Rep. Dan Crenshaw Gets Honest About Mass Shootings | Joe Rogan

When people talk about issues in this country, there's a giant divide with one thing in particular and that is mass shootings. Mass shootings and gun control. There's a giant divide between people that are Second Amendment advocates and people that want to round up all the assault weapons and take away all the guns and they think the guns are the problem. When you see this pretty disturbing increase in mass shootings in this country, what is your take on it and what do you think could be done? Well, it's awful. They're terrorist attacks and I think it's safer to call them that. Depending on how you define a mass shooting, when we look at murder statistics, we're actually at a very, very low point in our history. I mean, look at the early 90s, it was vastly more murders by gun than we have now. Just statistically speaking... What's that because of? Do they know? Well, there was a massive kind of war on crime, I think, in the 90s. Increase in police, you know, you have some of the crime bills that went through, which are obviously the source of a lot of debate right now in the Democrat primary. And yeah, it was just... There was an approach to fix that, okay? You know, tackling gang violence, tackling all of these things. And we live in a much... Even though you wouldn't think so because of these kind of theatrical... Again, they're terrorist attacks. I don't know what else to call them. Because the person doing it is trying to commit terror. And for different reasons, of course, but... Or at least they attach themselves to some kind of reason. But in the end, they're angry at something and they've probably been taking some kind of psychotropic drugs over time and they've gotten to this point and they'll attach themselves to whatever reason they need to do this. And it's awful. So, you know, how do you fix that? We have to understand the problem. We have to diagnose it. And then we got to... And I think we have to be realistic about what the solutions really are and what our ability to influence those outcomes really is. And that's an emotional conversation for people. You know, we've been dealing with it for the last few weeks, of course. It's front and center in the debate. But we got to have it. What can be done? Yeah. Well, so obviously the reaction by many is to go after the tool, right? To go after the guns. I don't think that's the right approach. It's not... Again, it's not clear that that would actually solve the problem. There's two main requirements when you're looking at an approach to gun control. It's like, does it infringe on law-abiding citizens' rights? Number one, what's the answer to that? And two, is it going to actually affect the outcome that we're trying to affect? Is it going to feel good or is it going to do good? Okay. And I think the vast majority of proposals fail both of those standards. They definitely infringe on law-abiding citizens' rights and they probably wouldn't even solve the problem. You know, look at examples of assault rifles. Or let's not... Well, ARs. Okay. They're called assault rifles. The reason they're in ARs is because they're called Armalite. That's a brand. Assault rifle is not a real thing. It's not a real definition. But what if you banned them? Well, rifles are responsible for less than 3% of all gun deaths. About 2.66% of all gun deaths. Okay. Hammers and knives, I think, are responsible for far more deaths. Is that true? Yes. Hammers and knives are responsible for more deaths than rifles? Got statistics. Including ARs. Yeah. Really? Yeah, rifles account for 2.66% of gun deaths. How many folks are killing people with hammers? Well, it's a good weapon, I guess. I feel real good if somebody has a hammer. If all you have is a hammer... Well, but if you have a gun, you're doing pretty well. Even if you don't have a gun, I feel like I could stop a hammer. Yeah, but you're a pretty good fighter. You can't do a goddamn thing about an AR. Well, that's not true. I can take away your AR if you're... How close do you have to be to do that? I just got to reach it. It's very easy to take away an AR. Yeah? Yeah. How easy? I just need to get a hand on the barrel. You should get AR-tiggly classes. Yeah, I know. I mean, I've taken those classes. That's why I know it's so easy. Whoever controls the barrel of any gun controls the gun. People don't quite realize that. They think if they're gripping it, then they control the gun. That's not true. Right. We can... We're in the weeds now, though. Yeah, we're in the weeds. We can demonstrate that afterwards. I have a flamethrower. Maybe you can grab that. Yeah. No rifles in here. Is that what that... That's Elon Musk's lame shirt. I wasn't sure what that was. Oh, you're going to take a picture with that later. Okay. Can I actually use it, though? Yeah. We can turn it on, as long as you don't cook the ceiling. Okay, but I can cook anything else? Yeah, you'll be the only one who's ever turned it on here other than Elon. It doesn't have to be in the room. Yeah, it does, though. Okay. Take a picture. Obviously. You're going to do it in the room. So, have you thought about this? I mean, if you had a magic wand and they said, hey, Dan Crenshaw, what can you do? To solve this mass gun violence, what can you do to solve these mass shootings? Yeah. I mean, you have to target the source of them. It's just not an easy conversation. Right. And so, let's also think about where these things started. We're talking about the theatrical mass shootings. There's a lot of statistics out there. They'll say we have hundreds of them, which include four or more deaths, but these are usually gang violence. So, gang violence, it's in a category, right? There's two... I believe there was 279 mass shootings so far this year, and some of them they do... ...to include gang violence. Right. I think it's two or more. Is that what it's deemed mass shootings? Yeah, it might be more. Which is so fucking weird that we have a statistic. Well, that doesn't count. It's only... