07 - School Shootings, Gun Laws, and Morrissey

Transcript

oh hi welcome to intimate discourse my name is jason today's episode school shootings gun

laws and morrissey was recorded on june 12th 2022 in toronto ontario canada

thank you very much for listening and i hope you enjoy the show

[Music]

good day folks and welcome to intimate discourse my name is jason i'm here with dmitry hello everyone

um today we are going to be talking about a few different things but mostly focusing on um

uh i guess firearms in general and a um

knee-jerk resuscitation of a canadian bill in particular um

we i think to start this we should probably explain a little bit about um for those

of you listening um you know for the most part with this show we're trying to uh

we are we are located in canada um and we focus some of our stuff on canadian

news and canadian policies but a lot of this obviously uh transcends canada and

a lot of the things that we're discussing are um

um similar things are occurring in the united states and in the rest of the western world

um you know the way this show has sort of is evolving it seems to be like we're um

there are a lot of local canadian things that we're talking about but we do try to encompass it uh we do try to sort of

spread out that um the topics to include the us as well um

because uh well it's it's the u.s is such a huge influence on canada in the first place that it doesn't make sense

to speak of canadian policy in isolation necessarily anyway but also so those of you listening from the us uh can can all

feel included um so uh and you know no issue is more uh

uh you know i can't think of an issue that would be more um emblematic of some of the few

differences uh that exists between american canadian policy

as that of firearms in america you of course have the right

to bear arms it is a contentious second amendment to the constitution

that um that you know every time there's any kind of school shooting or any

um really any any shooting anywhere uh that is sort of makes the the mainstream

news um and gets any kind of wheels uh there will be the the usual um

hand ringing in the in the states with um politicians on both sides it always seems like it's

kind of the democrats will yell uh until they're blue in the face

saying they want more gun control and then the republicans kind of do this little side step uh you know

never wanting to sort of forcefully say um that you know they want to that they

want to institute some gun control because obviously a lot of the people that own guns and support

um the second amendment are um you know will will naturally sort of

vote republican i think uh sort of certainly overwhelmingly um

so yeah it's an interesting little dance and it's a very difficult issue to talk about i think that you know if there's a

school shooting anywhere and you have um i don't know i guess not any shooting

anywhere um particularly school shootings they're just the sort of the most heinous

types of shootings um it becomes very difficult to you know stand there

supporting supporting the existing structure of

who can buy a firearm and everything because it you know you it's very easy for the other side to say like well well you don't care about kids or something

like that like you're happy to see all these shootings um and obviously that's a very um

disingenuous argument but sometimes that's what uh sells in american politics and canadian politics and just

politics um so i think it's important that we start this thing off with distinguishing

between where the american sort of collective psyche is on guns and where the canadian psyche is on guns um we do

not have in canada any right to bear arms um we don't have anything enshrined in our constitution that i'm aware of

that that gives sort of any allowance to do this i think we evolved

um you know as sort of like in many ways as americans have evolved as you know kind of uh individualistic

and um sort of outdoorsy so there's certainly in frontiersmen

um so there was use for uh guns in that milieu um but um we were

not uh we didn't have a war of uh independence so we there's there it was like we bifurcated

there and america um very wisely in some people's opinion and um

uh and i would say in my opinion as well i'll go out and get that out of the way um it said that they that they should

have a right to bear arms enshrined in their constitution whereas in canada we just never had anything like that we do

have um a firearms act like there are certain you can you can own guns at least so far

um but it is a procedure uh and um you know we'll go off and

step through a little bit of the process just of what it does what it takes to to own one um and to sort of get your license in

canada the the whole process for doing that in canada is a lot more rigorous and arduous than it is in the united

states as well um yeah so i guess you know just starting there um

yeah i think what what makes america quite the unique scenario unique

case here globally is that they really are the country that was born out of

revolution yeah to the empire so the british empire whereas pretty much everywhere else was

especially here in canada we're just an evolution out of it so it's right in like the the dna of what made them a

sovereign state to begin with right to the point where it's in their constitution yeah so it's really hard i

think in the psyche of americans to try to it's almost like you're striking at the core of what makes them a sovereign

state yeah that's a good way to put it you know i i i agree and it's it's really i mean you know just speaking personally i

there's something so beautiful about the way america kind of came into being and how they sort of the founding fathers

decided that they wanted to um articulate a society

in a specific way and lay down sort of immutable laws and balance the power you know

splitting up the splitting up the balance of power and sort of the amount of foresight i think that that took and the amount of thought that must have

gone into that uh you know it's just such a it's just such a beautiful story and and really is tabula rasa of

countries yeah yeah completely starting from a blank slate if we had the ideal situation on how to create you know

bearing down on 2000 years of knowledge you know how would we go about doing it right whereas everything else was an

evolution out of something else right this was literally starting from scratch and when you think of the um

uh you know they've been doing pretty good uh like um [Music] uh forget it now 1789 was the

declaration of 1776 declaration of independence i i forget i'm not american so i don't have this

stuff at my fingertips but yeah and not the 16 one yeah yeah but uh but yeah so it's it's um

you know that's uh uh that's a long time for a lot of these rules to kind of um

uh continue to be respected and to continue to have support among most of the population or

or at least a good portion of the population um yeah so all right let's see

in canada so the impetus for this episode really um is there were a few shootings the one in

valdez texas um where the um this you know madman i don't know what

else you would call them uh decided to go in and kill a bunch of children um and

there was also something in buffalo which happened i think a week before that you know what i'm talking about i

do but you know never it's interesting that we're doing this podcast now because never before have you been so almost disinterested because it's

happening it feels like it's happening at such a rate you can only emotionally give yourself yeah that space so often

you know yeah it's kind of the same story repeated over and over for me and um it's terrible because it's a life

you know it's uh yeah and we got to solve the issues of course but um you know maybe it's coming out of the

post-covered world too it's just like i'm just focused on like rebuilding my business and getting back to a healthy lifestyle i don't know how much time and

energy i really even have to put into the details because the details seem to just you know you have two or three variations of the same story coming at

you all the time yeah yeah and and you wonder i guess the concern is you

know that people just become desensitized to this because it's you know it's just horrifying to think of

having you know you have your kids in a school and you can't get to them and you

know there's an active shooter it just goes so beyond the beyond uh the thought of what anybody would

even consider you know if this was a 70s disaster movie like the towering inferno or beside an adventure like it literally

is a disaster movie but like we're in like part 20 now yeah yeah yeah exactly and so the sequels keep coming out and

you're like oh i wonder what happens in this one shooting like you've never seen it before right right we have seen it

before yeah yeah yeah so it's unfortunate so i certainly am um you know because we're

going to talk about you know the different sides to this and i think that i don't think there's anybody like i

mean it is it is certainly tragic and i definitely can see the argument i can definitely see

the argument of wanting to ban guns and take away guns and everything like that and

the thing with policy is um you know when you're when you're creating public policy and when you're trying to create

uh you know keeping to certain um principles like first principles that you have as a society it's important to

look at the details and it's important not to um not to legislate or not to form

legislation based on um you know um

emotions that haven't been properly processed uh so um in canada you know our uh uh the trudeau

government has put forth or so there's a bill c-21 and

it was um i think last year or two years ago whenever they had the last election was that po that was during covet that's

right that's right only only hughes would call it 2021 yeah yeah so we had um yeah fall 2021 is i think

when this bill originally kind of died uh because um parliament was dissolved and we had um

so what we what we have here bill c21 basically says i think originally um

there was um there were some laws on the books with this bill but they've now

been it's now the bill has now been rewritten to include a um you know i don't actually have the

actual uh language of it but it's basically you can no longer buy it has to do with

handguns mostly and you can no longer buy handguns sell handguns um

uh yeah what i have is like it's a national freeze on the purchase sale importation and transfer on handguns

right uh and yeah removing gun licenses from people with acts of domestic violence or criminal harassment such as stalking or

restraining orders right right okay yeah that sounds right um so this was this

was announced by um trudeau um in the wake of the of all the shootings

and the shooting in buffalo and um you know

i'll try not to get too um you know you know i find this very um you know of course he would of course he

would announce it then but i think there's something that happens here

um well okay let's just i don't want to jump around here just to cut you off yeah for a brief second it is what i what i disdain so much about this is

taking people's emotions from like events and then trying to then pass legislation through based on

emotion rather than actual statistical fact well yeah and also the the linking of like what's happening in the u.s as

if the same thing would be likely to happen like did we say we need to shut down our can-do reactors when chernobyl

blew up right yeah exactly did you see what happened we need to do something here although i have to say living

somewhat near the pickering power plant at the time i was a little old you know i i was terrified of the whole

chernobyl drift or whatever and then i was like what is this thing at pickering because i remember our school went there or something like

i always drive around it yeah just take a wide berth um

so uh yes the shootings in canada the shootings in the us are uh vastly

different we did have a big shooting uh that happened here in nova scotia like it was the sort of i think the biggest

mass shooting we've ever had and like you just don't hear about really i i i would be hard-pressed well i mean

there have been some in toronto um you know in the danforth yeah for sure so there have been some yeah and there was

the um was it the montreal massacre or the year right right yeah and the at the university so i mean it happens and just

like it happens globally yeah um but at a much lower clip let's say right right right

yeah so um anyway so the idea is this this bill bill c21 will be um

um uh posited to um uh to parliament and everybody will vote

for it and uh you know it will likely pass in the fall of this year

um so to so i guess to start it off how do you

feel about how do you feel about gun ownership uh dimitri because we we haven't talked really yet yeah it's one of those issues we don't really i

thought a lot about it this week i've never been into guns i don't really care about guns much um but at the same time i have had a chance

last couple years work of a lot of americans who are really into this sort of stuff and um the ones i've worked with um

treat their guns are so much like reverence right it's like a golfer in their golf club sort of thing they go on a sunday morning they go to the shooting

range to hit some balls or you go to shooting range to fire off your rifle and they're some of the most outstanding

law-abiding um trustworthy humans have ever met yeah so i can only imagine what it feels like

emotionally to be told and there are a significant number of people who in that in the population of 300 million people

in the states who are like that to be so like you're a bad person because you want this gun and you know by having your gun you're going to be you're in

charge of what you know partly responsible for what happened in a school shooting right that just doesn't sit well with me yeah but um

and i love the metaphor that's used often because i do feel it um when you know the gun is like your symbol of your

um uh your independence your your freedom um

putting a check and balance on the state um the only thing i have to say though is i think that's a bit of a trojan horse i don't think in the end if the

fbi or army show up at the front door of your steps like really stop any sizeable government

uh incursion on your say freedoms with your whatever selection of guns you have

well you had waco right like they they had apparently uh sort of a stash of weapons and that kind of postponed the

fbi going in for a long time yeah but yeah i know what you mean i always think of that clash song um when they knock

down your front door how are you going to come and uh amazing with your hands on your head or the trigger of your gun yeah and like at that moment you want to

be like you you it riles you up you're right i totally feel it so if this bill passes and then they say okay now we

want to do a buy back or you have to surrender your gun yeah am i going to go out guns blazing just

you'll never take my gun you know what like no i'm not i got to be like all right well this i'll complain about it but i'm like i'm not going to die for it

right but it's like um but it is but i think people sometimes i think people in the states maybe would you

know what i mean like you know what i mean the passion for it and the well it's in their constitution it's in their dna can you imagine if your father owned

a gun your grandfather or a gun and your great grandfather and god it does become cultural after a period of time yeah and then to say you're going to take this

almost cultural symbol out of my life right and what does it symbolize my freedom my independence and maybe family

heirloom or whatever's passed down straight into the core of you know that sort of thing but i'm just going to make it a little more canadian

on the opposite side like for a moment if if the freedom convoy trucker blockade in ottawa if they were armed

with guns would the situation have unfolded any differently would guns have helped the

cause my suspicion is they wouldn't have you know when you mount a

citizenry against uh who's like not going to be organized and fractured against even a small number of highly

disciplined military people whether it be police or whoever they hired for that you just

it would have only made things worse so what so i get always strike back to like what actually creates those

freedoms in a country to allow these things to be to to allow the citizens to successfully push back against the

