I went on Fox Business and got yelled at a bunch, as expected. It was an interesting experience to be shouted at about demonizing “objects” by folks who treat those objects as if they were the golden calf. I’m not sure the conversation in such a format is useful. I’m also such a visual person that it’s hard to fake eye contact when I’m actually in a tiny room in Minneapolis staring at a camera lens (and a clock ticking to the right of the lens).
I wrote this, in February, on guns:
I am not saying that we should criminalize all private ownership of firearms. The burden of such mass criminalization would mostly fall on non-white and poor people anyway. But we must dethrone firearms as a specially protected class of objects in our most important political documents. They should be treated like all other tools: assessed, regulated, studied, insured, and subject to legal remedy when we need to hold both owners and manufacturers responsible for their use. In fact, these moves to keep better track of firearms and hold appropriate parties liable ought to be a nice incremental consensus position. It isn’t, thanks to the Second Amendment.
No one read it much, but I needed to put the thoughts down. Essay writing is iterative and often prospective
Then Justice Stephens wrote a call to repeal the amendment for the New York Times and suddenly I got invites onto Tucker Carlson and this show “Kennedy,” which I hadn’t seen. I hadn’t done this type of “people shouting at me” TV, so I thought I’d try it. A couple dozen more reps and I think I’d get pretty good at it, but I’m not sure that will happen.
You can watch the video here. I’d embed it but their video player’s code is buggy.
P.S. John Paul Stephens was appointed by a Republican and identified as a moderate Republican. If he’s not a Republican today, it’s worth asking why. But laughing and mocking me also works.