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got to draw the line somewhere and you got to be able to... Right. ...analyze it. You have to look into that. But I think the dramatized shootings that these guys are doing, it all started with Columbine and it's become this sort of copycat crime that has occurred over time. We didn't have this before that. And I think that's interesting. I think it's something to take note of. And it's not clear what you do about that. You have to look for signs of people before they do it. And so, one bill that I'm on, which I've taken a lot of fire for because people are just... I think misunderstand what it actually is, is the TAPS Act, which is the Threat Assessment Prevention and Safety Act. All this does is give local law enforcement the ability to apply for grants to get training and behavioral threat assessment training and data analytical tools to identify these threats beforehand. And people that are opposed to it, they look at it like red flag laws, right? They combine those two quite a bit and that's just not... It's not true. I mean, the TAPS Act doesn't actually have anything to do with guns. And red flag laws, depending on how they're implemented, could take someone who looks like they're erratic or who has a penchant for violence and they would say, you do not have access to guns. Right. In theory, that would be how they work. And they would fill a gap, I think. And it depends on the state. Some states have all the ability they need to see threatening behavior and then arrest that person. But it depends on criminal law within that state. So theoretically, red flag law would fill that gap. The concern with red flag laws, obviously, is there really due process? A lot of people hear that and they're like, okay, that means my neighbor can tell on me and they're gonna cut my guns the next morning. Well, yeah, I mean, if that's how the law was written, then yeah, you better be against that because that's a terrible law. Right. And to be fair to a lot of the people who don't like red flag laws, they see how these are written in a lot of states. I think California has one. And they see how those are written and they say, this doesn't protect due process. How can we possibly do before this? Now, on the other hand, there hasn't been any cases where there's been some obvious abuse of that law either. So I've encouraged the conversation. I think the conversation has to happen at the state level because every state has different criminal law. And that's where criminal law happens. It does not happen at the federal level. The only other controversial approach that I've heard is putting armed police or soldiers at schools, which is like that seems incredibly disturbing to me that you have to have people not opposed to it, but it's disturbing to me that you would have to have someone standing by ready for violence. We have guards everywhere. Why not our schools? Which is because we've never had them before. And it's sort of signaling that we've reached this point of impasse where we have to do something about it and we're not doing anything to prevent these things from happening. What we're doing is protecting the people that are going to be there when these things happen. Yeah. I think inner city schools have long had police presence there. So I don't think it's totally new, the idea. And I think we could rapidly get used to it. There's a good argument to me that gun free zones are the first thing that are attacked, too. So I mean, it's a counterintuitive response to this, but it's true. If I'm going to commit a terrible act, of course you're going to go to the place where you know nobody is carrying. Yeah, you're not going to a gun show. Right. Yeah. Unless you're just really looking for a fight. But there's some truth to that. And it's just hard, it's so hard for people to have this conversation because it's so emotional. And there's a cultural fissure here, too. People don't understand some people who like guns. And there's a cultural divide there. And I just don't like people who like guns. We have to admit that's true. Well, they have this idea of guns, that guns bring violence and violent people want guns. And that's just not true. And one of the things that people like to gloss over is how many people have defended their life and defended the lives of their loved ones with guns in this country every year. It happens all the time. I've got a whole list of stats and examples that I could read to you right now. Unfortunately, one of the things that gets brought up during gun violence statistics and talk about how many people die from firearms every year in this country, they're also talking about people who've defending their lives and defending the lives of their loved ones. People get their houses broken into all the time by armed criminals. And they shoot those people. And they live to see another day when that person dies. And that is the whole reason why people don't want to get rid of guns. Right. And I want to bring something up along those lines. So it's far more likely in countries like Great Britain that you'll get your house broken into while you are there. Far more likely than in the United States. Like by a good order of magnitude, actually. So why is that? Because they know that there is no gun in that house. And you do that in Texas, there's a good chance there's a gun in that house. It's probably 