government when their rights are being infringed on is it the gun or is that just a bit of a false god

yeah um that's a good point yeah because i you know just saying that i i was thinking

probably along the lines of you and yeah i think if anything if they had guns it would have been worse like it would have

been easier for the government to sort of malign the people or much more potential things to go wrong

and the end result is against the small but disciplined um police force inevitably i think you're still going to

lose yeah yeah for sure and if it escalates then you've just totally lost the whole

legitimacy of your cause true right so i don't see it being the right way out of it but that i i agree

with you um but i don't think like i also think okay that's fine for for that like isolated cases but what if that

kind of thing escalates you know what if you have um pockets all over the country yeah and

then and the government gets even more aggressive with taking away rights right like eventually like a a population

might form or you know go to clubs every corner so yeah you're right you can create your own yeah if you get enough

people together then it's like okay well we don't want to stand for this anymore and nothing seems to it just seems to get worse so it's like and then if you

have nothing but your you know like swiss army knife like it's not going to be i mean at least if you at least if

you have a gun there's some manner of um you can

yeah push back yeah yeah um yeah i don't know if diverting a bit but i completely

the symbolism of what they will do i'm 100 behind i just don't know if the mechanism of actually gun ownership is

the right thing to do like i'm just like i'll expand on it like good education a strong family structure some money in

the bank so you can actually afford to take time off to protest you know so having your financial independence yes

you're not tied down by debt you know i think a lot of those things you put you put 2 300 000 people in queens park even

unarmed you can get the government's attention right right so what creates that mass

movement is it the action of the gun or is it like how

do we build individuals to be stronger and have more freedoms in order to be able to push back against the government

right because then i wonder sometimes does the government actually think like you know we'll let you think it's the

gun that actually stops us from running over your life because then it diverts you from actually putting your focus where it should be

as a you know like you're a strong family structure uh some uh

high level of education financial independence home ownership uh judicial system that is 100

separate from the political system like that's really for me the framework which which what creates a much stronger

society and the gun may actually be a distraction to that i think i think you're right with

canadian society i think that's accurate i think in the the us governments would think twice because i

think that there are enough people that own guns i forget the number but even in canada like critical mass now like we're

just not going to go in sort of things well i mean there's like what i for i forget the number but i even know like in canada it's like there are a million

handguns yeah i think four million people are part of the nra it's like actually signed up oh in the

u.s yeah so that's that's a sizable percentage of the population and i think yeah and i think it's like i mean i'm

just saying this number i don't even know if it's right i was gonna say like 25 sort of sticks in my mind as there's 25 gun ownership i think i heard 100

million guns okay so it's probably and you yeah and obviously there are lots of interests that have

a lot more um you know people would have more than one gun for example yeah you're right when it hits critical mass levels of

that nature over such a large landmass like the america is the much harder time to contain it i mean to

your point during lockdowns are the states that are were more open i'm going to be a little generalizing

let's say they're more southern and more republic red states i'm going to assume they have higher gun ownership

so would the gun ownership be part of the philosophical leanings of a state to such a degree that it actually was

one of the elements in the recipe that allowed them to break free of these ridiculous mandates sooner than the blue

states yeah it's interesting because it could have been two two different way it could be two different

things there could be that a they're um you know because they're high gun ownership the

you know cumulatively the state eventually is like okay like let's kind of back off a little on some of these mandates just knowing that that that um

sort of um presence is there or is it just the fact that those kinds of people have you know

they're because there's more of them they have just voted in parties that are more likely to represent their own philosophical but the gun is part of

that energy yeah as a part of that the symbolic freedom um i want minimal government i want my you know my human

rights elevated to the top tier you know importance yeah you know maybe it's more

individualistic based versus a community-based philosophy right but you know you could argue what makes a better

society um and uh trying to fix things from a community-based level or let's build each individual so strong

that therefore by default when you have a lot of strong individuals you have a strong community yeah you know like i

i'm attracted to that point of view quite a bit as i get older yeah so that's why symbolically i i love

the idea of the gun i just don't know from practical terms especially in a place like canada does it actually do something so well you

said earlier that um if you have or if you said a thousand or ten thousand people showing up in

queen's park you know that's going to get the government's attention or even 200 000 or whatever huge number yeah

okay but so but we've also talked on the show about um some laws that have been getting passed

recently which are limiting the amount of people where they can protest these are these are the trojan horses is it

actually the gun that's going to be creating your freedoms or should we be watching these laws like a hawk

well or yes i mean but that's that's the my point is that if we start getting situations where people can't really

even protest in great numbers anymore you really get that sort of diffusion of people and it's not you don't have those

pockets of like potency anymore so maybe the idea is the gun is something where

you know at least if people have that that's one fundamental right that it's like well and again it's not a fundament

considered a fundamental right in canada i'm saying i'm speaking philosophically like um you know if if people have the

right to own a gun then maybe there is a little bit of that pushback a smaller number to your point i think a

smaller number of people will be more potent if they're armed versus uh you know five thousand people armed at

queen's park is gonna at least be equally as potent as two hundred thousand people unarmed and to your

point how do you get 200 000 people to actually show up if the weather's bad or you're not allowed to stand on the streets and there's limited amount of

green space you know yeah they kind of have cornered off these zones where you're allowed to legally protest to only hold a certain number of people

anyways right i believe it's in calgary or at least somewhere in alberta that you are no longer allowed to protest

while standing on the streets so they talk about the trucks all the time blocking the roads but the truth is it's anything blocking the roads even

people so what is a legal protest when you create the parameters around it that are so narrow you can never actually hit

mass acceptance anyways yeah so maybe having a gun is actually something that makes a smaller number more potent right

yeah yeah it's something to consider yeah yeah it

it is i am i think so like one of the reasons well the reason i think the americans enshrined this in the

constitution was that it was to protect themselves from a tyrannical government right and you know

we might not have like as much as we might find our government sort of inching in that direction you know it

would be hard-pressed to you know sort of say in good faith that that um you know that uh the trudeau government are

complete tyrants right like i mean uh when you compare them against like actual tyrants from the past um i

wouldn't say that there that there aren't those leanings and i and but you know you start seeing some of these

rights being eroded and you start thinking like you know if this kind of attitude whether it's

with trudeau or with some other you know whoever the next prime minister is um or uh you start seeing this kind of go down

the road 10 to 15 years and we get some of these you know social credit scores things

that we've been talking about like kind of start rolling out then you know maybe though the gun starts looking a little

more attractive for canadians too right i think the the gene for authoritarian tendencies that was expressed in 2000 bc

will come out in a certain way versus 0ad versus 2000 a.d

you know you're still seeing those tendencies in a modern form come out and they need to be kept and checked you know whether it's uh

cleopatra or you know alexander the great or you know justin trudeau is the same issue right it's the same

you should never put him in the same sentence no yeah particularly yeah i put those though

actually i kind of like the other two but um but you get my point you know like a nero or something like that yeah yeah yeah hitler or whatever yeah um

don't you think uh it's amazing though just cycle i know you're you're quite into psychology and just

thinking of sort of almost like the mass psyche of just human beings and how this thing really does just crop up it's

the same problems over and and over again it's a constant battle so again you know the gun may be a part of the solution but are we actually getting to

the core issues here yeah that's why sometimes i feel like it's a false god or a trojan horse like what is actually happening because we're repeating like

justin trudeau may just be the your you know 2022 version of a dictator from 2000 years ago this is just the face of

dictatorship in a modern technological right highly industrialized society yeah in a democratic society so it's kind of

like you can't start merging parties together and forcing through votes it's not that far away from the authoritarian

rule right and that tendency is there yeah and you've got to then ask yourself what are the mechanisms we have to check

that tendency and are they holding up yeah are they being eroded right you know so yeah the symbolism i'm with you i'll

say it like i love the idea of the gun i just don't know if in practicality in

countries other than america it's going to really be the solution we're looking for

you know um okay so i've got my gun license it's funny though again with the differences

between uh the two countries like i've never felt passionate about it or anything like it's cool like you know

it's cool having it uh but it's um you know it was it was a big process to get the license it was you go

um so in canada you have to get a uh possession uh it's called a pal possession and

acquisition license i think it is and it's um you know i i mean it's it's three days like you

have to go to a classroom for a couple days and uh you know you have to get um

two people to sign off on you that aren't family so like um um

just trying to imagine like being somebody i mean really like how lonely do you have to be if you

don't have like at least two people you know that can sign up it already puts you in the in cell category but you know

what the funny thing is when i when i got in and get some people to sign up for you yeah yeah um but the the funny thing is is like it

wasn't it's not easy like it i think it's probably maybe the circles i run in or whatever is and probably

similar with you like just going up to a friend of yours and being like hey uh do you mind signing this um reference so i

can buy a gun like it's kind of an awkward thing to ask because like the person like i did i did have somebody

who said no and they were kind of thought i was joking when i was saying that i was and i was like no i'm i'm getting one like you know and he he

didn't want to sign off and i'm like okay

but it is kind of a weird ask like in canada there's just not that culture so it's like and especially in again i've

never been wrong i don't even know i would be i'd be shocked if somebody asked me yeah yeah can you imagine yeah

just like a friend of yours just like hey yeah like because you're like what are they what is what is this for quite frank even though i don't really have a

position on this if my brothers were to come and ask me to sign off i don't know if i'd actually sign it i know because it it's like is this a cry for help yeah

like am i complicit in some way yeah am i aiding some weird thing yeah would i would be frozen i'd have to think about

it yeah it's it's it really is um i mean and it's an awkward thing like it's it's

it's but it's funny though it's just really contrast contrasted with the states where i think it's you know i don't think you even

need to sign off i think you can just go and buy one and uh there is some measure of background checks i think but

i don't know how much but in canada there are a lot of buyers the rcmp investigates you for like you know um i

don't know it's minimum of a month or six weeks or something where um i can't remember i think they called a couple

people they called my partner to you know who i live with so um

and like you know i assume she gave a glowing reference because eventually i got it but yeah and it took a long time

to get it so it's not like uh you know it's not like there aren't gun there isn't gun control there's a registry and

all that sort of stuff because oh my sure for sure oh and i get letters from them you have to change and there are so many rules and restrictions like you

can't have so if i have a gun um like i can't have my gun outside of my safe i had to buy a

safe just to keep it locked and you know i'm the only one who knows the combination so it's like

uh it becomes a very like i can take it to the gun range to shoot and uh i can

take it out to clean it so that's about it like wow so otherwise it must be locked all the time yeah so so it's not

like it's like like there's a lot uh you know i've gotten a gun control laws

around that um that's why i so when i hear these kinds of you know things

announced um you know in canada where it's like oh we were going to start stop the sales i

mean like nobody is the people who are committing crimes are not the people who are buying guns like the whole process

like if they were going to do that they wouldn't have if somebody's planning to commit a crime you don't go out and spend you know uh a weekend you know

book book and booked well in advance by the way because there's always a backlog yeah and if that person i'm just willing to bit

a lot of times they have quite a few guns on them you know like you know what yeah yeah so would they have to individually sign up

for each and every gun yeah and they're probably not going to go through that process you know and like that guy and therefore that gun must be then

criminally purchased right right in order to get the quantity of guns they'd want to do mass damage with yeah

yeah um that's funny you say that though my canadian genes must have been triggering because as we were planning

this podcast i was thinking to myself like what would fix the united states like what couldn't they do it something like you're mandated to keep it inside a

lock safe or something and only bring it out and then i could only imagine well it's my gun i'll sleep with it underneath my pillow if i want to yeah

you know like how do you get around that but here in canada we just don't do that you know don't think this in in new york

in the 80s to institute some law that if your child breaks a window the parents if they're under if the child is under 18 the parents are charged

so it was that sort of like they would you know find you know where does the root cause of the problem so i was thinking about the same thing in the

states if someone 17 year old were to take papa or mama's gun and go kill people at some point aren't the parents

also responsible i think that that's not a bad idea you know like if you're yeah if it's if they're under 18 they're in

your house and you're not keeping your gun locked in a safe and they use that gun to commit a crime then yeah i think

