My solution to the gun violence problem. (It's not what you think.)
CORRECTION: In this episode, I claim that the population density of Cook County, Illinois is 9,000 people per square mile. This is incorrect. It's about 5,500 per square mile. My claim that Brewster County's population density is 1.3 people per square mile was closer. It's actually 1.5.
Transcript (by speechpad.com):
Hi. This is Jaime Escuder. Welcome to another episode of None Sense.
Let's talk about guns.
You know, I don't really wanna talk about guns, but guns seems to be a particular problem in my country in that we have these endless horrible mass shootings that keep happening over and over again. And I think maybe we ought to talk about why. (I know that the gun debate is not something that's at all new but I think it's important. And I haven't really waited on it and so I'm gonna do that.)
I'm gonna do that by starting off with a surprise. And this is the surprise, I'm a very liberal ... well, this is not the surprise ... I'm a very liberal person. Super liberal. I think that ... I mean, if I could wave my magic wand, I would legalize virtually every victimless crime, so prostitution, drug use, whatever. I think we live in a far too criminalized society. America is an over-criminalized, "overruled," I like to say, country. And I'm very liberal in that way and I think that people should just be allowed to do stuff so long as there's not a victim.
And when I talk like that, people naturally assume that I'm a Democrat, which is true. And, of course, every Democrat is a big proponent of gun control, right? Well, not me. I'm actually not a big gun control guy and this is very surprising to people who, after they get to know me a while when they learn this about me, it's a shock to them and it's somewhat disappointing to them. So I wanna explain why, and then maybe because, yes, I'm a Democrat but I'm not a big gun control Democrat, those of you who are skeptical of what I'm about to say might be a little bit more willing to listen.
So, I'm not a gun control guy, number one, because I like freedom. I think people should be allowed to do stuff. And I think one of those things is if you wanna be a gun collector or own guns, I can understand why you would wanna do that. Guns are actually pretty amazing machines if you think about it. They don't require batteries or electricity, they just kind of harness the laws of physics and chemistry to function and that's a rare thing.
And I'm not a gun owner, I'm not a gun nut, but I can see, you know, it's a rare thing, it's a rare instrument that sort of functions merely out of alignment with the laws of nature. And a gun does and that's kind of amazing and so I could see how, for historical reasons and just kind of neat mechanical reasons, why people might wanna own guns. And more importantly, even if couldn't see that, I just think people should be allowed to be free in a free country and so one of the things you should be allowed to do is have guns.
The other thing is I'm not at all blind to the fact that guns have their uses. The police in these types of situations ... there was just a mass shooting, like, I think I may have mentioned, in Las Vegas. I think the last count was 58 people dead ... in these kinds of situations, so Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech etc., the police always get there too late. Now, that's not to blame the police, there's no way they could know it ahead of time but it's gonna take them some minutes to get there. And if, in that time, the only person with a gun in a room full of people is the guy who's killing people, that's how you get to numbers like 58 people or whatever the number was at the Pulse Nightclub, dozens of people killed. So there's a value I recognize to having guns in places where this is gonna happen.
And then the 3rd thing is, gun control is ... even the very concept of gun control is completely ignorant of the fact that it absolutely will not w...
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