Joe Rogan on The Second Amendment

But it's a terrible thing, obviously, with these school shootings and things that are going on here at the moment. I mean, this is obviously one of the things I watched your podcast the other day where you were discussing this with the latest one, with the Florida. And I think, you know, in a way, bafflement going on in this society about this is understandable. Yeah, the unimaginable horror of being involved in that situation, your mind is just not prepared to cope with that. I mean, maybe if you are a soldier and you experience combat and you know how to stay calm in a firefight because you've been in a bunch of them. But for the average person, I mean, it's one of the reasons why eyewitness testimony is one of the worst pieces of evidence you could ever get, including, I mean, about basically everything, about fistfights, you know, anything. Oh, yeah. Now, we all have examples in our own lives of seeing friends who've been through the same thing. We know that they've been through the same thing. And yet they have two totally different portions of what happened. I mean, that's a real problem. But now you have this thing here where, I mean, in some ways, even worse than we do of the search to notch it up for your own political side or against the enemy. It's the same thing with the Twitter point. But I mean, this obscene glee that goes on after any terrorist attack in Europe, but I think also here as well, the attempt to immediately call it for the other side or for your side or whatever, and to try to use terrible events as a way to justify whatever your own team is. Yes. I find this amazing with the gun debate here. And I would find it amazing coming from a different society on it. But the way to sort of notch it up for one side or the other in it, and I don't know, it's, you've got a real problem on this one. I've been watching a lot of it from the perspective of the gun owners, the NRA members and the people that want to defend the idea of having guns, even of arming teachers. And you're looking at their perspective on it. And their perspective on it is all about their rights, all about the Constitution, all about the Bill of Rights, all about protecting the Second Amendment, all about gun ownership being taken away, gun ownership under attack, the NRA under attack. They're coming after our guns. And this is this constant battle of ideas that's on Twitter, not addressing the actual issue. I mean, sorry. No, it's okay. I was going to say, I mean, watching this thing, arming teachers. Yeah, that's insane. I mean, this is... Samuel Jackson had a great quote about it. But, you know, he put it on Twitter. Like someone tell a motherfucker who's never been in a gunfight the problems of arming a bunch of teachers. Right. Yeah, somebody said... Someone who's been in a gunfight, please tell a motherfucker who's been in a gunfight. Somebody said, anyone who thinks it's a good idea giving teachers guns has clearly never seen one try to use an overhead projector. Yeah, there's Samuel Jackson. Look at that. 306,000 likes, so you know, was an effective tweet. This is the world we're living in. You checked the number. It was only, yeah, you got three tweets. It can't be true. Nobody likes you. I thought there was a very pertinent one a few years ago in New York on 5th when somebody shot their colleague and outside the office came back, is disgruntled worker, shot the colleague and locally there was some policeman around the corner and they came out and started firing at the guy who'd done it. Ended up wounding about 11 pedestrians. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Of course. I mean, I'm not saying by the way, we have our own problems, but I mean, this is a big problem for America. We have more guns than we have people. I mean, I completely understand why the amendment exists. And I think it's a very good idea for the time. And I think it's a very understandable idea to hold on to it now. But why can't people say, for instance, I mean, we all have abstract ideas we have to hold on to, but we all in our countries have like weird things that other people don't understand. I mean, you might think it's odd to have a hereditary constitutional monarch, for instance. Right. It is weird. It's a great way to put it. It's strange. And if you are starting from now, you might not do that. But, but clearly with the gun ownership thing, it is we are willing to take bad things happening quite often because we want to hold on to the Second Amendment. Well, the Second Amendment has been around forever. The bad things happening quite often is really from Columbine on. I mean, there was a few of them before there was the Austin, Texas tower shootings. But it seems like I mean, again, I mean, just it's such an obvious point. And I don't sound like a snotty Brit is saying something about America. But it seems obvious that you just you could do a lot more damage with a semi-automatic rifle than you can with a knife. And most people we see this in the terrorism as well. There are really committed terrorists who don't commit acts of violence unless they can get hold of the means to do it. Because we often think, well, why don't you just like go out with a knife? Some people do, but most people actually want to go out in that way and what they see as being a blaze of glory. Right. So they like stopping them, having the means of getting that very easily seems to me very obvious. But that isn't to say that I mean, of course, I think you made a point the other day, it's like saying, if you say everyone who has a gun is part of the problem