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0:37
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:44
All right, guys, today we are going to be discussing the recent rash of mass shootings that have
0:49
occurred in the United States. And you might be a little bit surprised at the timing of this podcast,
0:54
because obviously that rash of shootings occurred several weeks ago from the time that
1:00
you're typically going to be listening to this. If you're listening to this on time,
1:03
we had the Gilroy, California shooting. We had the shooting in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio,
1:08
and pretty much Chicago every weekend. But everybody wanted to give their take immediately.
1:13
If not on the Saturday of that shooting or the Sunday of that shooting on the Monday after,
1:18
you know, the first full day of the new cycle, they wanted to kind of give you, you know, their
1:23
opinion. And they wanted to give it to you as fervently and defensively as possible and
1:27
whatever the thing might be. But for me, I made a very conscious decision that I wanted everything
1:33
to calm down, including myself before addressing this issue. Okay, because again, it's one of
1:40
those things that when this comes up, it becomes very incendiary for a while. And then it kind of
1:46
fades away. And then invariably it comes back, right? But for today's podcast, what this isn't
1:52
going to be is this isn't going to be guns in the reality of evil part two. So if you go back to
1:57
episode 10 of this podcast, okay, so very early on in this podcast, I address this, this was after
2:03
shooting out of school in Florida. So I kind of broke that I broke a lot of things down in that.
2:09
So I went into some of the arguments that pro gun people and anti gun people make and how they're
2:13
wrong. I went into some of my personal opinions. I went into a lot of different areas. And so some
2:18
of that stuff I'm going to rehash. But to be honest with you, I just listened to that episode. I
2:22
re listened to it about a week ago. And I cosign everything, like everything that I said, there's
2:27
not a single thing on there that I would change. There was one time I think I misspoke, I said
2:31
something like a class three license is what you need to get an automatic weapon. But the more
2:36
specific way of referring to it would be, you know, a class three special occupational tax,
2:42
you know, that kind of thing, the tax stamp type of a deal. And so that would be the only thing I
2:45
would change was just I'd make it more clear what exactly I was talking about. But still I cosign
2:50
everything there. But what's funny about this podcast and my preparation and for you guys,
2:55
you don't really know one way or the other. But for most of the podcast, I do put quite a bit of
3:00
effort into preparing myself before the podcast, right? There are some podcasts that I just get
3:04
ready and go I put myself three or four bullet points down on a piece of paper and then I just
3:08
flow for 45 minutes. And then others, I'll spend several hours researching and kind of getting my
3:13
thoughts and my philosophies together before I present it to you in a in a cogent manner that
3:17
hopefully has a narrative arc that you can follow. But with this one, this was a different podcast
3:22
when we were 93 podcasts in this one, I spent a whole lot of time thinking about what I would say,
3:30
but not a whole lot of time actually prepping what I would say. And so to be clear, what I mean by
3:35
that is I spent a lot of time I spent several weeks thinking about this subject. But not specifically
3:42
how I would address it with you all. But I've just spent time thinking about it like marinating
3:47
on in and around this subject matter. But then when it came time to put my notes together to
3:53
get in front of you today, you know, I didn't really put a whole lot of thought into it. I put
3:57
some thought into it, of course, because I want this to be valuable for you. But that's just something
4:00
to kind of give you a little peek behind the curtain as to kind of where my mindset's at. But
4:05
the way I think I'm going to do this today is I'm going to present this in kind of two
4:10
massive categories. So I kind of have some generalized issues that that I wanted to bring
4:15
up maybe, you know, about a half a dozen or so, maybe a little bit more kind of just general issues
4:20
about mass shootings. But then I want to kind of get into specifically issues with these shooters
4:25
and how we can try and get some sort of a semblance of an understanding of what's happening here.
4:32
And so I'm just going to go ahead and launch in here without any more fanfare. But in terms of
4:35
the general issues, the very first thing, this is pretty obvious. This issue just has to be political,
4:40
right? I mean, every time you see it, this just goes political immediately, right? I mean,
4:48
Twitter, it was like a cesspool for two or three days, like I'm getting on there trying to see
4:52
stuff about fights coming up, trying to see stuff about, you know, baseball or just random funny
4:57
things. But that this was on everybody's mind. And I'm not, I'm not necessarily dog in the fact
5:02
that there were a lot of people talking about it. Obviously, I'm talking about it. I want that
5:05
conversation to continue happening. But gosh, it was just there was no one listening, right? Everyone
5:10
was just yelling. And so if you came out pro gun, you know, you just got attacked, if you came out
5:16
anti gun, you got attacked from the other side, it was just kind of one of those things. But this
5:20
this was a great opportunity for the Democratic presidential candidates to come out and basically
5:25
just point their finger at everybody, right? And so it's just one of those issues where,
5:30
and I know people said this a lot before, but I mean, I think it bears repeating.
5:34
The bodies are still, you know, still warm, right? You know, some of the bodies haven't been fully
5:41
processed yet. And yet we're already jumping on the narrative bandwagon. And that kind of gets
5:46
me into the next thing is that narrative trumps everything. And that's all pun intended narrative
5:51
trumps, everything. And so if you're pro gun, you've got your narrative, you run right to it.
