If I didn’t know any better, I would suspect “kimmel” meant “ignorant” in German. Jimmy Kimmel’s recent anti-gun tirades during his late-night television program showed the world how embarrassingly little he knows about modern self-defense principles, the U.S. Constitution, American history, politics and just about every other subject he broached while obviously impaired by emotion. The outbursts also showed how hateful he is capable of being.
Of course, Kimmel does all his elitist preaching during the kind of show most people seek as a refuge from all the terrible news the world has to offer. It’s not as if there aren’t more than enough radical leftists who have their own TV slots and who actually get paid to lie to people in order to influence policy. Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Ali Velshi, Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Cuomo do an outstanding job distorting reality in every way imaginable. Their audiences go to them for the propaganda.
Of course, Kimmel does all his elitist preaching during the kind of show most people seek as a refuge from all the terrible news the world has to offer.I have never understood how someone could care so little about being honest. It was always my belief that my words and my actions were the only things in life I could always control. They were the things that I wanted to be judged by at all times. This motivated me to study and be as well-educated as possible so that nobody could accuse me of being dishonest when it was really a matter of ignorance. In the case of Kimmel, I would like to believe he’s just not that smart and that he’s spent much more time reading cue cards than history or good science.
Ben Shapiro did an outstanding job detailing all the emotional misinformation Kimmel provided to his audience the day after the horrific massacre in Las Vegas. I strongly encourage you to watch it. It must be so easy to go through life literally not caring whether anything you say has any basis in reality. I guess it’s all about the life of a Hollywood millionaire.
Without stepping on Shapiro’s toes, I must touch on a couple of the more egregious examples in a little more detail. Jimmy states as fact that semi-automatic firearms are not used for self-defense and suggests they should be banned. I hear a lot of outrageous claims from the anti-gunners on a weekly basis, but this is be among the top five silliest in 2017. I know that every gun owner reading this is already shaking his or her head, but I need to get to specifics in case Kimmel is actually studying for a change.
In truth, there are around 16 million Americans with concealed handgun carry permits. There are millions more who are able to carry concealed handguns in states that don’t require permits for such wholesome activity. It’s safe to assume no less than 90 percent of these people carry semi-automatic handguns. Of the hundreds of thousands of firearms that are used every year to stop criminals in their tracks (the vast majority without firing a shot), it’s likely that most are semi-autos.
Jimmy is clearly too busy reading cue cards written by others to be curious enough to ask questions, but let’s assume this is not the case for a moment. If he called the top 20 self-defense firearms instructors in the country and asked them what they use for their own daily home defense gun, I would bet, from my own experience asking many of these individuals the same question, that most of them would disclose it’s a semi-auto rifle. We’re talking something along the lines of the AR-15 that ol’ Jimmy claims should be banned because it has no legitimate use. The experts would adamantly disagree with the blowhards.
Continuing to publicly air his ignorance and emotion, Kimmel claimed that the Founding Fathers could have never intended for the Second Amendment to protect the modern, scary-looking rifles of today—the so-called “assault weapons.” According to his “thinking,” they could not have imagined that technology and innovation over time might make firearms more efficient.
It’s ironic because he was recklessly exercising his equally old First Amendment rights, and I’m on my modern laptop computer via the internet at this very moment—both things the founders could have predicted right after a Martian landing. Anyhow, Shapiro, in his analysis, succinctly points out that the 250-year-old muskets Kimmel believes the founders did mean to protect were the “assault weapons” of their day. They were “killing machines.” Just ask the Redcoats. Civilians in America owned the same firepower available to the professional military forces of the mighty British Empire.
It seems that most people these days accept that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” actually means what it says and recognizes an individual right of each American (aka those who make up the “people”). Even former President Barack Obama sees it this way, whether he likes it or not. Those brilliant, freedom-loving patriots who adopted the Bill of Rights wanted to ensure that the people could forever repel the sort of government tyranny that they had miraculously repelled when they defeated the British. They could do this only if armed because the pen, in fact, is not mightier than the sword when a murderous tyrant is coming for a visit.
Kimmel’s claim that James Madison must have wanted civilian firearms technology to remain frozen in time is nothing short of nonsensical. To believe Kimmel’s take on the matter is to believe Madison wanted to curse the “people” he loved so much to a permanent technological disadvantage against the potentially tyrannical government elements he dreaded so much.
Kimmel’s misunderstanding of how the Constitution works and was intended to work is not limited to the provision guaranteeing us all a right to arms.No matter how unpopular it is to say, it is crystal clear that the founders intended for civilians to have the same firearms technology available to them as was available to government forces. It is the only interpretation of history and the plain language of the Amendment that makes any sense at all. For those who think this talk about gun rights is barbaric and antiquated, there is an amendment and repeal process the founders were bright enough to offer you. It’s Article Five. The citizens of today’s Venezuela would tell you that you’re making a big mistake to do so, however.
Kimmel’s misunderstanding of how the Constitution works and was intended to work is not limited to the provision guaranteeing us all a right to arms. The day after his emotional rant, he went back on air to complain about those who criticized him for his campaign to see his fellow citizens stripped of their firearms freedoms. He said that his First Amendment rights were at least as important as their Second Amendment rights. This is the kind of stuff that almost makes me feel bad for him.
Kimmel clearly does not grasp the simple concept that Americans telling him to “sit down and shut up so you stop embarrassing yourself” is not a violation of his right to speak freely. The First Amendment comes into play only when the government tells you this. The freedoms protected in the Bill of Rights are protected against abridgement by government agents, not fellow citizens. This is stuff we all should have learned in an elementary school civics class.
Kimmel’s ignorance is one thing, but his hate is something entirely different. He is absolutely culpable for it. It reared its ugly head when he openly blamed NRA and any of its millions of loving, kind, hard-working members and supporters for the dead and wounded in Las Vegas. This is pure evil, not stupidity. I cannot forgive him for it, and I know many others feel the same. The rich elites in Hollywood give lip service to tolerance and understanding. Yet they show time and time again that they are the antithesis of it.
Darren LaSorte lobbied with NRA-ILA for nearly 14 years and now lives and works in Dallas. His passions are shooting, hunting and self-defense training.