is obviously not because it's like saying everyone who's got a truck is about the problem. But there is there are obviously two things. One is the psychological and whatever the social issues are that cause this to keep happening. And that that is obviously very, very important to try to get to the root of. But you can get to the root of that or try to get through to that and also recognize that people having access to some of the weapons they have access to in this country must be a part of the problem. It has to be. And there also the idea that you should just be able to go out and buy a gun without really understanding how a gun works at all. Yeah. And which is exactly how you do it. I got my first handgun license in 1994. That's when I bought my first handgun and I just went and bought a handgun. I did a background check on me. That's it. I mean, I went to the range. They showed me what the safety is. Point at this. Put the earphones on. Make sure you don't blow yours out. Bang, bang, bang. And then you leave with a gun. I mean, once your background checks clear, they find out you're not a criminal. There's not much to it. There's a there's a giant problem with that. If you want to drive an automobile, you have to show that you understand the laws. You have to understand you have to sit with an expert who's to sit there and driving instructor. They have to go through it with you. They have to watch your movements. They have to watch you make turns. They have to wouldn't wouldn't you imagine that it would be a good idea to have some sort of a clinical evaluation of a person that's going to going to buy a gun. And here's another thing. There was an article recently that was saying contrary to popular belief, most school shootings are not committed by people who are mentally ill. Well, that's a fucking stupid thing to say. You know why? Because if you're you're committing a school shooting, you're mentally ill. Then on top of that, what they're ignoring conveniently, and this is another headline thing, psychiatric medications. These people are almost entirely on some form of psychiatric medication, whether it is anti anxiety pills, whether it's antidepressants, whether they're they're all. I'm not saying that correlation equals causation. I'm not saying that. But to say that they're not. This is just a bullshit. This is clickbait headline. They're mentally ill 100 percent. 100 percent of them are mentally ill. There's a conservative commentator in the UK called Peter Hitchens who always makes point after Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe that there's a large number of them as well as other types of attack who seem to be on some kind of medication. Yes. And my point is always I'm very, very happy to have that conversation. I think we need to have that conversation. And we also have to have the other parts of it as well. Yes, you're right. It's the same here. I can't see why we can't have all of this. It's the same thing that we were talking about earlier. It's these idea sports, these wars. People don't want to give up their idea. They don't want to give up any ground whatsoever on their Second Amendment rights, whether it's owning a 50 caliber fucking tank gun or whether it's having a gun for home safety or for hunting. They don't want to give up anything. And they feel like it's a slippery slope. The people that I follow online that are tweeting about this on a regular basis, you can go to a lot of them. They're making videos about it. Dana Lash and Colin, actually his name is, it's not Colin, it's Colion. Colion Noire, N-O-I-R. He's very, very vocal about it. I'm reading all this stuff. All anyone's taking into account is this idea that they're coming after your rights and emphasizing the idea of a good person with a gun that can protect people in these terrible situations, which can happen as well. But what we have to address, that's not what we're talking about. We have to address how the fuck do these crazy people get guns? Why are so many people on mental health medications? Well, that's a huge problem. I can't understand. We always have this sort of wanting to have the conversation about it, but there's very little done on it. That's one thing I'm very struck by. We have in all our countries slipped into a very weird attitude towards this type of medication. Yes, very weird, very accepting of something that radically alters the way your mind works. Right. And I don't know. Maybe it's because there's not an incentive. Drug companies obviously don't have an incentive quite the opposite to look into it. But it's another example of the set of things we should be thinking about at the moment and looking at, which we just don't. Why don't we? Because it's sort of shut down because we shut it down ourselves. I think it's just such a range of issues, this is the case with. And it's always the same thing. It's always that if you address the question, difficult as it might be, you are attacking an individual who might suffer from it, who might be upset by us addressing the question. I mean, I have a lot of suspicions about all sorts of things. I'm a very skeptical person, as it were, about things that I'm told. So I'd like to look into things. I'm amazed at the number of things in our societies that we just don't discuss. And they're all the things that we ought to be discussing, issues like mental health issues, issues that have to do with the social presumptions that are going on left, right and center at the moment, where you're not meant to discuss things that are, apart from anything else, very, very interesting and very important.