- Home
- Politics
- Entertainment
- Sports
- Health
- Religion
- Society
- Tech
- Money
- People
- Science
- Galleries
Guns
Jon Stewart: Guns Not Problem, "Crazy" is Problem
By Paul Helmke
Memo to 14-time Emmy Award-Winning Daily Show Host Jon Stewart:
I’m a big fan.
Unlike Oprah, I’ve been featured on your Emmy-Award-winning fake news show. It happened this year on April 12, in an interview about Open Carry with Wyatt Cenac. Brady Campaign VP Dennis Henigan also has been a guest of yours.
We understand why you were voted as America’s most trusted news anchor in an online poll conducted by Time Magazine. America adores you. And you won’t find a Brady staffer who isn’t a devoted watcher of The Daily Show. We love you and your show as much as you love Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams.
So it is with a heavy heart that I ask: Really, Jon? Really?
Did you really suggest on the Oprah Show while promoting your Rally to Restore Sanity that when it comes to the horrific experience of school shootings that it’s not the guns that are the problem, but “crazy is the problem”?
Did you really say that if all the guns were gone that there would be “a 100,000 percent increase in school bludgeonings”? Did you, Jon Stewart, really say that?
show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cxfPSBcyvU&feature=player_embedded
If you did say those things, then I have to ask: Did you mean what you said?
When, really, was the last time somebody in America was able to terrorize a college campus, kill 32 people, and wound 17 others in less than 12 minutes with a blunt instrument? The Virginia Tech killer was able to do these incredibly awful things by getting off 174 rounds with the two semi-automatics that he wielded. In less than 12 minutes.
Our Capitol Hill staffer, Colin Goddard, was one of the 49 people shot at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. It became the worst school shooting in America’s history. Colin was shot four times, but bravely was the first to dial 911.
Colin lived, thank goodness, but had to spend weeks in rehab learning to walk again. Earlier this month he underwent a second surgery on his hip to remove some of the leftover bullet fragments from the shooting. It took him a week to recuperate and still more fragments remain.
Colin is now featured in the upcoming documentary, Living for 32, because of his journey of renewal and hope, since the tragedy. Colin is a big fan of yours, too, Jon. He’d love to talk to you about what he experienced as a victim of a school shooting, and what all Americans can learn as a result of it.
Colin also would address how schools could improve their policies and procedures to limit the suffering, in the case of a shooting, and how mental health policies play a huge role in preventing violence in schools.
Colin would tell you that in America often those with malicious intent have too easy access to guns because our gun laws are so weak. Right now, anyone can walk into a gun show in most states and buy a gun without a Brady criminal background check. This is how the Columbine shooters got their guns. We need to make it harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons. We can save lives with commonsense steps.
Colin would have the kind of conversation that you’re hoping to spark with your Rally to Restore Sanity on October 30.
So I encourage you, Jon: Have Colin Goddard or someone like him on The Daily Show so that you can talk face-to-face about what it’s like to experience gun violence and maybe lay the groundwork for more sanity regarding guns in America.
Americans account for 80 percent of all firearm deaths among high-income populous countries. Every day in the United States, around 300 people, including 65 children and teens, are injured or killed with guns in murders, assaults, suicides, and accidents. A police chief recently testified before Congress and stunned them with the fact that “America has lost more people to gun violence than during all the wars in the 20th century combined.” Isn’t that insane?
Having Colin on your show, as someone who knows the real difference between what a gun and blunt instruments can do could be the just the thing that America needs, along with your rally, to walk us back toward sanity. Really.
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
Comments
Expert? Really?
My question is, how did Paul Helmke get on "Issues, EXPERTS, Answers..." Just what is he an expert of? Bull sh*t. That's his field of expertise.
Lies, and the lying lyiers who tell them...
As a point of interest go through Paul Helmke's posts and pull out the lies. Not difference in opinions but the outright lies.
In this article Paul writes: "Right now, anyone can walk into a gun show in most states and buy a gun without a Brady criminal background check. This is how the Columbine shooters got their guns ."
Harris and Klebold never bought a gun at a gun show. The truth is that the two killers asked Robyn Anderson, who was of lawful age, to buy guns for them. She purchased three long guns, a rifle and two shotguns at a gun show. These were legal purchases as nothing in her past precluded her from buying from any licensed dealer in her state, at any gun store (i.e. Walmart). Harris and Klebold also purchased a handgun from an individual. This transaction was illegal but had nothing to do with a gun show. Anderson was not prosecuted for her involvement. Two people who sold the handgun did prison time because Harris and Klebold were under the age of eighteen when the transaction took place.
The truth is legislation that Helmke is trying to get passed would not have affected the gun purchases of Harris and Klebold as Anderson was a qualified buyer to purchase from any gun store and the handgun purchase was illegal with or without any new laws being passed.
The current priority of the Brady Campaign is to get gun shows outlawed nationwide. They want to do this by passing a law against individual transfers. Under their plan if a parent left a gun to someone in a will, that gun would be illegally obtained if it did not go through a Brady Background Check. All gun ownership that did not have a store receipt would be a violation of law. The purpose of this is to know who has guns. The long term goal of Brady is to eliminate the private ownership of guns.