there is and you may not have to keep it under you know like it may be a little bit like a hybrid not quite as canadian

where you're mandated let's say to keep it inside a safe but if you don't and it's used for something criminal you're

in charge right right right so it's the onus would be on the gun owner that's a much more whether you're talking about

sort of the the even the coveted mandates and stuff like that it's like putting more

responsibility onto the onto the person which is where it should be in a society you know and it's like

with real responsibility it's like i didn't know my son was going to take it and shoot someone well guess

what you should have known it's your son and it's your gun right right right yeah there is some response at some point the

point is if it goes over 18 and what do you do i like a legal nightmare let's say you can make it 21 or something i don't

know you can't drink in the states until you're 21. yeah whatever the age is and you know like i think the details are

things that could be sorted out but it's um i think there are there's definitely ways to do these kinds of things without just saying you

can't buy a gun yeah um there is a middle ground there is a middle ground so the guy um and i don't you know they

do something on the daily wire where they don't actually and i didn't know this um but um where they don't and they

don't say the name of the killer yeah if whenever any shooting or anything like that they don't say and i i didn't

realize that that and i heard that i was like you know what that's kind of a great idea so i won't say the name of the guy

although his name really fits to a t the nova scotia shooter he uh you know i

don't say his name but it is it sounds like he's he's like he sounds like a horrible human being just by his name

well i mean you're getting because a lot of them just want to live in you know the history books sort of thing you might be the teddy yeah for sure right

yeah well so you just did it sir ted bundy well you just you just named the name well i mean that one's already out

there all right you know bcad sort of thing yeah i mean going back to greek history one of the

seven uh wonders of the ancient world was this giant temple i think in what is now western turkey artemis i forget

and the point is um someone some citizen greek citizen decided well the way i'll become

really famous in history is if i get no one for the person to be to burn down this temple yeah so that one of the

seven wonders was burnt down for precisely this sort of notoriety and so they made it a a thing in their culture

that that name would never be spoken of again yeah good right so so you know these are problems we've been wrestling

with since antiquity yeah you know there's that um and not to get all up in

a soapbox but there's that uh a netflix documentary on that guy and i i i forget

his name and i don't want to say it anyway but it's the guy who like was killing those cats and then he ended up

remember he was a fashion he was where he wanted to be a fashion model or something and he um

and he said he was like he did this whole thing where he pretended that carla hamoco he basically went to the news and and denied any

relationship with karla homoka and but like nobody like nobody had said that they were in one we just sort of

did that as a seedling to be like oh who's this guy that is not in a relationship with karma homoka and so

anyway he's like completely insane and he ended up you know murdering this uh murdering this guy and killing a bunch

of cats which is anyway was he like after bleach blonde hair the guy killed was asian i believe

yes yeah i do remember him so yeah i won't say the name but i think i remember yeah yeah yeah and then um

anyway the netflix documentary now on principle i didn't want i'm curious about that kind of thing like it's it's like any of that kind of stuff is

interesting but i purposely didn't watch it because it was just so it's bad energy it was like yeah it is bad energy

and it's like supporting you know that notoriety quest um i mean you know and i won't say that i've never watched like

like true crime stuff is kind of interesting but it's like um i don't know it is uh we gotta sort

of that's one of the things we can do is sort of take the that power away from people who would do something like it's

like walking away from a fight almost like why even it might you know you have to reciprocate almost for it to elevate to a certain point so you just walk away

from the story you know yeah just to see you i'm not even playing with this yeah you're nobody and you're going to stay

nobody right right um anyway so this guy this guy in nova scotia shot up all you know it went on a

absolute rampage worst in canadian history and um and all of his guns i i i

actually i don't know if all of them but most of them uh were smuggled in from the u.s so like you said like about

getting you know if you're going to do it you're probably going to end up getting a bunch of them and you're probably going to do

it illegally because why would you go through the whole process there would be a lot of people who signed off who were really wrong yeah

yeah yeah two signatures per gun right right they fooled a lot of people well it's per license but yeah yeah per

license yeah once you have a license you can get many guns then yeah so you have there are prohibited weapons which you

can't get like there are certain weapons that you know if you're a police officer or there's another one even that's dubious

there's assault weapons assault style weapons isn't every weapon an assault of some sort you know like there is and the

i think the details to some extent matter because it's like you know it's the difference between having you

know if somebody has like a howitzer you know outside on their lawn then it's like okay like that's

seems dangerous i can see the argument for i can say again like you know i can see the

argument from a public safety perspective for a lot of these things but my position is that something like

well first of all i think it's disingenuous the way this is being done i don't think that we have the problem that the united states has i don't think

there's a need to ban handguns or to you know do a freezer the police say every year that crime is going down

and we you know citizens like man the city is getting worse we never used to have these issues then somebody will come on you know the news but actually

you know statistics are better this year and uh it's been a downward trajectory for a 20 to 30 year period and the

average person's like what are you talking about if you're so much different when we were kids we'd ride bicycles to nine o'clock at night now we

walk our kids to school because we don't know what's going on so i always get caught between those two feelings like is it truly safer now or not

so i i actually did do a little research on that and um because i might my thinking was always that

a lot of these problems have always existed so that it's it probably happens like first of all you know even in

america the chances of you getting shot by a gun are sort of killed by a gun i guess um

are like le it's more likely that you'd be struck by lightning it's five times more likely that you'd be struck by lightning than killed by a

gun in the states so and that's not even taking into consideration whether it's um uh

you know it's not like that like lightning is random like if you're in a low crime area and everything then you're it's even lower than that so it's

like so these arguments that come out that are like oh like oh look at all these shootings and everything it's like i get the i get the emotion behind it um

and and i won't even say like i would say in the united states yeah that probably if there was some gun control law

i would expect is i think it's a reasonable thing to expect that crime does come down or that gun related violence comes down a little bit but

that being said a lot of the stuff is happening like all these like shootings in the city a lot of them are happening with illegal guns anyway and

you have to understand that you're like you're not getting something for nothing it's not like well like what do you need a gun for anyway like it's that that

mentality of like i'll decide what somebody else can want or what somebody else can have um

i i think it's dangerous to have when we have all these rights being eroded all the time it's like everybody has

something that they don't want taken away right so like and i get that the gun is more um you know dangerous and but the people

i think overwhelmingly the people that are buying these things like you know like people that are legally just going to

target shooting or whatever are getting them for um like they're going through all these

steps because they don't intend to do anything bad with them and they want them for protection i think the people that actually have such reverence for

the gun in like a like to care for it and to learn and get better at it it's like it's a sport for them you know like

oh for shipping or golfing or something so yeah did you find any stats at all um

in terms of the total sum of uh shootings in the states how many come from like inner city gangs versus like

actually mass shootings at schools i i don't know about the us i i know um in terms of canada how many

you know in terms of the years like how the trajectory of whether there's more or less or whatever

um but i don't know uh i mean i have heard anecdotally that it is a lot more that just happened you

know the like the school shooting scenario is relatively rare in terms of the total number like for

every 1000 people who get shot by a gun in the states uh let's say you know

monthly or whatever the number might be um what percentage of that 100 000 comes from inner city versus school shootings

like a factor of 99 to 1 95 90 like it's really exceedingly my point is

it's not going to solve the vast majority of the problems having more gun laws right yeah yeah exactly like a lot like

chicago for example is just drowning in you know um crime right now because if you could just shut down the city of

chicago and pretend never existed all right actually you know yeah that sort of thing right so yeah so you're right

so what are we actually going to achieve and net sum by creating all these laws yeah yeah and it's it's terrible because

i think some laws like you were saying the canadian version of them could go a long way and help at least give people the sense of responsibility and security

about such ownership of a weapon but would it actually like i believe i did see like even um

here the canadian um the police chiefs are saying you know more more regulations are not going to stop the

number of handguns actually circulating in the city right right these are the police chiefs yeah so they must be

sitting on some data here like you know where are the actual guns coming from and what percentage are these gums guns

uh being you know allocated to the actual crimes that are happening yeah right are really high yeah so the uh toronto

toronto police deputy chief did say that uh um you know guns that were used in

crimes uh last year that um of the ones that they could trace 86

percent of them were smuggled into canada from the u.s so they weren't even legally obtained so it's like

so the this certainly seems like political opportunism and you know you have um

trudeau announcing this in the wake of two shootings in a country that wasn't us it has completely different laws on

this and uh and now saying that they you know because there's a lot of support for for a lot

of people just aren't gun owners that is a devastating stat towards those who are pro gun control

yeah because at best if they were to achieve 100 success with the new rules

they wish they'll have a reduction of 14 and the other 18 86 will still be

occurring right and you know and i would say that's even because i mean you'll certainly get

people arguing like well even 14 is too many and like and you know certainly like everybody

you know nobody wants anybody to die but here's the thing is like

i i understand the argument of people who say look nobody should have any guns because it's just even if you have one

gun and it goes off and die if somebody dies from it that's two one too many and yes that you know nobody wants anybody

to die however when i got my license there were there were like sort of things i had to say to

everybody so everybody wouldn't think i was insane but like um you know i would say like well i want to go to target practice and i think a

lot of people do this it's like you know oh they would like the sporting of shooting guns yeah it's cool it's fun to do like and you can kind of improve with

it and everything like that so there is that um but it's the truth is like i don't do a

lot of target practice i don't i i every once in a while i'll go with my friend to the um to the shooting range and it's

kind of fun but it's not like i you know there are a lot of other things that i would like to do too that i would rather

do but the main reason i got it was because i i'm concerned about the same thing

that the people the sort of founding fathers in america were concerned about and that is the the tyranny of a government or the or either that or the

complete breakdown of society and you know ironically i got this just before the um the kovid um pandemic kind

of started and i was like well see like when i started well i was like imagine if every

gun handgun owner was assuming it's a handgun like you have but like every handgun owner

in canada did exactly what you did like i not i'm kind of gun neutral but i think i'm gonna buy one it's more for

the political representation of the rights of being a free citizen i'm gonna get it all done perfectly

legally and do what they say and keep it inside my box locked the one person knows the thing the code is me

and then all of a sudden let's say out of the 20 25 million adults we have in canada

each person has a gun that does have a symbolic um gesture towards the ruling government

how far the citizenry is going to go along with things right you know what i mean like man the

population doesn't trust us they'll never use those guns they'll never pull them out if we need to bully them with

the army we can but they are weary of expanding powers yeah

and you know and they've shown that through the purchase of this weapon yeah

you know there is something symbolic about i'm not saying whatever we were arguing a little bit before about the effect would it could actually be you

know something that would change the way government who knows but symbolically i have to

agree with you there's something there i think it would say we have a strong independence free thinking

willing to do it themselves populist and we need to govern them then lightly and appropriately

yeah i mean you can even look at the fact that trudeau didn't actually ban guns

outright um maybe and i don't know for sure if this is his motivation but maybe there was something to be like okay he'll get the

political points for what he did do because a lot of people support that um

and look we live in a democratic society so like like it's not that i think like i disagree with that but you know if this

is what most people want then you know that's why that's why we you know you can't have everything you know i

can't i can't have everything that i want as a citizen i have to be able to you know argue my point or make my case

and then if everybody wants it the other way then so the facts have to come out too when the when the media becomes just

a uh you know a propaganda arm for the government people can make emotional base decisions yeah

yeah like um i i wonder how much of the thought went into um the trudeau government's decision on this that like

okay we better not say like and we're going to take you know you have to forfeit or surrender your

guns all the people that if there's a million guns in canada that's a lot of people and that's you know a bit of a

political blowback but probably not because a lot of those people aren't going to vote for trudeau anyway just statistically speaking um

but there would be the possibility for there being like a lot more of like you know maybe there

would be an armed rally you know like or something like that carrying around their little suitcases that are locked

like fighting by the law yeah um like uh the suitcase and pulp fiction all right

yeah uh but yeah you're right you could you could the government would have to at some point sit back and say well if

each each purchase of a gun is sort of a vote how are the populists voting

right we have like 25 30 million people that said no we don't want that kind of society and i'm showing you by

purchasing a gun not that the gun will ever be used it's just the act of actually doing such a

