Opinion: Poking holes in Jimmy Kimmel’s anti-gun rant

When I was on the air Monday covering the horrific acts of a crazy man in Las Vegas that happened the night prior, I made a commitment to our listeners.

Because I am the gun and outdoors guy here at KTAR News, you can imagine how many questions I received over email or text about gun rights and control. I committed to our listeners that I would take a few days before commenting about this tragedy.

The following day, I was sent several emails with a link to a Jimmy Kimmel monologue about the shooting.

The first time watching it, I laughed, I was shocked and I was concerned.

I laughed at the hypocrisy, was shocked by his lack of knowledge and was concerned he could knowingly spread nonsense to millions of people at a time. That is nothing short of irresponsible and dangerous.

But I will keep my commitment and reserve comment about Las Vegas and I will simply address the hypocritical nonsense coming out of the Hollywood elite left. In this case, Kimmel.

Crying on camera to garner sympathy, gain viewers, and boast million of views on YouTube seems to be Kimmel’s new favorite play.

So let’s sift through his sensitive man routine and dig in to the dangerous and uninformed rhetoric that he is spewing to his audience and to the online masses.

Kimmel began with a shot at the argument that our forefathers wanted us to have AK-47s.

I’ve never been one to use the tyrannical government argument, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t understand it. Kimmel sure doesn’t.

Our forefathers wanted the citizenry to be as armed as the government. That means that, as government military technology increases, so will the access to the same firearms for its citizenry.

The debate isn’t whether or not that is a good idea.

Yes, the Second Amendment was written during the time of muskets and the First Amendment was written during the time of quill and ink wells. It was written prior to microphones, radio, TV and the internet.

With 4,000 suicides attributed to cyberbullying each year, why don’t we hear anyone crying to illuminate the First Amendment?

Kimmel continued, erroneously claiming that the Newtown, Orlando, and Aurora mass-murdering idiots used automatic and semi-automatic firearms — firearms that are not used for self-defense.

Automatic weapons were not used in any of those tragedies. Automatic weapons are illegal to the vast majority of Americans. Those with the time and means (tens of thousands of dollars) to obtain a license can try. MOST fail.

As far as not being used for personal protection, Kimmel, if you try to break into my home, you’ll find yourself on the business end of my AR-15. I use it to protect my home.

Before you comment that I don’t NEED an AR-15 to defend my home, here is a statistic that will explain my logic: Only 10 percent of gunshot wounds are fatal.

I’m not looking to wound someone that breaks into my home. I want to defend my family with lethal means. I’ll let my attorney worry about the rest. I want as much firepower as I can get when defending my home.

Then, he decided to get political. He mentioned certain pieces of legislation.

This is where Kimmel becomes a dangerous man.

He talked about legislation that he has not read in its entirety, legislation that he tasked his staff with pulling out bits and pieces that support his narrative so he can scare millions of viewers at a time.

Bits and pieces of legislation without context can scare anyone.

Let’s look at that legislation, shall we?

His first claim was that President Donald Trump signed legislation making it easier for people that are “severely mentally ill” to buy firearms.

This is simply untrue. Earlier this year, the Trump administration rolled back a President Barack Obama-era executive order that gave the Social Security Administration the power to revoke a person’s Second Amendment rights based on whether he receives disability for a mental impairment that keeps him from working, or if he utilizes a representative to help manage benefits.

This is a violation of not only the Second Amendment but the 14th Amendment as well. It’s a liberal, 2-for-1 stripping of constitutional rights!

Kimmel also mentioned the fact that American citizens on the no-fly list can purchase firearms and Congress did nothing to stop that.

He is right. Remember “no fly,-no buy?” The reason that unconstitutional piece of legislation did not pass was the same reason that Trump rolled back the aforementioned Obama order: Stripping rights with no due process.

Understand that any of us can be placed on the no-fly list without cause or knowledge. American citizens have been placed on the list by mistake!

This slappy goes on to tackle the issue of straw sales, aka the gun show loophole.

