He said. “That’s not a subjective opinion. That’s dead people.” This claim is non-sequitur. The subjectivity in the claim is that innocent deaths — more than half of them suicides, which exist at higher per capita rates in many nations with virtually no private gun ownership — are attributable to a lack of regulations, not that there are no innocent deaths.
Stewart will need Dahm, though, to speak out against this imaginary anarchy. “If you don’t have background checks, and you don’t have registration and permitting, how do you know who has a problem in terms of the people who you’re giving a gun to?” Stewart asks. Stewart asks. The majority of psychopaths that attack schools, festivals, or malls have either no previous criminal records or are already in the police’s sights.
Stewart gets Dahm on board quickly to support curbs of the First Amendment with respect to banning drag shows and then showing flexibility in curbing gun owners. “You’re telling me…when it comes to children that have died, you don’t give a flying f**k to stop that because that shall not be infringed,” Stewart lectures.
Dahm might be a hypocrite. However, this doesn’t mean that the Second Amendment is invalid or gun crime has been eliminated. Stewart doesn’t say what laws Stewart would propose to stop deranged gunmen killing children. He doesn’t say. Just fewer guns, I guess. Stewart might debate someone stronger if Stewart had some answers.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. On Fox News, C-SPAN. CNN. MSNBC. NPR. ABC World News Tonight. NBC Nightly News. And on radio talk shows all across the nation. Follow him on Twitter. @davidharsanyi.
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