thing tells the government there's only so big the populist wants you to be right yeah we want a limitation on your

powers yeah and we like just like an arms race we pray to never use any of these things

but all the major countries in the world have nuclear weapons yeah right it kind of creates a stalemate you know like a

strong population is a peaceful population to a large degree and i think some of this also when you think of um

you know you think of i think the russian army for example like in what's happening in ukraine like i bet there's you know a good deal of them that are

not supporting what's we're certainly sending a lot of handguns to citizens there yeah that's true yeah yeah yeah no

problem there um but uh but when you think of the when you think of the russian army going into these villages

that are like uh you know fairly similar ethnically and everything and it's a fairly like

i guess what was my point here that i think that it's it's one thing to say like if if the

if say the trudeau government want to put forth some mandate that you have to

um i don't know everybody has to forfeit their television sets or something like ridiculous but like um so then worst

case scenario they send in the army to go do that it's one thing if the army goes in and they have an unarmed

population are just like complaining and maybe they feel bad about what they're doing but they go in and they take it anyway um what happens if but but if

people are armed and the army is has to sort of enforce some um arbitrary you know something that

doesn't sit right with them in the first place then maybe they'll still think twice and they'll be like you know what like i don't even agree with this and

these people are armed so it's more dangerous for me like there's a little more like i think that genuinely the people

like in the armed services you know though and police are the people that actually do want to serve like um the society

right like for the most part so when you get like um governments giving rules that don't sit right with

them um i think it might give them that little extra incentive if you know if you do

have people who own guns they might be like not only do i not agree with this but i also don't want to get into a

situation where you know somebody's armed and i'm going in there and then they're like um some something else goes

down um it's another layer to prevent that that erosion of rights yeah whether it's

a large layer a substantial layer i don't we can argue all the details of that but yeah there's i'm i'm starting

to change my opinion as i'm talking to you here a bit because i was calling it you know a false god or uh what else did i say a false god or a

trojan horse of sorts right you know good governance is really the way to go about it and i still believe all that but perhaps

i kind of liked the thought that came out that this kind of creates like a cold war an arms race a bit and it just the tension alone

keeps the peace yeah yeah exactly yeah i i think that that's i think you hit the nail on the head

like it's it's it's the um it's a constant tug of war you know like

against those who are in power and those that don't have power it doesn't matter like like the government by definition

they have things they want to get done and in a sense democracy slows that down yeah exactly right so they're like well

we just need to get this done you know you know by the time the people vote for climate change well the world will no longer exist we need to have power yeah

that's true and you know insert whatever is the agenda but the point is they're looking for more efficient ways of doing

things i think that's why there's always a tug of war towards um you know freedoms of the individual towards efficiency of the state yeah

so there's an interesting quote um i love this quote by edward snowden and

uh um you know think what you will about him i won't sort of comment on my opinion or whatever but like he um

i think this is a really great quote um he's talking about privacy here and um

uh in the context of it this is in his uh um book i forget the name of it now but like or actually one of his books so

i think he has more now but um he says i'll just read it to refuse to correct to refuse to claim your privacy

is actually deceded either to a state trespassing its constitutional restraints or to a private business

ultimately saying that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying that you don't care about freedom of speech

because you have nothing to say and so i would say that in context with some of these rights that are being

rooted i know that it's not popular i know that in canada especially you know gun rights is a

a bit of a no-brainer for a lot of people it's like of course people shouldn't have guns you know what i mean and like these kind of arguments i think

people gar uh sort of view as specious where it's like you know if i was saying like you know i want to have a gun

because i'm worried about the tyranny of a government right like it's it's like first of all i would argue nobody

nobody ever thinks their government is going to turn tyrannical but the past is littered with examples of it happening right um

we're we're i'll just interrupt you but i think we make a a very potentially fatal error here in canada in that we

are a new country uh born in the uh really who came to rise in the most uh

70 years of the most peace and prosperity the world has ever known and we've never really seen bad

governance so we have been uh acclimatized to being like naive to the actual dangers in the

world yeah really we've had 70 years since world war ii of the most peace and most prosperity and generally good governance

yeah so to have this you know doomsday cloud looming over us and therefore we need these freedoms is something that i

think for a large you know for a large percentage of the population is outside the scope of their everyday thinking

yeah you know that's a good point i i agree we're naive yeah we've been very soft yeah we've been blessed you know um

and uh that's where you know education going back to other things other than the gun that can protect your freedoms you know being well educated

and glow and looking at the world on a global scale and understanding you know the arc of time and history

and power and the psychology behind this and the financial motives

um then you start to see a lot more clearly and you can have the benefits of living in such a free society knowing that

these things are always on the horizon and it's up to us to actually protect it from never growing to that extent yeah

kind of like a like a tumor like you know it's there and you got to keep it in check right you know you'll never get it get rid of it completely let's say

but you're you're aware of it you know and you just keep going instead of like i've enjoyed perfect health my whole life i'll just eat whatever i want

and all of a sudden something tragic happens when you're 60. like i wish i had no one when i was 40. right right yeah that's a good analogy right just

know that it's there and you have to be part of the process and keeping it in check yeah

yeah and um i think this this quote by snowden while it was said about privacy you know you could certainly compare it

to um something like the gun laws or something like any of these rights where if you look at them individually you

might say like well i don't know i don't need um you know like smoking and smoking restaurants or whatever like for the

government to come up and say you can't you can't smoke in restaurants anymore it's a public health

thing it's like you know first of all i don't smoke but and but i don't think that that's a fair law to put forth um and the reason i

don't think so is because i just think that the you know this is something that um the market can decide for itself

right like somebody allows smoking in the restaurant great like all the smokers will go there most likely i think what would happen is naturally

most people would just not want to go to a restaurant that's filled with smoke so eventually that can become the tyranny of the minority too though

well what percentage of canadians before they created no smoking in clubs let's say smoked like that's less than half

yeah 100 of the clubs allowed smoking so i don't know if i've never seen prior

to that this is going from well i i know you you know would go through this uh because you were it never bothered me i

accepted what you know you know being in that age group i accepted that's what a club is you know but when i think about it mathematically i don't think the

market forces were there it's even though that the majority of people weren't smoking uh they were never strong enough to

actually say well we'll get rid of smokers and not let them into this nightclub i never saw it prior to like being legislated no but then you have an

industrious um nightclub owner who says you know what this nightclub you can't smoke in but it never happened no well but maybe it

should have maybe there i i don't know did it never happen like i i've never um i i think i remember there being a

restaurant once that was smokeless and it was called smoke smokeless joes like that right okay but there's restaurants

that you eat in like a total darkness like those are like well like those one-off trendy things what i'm saying if

if they're if the where there's a will there's a way you know like there's if there's people that feel strongly enough enough if there's

such a health outcry and you see that everybody's you know who's smoking is getting like cancer um people are going

to eventually say like you know what i don't want to go in a place where there's all this secondhand smoke and they'll go to another club if you have the other option that's where it becomes

culturalized like you're just like well i guess i don't prefer clubs of smoke but that's just the way they've always been but then you just accept it but

then it's like i i don't know i i i don't or to your point you can say restaurants because all ages can eat in

restaurants but in nightclub in order to drink you have to be 19 and older in canada so as a an adult you make your

adult decision live by the sword die by the sword you're an adult now so i would i would actually differentiate between

clubs because of the alcohol age limits in order to get in versus a restaurant where you're bringing small children to

maybe but they still have a chance not a choice not to go to the restaurant and you still have maybe maybe you can say

something like go get the ventilation like you have to have like the smoking section non-smoking section has to be more than just like didn't society get

better when we got rid of that rule it doesn't to me it doesn't matter that's beside the point even if it did

right like i like i recognize that you know i i when i see somebody smoking now i'm like that seems archaic

you know that causes cancer right you're riding a bicycle without a helmet you know you know it becomes normal

normalized normalized but but it's bad to me that it did like it's bad that that's the way it became normalized like

it would have been better i think if it was a i think we talked about this before in terms of like if you try to

force something down somebody's throat it doesn't um it doesn't resonate in the same way as if it organically kind of um

um the sort of the change happened organic could you argue i'll take just take the opposite could you argue then that's the

role of the state to kind of create a new culture within a country like you to take a bit of a slightly more dangerous

um analogy like a why stop at a red light who's to tell you to stop your car but

you know we're all better off at this you know you say well you know a car might be coming the other direction so we'll just make everything four-way stops sort of thing

um well i mean i could make an argument with that i i've made the argument before that you know that the traffic

law is like you see i can make an argument for it i don't necessarily believe that that's yeah you

know eventually like for example like you know in my mind it's like okay you can speed you can go

whatever speed you want and just the audubon like everywhere you can do even on even on even right in front of a

schoolyard you want to you want to go 140 kilometers an hour go ahead but you kill a kid or you kill anybody it's life

in prison or the death penalty yeah in that vein like i am a sort of a

free speech absolutist and that you know the the classical example you can't yell fire in a movie theater like well

like why not right because if you're if you're caught out and you're wrong there'll be a consequence for that so it's your your

words your actions your your consequences and also as a person listening to someone yelling fire i have

some personal responsibility to at least turn my head before we all trample out the door and

see is there actually a fire right right like there's a bit of that too yeah where did that come from that kid in the front like does he you know what i mean

you look down you don't see any fire it's like okay well he's probably lying yeah it's i guess in each and every

scenario you're gonna have to sit there and take a look at it and just like you know what is the the correct answer here so

just to address your your question because it's a good question and like i'm not saying that there shouldn't be any laws you know i think that it's

the government's job to create laws and it's the people's job to make sure those laws don't go too far and i think that

we've gotten really like you said um we've become yeah just kind of we've

allowed um we're comfortable and we let the government kind of take things away

because they're like well that seems to make sense you know like well of course i of course it makes sense to wear masks like or of course it makes sense to

mandate vaccines why wouldn't somebody want to be safe and you start getting these like things which are really personal choices like um you know you

you want to go to a club that has smoking in it then um you know that's your choice to go to that club like you

don't have to go there nobody's putting a gun to your head and if the if and you know what if you can't find any club that doesn't have like if no business

owner comes forth and says like here's a non-smoking club which would to seem to me it would be a brilliant idea because you'd get a you know the more that

smoking is maligned and the more that smoking is you know just kind of proven how dangerous it is then why wouldn't

you why wouldn't there be a club owner who would do that and then the then and then people would see how successful they were

today someone come around and say i'm gonna make a smoking club i applied for a special license or something yeah see where the people decide to go yeah for

sure and um you know that stuff i i think i think it's better when those things happen organically and you start and we

really have to limit what um the government is dipping its hand into and it comes back to this edward snowden

quote where it's like you know just because you don't necessarily um have anything to hide doesn't mean that you

shouldn't uh that you shouldn't care about privacy right so it's like that's not saying communist

russia you know you're not going to if you have nothing to uh fear you have nothing to if you have nothing to hide

you don't have to fear right right yeah it's exactly like we hear that being repeated in western society today yeah

which only shows you how much we're actually picking up in some of this um totalitarian authoritarian type of

rhetoric in our own messaging here yeah i've actually quoted that before and it's it's quite terrifying because we're

just like and you know talking about you know the average person like we just had elections here for uh

ontario in our province and it was the lowest voter turnout i think of all time percentage-wise oh was it yeah and so

you know you're talking about all these individual laws and it's all we can do to get people to come out and vote once at once every four years

yeah yeah you know and then from that vote you know stem all these new laws it seems you know you know just sort of propagate afterwards yeah so people are

really looking to to your point like they're deferring like will i even vote what difference does it make yeah and

they're you're lucky to get their opinion on everything once every four years yeah it is good to see i must say which is a negative which is a negative

thing because then they're not putting any personal responsibility on how their own laws are shaping in their own country right you can't even get them to

get come out and vote for a single leader yeah i must say i had a little bit of voter

apathy in this last provincial election because i wasn't really i mean i i voted for um somebody who wasn't one of the

major parties uh and even that it was kind of like i don't know much about them i kind of

went on their website and i was like sounds good because it was but it was more like almost a protest vote like i didn't necessarily the um