Please tell me where banning the private sale of firearms without a background check would have stopped any of the aforementioned mass shootings. Tell me where any of the aforementioned mass shootings were carried out by firearms purchased at a gun show.

Truth be told, I have several firearms, of which I’ve only filled out background checks for three of them. The rest of been purchased from neighbors, friends, inherited from a relative or have been gifted to me.

It is already illegal for a firearms dealer to sell a firearm to anyone at a gun show without a background check. If they do that, they are breaking the law.

Tell me how requiring something that is already required would help anything.

Kimmel then took the opportunity to jump on the Hillary Clinton bandwagon and broadcast his lack of knowledge of firearms by bringing up legislation that is currently in the House that would lift some restrictions and requirements for the sale and purchase of silencers.

That is true. It’s called the Hearing Protection Act. Like it or not, you have to give them credit for the name.

It is currently legal to buy a silencer. I don’t need to say much more about that.

But here is where the anti-gun crowd, most of which have never fired a firearm, lack understanding.

A silenced firearm does not sound like it does in the movies. It doesn’t turn a loud bang into a soft chirp. I don’t care how many Bond or Bourne movies you can cite, it just doesn’t work that way.

A silenced semiautomatic firearm is about as loud as a jackhammer. Silencers do not make it easier to commit crimes. Silencers make firearms mildly quieter.

I can illustrate this by changing the word silencer to its larger twin, the automobile muffler. Mufflers are required on automobiles to muffle the sound an engine makes.

This is required for noise pollution reduction and hearing protection of the occupants and driver of an automobile.

So to follow Clinton’s and Kimmel’s flawed and uneducated logic, more damage can be done with silencers because first responders would not be able to hear the firearm.

That’s like saying that we need to remove mufflers from cars because, as we won’t be able to hear the car coming, we will all get hit by cars.

Then Jimmy Kimmel tackled my favorite argument from the left — We can’t have people with mental illness owning a firearm.

This, my friends, is already part of the game. People with severe mental illnesses cannot own a firearm, particularly those that have gone through the judicial process and have been deemed unfit to do so.

Let me ask you this: If we expand the definition of mental health in relation to Americans being able to own firearms, who gets to decide who is healthy and who is not? Who gets to decide what mental health issues will eliminate someone’s Second Amendment right?

A few years ago, for about 60 days, I was prescribed medication to help me with anxiety. That can easily be classified as a mental health issue. So if legislators decide that anxiety treatment makes me mentally unstable, they can strip me of my Second Amendment rights.

You see where I’m going with this. It’s a simple question that is not being asked: Who gets to decide what mental health is and isn’t?

Kimmel wrapped up his anti-gun tirade by suggesting that eliminating an Americans ability to have roughly 10 or more semiautomatic firearms would eliminate these tragedies from happening.

This moronic claim flies in the face of logic.

Let’s say Congress passes a law that prohibits me from having 10 or more semiautomatic firearms. Being a responsible firearm owner, I would follow that law because I’m not a criminal.

Do you think criminals would do the same thing? Do you think a criminals would not buy that 11th semiautomatic firearm because, “Hey, it’s against the law?” Nope.

It’s the same flawed thinking that led us to our multi-trillion dollar war on drugs. It is illegal to sell and use cocaine. It is illegal to sell and use heroin. It is illegal to sell opioids. Yet, in the war on drugs, drugs are still winning.

New laws on top of current laws will not stop bad things from happening. We can’t legislate our way out of this, no matter what the elitist Hollywood left tells us.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Leah Libresco, a statistician and former writer for fivethirtyeight.com, set out to prove that guns were responsible for all of this carnage.

After studying tens of thousands of gun related deaths, she ended up agreeing with me.

So how about we start here? Let’s have these millionaire Hollywood snowflakes fire their armed security or have them armed only with non-lethal weapons. We’ll ask politicians to do the same.

Then, when they are not able to protect themselves with firearms, I’ll be more willing to listen to their argument for me not being able to protect myself with mine.

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