100%. Yeah. Even the liberals like, they're like, I'll wait at you if you don't have a gun. Right. Hey, take one of mine. Fuck you doing out a gun. So that's an interesting point. The other good statistical analysis to do is, okay, when there's high amount of concealed carry, what does that do to crime rates? And the correlation is there's less crime. Okay. Now it's not fair to say that's a causation. That would be intellectually dishonest. But it's an important correlation to note. It's also important to note, okay, per capita, places like Switzerland and Israel have far, far more gun ownership than we do. People don't realize that. Is that true? Yeah. Switzerland? I wouldn't come in here and lie to you. I know, but I'm just stunned as a rhetorical question. Yeah. Because now somebody would counter-argain that, say, no, those are government weapons issued to people. Yeah, fine. But they still are with the people. Like the people have the guns, okay? And they're at a rate higher than the United States. I thought they were in Israel over there. Yeah, yeah, but that's how they stay neutral. They have almost no crime. Almost no crime. Israel too. Almost no crime. There's issues that Israel has in general with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But does a criminal act, like they have very little crimes? Like this is interesting. So you combine that with what we know about concealed carry data here in the United States. You know, how do you solve this problem? The other thing to think about is the vast majority, over 50% of all gun crime, it happens in like 2% of all counties. So it's highly concentrated. So as we look to solve this problem, like we do have to really peel back some layers here, like who is committing the crime? Where is it happening? Why is it happening? You know, we can detect the tools, but it's just so far from self-evident that that would work. Again, going back to ARs, they're responsible for less than 3% of gun deaths. And also, let's say you banned them. Are you actually stopping 3% of gun deaths? No. Because why don't they just use another gun? Why don't they use a different weapon? Why don't they use a truck? If they want to kill, they can kill. The horror that we're seeing is that they like to kill this way. And maybe that's, like why is that? And again, I go back to Columbine, it all started with that. And that's interesting. We should look at that and like what is driving people to like that? Well, I think there are a lot of people. If you look at mass shootings, a lot of these people, when you read their description, they're very disenfranchised, they're very angry. When you're disenfranchised and very angry, there's like an archetype, right? There's an image that you have in your mind of shooting all these people that wronged you. I mean, this is... It goes back to our victimhood conversation. Sure, yeah. And blame somebody else. Well, and then the real conversation is how many of these people are on psychotropic drugs? And what are those drugs? And what are the effects those drugs have on people? Well, when you look at the numbers, it's fucking stunning. Whether it's anti-anxiety medications or SSRIs or amphetamines, or whether it's whatever they're on that alters the chemical frequency or the biological structure of your brain in terms of like what chemicals are in there, serotonin, dopamine, these speeds that so many kids are on, Adderall and various types of speed. That stuff radically changes the way you look at the world. How many of those drugs contribute or are a factor in these mass killings? I don't know if correlation equals causation, but I do know the correlation is phenomenally high. Yeah. I mean, I think it's in the high... Five of those homes, things like that. Yes, sure. Let's start analyzing it. Absolutely. Bullying incels, which is a new word, involuntary celibates. Did you know about that? Huh. You didn't know about that? I taught you about incels? Amazing. Look at that. Yeah, there's whole groups online on message boards that they can't believe they can't get laid. And they just go like, fuck. Involuntary. Yeah, they're just guys who can't get laid. Yeah, that's just a fancy word for that. Losers. Well, let's not call them losers. That's what makes them crazy. If there's a game, there's winners and losers. And that high school football quarterback who's banging all the cheerleaders, that guy's a winner. It sucks that that's true. Yeah, it is unfair. I'm hoping genetic engineering fixes all that in the future. This is what you're dealing with a lot of times, is these guys that got a really shitty roll of the dice. And there's no other way to describe it. They got handed a terrible hand of cards. And some of them are pilled up and angry and abused, and they have access to guns. And then next thing you know, there's a mass shooting. Right. And then, again, going back to the victim of a conversation, maybe they did work double the delta bad hand, but they also tell themselves the wrong story about why that is and who's the blame. And that narrative just seeps within them and it creates this. I mean, you're absolutely right. When Bernie Sanders was on here, there was one thing I thought I agreed with him on, which is we have to look at the effects of these drugs and really what they are. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think that's true. Well, it's amazing how much blowback you get from that. And it's by people that want to look at the guns. They just want to say, no, no, no. Why are you talking about psychotropic drugs? It's the guns. No, I'm talking about the guns too. I don't necessarily think that really angry, volatile people that have criminal records should have guns. I think they shouldn't. Right. So the guns are... And we already outlawed that. Yes, we do. And we probably should have some understanding of who you are before we give you a gun. The real question is, what is that understanding and how do we go about doing that and how do we keep people from making these incredibly rigid rules, particularly regionally, right? If you have states that decide to have incredibly rigid rules that preclude most people from having guns, that can be possible if they devise their own tests and you're honest about your perspectives on things. And that's the fear, and it's an honest fear to have. What is the limit? If you're on psychotropic drug sheets, you'd be barred from having weapons? Of course not. And how do you manage that? And the way we do it now, again, you have to have committed a crime. Yeah. Of some sort. So there's other things too. If you abuse medication, if you abuse medication, then I think you're also, I think, according to federal law, you're barred from owning that. That's in the system. I think dishonorable discharge from the military, things like that. So there's already a lot of standards that actually preclude you from buying a weapon. And there would be a very vigorous debate on how you add more standards to that. Dishonorable discharge keeps you from buying a weapon? That's what I've read. We fact-checked that. That's interesting. I didn't know that one. I thought you had to have a felony. Maybe. I mean, it makes sense. But there's no answers. This is the thing that I came up with from... Is there something, Jamie? Yeah. Dishonorable discharge and NFA. What's an NFA firearm? NFA refers to the National Firearms Act. So that's what banned automatic weapons. Based on general court martial conviction, a person who was convicted of a crime that is punishable by imprisonment for more than one year, including dishonorable discharge, is prohibited from... Okay. That's where I heard it from. Yes. Okay. That's what it is. So it is true. So if you're imprisoned, not just a dishonorable discharge... Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of people dishonorably discharged that probably... Not violently. They're not violent offenders. What's disturbing, talking to you, talking to Bernie, talking to Tulsi, talking to everybody? Nobody has a solution. I mean, with all the brightest minds that are thinking about this all the time, no one has one thing that makes sense. This gets to a very deep question about what are capable... And I think I briefly touched on this before. Why does government exist and what are we capable of solving and what needs to be solved by ourselves? And what is just inherent to human nature? And it's evil and we hate it and we don't want it to be there, but it is. And is it appropriate for us to scream to our politicians as they save us? And sometimes it is. Sometimes we can solve it and we should try. But we have to do it with some kind of constrained vision, as Thomas Sowell would put it, about what is possible and then let's be reasonable about what is possible and hit those two categories, I said. So, is it infringing on the rights of everyone for the sake of doing this? And second, is it going to actually solve the problem? Those are very important questions and if we don't frame the debate within those, I think we're not doing justice to the problem itself. True, but again, no one seems to have any logical course, any logical clear path. Like this is how we're going to reduce gun violence. This is how we're going to stop mass shootings. I mean, other than arming all these public places, I was in Rome recently and when you go there, it's fucking stunning. There's military vehicles, guys with guns just strapped ready to rock, just standing by all over the place. And I was like, no, it didn't. And I was like, wow, this is a very, it's, you know, you're trying to enjoy yourself when you're on vacation, you're checking all these ancient buildings and then you're like, oh, look, fucking guns, military tank. Look at that. You know? Yeah. And it's, I wish it wasn't that way. Yeah. You know, but again, like, you know, you're right. We haven't come up with perfect solutions. We have some ideas that I think would mitigate these threats and we've discussed those at length. But none of them seem tangible. Everything seems like just talk. No, well, the TAPS Act that I talked about, I think is perfectly tangible. Again, it's not a, it won't solve everything, but it mitigates something. I think armed security at schools, I think certainly mitigates things as far as school safety goes. So, no, I don't think it's just talk. I think those are tangible things and I think they're perfectly reasonable. You know, it's... People just are so reluctant to think that we need armed guards at school and I understand and I'm thinking about it myself. I'm like, ugh, is that really what it's going to take? Is armed guards at school? I went to high school in Bogota, Colombia, so we had armed, like, a lot of armed guards at our school. You grew up... Your dad was a banker? No, he was an oil business. No, oil, oil is petroleum engineer. So we moved, my life growing up was between Houston and overseas, back and forth. That would be very bizarre. Yeah, it was fun. I mean, I don't regret a minute of it. It can be hard at times. How could you Spanish? It used to be better. It's not bad. I'll do an interview in Spanish, so it's obviously not bad by any means, but it's not great. So you can go to a taqueria and hang. I would totally hang. I speak really well conversational Spanish. My Spanish, it's harder when I'm talking complex policy issues because I didn't learn that kind of Spanish. Right, right, right. So, but yeah, I mean, pretty good.