uh you know any anyway like there was no major party that was really representing everything

i did like i think there were a lot of things that the conservative party did normally i would have voted for the conservatives but it was they're just a

very like i don't know seemed very heavy-handed with a lot of the kovid stuff and um

i i that's sort of where i uh where where i went the the incredible thing

here was that you know we had the conservative party running ontario which was the party that was responsible for all the shutdowns in

the last two years but ironically it was the leader doug ford who was then the

one more talking about recovering the economy and opening things up so the man that actually shut us down was took the

position of yeah let's get past this and open up and the other two parties that were still sort of you know you know we

must mandate vaccines for all children going to school and masking should still be they actually became the lockdown

parties right right so it was quite quite so i think that switcheroo kind of threw everybody's like mental

game off here a bit yeah like how can the guy that told this lockdown now be the guy that's actually out of the major

parties you know promoting us to reopen up you don't believe anything at that point right yeah yeah yeah exactly and the

other two choices like really we're going to do more of this you know like we don't want to do this and i was very

happy i don't know if for me the striking lesson the night of the elections was that the here in ontario the liberal

and the ndp leaders for the provincial elections were the only two leaders that were

going around shaking hands with face masks on still you know that's quite something right

yeah and guess which to step down unprecedentedly that night those two

yeah because they did so horribly in the polls right so those which were wearing masks the night of the election now

have had to step down that that gave me so much hope and the fact that i saw so many other small

parties on the ballot yeah like there's actually a fragmentation that's happening within society where people

are like we're done with this and i'm willing to risk my vote on a smaller party just so my voice can be heard

yeah and yeah and yeah not just smart smaller parties but smaller parties that lean right so it's like you have sure yeah

the green are always there under the green yeah yeah too um but i mean it's good to see

fractured um fractured parties sorry it's good to see the um it's good to see these smaller

parties kind of coming up but also the conservatives still winning an overwhelming majority but

you know and i'm not this isn't like a right-wing left-wing i like i i just it's um i

i'm trying to say i don't have i don't have anything like i think that this was a difficult crisis to manage and um but

thought i found the ford government a little inconsistent and um there were a few things that they did that i was you

know didn't support so it's nice that i was able to you know i also was pretty sure they

were gonna win this election so it was nice to have the option of like you know what i'd rather go with one of the other parties that are you know

they sort of have nothing to lose at the moment because they don't they aren't in power but like i think by sort of voting for these smaller ones i

can support that kind of larger movement to keep you know like i said it's always a tug of war right so you've got like

this um well my theory on this was that i i consider myself sort of a

disenfranchised liberal i'm a very boring sort of center of the road canadian but the entire politics of the

country overall seems to have shifted so far to the left and then the parties are only about are only concerned about

staying in power like how do i bring like the national consciousness more

centered i need to tug on the right a little bit so in order to pull those parties that have gone center left more

back to the center so i almost see like a it's like a war for the um like a tug of war for the consciousness

of the the soul of the country almost yeah so like you said there was more fragmentation of parties on the right-hand side and their growth to me

was great because it's saying there's more voices on that side that the larger they become the more legitimate they become yeah and therefore

center-ish right parties like the conservatives must listen to those parties or they're going to bleed votes to that side right right and then that

pulls the narrative a little bit more detention back to the center yeah yeah you know otherwise i think the greatest danger is that you just keep voting for

the same part of your whole life because like well that's my team and you know i'm a fan for life and that's it i think that's what they kind of bank on

yeah your loyalty because it's emotional my parents are like that you know they know which party brought them to canada

and gave them a great life but that was 60 years ago right yeah it's a much different world

now you you once said um [Music] that you

truly believe i'm paraphrasing but you truly believe that the overwhelming majority of people just want the best

for everyone yeah and like i agree i i think that the problem is not like you know because you said that everything

was tilting very left i think it it really just comes down to a lot of apathy a lot of things people

being very busy and being you know it comes back to like the media and people seeing like short clips

and people on the left are very good at sort of um maximizing that uh that that medium well

the rhetoric on the left is always the more you know universal um humane uh community oriented right right and with

very few words you can create a slogan that is very hard to have a nuanced conversation against yeah right and

therefore like aren't you of course you know climate change and like yeah i i'm sure right i'm all honest you know me

personally like i'm as green as a person can probably be but um you know don't politicize it

beyond that which it is right the hell what's that noise

listening to us yeah it's like that thing in my car

so the you know i remember back in um when was it it was the last time

i so morrissey is a front man of the smiths i used to be

uh and uh has had quite a splendid solo career since then as well um anyway he

you know very opinionated guy and um he stopped coming to canada to do concerts

because of uh the seal trade um i think that was the reason he's

obviously a big animal rights activist you know i i'm i'm a huge

morrissey fan in terms of his uh um his music um and sometimes in terms

of his politics but sometimes things you know i personalize these things too much like it's just um um and i it's one of

those situations where it's hard to you it's you should never really idolize you know um really anybody that's like

you know what i mean like because you really get into these situations where like you know it's almost like a betrayal like a personal betrayal if

like you know he stopped touring in canada i was like you know i was like maybe i'll just stop listening to him or something just like i lasted like a week

but um anyway i remember him the last concert i saw him here in i think he comes back now actually i just haven't

been to see him for a while but like uh for the euro the quarry tour and he he was on stage and he's like

he said you know um i have a you know i had to change the album cover of my of you or the quarry for canada because you

can't have a gun on the on the front on the cover yeah and i was like oh i didn't know that either so but that makes sense

because i was like yeah because if you look at the british cover or whatever it's like he's holding a tommy gun and then in in the um in ours it's just like

a close-up of his face and i always just thought it was like an artistic choice or whatever you know he's he's not i was living in greece so i had

the european version i didn't even think about that oh yeah never you're giving me new information here so so he uh yeah

i assume in that one he had the full you know the full gun yeah yeah and the uh

yeah what i what i think of gangster i think of morrissey um don't we all uh the um maybe he is the

original gangster the guy's doing whatever he wants whenever sure yeah man like he's kind of cool yeah he's he's

you know and the funny thing is some of the stuff he's said and done and over the years you're like he just keeps getting away with it because he's just

like he's a very good example of a powerful individual yeah someone who's

struggled of self-actualization but has made it pretty high yeah maslow's hierarchy you know right right it's kind

of in a sense that anybody that's what his words don't bother me so much come like he's just expressing himself and he feels

insulated enough to be able to do so yeah yeah it's kind of cool i don't have to agree with it why do i have to agree with it you know i always i always liked

um you know and it's obviously one of the great tragedies that the smiths broke up but like the um

i always remember johnny mars quote and not to get down a whole thing here but i remember johnny marsh quote of saying like what is it like was that song

golden lights you know that one where it's like some like it's a johnny marshall no no it's a um it's a smith song but it's

like it's a real it's probably it might be in their worst song but it's just it and it's some cover of like some i don't

know 50s movie star did something you know how he got into that whole course and johnny mara was like you know i didn't

start a rock band so i could do these kinds of songs or whatever and i think that was like around that point that they were kind of like started going

yeah it was splitting up but like you know mercy's always like he was so specific about how they designed the covers and how he did like he knew

exactly what he wanted all the way through and you have to appreciate that like articulation of like um anyway he's a man of vision and he's

been changing and growing throughout the years i don't know i think he's a wonderful example of a self-actualized human being who's struggled he has his

own struggles he's pretty open about his struggles you know yeah yeah i always wonder about well nature make a man of me yet sort of thing you know like it's

it's i think the struggle is so it's so in your face and it's wonderful it's very raw it is quite punk in a

sense or gangster yeah yeah i mean in a sense it is like and he sings about some stuff that's like you know uh very

you have to really have guts to sing about certain some of the stuff that they use especially with this mess um but like still now he

does uh anyway uh where was i going with that um so the but anyway so here's my point is

that like that's a ridiculous law that you can't have a gun and i probably originated um you know maybe it was like

i can just imagine like in the 80s there was probably some like rap thing that they had a gun and you

know there was some like parent group that was like oh we can't we don't want our kids listening to that so they were like if you see a picture of a gun right

my god and these are the kinds of things it's like you know we have to uh as a society

be more uh recognize that what we want for laws are

things that are much more broad in perspective like we don't want um

like like the less the less government intervention the better you know as a general rule i have an interesting sort

of thing on this is it the freedom to or the freedom from so you know for instance you know

outlawing theft murder rape you know it outlaws one's freedom to

do such right horrific things but it also helps protect one's freedom from

having their possessions being stolen being murdered or having one's body violated so this you know it's a very

delicate balance you know except one i think and i'm just you know i haven't thought

this through but i one seems to imply like

like the onus is on like the onus is on oneself to do the freedom too whereas on the other it's

like the onus is on somebody else true true yeah and nine times out of ten i do fall on the uh

what strengthens the responsibility of the individual right as opposed to being dictated to

from an external force yeah yeah so like i guess all this is just to i understand

the argument like you know um for more gun control i i i i i can understand so

i think we should talk more broadly and speak of canada and america because um right now it's in

terms of canada i don't i i think that it's we our gun laws are some of the tightest

in the world and i don't think that we need to increase them like well when the police chiefs come out and tell you these laws are not going to

actually eliminate the number of criminal activity happening by guns yeah these are the people that are on the front lines you know theoretically

losing men on the job men and women on the job two people with criminals with guns you

know you got to take that to heart you do but i think the argument from the side of um somebody who does support

more gun control laws is they would say well uh but what are what like what are you

arguing against if somebody says like you you have to mandate you have to wear a mask or you have to get a vaccine i think at least

the more tolerant um people on the other side of the issue will be like okay like we get that they don't necessarily want

to put something in their body or whatever there's some measure of like bodily autonomy this i think is like

well what do you need a gun for like so you can go play shoot em up at a thing like it the the it doesn't seem like uh when you weigh

those things that one like one seems much more um uh valuable than the other like if you

if you like if you're just taking away somebody's gun it's sure the economy is much more personal yeah

yeah so so i can understand people saying like okay even if the police chiefs are saying that it still gets more guns out of the country or whatever

but i think that the the the problem with that kind of reasoning is that you could sort of say that about

anything if you're you're sort of saying that about something that you don't have a vested interest in if you don't go out and you don't go to a gun range or

anything sure if you think that the government's just fine you don't worry about like some future where they might be able to take you know they might get

a little more tyrannical then that's fine too i mean you know history is replete with examples where that has happened but you know to each their own

but what you're saying with this is like not only do i not believe that that stuff's going to happen i

don't want anybody else to believe it either and i'm going to take away something that they

i'm going to take away their right to something else because i don't think that they should have it because it doesn't seem like a big deal to me true

but if they're right to something else is causing a pandemic whether it be viral or criminal you know um you could

say okay for the greater good we need to have some refrigerant on our rights but back to the stats yeah 86 of the you

know crime is happening and guns that have been illegally brought into the country right you're not really getting to the core issue yeah it's like you

know and so whenever you treat it like a court sort of yeah i think it's to treat it like you know can we reduce the tumor

by 14 will that help sure but you still got 86 percent of the tumor how about how do we fix the core issue here right

because that's going to create the if we're all about this that's what's going to create the greater good right and if you're really serious about it then go

get tighter border controls you know what i mean do something like that invest in technology that will you know

um well i was able to say something then i thought maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea just scanning cars as they came in because we're talking about

digital tracking and digital ids and you know social credit scores of all these like quite heavy-handed totalitarian

technocratic solutions on individual citizens can't we just apply those at the border

right and leave me alone yeah yeah you know yeah that will take care of 86 of your

problem right like leave me alone yeah go to where the problem is and leave the individual citizen alone yeah like you

know you really in my opinion you should always just be really have to make your case to infringe on people's rights even

if you don't agree with the rights like i don't smoke and i think you know when i see people smoking i think to myself

like you know like i used to smoke like jay jason you used to smoke and you and you stopped smoking yeah um

how did that that didn't happen through government intervention exactly yeah no it happened i will say there was

probably it probably did to some extent because of the high uh taxes on it and the constant sort of

