America’s Gun Violence is Cultural

(00:00.982)

Saw this story today and again, it just made me sad. And I’ve explained this before with all of the gun violence here in this country. And the volume of times I see my kids coming down for school and the news is on and they see another shooting and I see that in their faces. I see it in their faces and I have, how many times I’ve had to say to my kids, it wasn’t always like this.

There’s a story today. Gun milestone, new record for the deadliest six months of mass killings. From January 1st to January 30th, the nation endured 28 mass killings, all but one of which involved guns. The death toll rose just about every week, a constant cycle of violence and grief, six months, 181 days, 28 mass killings, 140 victims, one country. Now, this story obviously is…

read the story, AP story talking about gun violence, gun control. I want to just, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, you saw all of the riots that were taking place in France, which has very, very stringent gun laws. Yet for some reason, all these rioters had guns. Yeah. I don’t know how they got them. They got very strict gun laws, but they had them. Um, we don’t have, we don’t have a gun.

We have a culture problem here in the United States. I know we made fun of Kamala Harris. Made fun of Kamala Harris and she was asked about culture. And again, she puts out some sort of word salad. You actually look at the definition. It’s the custom of arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or social group. If one were to ask me, you know, what the culture…

what the culture is in the United States, you can’t put your finger on it. I guess what I would say is kind of go to our nation’s motto, e pluribus unum, out of many, one. Where have we gone wrong? Well, we accept all cultures, even if they’re bad. We’ve got this thing in this country now where…

You can do whatever you want. It’s moral ambiguity. Anything goes. Doesn’t care how rotten that culture is. You can’t condemn it. You can’t push it out. And again, our founders of this country, John Adams talked about this. The fact that this country doesn’t work unless you have a moral population. A God fearing.

population. Democratic senator, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York, talked about defining deviancy down. And we continue to do that again, and again, and again. And, again, we cover things up, we do not tell people the truth. And I was thinking about this today, and I

popped into my head and I looked over my bookshelf and I said, I gotta reread that book. Do you remember Bernie Goldberg from 16 Minutes? Again, I was as dark as a kid and I used to watch 16 Minutes. But anyway, Bernie Goldberg, and then he used to be on the O’Reilly Factor a lot. He put out a groundbreaking book in 2001, was entitled Bias, and he was talking about all of the crap that he saw over the years at CBS.

when it came to the news. And again, there was one chapter that was really striking where it talked about the AIDS epidemic and how the entire population was lied to about who was getting AIDS. And they pushed that idea that everyone’s gonna get it. Everyone’s gonna get it. And it’s not just the case. It didn’t wanna upset anyone. I’ll never forget.

I don’t know how these things stay in my mind, but they do. Good morning America, when it was Hartman and Dan Hartman and Joan Wunden. Hey, you know, could you get AIDS from a mosquito bite? And as a kid, I’m watching them like, what? They had everyone scared shitless with this, and they knew. They knew it was a lie. You see, out of many one.

We bring all of these cultures here to the United States and we adopt them and it’s okay. And again, you’ve got certain neighborhoods, whatever it may be. We’ve created some really bad cultures here. And at some point in time, we have to start rejecting them. At some point in time, you have to say, this is not okay. This is not okay. Well, that’s their choice. Sure it is, but it sucks.

Again, one of my favorite comedians out there, Sebastian Maniscalca, one of his entire routines, the name of his entire standup routine is one of them is called, Aren’t You Embarrassed? And he goes through all of these things that he watches people and he’s like, aren’t you embarrassed? No, no, that is a cancer in our culture is the fact that there’s no shame.

And I can go, I can do standup on this stuff too. I go to an airport. Go to an airport. I’m sorry, unless you are a baby or a toddler, don’t wear fricking pajamas and slippers to a fricking airport. Okay? It’s not okay. I mean, there’s certain standards that we should adhere to.

The kind of slobs I see going around all the time makes me sick to my stomach. Oh, oh yeah, I’m gonna wear my jeans halfway down my ass. My underwear is sticking out. Oh no, you can’t condemn it. That’s a part of black culture. No, it’s not. And any self-respecting black person would tell you that’s not black culture. That’s gross.

Chris Rock did entire bit about this. Again, if he did it today, he’d be canceled. He’d be canceled. He did it back in the day where he was talking about crime and the thug nature. He did one bit talking about kids leaving the ghetto, going to college, getting their master’s degree. It was funny. They come back, where you been? Oh, I was in school, I got my master. Oh, you my master now. Oh yeah, yeah. No, it’s not.

Not, no, we don’t want you to be intelligent. We don’t want you to be smart. We want you to be a thug. We want you to be some sort of drug dealer. What? Since when is intelligence something you want to disregard? And then he had this one rant that again, couldn’t do it today. He couldn’t do it today’s blank. He did sing where we talk and I think it was about crime. He’s loved black people, hate, eh, N word.

Love black people, hate, eh. Okay, black, white part of the culture can’t stand. I thought about this one as well. Sopranos episode, well, sub-reference a little bit today. Sopranos episode, Tony Soprano is out to dinner with his buddy Artie Buco, and he’s at this really nice Italian restaurant. And he’s sitting there with Artie, and he looks across, and he sees this kid with his girlfriend, and the kid’s wearing a baseball cap.

and it just, it’s eaten him alive. This is what happens to me too, stuff like this. I keep my mouth shut, but it bothers me. It does. Tony goes up and says to the kid, it’s like, you know, they don’t serve hot dogs here. Take the hat off. And the kid says no. And then Tony doesn’t say a word, he just stands there and looks at him. And the kid knew, took the hat off, thank you. Tony sits down, sends him over a bottle of champagne.

Again, people ask me, oh, Chris, you’re going on vacation. Why do you go to, you know, same places, Greece and Italy on a regular basis? Well, I happen to like their culture. It is what it is. I happen to like walking around and seeing crucifixes and saints and having little chapels here and there. I happen to like the fact that when people are out and about with their families,

They’re dressed appropriately. They’re not dressed like slobs. I like their food. Okay. I like that culture. And we have a lot of that culture. Let’s get out of many one. We bring that here too. You want to get rid of violence, get rid of the violent culture, the stuff that stems that. Okay. That’s what’s going to get rid of all this stuff. We have to start making some choices here. We have to start rejecting cultures that are cancerous to the body politic.

And until that point in time, people, doesn’t matter if you had the most stringent gun laws out there, okay? Why do you think they had the problems in France? They didn’t assimilate those cultures. We know how to do it. We have the secret recipe here in the United States. But again, we have to put our foot down and say, screw that, that’s unacceptable. And it’s across the board. I get it, okay? And listen, I’m…

I’m accepting of everyone. I don’t care what color, I don’t care if you’re gay, I don’t care if you wanna pretend to be a girl, but you know what, don’t shove it down my kid’s throats. That’s bad, understand the limit, okay? That’s for an adult. That’s not for children. All of these bad things we’ve got to alienate from our culture, and again, the violence will follow suit. Watchdog on wallstreet.