You have to know who has them before you can take them.
And I am....... E. Zach Lee-Wright
E Zach Lee-Wright
Brady does some good.
The best service provided by Paul Helmke and the Brady group is the annual scorecard they put out. It rates each state by its gun control efforts. The state with the highest score in 2010 was California with over twenty state gun and ammo control restrictions (laws) bringing its score up to seventy eight. Brady rates the worst state as Utah, which it gives a score of zero. Utah has a law prohibiting colleges from interfering with the right to carry on campus by permit holders. Ironically, California has a violent crime rate that is four times higher than Utah's according to the FBI. The "rate" is adjusted for population differences. So, the state with Brady's best score has much more crime than the state with the worst score. An I am......E. Zach Lee-Wright again.
E Zach Lee-Wright
Ok, but...
those numbers only apply to the law-abiding citizens. Where does the criminals come into the statistics, they do not care one way or another about what the law says. Explain how multitudes of laws has any impact on a criminal?
Read it again, RKM.
The statistics measure CRIMINAL ACTIVITY as measured by the FBI.
E Zach Lee-Wright
Who are you going to blame?
When a gun tragedy hits close to home, some people blame the shooter and some blame the gun. Colin Goddard is not a coward for what happened or what he is doing now. He is simply a liberal who wants the rest of us to be as defenseless as he was at Virginia Tech. And of course he blames the guns .
The 2nd president of Helmke's group was Pete Shields. He became active in the gun control movement when his son was murdered. Nick Shields was killed by black radical Muslim terrorists on a killing spree in California (known as the Zebra Murders - in '73 & '74). They used a .32 caliber Beretta, a machete, and a meat cleaver to kill a unknown number, but more that a dozen people. Shields (like Goddard) blamed the gun. He could not bring himself to blame racial or religious killers - a mistake which price would be paid for later - by three thousand.
And I am...... E. Zach Lee-Wright
E Zach Lee-Wright
Paul wants to know....really?
Paul Helmke asked the question: When was the last time somebody in America was able to terrorize a campus, kill 32 people, and wound 17 others in less than 12 minutes?
I will answer it: The Bath School disaster. In Bath Township, MI, on May 18, 1927, three bombings killed 38 primary school children and 7 adults, and injured at least 58 people.
And he did it without a gun. Hmmmmm.
And I am.... E. Zach Lee-Wright
E Zach Lee-Wright
My advice?
I have one thing to say.....
If I had an 18 year old headed off to college, I'd give them 3 things:
A small, concealable handgun, with ammo.
Money for target shooting practice
And a piece of advice - "tuck this thing in your waistband every single day, keep your mouth shut, and do what you need to do to come home at the end of the day".
Screw the school's rules....
Quote from a criminal himself
"Gun Control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins."
-- Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
You Miss The Point
Dear Paul,
You entirely miss the point, don't you? If you make more and more laws, rules and regulations concerning gun oenership and carry of same, then you make it inconvenient for law abiding citizens to own and carry them. I know this is exactly what you want.
What you apparently haven't realized yet is that criminals are criminals are criminals because they don't CARE about laws, rules and regulations. They aren't going to change their minds about robbing the convenience store because it sports a "no guns allowed" sign by the front door. They're going to go ahead with their plans and possibly shoot someone with the illegal guns they carry inspite of your ridiculous attempts to regulate them.
I'm a member of opencarry.org and I just want to say:
"Welcome to irrelevancy".
Playing dead
and calling the polinanies to come save your ass isn't brave. It might be necessary, but it isn't brave.
The brave ones died that day, because they had no way to retaliate to the unwanton shootings. The brave ones barricaded the doors, The brave ones attacked cho when he entered the room. The brave ones covered their classmates with their own bodies to protect them from a madman.
Colin played dead and hoped cho would shoot someone else. He was a coward, so don't call him brave.
The insane will find a way to kill, whether they have guns or not. The most reasonable solution is to be prepared to meet them when they show up. Because if you're empty handed they WILL show up better prepared than you.
Brady missed the "sanity" stipulation
Sorry, Paulie, the Brady Bunch would be the last people on earth anyone would invite to a rally to restore sanity. You are the nut cases to whom Stewart refers.
If your sissy boy Goddard had been armed, he wouldn't have been shot all to hell. If the Brady communists hadn't made it impossible for less cowardly Americans to be armed, one of them would have taken out the bad guy within seconds of the first shots being fired.
So, your communist pansey boy called 911? Great. Wonderful. Terrific. Thanks for proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that when seconds count, the police are minutes away.
It also demonstrates that the first thing the gun grabbers do when their own fat is in the fire is to scream at the top of their lungs for a man with a gun to come save them. At the end of the day, there's a certain poetic justice in seeing an anti gunner get his ass shot off in a gun free zone. It's too bad he didn't die along side the innocent victims he is responsible for disarming, though. That would have been real justice. If it wasn't for the Brady communists disarming real Americans, those others would still be alive.