propaganda and um you know not i don't say that in a uh pejorative sense like i

recognize that the stuff is you know actually bad for you but like

um i don't know if i would have like eventually i eventually one day i was just like you know what i can't run as

well if i'm smoking so i was like for me that was the the final decision but um i

also up until then you know i would buy them and you know they had those like ads on the cigarettes would show like a

you know a pregnant woman or like that would show like um you know they just there's one to just like show the inside

of like a lung or something and it's just like jesus like you know um so when you have that like that's

probably subconsciously yeah i think i think it probably if i'm honest you know as much as i as low as i am to admit it

was more information correct information you know this wasn't information that was debatable at this

point right right we're like well you know yeah you know 14 percent of the population only has

outlined like this is going to happen if i keep doing this with a high correlation yeah yeah you know yeah exactly so um but

i don't i want to be able to come to that decision on my own and i think i would have like i was i was going i

never thought i would smoke forever i just so they'd never banned smoking they just gave information that slowly it

happened organically over time correct so kind of like that you're thinking about let the club sort of peter out

over time or you know just other rules yeah give information but let it actually take root deeply

deeply seated in the actual population as opposed to sort of just tacked on as a new law as of you know january 1st

tomorrow you can't do xyz yeah well it feels very artificial fake and forced i would say yes i would say that

this is this is kind of the worst way of doing this so just outright sort of stopping something

uh but also i didn't like the fact that there was so many like there were tax dollars spent on you know um

the the sort of propaganda arm of the criminal law you know um

um like stigmatizing smoking and everything like that and like you well you can't smoke within this far of a public

building everything like that like and now i understand that it's nuanced i understand that it's like in terms of the tax laws people say like oh look all

the money is saved and people not going having to get cancer or whatever it's like okay yeah fine but like overall i

don't think it's ever a good idea to sort of strong-arm whether it's like socially strong-arming or

um mandating but i will say the socially strong-arming is preferable to the mandating so that's with the smoking um

are you happy with smoking obviously yeah that's great yeah i um i still have dreams where i'm smoking

which is weird but yeah i had are they dreams that are more like nightmares yeah because i'm like oh like i just

broke my record of like because it's been you know i don't know 15 years now that i haven't smoked or something so

it's i forgot i remember of course yeah yeah smokers at all lately and i just kind of just

thought maybe you're smoking less i didn't know you actually it's quite a revelation here today folks oh wow yeah

between that and the morrissey cover yeah yeah so uh but anyway you know

um i think so the point with all this is this you know there's no like i recognize that the majority of

canadians probably support this um um you know the freezing of sales of

handguns and everything but they they support it emotionally yeah exactly as do i emotionally you

know i don't care to own a gun and guns kill people so you just you know you kind of do this sort of like well then

less guns means less killing people you know how can you argue against such a thing but like we said earlier of 86

you're not actually getting the core issues here yeah so and i think that the problem is like you have um you know

this is the trudeau government lost nothing by doing this like anybody who was any of the people who are hardcore

you know yeah they're like you're going to they weren't going to vote for him anyway so he's he's not losing anything by doing this politically um i think the

problem is that we have to always be careful when when the government decides

to take something away from us as a society it's a normalization of these activities exactly right like now we're

saying like they used to say in ussr if you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear

yeah and it becomes normalized that type of way of thinking yeah yeah so um you know and and it's unlikely

that that's going to harm uh trudeau in the next election i uh you know i hope some i hope uh hit

the litany of other um uh but just like masking js so jason's like sometimes like i think governments

just want to look like they're doing something whether it actually has any effect on the population or not right

yeah did masking actually work most people will tell you statistically show me one randomized control trial that

actually proves that masking works you won't find one okay but they wanted to look like they were

doing something and in the case of you know the shooting in the united states the federal government here wants to look like they're doing something yeah

whether whether it will actually have an effect the police chief seem to think no right what do you make of like i know you know

if we shift this a little bit to america and like i do think that um you know you talk about and you know

see youtube videos online and i know some people in the states too who are i actually know somebody who owns like a gun a gun store and uh

yeah they love their guns like it is um they're very passionate they know a lot about them and yeah like like you i

found that most of them seem or all the ones i know seem very responsible with them and they're very like

um take it seriously you know i find if i can just be generalized and maybe you can tell me if you felt this or not

they're people that are actually quite they don't they love their freedom but they also have a tremendous respect for authority

right they respect the police the military you know that sort of stuff but to a limit you know but they have a high

regard for them yeah these are not the type of people that will be usually um joining campaign to say defund the

police right yeah so therefore they're okay with authority and policing and the

arming of police right right it's almost like they just want to have a balance like a tit-for-tat sort of thing yeah you know yeah no it's i

i would agree with that it's a very interesting psychology because then those who say defund the police are the same people are saying get rid of guns

in society in general they've gone about it in a different different way yeah just get rid of all sorts of but which

one is the most pragmatic solution yeah yeah so you know i just um

as we're sitting here i pulled up some stats here on reader's digest from 2020 but you know taking these as they as

they come you know like total u.s gun violence deaths in 2020 were about 43

000 people in the united states of which 24 000 ish were suicide 19 000 homicide

that's pretty devastating but this much smaller portions of the pie mass murders

21 and mass shootings 611. so if you were to combine those to

around 650 compared to the homicides of 20 000 you know and what percentage of the

homicides are happening from guns that were legally acquired probably right uh back to somewhere

around the 80 85 15 ratio so are all these are all these laws actually going

to be fixing the bulk of the problem yeah and i think that you know because you could always i think the argument

would be like that's that's interesting because like the smallest portion of that is what has

the most media coverage and that's probably why most people have this idea that um you know guns are this massive

problem uh in in in this year guns guns are a massive problem but i don't know if the solutions are going to be

uh addressing um the bulk of the problem yeah yeah and you know again like i'm you know i'm not

trying to minimize anything like it and the us is a different animal from canada um in terms of gun gun ownership

uh it's just that um it's what it's what's drawing the public's attention and it's a there just

needs to be sort of sober looks at these um uh like every time there's a mass shooting

it's always the same thing that you see played out on the news it's like you know the democratic politicians screaming at the republicans to like

stop letting the nra influence them or whatever and it's like um i don't know if the nra is as big of a

you know lobby as they they were in the past or not but like you you know then you get people and then you get the

republicans sort of doing this awkward dance where they don't want to uh well the nra is very well organized and they

have a tight relationship with the gun manufacturers too so it becomes its own little tough little walnut to crack right but

but to take you know a gun control stance you know i just i don't know if it's the right solutions you know guns

compared to cancers there's about 40 000 people who die of breast cancer every year in the united states 45 000 die of

pancreatic cancer and roughly 40 000 who die of gun violence right yeah so

that context is something you know if you can get rid of it wouldn't you want to get rid of it it's a cancer yeah

like my analogy before it's a tumor but how do we but how do we address the bulk of the tumor you know from the

addressing the mass shootings which were a very very small percentage of the overall yeah you know infectious rate

let's call it or are you going to address the where the bulk of the problem is yeah that's where i come back to like i know it sounds like such an

old-fashioned guy but like you know family values education um freedom leads to prosperity prosperity

leads to you know a better lifestyle you know i just don't um yeah i don't know if this is a this is a

band-aid a lot of these things that are not going to that looks good and gets certainly the politicians a lot of you know

good face time on the tv but it doesn't i don't see it as being addressing i'm all about you know practical results i

don't know if this is going to bring the results we wish it to have that it's being sold as yeah

yeah i think that there are uh i think there's something to that i think that like when you look at and i don't know

how um you know if you just want to look at the mass shootings and again this is a small

portion of it although let's look at let's look at all of them because i think the majority of violent crime comes from inner cities and you have is

it's usually the families aren't exactly you know it's usually poverty there's usually um like there's a reason why

these people are are in gangs or you know they feel that they need to shoot

somebody else's you know it's like where the gun becomes more prominent yeah yeah yeah or or like a symbol of um

masculinity or something in some cultures um or some some subcultures but uh

i think there's something to that whole like needing stronger family stronger you know role models um i think a lot of

these ones and i don't know if it's just that they're the more sensationalized ones like you know the guy in the on the

danforth here in toronto where it was like um you know of the incel variety you know so like um

and just for those who are listening that um uh you know um in toronto a few

years ago on a popular in the sort of greek neighborhood in toronto um it uh this

guy uh just opened fire and started killed i don't know you know 14 people

or somewhere in the tens yeah and he just you know just finished his friends yeah yeah went on a rampage

families eating dinners you know right right and um and like you know so that's you know he

was part of and you see this a lot with school shootings where it's like part of these like little you know it's like almost like they

aren't socialized properly like they don't have like maybe a lot of friends or they don't have like they're very

engaged online they have people they you know tend to gravitate toward you know

forums that would you know sort of i wouldn't say promote this kind of thing but like you know people

supporting like radical action and and things like that uh

well in this particular case i think there was a little bit of that in cell i think the gun was illegally acquired

and uh yeah i think you might throw in a little bit of isis into that too there was a bit of with a pinch of ice a little pinch of

ices there you got the hot cocktail going what is it really i didn't know that yeah i didn't know that um

okay well i mean so you to be attracted to such a ideology you already have to be quite on

the edge as a person yeah yeah suicidal of sorts you know so you get into you know certainly mental illness

you get into um but i think mental illness is like this is another show we need to do is

one on mental illness because i think that there's a lot of the things that you would

sort of traditionally refer to as mental illness like depression or you know anxiety what you know schizophrenia

there's a ton of ton of different ones but i think there's also it's almost like our culture has has

developed its own kind of like like look like people spending a lot of

time online in these little silos where they're reinforcing these kind of radical views

um over time that really eats away at somebody's personality and how they then they view the world through sort of a

skewed lens so like whether that's technically a mental illness or not like those kinds of situations are a problem

like these young especially young boys aren't being socialized in a way that is that is

helping them integrate properly into society well when you're the last one picked for the sports team and you know

you you know when you're a child you learn to you learn so many things when you can be socialized in a normal way like you get

into a fist fight what is it all about how do you stop such a thing from happening how do you reconcile these differences and then you

take these life lessons into the adult world but you've had your sort of grooming as a child you're able to make

your mistakes in sort of a confined box and then you know how to actually behave properly within norms of society but if

you are silent off and uh on your phone and you are not socializing because it's difficult

sometimes for some of these young kids to socialize they now have a legitimate out let's say

and they never get to develop to a lesser degree get to develop these uh secondary

life uh you know lessons yeah yeah like is this happening

more now first of all is it happening more now uh and secondly

to the people that it's happening to like this this kind of um almost uh archetype of the person of the like kind

of loner you know um internet uh obsess you know i don't know i just i

feel so old when i'm saying things like that uh but like um somebody who's just like spending all their time on you know

um uh digital games poll or something like that like digital echo chambers you know

you're gonna find your tribe in there and like yeah man me too i feel the same i wish xyz you know yeah yeah that sort

of thing and there's nothing to pull you back right right yeah and yeah if you don't have the the sort of real world um um

um structure there to to like kind of keep you grounded um yeah you get into

these uh situations where there's there's novels you know i got narny on the turkish delight you remember the

little the little treat that the white witch gives uh which was the boy that was first caught

peter i believe his name was and then he just uh you know you lose your mind you lose your memory you lose your desires

for the real world you're actually living in a fantasy world yeah or odysseus on the island of calypso right

now and then you're you're trapped on your own little siloed world away from it at some point you have to come back to reality yeah you know

um we've created now um these little silos where you don't have to come back to reality and you can find like-minded people which may not have your

best mental health interests at heart yeah yeah yeah and i guess that's it right like

maybe it's maybe it's that simple like i mean i i just think of like when we grew up it wasn't like you know we were in

that kind of almost hybrid zone where you know i think i well i was fully grown up by the time

you know the internet came around like when i was in university so it was like i'd already like gone through the formative years but like i don't ever

remember you know like you said like it's like you learn all of those ways of adjusting to society like you either get

in the fights or you you know whatever the bullying stuff um you know you sort of work that out almost like in a

natural way and i don't know what is different now other than you know i'm just thinking out loud like i

