During the latest episode of Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost provided audience members with an analysis of the “gun control” debate, claiming that Republicans “value guns more than people you don’t know.”
“Well, this week kind of felt like Biden on those stairs,” Jost began, alongside images of Biden falling up the steps of Air Force One. “You thought it had to get better, but it repeatedly got worse.”
“In the wake of the Colorado and Atlanta shootings, President Biden called for universal background checks for gun purchases,” he continued. “And background checks are a great start, but shouldn’t we also do current checks? Like, what are these guys up to now? How much Call of Duty are they playing? Have they recently DMed a girl ‘Hey’ 30 times?”
“Or how about this,” Jost added, moving to the subject of gun control, “if you want a gun, the gun store has to talk to at least five people from your life who agree it’s a good idea for you to have a gun.”
“It’s not really that much to ask,” he said. “You’ve got to list three references on an application to work at Foot Locker.”
“And Republicans, please stop pretending this is a Second Amendment issue and just admit you love guns more than people you don’t know,” showing political advertisements from a handful of Republican figures which include firearms.
“If you actually cared about the Second Amendment, you’d also care about the well-regulated militias part. And I don’t know if you noticed when they almost hung you two months ago, but our militias aren’t super well regulated,” he concluded.
Unsurprisingly, the political analysis from Saturday Night Live is entirely ignorant. Let’s break it down.
Biden called for far more than “universal background checks.”
Jost applied the classic “over simplification” tactic used by the Left when conservatives oppose their policy positions by cherry-picking the least extreme element of broader legislative objectives and presenting them as indicative of their entire position.
In this case, Jost implies that Biden just called for universal background checks, when in fact, Biden’s policy suggestions included far more than the expansion of background checks.
As The Daily Wire reported, “President Joe Biden made a brief statement, Tuesday morning, addressing the mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, and pledging to press forward with gun ‘reform’ measures, including a ban on so-called ‘assault weapons,’ and a ban on ‘high capacity magazines.’”
The argument used by Jost is the logical equivalent of a political party rejecting criticism of a national “Cocaine and Ice Cream for Children Day” by accusing their opponents of hating ice cream.
“Current checks” already exist
While Jost used some apparently humorous examples of “current checks” that could be applied, such as “How much Call of Duty are they playing?” and “Have they recently DMed a girl ‘Hey’ 30 times?” he ignored the fact that some form of “current checks” already exist.
Currently, 19 states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of red-flag law which permits police departments or family members to file for the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to themselves or others.
These red-flag laws are known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) in Oregon, Washington, Maryland, Vermont and Colorado; Extreme Risk Firearm Protection Orders (ERFPO) in New Mexico; Risk Protection Orders in Florida; Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs) in California; risk warrants in Connecticut; and Proceedings for the Seizure and Retention of a Firearm in Indiana.
Given that such “current checks” in the form of “red-flag laws” already exist in Colorado — the location of one of the mass shootings discussed by Jost — it seems like his suggestions are redundant.
References for gun purchases
This suggestion is absurd for many reasons. For example, it is obscenely easy to bypass — references could be fabricated, selected based on likelihood to remain supportive, or chosen based on their willingness to lie. It also applies a popularity layer upon an inalienable right — what happens if you don’t have any friends? Are your Constitutional rights invalid?
Republicans care about the Second Amendment and people they don’t know
The argument Jost used — asking Republicans to “please stop pretending this is a Second Amendment issue and just admit you love guns more than people you don’t know” — is more despicable than most will acknowledge. He is implying that Republicans are pretending the debate over gun control has anything to do with the U.S. Constitution, and is instead motivated by a physical love for guns, which are then viewed as more valuable than human beings.
This is absurd. The gun control debate is based entirely on the Second Amendment, without which this “debate” would already have been decided in a similar fashion to the rest of the Western world. Hand-picking a few controversial Republican figures to mischaracterize all conservatives as “gun nuts” is dishonest and cynical, and is designed to dilute the debate down to the “intelligent Left” and the comparatively “unintelligent Right.”
Jost desperately wants to drag the debate away from the Second Amendment because he knows that he can only win in the arena of insult and emotion.
Well-regulated militias
Jost referenced another lazy anti-gun argument when it comes to the Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The Second Amendment is divided into two parts: its prefatory clause (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”) and its operative clause (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”). The “individual rights” thesis emphasizes the operative clause, while the “states’ rights” thesis focuses on the prefatory clause.
In 2008, the Supreme Court definitively ruled in favor of the “individual rights” theory in District of Columbia v. Heller. According to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, “The Court reached this conclusion after a textual analysis of the Amendment, an examination of the historical use of prefatory phrases in statutes, and a detailed exploration of the 18th century meaning of phrases found in the Amendment. Although accepting that the historical and contemporaneous use of the phrase ‘keep and bear Arms’ often arose in connection with military activities, the Court noted that its use was not limited to those contexts.”
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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