don't i don't have sort of the answers i'm just like i guess that person's growing up now and they're bullied online too maybe

very simple reality matters you know you just and when you're in virtual reality of sorts which we're

only encouraging more of the metaverse and everything else you're gonna you're not going to understand then how to how

to negotiate your your being in the real world right and then you find yourself

at a great disadvantage to those who are more highly acclimatized to the real world and you feel even more isolated

from the real world yeah and you only bury yourself more into the island of calypso where you don't have to

socialize with the rest of the world until you finally at some point snap you know right

um you know what's interesting uh i'm just thinking about the the incels i

don't know if they're really if that's still a thing or if it's i believe they still yeah it's a thing and it's a growing thing with more social

isolationism happening through the digital means but and i think because i think like not to be glib about this but

isn't that like a big part of the problems these guys just aren't getting laid you know like is it just is it that simple like there's just because like

when you're younger you sort of learn the socializations and then you're like okay if i wanted to you know date this

girl then i have to behave in a certain way and you kind of like tone down certain things or you tweak your personality to look as a good pro

prospective mate you know you have to bring something of value to the table right and if you are not bringing

something to the value table what traditionally happens is you go work on yourself get in shape get a good haircut get a

degree get a job make yourself more prospectively you know as a prospective mate and more attractive and if if

you're not developing these parts of your personality of your character of your being and you're just in your

own little you're going to feel like well i got nothing to lose because the world doesn't want me anyways right you know and then you're going to get into

some echo chamber where that sort of thought is encouraged and amplified you know and uh it's just you're not

doing yourself or society any as an individual um any any benefit you throw a gun into their hand or something you

got even you know it's a keg powder keg ready to blow up right right

um have you heard of this um sorry just it just comes back to just like an ill-functioning society of which

the gun is simply an extension of that the core problem is an ill-running society

well i i i would say i wouldn't necessarily say the gun the gun is that i would say

that these shootings like these people like these people that are going on yeah but if you put if you no one's gonna like mass stab somebody to death

right so if you're saying that if the gun isn't there then they wouldn't do it in the first place they may do something but it won't have such a large negative

effect that's the the number one yeah for me like the number one you know critique against your point is the gun

is just so efficient at killing people you know that um if you're you put that

in their hands and it's just you're giving them way too much uh firepower in order to enact their fantasies so we'll

look at think of this situation though if you have um um and i've heard i've heard this argued

and i maybe i know that this sounds a little uh um i can see an argument against this

but like uh if you have say a school shooter going in armed to the teeth all the guns obtained illegally will say for example

um and then they go in and then you have some you know they they get through whatever

like security at the school if that's something that they even have and then they go and they start shooting kids

um wouldn't it be better to have like a teacher who's like you know has a legal firearm they happen to carry it with

them and then they can actually do something about it as opposed to waiting until you know the police arrive and like in the case of the ovaldi like

didn't i mean i don't know the details but i from what i heard they didn't do anything like that i that's something you know

i think professionals have to answer you know like how do you how can you effectively train uh you know uh

teaching staff to you know because could there be stats i'm just playing devil's advocate that if you then meet a shooter

who's got more guns than you and you have a single handgun and you're not particularly super trained at it and

they have been practicing for six months because they've been unemployed in the mother's basement practicing at the shooting range every day yeah what is

the likelihood of success well what's a deterrent maybe but right you know engaging somebody in the

hallway and they've got you know some flash bombs and grenades and everything else and you've got like a pistol well

isn't it better than trying the other room isn't it better than nothing like i mean he's going to shoot him anyway right like

as far as i could tell he was shooting everybody he could yeah i guess i guess at that moment if you're cowering underneath the desk as a teacher um

you're just like they're coming so i wish i had something in my hand um yeah so perhaps but uh i can only think that

then just like if you bring you're just i would i can see again i'm not an expert but i could see maybe a professor

let's say a police officer here saying just lock the door and stay away from the person and do not engage them that

will have a better rate of success so maybe the doors have like some sort of like lockdowns like boom they just

bolt automatically and you can't get in you know like that might have a better like health benefit than actually arming

the teachers sure i and you know i'm not saying like i i think that that i don't love that argument of saying like well

we just need more security of the schools like nobody wants to live in uh you know a fort fortress kind of like

you know imagine that's your kid's first you know experience in the real world yeah but i would say uh that other

countries do have those kinds of things like they um maybe that's not how like you know what look america's got their own thing going

on with guns and like we're kind of coming from a canadian perspective so it's hard like it really is something that you know

i don't i don't like that idea either i don't think it's great to have you know schools be security zones but i mean you

like um if you if you want to sort of step back from that i guess we kind of can as

canadians we have that sort of luxury of going back and being like well look at canada it's actually not that bad here but like you know if you did have a mass

shooter in canada having somebody who did have a legal firearm with them would have been

you know that really is a way to effectively stop a shooter if um if there is one i mean in the rare

circumstances where there is one because again these people are for the most the vast majority of them are obtaining

these weapons illegally anyway like it's not like they're like signing up for their pal license waiting like you know while the rcmp does this background

check and then and then going and shooting something i don't know i think teachers have a

a hard enough time attracting good quality teachers one of them finding good quality teachers that can actually pick up firearms so yeah you know so you

know a lot about history and i got a marksman i got the job because i'm a crack shot

no i agree i agree yeah i i it just i just somewhere my instincts is i need to talk to a professional about this

because i just don't know if doing that will have the effect if it has the effect i'm all behind it sure but i need

to see like some data behind that um i would just go for a more simple answer just than just like just a

regular citizen like make the doors bulletproof and they're automatically locked yeah

it's probably expensive sure but guns aren't cheap either i mean the bulletproof door bang it automatically it's electronic and it

locks you know yeah yes that's a fire hazard or you know what i mean like

take your chances yeah yeah pick it up there's always something yeah but but i just you know if you could keep the person in the hallway you know and all

the where the kids are locked down i would say there's something to some sort of efficiency in that like we did have a

mass shooter at the uh parliament in ottawa a couple years ago and i think it was our prime minister the time that hid

in the closet it was that true is that true yeah yeah stephen harper hid in a closet somewhere

as the shooter went away so what i'm trying to say if you can corridor yourself off and hunker down behind something that is relatively bulletproof

yeah you probably have a like a low cost sufficient answer to the problem and

then certainly police stations maybe they have to be located within a certain distance of schools in the future so you

call them and they can be there in like you know a very you know predetermined by law set a time like two minutes max

they're there right so you don't have to actually have teachers with guns in the school just get the police who are

trained with guns to be at the school in a very short period of time yeah and in that interim you've hunkered down

everybody in the school as efficiently as you can right yeah i mean i i think those are probably

uh reasonable unreasonable ideas um you know there's talk in the states about putting in certain like

um barriers apparently this guy like drove the car right up and that was a big problem because it was you know it

was quicker for him to get in and um but you know putting barriers there and like there's all there are i think solutions

to these things that don't have to involve like taking away guns like i will say that you know some of the i you know banning

automatic rifles like there there are some like this is the kind of thing where it's like i i i do understand the

argument from the other side but there being some sort of gun control and i do think that is very dangerous if you have people with

you know assault style weapons um like if that's if that's something that is easier to obtain

um um because because there are no laws around it then that that can be a

problem i just think it's it's a kind of issue that people should tread more carefully on

than i i think that they are doing now because you just get the you know get the whole going back to a you know

previous episodes you get the whole virtue signaling i supports you know no yeah yeah yeah because guns kill people

so therefore right you kind of create your your argument that way you know i'm just

just being a little cartoonish what happened to the good old-fashioned like sleep grenades can teachers just like chuck them in the

hallway and everybody you know like put the person like you think they're wearing a mask that's prevented like i just i never tasers you know like why

does it always have to be just a gun yeah i guess i i don't know i mean maybe they do we're i i you know if that if

that sort of got out i think maybe some of them would wear masks like these people you see them um these shooters

they're they get all you know done up in military garb and everything like it's not this is it

they're they're this is their last 10 minutes on earth so perhaps yeah again i just like to hear professionals point of view like

cost effectiveness uh efficiency uh low level of training is sufficient you know like uh you could maybe say if to your

point a teacher has a gun they also have bulletproof vests in there so they feel at least a little more confident if they have to

confront an individual they have at least not just a gun but it takes 30 seconds or even less to put on a bulletproof vest it's something yeah you

know but yeah a sleep grenade a taser something a relative close distance to the actual police stations there's got

to be other solutions involved yeah which will probably have a much greater effect of reducing that that 14

that we're talking about right and and i would also say that it's probably something like in the states it's a polarized issue so like

wouldn't it make more sense to for the instead of just ranting at each other after every shooting maybe

try to find some compromise in there and think like okay what can we both do that we can all agree on like they all you

know presumably all agree that the shootings are bad so like let's uh you know let's find a way to agree on

the method and the apparatus we can put into place to deal with the shootings like as opposed to you know

one side wanting to ban guns the other side saying like we don't want to um you know you're not going to take our guns and like it's like it shouldn't be about

that it should be about the getting more granular with this situation and figuring out a solution there yeah i just find it overly simplified like they

got a gun i'll get a gun you know they kind of give the teacher the guns there's gotta be yeah yeah you want something i mean i regret saying that

just like he's using it as an example i'm just like like to me if you're gonna say the argument of like well uh

you know more guns are are bad it's like well yeah but like if you if you have an arm shooter going in is you know

strictly speaking binary binary question here like is it is it safer or less safe

if somebody else who is a legal gun owner has a gun and i think the answer is i think yes but uh yeah i i

i regret saying it because it's not i don't it's not that i think that we need more guns i just i just think that it's

like um the situation of this like school shooting sort of you know epidemic or

whatever you want to call there are other ways that we can kind of deal with multiple defense systems you know like

with ronald reagan in the 80s we had the arms race of the cold war and you know he created the star wars you know the targeting laser there was a multi was

another defensive mechanism in order to prevent such you know like a nuclear bomb from coming in from russia let's say okay so

you know instead of having a history teacher maybe there is a cop who's well trained for all this uh in

each school right but just one in the office and you never really see them for the most part you know right and they're very friendly and they go around and

talk to everybody but in the you know god forbid once uh every you know um in some way even if it happened once in

somebody's academic career of 13 year or 14 years in schools but at least that one person was there that one particular

day and they were perfectly trained for this moment yeah but putting that gun into a history teacher's hand i just don't think when push comes to shove

will they actually have what it takes to do what disaster them i i don't know yeah because that's the thing i mean if

you're just like you know it's like the nuclear reactor right like if for 20 years your job is just to sit there like

i'm thinking of homer simpson now you know just to say they're eating donuts it's like you know and then suddenly these alarms go off are you really going

to be they weren't trained for that moment whereas if you have that one police officer who's just like i've been waiting like my whole career for this

one time to happen right holy my god it's happening right now but this is what i'm paid for and this is my moment

you know so i don't like the idea of police in schools but i could see that you know as more like a

almost like a social armed social worker of sorts yeah you have like you know because a good rapport i don't like the

militarization of you know anything that has anything to do with children yeah you know but if you can do it in a soft

way that's more of a deterrent than anything right and you know and then other mechanisms like defense mechanisms

like i said bulletproof doors or whatever that are electronically engaged perhaps that would have a better effect

overall you know so um there are

like we talk about this stuff you know even having a cop in in a school or whatever and maybe

that is a good idea and not commenting on that but it's like it almost gives the impression that this

stuff is like happening all the time and it's extraordinarily rare that this would ever happen like the chances exactly exactly yeah yeah they might be

waiting their whole career like we have i you know i was not a fan when i first started seeing police officers in our malls in canada like oh that we're

becoming so americanized we have to have them walking around but in the end they have their one little office off to the side you know yeah yeah somebody had

something shoplifted they have somewhere to go and actually place a complaint right there's other things that can go on there other than just like the moment

they have to run out to the food court with their guns right sure yeah in the case of the you know the cop of the school maybe you know some kid bullies

another then they have to have a session with the cop there and like you know they could put the fear of god into them or whatever that's what i was getting

with the whole it can be more social worker pointed almost right yeah it's not just about that one moment but when

you need them they're there and they've been trained for this they've been professionally trained yeah for this one

moment yeah you know perhaps that's uh gonna i my guidance thing because i'm talking to you right now is that that

will have a greater effect than you know more gun control laws yeah yeah it yeah it's just the politics of

it all bothers me like when when this kind of came out it's nothing but politics yeah yeah because we're talking you know what we're doing right now

jason we're talking solutions yeah i think the other people are talking politics right where is the

pulse of the nation and that's what i'm going to say because therefore i'll get more votes yeah and we're actually going anything quite honest about this going

okay like we're just talking here with a cup of coffee like how do we solve the problem yeah and i never hear that level

of dialogue between our politicians yeah i think they're just simply going off the polls and they just want the votes

and off they go and you feel you feel better as a citizen but are you actually in a safer position right yeah no i i

would agree um yeah so i is there anything else you wanted to add or i i i hope that this i

mean you know i think we started off this episode wanting to talk uh about this um this upcoming bill in canada and

i don't know we didn't get him really into the nitty-gritty of the bill or anything but it's basically the gist of it anyway but do we really need to

because in the end like i said it's if it's just politics and we're trying to problem solve i it's pretty safe to say

this bill is not going to solve the problems we're trying to rectify here you know yeah for sure not and it is

just uh overall it becomes an another uh erosion of our rights and um

you know we just have to be aware of that of society that's the one takeaway i didn't even understand again and i hate to i sound like a you know a broken

record here but i can understand the argument about worrying about guns and i can understand not wanting guns to

proliferate like i'm not somebody who is like in love with guns i genuinely would be

have it because i'm concerned about uh sort of an overreach of government or society breaking down it's a you know it's a very cheap insurance policy as

far as i'm concerned for that but like i i i totally understand the idea that you don't want you know looser gun laws

or anything like that but i do think that we always as a society have to be very careful when the government wants

to take anything away from us regardless of whether it's something you have a personal interest in um [Music]

there's just you know it's it's an erosion that seems to be happening more and more and you

know it's like the frog who is you know put in a thing of water and it slowly heats up and by the time you realize uh

where you are you're burning alive yeah and perhaps i've approached this from a slightly different perspective and that you know your argument if someone breaks

into your house at least you have a gun in your in your house and therefore you know how to use it and perhaps you can you know make a better situation come

out of it i'm just approaching you like why is a person breaking into your house what has happened in the society that

has allowed that person to feel like they need to do such a thing in order to have a better life for themselves is it

that they had not have the upbringing they needed the education they needed and inevitably that's going to create a

better outcome for society if we get to the root cause rather than oh well we'll try our best for society sort of in the

interim go get yourself a gun and you know we'll have an arms race here and a bit of tension that part still bothers

me because i feel like we're not anything we're talking about gun control is not getting to the core reason why people are doing criminal activity to

begin with well you can ask them when they break in your house why they're doing it well they

have you a good point do you they want to talk

um no i i agree for sure there's you know a lot of problems a lot of like mental

illness poverty there are a lot of you know issues that need to be and those issues may never be rectified and

there's a certain percentage society no matter what you do are always going to be unhinged and therefore how do you police you know society i i know i can

see that you know i think we've touched on a lot of good points here today and it's been um i've shifted a little bit okay yeah

i didn't expect that at all you know yeah and again as canadians i think we're this issue is sort of like

abortion where it doesn't really have the same resonance as it does in the states um our laws are um

uh you know a lot different um but yeah and we have a greater quantity of middle

class and that really kind of gets we our core issues are less much less substantive

than let's say in america right so it's never been something that's really been at the forefront of like uh you know you move

into a new house uh do i need to put netflix high internet what about my security system that's not even that's

just a new thing really you know right and then like then what else a gun in my house like we never had to go there as a

society because we've had done a better job of balancing all the the key elements see well

and maybe part of this fear comes from you know being so close to the u.s and getting a lot of their media because you

know i'm thinking like because in the us and i could be wrong here and that's the way i think it is it's like if somebody

comes onto your property at least in some states um and you know you have the right to if

they're trying to steal something from you the right to shoot them is that what is that law in canada do you know you can't

you can't shoot them uh yes see so that part there if someone breaks into my house and i feel like my family's life

is at risk i will do everything to eliminate that risk and if it means

that i have to go to prison i certainly hope that isn't the case by by laws or actual reality in what i

have to do but you got to take it on first principles you eliminate the you eliminate the threat however you can

yeah like and i think you self-defense you can't like i think that there are you can still use self-defense but i

think it's pretty tricky and you better be sure that that person is going to try to delight you know exactly that's

that's the problem and that's those are the nuances that get left out of these laws so you're just left to be so like am i going to have the time to unlock my

safe load it like do all the things that i need to do to effectively defend myself like you know probably not

sort of like try to internalize these things like stop drop and roll deeply

yeah i don't even know how i got it out of the case it just it was all unconscious memory was there the truth is they

probably break in and you know the the is like one of the few things that's valuable is the gun so i just wouldn't

even bring it out because i would want them to steal her like jason let's make this interesting i got your code here 39 64. all right i'll

give you five seconds yeah yeah yeah well yeah i mean so you know the difference in the laws it's just such a

different philosophy um with the us and canada and it's just it's actually really interesting how it all sort of

evolved but that is something that i you know i would worry about just we don't have the freedom to sort of

defend our property or you know what i mean like or and you know not to say that you can go out and just shoot

somebody because they you know walked on your lawn or something but like you know if you think that your life is at risk or even that you think

somebody's going to steal something of yours like don't you have the right to stop them like yeah you know i don't

know outside of the house on the front lawn no obviously that's right you're no immediate threat but you know inside

your house yeah like what didn't our former prime minister say when somebody broke into his house uh

jean-christian and uh he actually grabbed them by the throat and i think and like

threw him out of the house or something and uh all right did that happen well i know he actually did grab something that thrown out you know and he did and i

think he grabbed like an inuit statue of some sort as his weapon or not really and i i

just remember the the funny i mean i really adore the french canadian accent and i love when we have prime ministers

that have french background like that but he's like when someone breaks into your house you take him out

yes man yeah he was pretty uh he was pretty hard it's quite but it's quite simple like someone breaks into your

house yeah you take them out very basic stuff yeah you know there's clear logic to that it's your house i'm talking

about freedoms and rights if it's not your own house to do which what you wish in your own house they are coming into

your world yeah at that point all bets are off for me well i think there was a case in england where somebody

i say this you know i don't know like you never know what's you know i just haven't fact checked this was in the

news i just don't know 100 that this is like what happened but like it was basically somebody like was was it was

like a cat burglar and he fell through the person's roof and uh like broke you know his spine or

something but then he was suing assuming the because the the roof wasn't helping me yeah and it's like

like things situations like that it's like that's crazy you're on your own like you can that should be like a no-brainer like you're breaking into

somebody's house like anything that happens to you at this point like short of like you know if you know sure like

an execution shot to the head or something is like maybe but like other than that it's like you really um people should have the

ability to defend their can i ask you a question are tasers are available in canada and would be less paper work involved

you know i don't know it's a good question you can get a bow and arrow though i which is pretty cool like or a crossbow

and i don't think the same i don't think there are any laws against that now that you mention it i'm just you know because you're talking about

just you know very simple safety so did you need to do the nuclear option or were there other options you know you know the old-fashioned baseball bat or

bow and arrows you're saying or a taser or something like that you know yeah i never really um

i never really looked into it um the bow and arrow thing is kind of cool but it's like you know that requires

some skill and i you know i don't know maybe that'll be the next step i have to wonder though because we talk about and

here we are talking about guns but you know if tasers were talked about more often yeah you know just like you know it's your you know your you saw them at

canadian tire like your car breaks down on the side of the road here's your little orange triangle and your flare yeah you need a taser gun get a taser

gun you know maybe you have to be 18 and older or something i don't know but at least you know you're not killing the other person

but you're giving yourself some time to escape the situation yeah it's a good it's a good um i mean

those are other options i mean there are other options if you really want to defend your yourself or whatever i just think of like the you know the main

reason i got it was really it wasn't even really about like you know government tyranny it was more about

like the breakdown of society like if we had some major you know and if a nuclear war broke out

like it's not um you know it's not so outside the realm of possibility right

so it's like if something like that happened i mean i guess we'd all be dead eventually anyway if there was another basic war drinking water and you know

aspirin or food you know well i'll tell you last week i felt like or last you know in 2020 like i ended up getting my

gun license i think in 2019 or something and i felt like a genius when you know the you know covet came out and then

there are all those riots all the time i'm like man this is exactly what i was preparing for like like like i really

called this inspired training my whole life for this moment yeah it was it just sort of came in you

know thankfully it never got it never snowballed out of control but um you know

uh like those are the situations where it's like look you hope never to have to use it obviously but it's just like to

your point i think a lot of people were stocking up the pantries yeah i remember being in whole foods the uh you know

around march 20th 2020 when it was really and seeing people put like 50 cans of soup in their uh their cart

right you know like so and this is like you know you know but if the apocalypse apocalypse comes i

better have some organic soup because the chemicals i don't know

i just laughed right they were buying the fancy stuff right right um but yeah i mean everybody was on edge

and i guess everyone and to your point that has their their own right to you know prepare for that um

that potential and however they see fit you know what and not to not just sort of like

drag this out or whatever but i remember you know earlier on you said it like we we've lived we've been very lucky over

the past like since world war ii we've been very lucky like there hasn't been any major and in canada we've been very lucky and very fortunate to not have

like we did you know send soldiers over in world war one world war ii um but we have not um you know we've been the

general population like has been very fortunate that we're distant from you know just

geographically where we are we've got the united states is like the biggest superpower and the right they're unfriendly neighbor kind of thing uh

and we just kind of sit here and almost don't can't conceive of

of like a breakdown in society or can't conceive of things just going irrevocably wrong right like and um

and but stuff does happen right like i'm sure a lot of people thought noah was pretty stupid until it started raining

right right yeah we're living this like talking about history repeating itself you know you don't want to be paranoid

but preparation you know it's half the bible you know what i i rewatched uh the other night and it's a great movie and uh deep

impact ah yeah maybe i saw it once yeah oh yeah it's really droid the asteroid

bruce willis no no that's morgan freeman that's armageddon the one that's the one with morgan freeman okay yeah who was great in it

um the but it's the kind it actually that movie

was very well done i showed it to my partner who is um i um well my girlfriend i don't know you

know i say partner it's like my business partner but like um uh you know and she doesn't generally

like that kind of thing in fact any anything remotely sci-fi or action-y i just don't watch with her kind of thing

because it's just not her cup of tea but um i showed it to her and she she was like because i was like you know it's kind of my turn to watch or whatever

and i and she was like you know i actually like that better than i thought i would and it was a very intelligently

done um sort of disaster movie like it was very plausible like all the steps that we're taking like the president sort of

like they arranged it so that like you know they had their plan to send out a ship to blow it up but to blow up the

comet then they had uh um this second plan of just firing these nukes as soon as it came and then they

had this back-up plan of putting saving a million people that they put into a lottery into the the limestone

eclipse cliffs of missouri um and having people rebuild civilization like from that if the worst case scenario happened

and like um that's the kind of situation where it's like you know those things start to happen and those events start to

if something like that ever happens like isn't it just better to be prepared like isn't it better to have some sort of an insurance policy like yeah for sure i

just you know you got to have the right plan yeah yeah that's all yeah preparation i completely agree i just i've always

aimed more for societal you know change you know rather than just like quick fix here's my gun but but maybe

like i was saying earlier you need different layers to all of it yeah on that note there was um during the lockdown did you happen to see the

the movie that i think went straight to netflix don't look up oh yeah yeah i thought that was a nice modern take on

it too because a little bit uh cynical with social media and politics yeah it was good taking uh i saw a lot of um

for me a lot of parallels with the whole covet vaccine thing and just making them you know taking a real problem yeah

politicizing the hell out of it yeah yeah it was a well it was a well done yeah yeah cool yeah well

um okay so yeah that's it for this week and uh another one in a bag another one in the

bag thank you all for listening and take care out there take care guys

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