5:58
If you're anti gun, you've got your narrative, you run right to it. I guess now would be a good
6:02
time to remind you for any of you that have not gone back and listened to episode 10 of this podcast,
6:06
which I would urge you to do so maybe before you listen to the rest of this podcast, I am very pro
6:10
gun very much so pro second amendment. I can seal carry. I try to make sure that all my different
6:16
weapons systems that I own that I can be lethal with all of them and safe with all of them. I've
6:22
got a gun right here by my right hand here in the studio. And it's just, it's one of those things
6:26
that I'm very much on the pro side of this. But I'm also not somebody that sees something like this
6:32
happen. And thanks to myself, I have nothing to see here. No problems here. I'm because there's
6:38
obviously problems. Now we need to start kind of unpeeling, you know, this the problem and kind of
6:44
getting to the core of what it actually is, but kind of getting back into talking about how
6:47
narrative trumps everything. The thing about it is, is if if the shooting that occurred doesn't fit
6:54
perfectly into your narrative of your side, then you try not to talk about it. Okay.
7:00
So, so a few examples here. So people on the right, I felt like we're almost giddy about the
7:07
Dayton shooter. Because the Dayton shooter wasn't a valid socialist and Elizabeth Warren supporter.
7:12
He had talked, interestingly, a lot about, you know, gun control and then he goes out and shoots
7:17
up a bunch of people, right? But then I saw people on the political left that were really,
7:22
I mean, over their skis excited about the El Paso shooter, because he was a white supremacist.
7:27
Because they're like, great, we've got our narrative. You know, they've got their narrative.
7:32
Trump's a racist, Trump's a white supremacist, Trump's an ethnocentric, whatever the situation
7:37
might be. And this guy's going out there spouting the same nonsense that we say Trump spouts.
7:42
So this is perfect for our narrative. Our ratings are about to go through the roof.
7:47
And guys, I'll be honest with you, Trump has been very clunky in his language at times with people
7:53
that do align with kind of the white nationalist very all right side of things. But a lot of people
7:59
talk about what he said after Charleston, whenever he said there were good people on both sides,
8:04
that was a very clunky and very mismanaged statement by him. But in that same speech,
8:10
like here, here I am, y'all are turning me into a Trump Trump, like defender, which I don't tend
8:14
to be. But you in that same speech, he completely disavowed people that were white nationalists
8:19
in the same speech. But again, narrative Trump's everything. Here's another thing you guys maybe
8:25
didn't know about about a week after the shooting that occurred in the El Paso Walmart, there was
8:30
another guy that planned to shoot up a Walmart in Missouri. But the guy was stopped by an off-duty
8:38
firefighter that had his concealed carry and had a gun on him at the time. So I think it was a 20
8:43
year old kid basically comes walking into a Walmart. He had like a bag. I think he had a rifle and he
8:50
had a lot of ammunition. And this firefighter who basically lives left of bang and he's constantly
8:55
looking around and he's a sheepdog, he basically gets this guy at gunpoint and gets him down until
9:01
the police were able to show up. Did you hear about that? I bet you didn't. I mean, if you follow
9:08
some what, you know, more right wing sources, I'm sure you heard about that because it's a good guy
9:13
with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun. Did you hear it on CNN? Did you hear it on MSNBC?
9:19
Did you was it on the front page in the New York Times? I mean, he didn't see it because it's all
9:23
about narrative. This subject, abortion, immigration, it's all about narrative. And if you're narrative
9:30
and your story doesn't fit, then they're not going to run with it. And another general issue
9:35
that we kind of talk about is kind of the demonization of objects, right, of inanimate objects,
9:42
which is exactly what guns are. Guns are not evil, right? They can be used for evil, but they are not
9:51
for evil. And I use this example all the time. If we were sitting across a table from one another
9:57
and I set my gun on the table in between us, loaded, ready to go with the safety off,
10:01
it's not going to jump up and shoot you. It can't do that. It doesn't have a mind of its own. It
10:05
can't reckon. And so, you know, a battle on be, I don't know if you guys follow them, but you should
10:10
follow them on Instagram and Twitter, Babylon B, they're basically satire. They're more kind of
10:15
right wing Christian kind of satire news, stuff like that. They basically said that, you know,
10:20
there was one where they said, you know, the police showed up at this event and they arrested an AR 15,
10:25
right? Because it's the AR 15. That's evil, right? Because a lot of people on the left that want
10:30
to demonize guns, it's because they don't really like demonizing people unless they're white nationalists,
10:35
they'll hop all over that one. But they, they just don't want to demonize people because people
10:39
can't be bad, right? Because we're all very highly evolved monkeys and we evolved in order to be
10:44
at peace with one another. If you listen to, you know, basically the four horsemen of new wave
10:49
atheism, right? But we keep demonizing objects. But around the same time you saw this latest rash
10:55
of mass shootings, there were mass stabbings in the United States that left multiple people dead.
11:01
But you just don't hear people talking about how we shouldn't have knives,
11:05
not an American. You hear that in the UK, but you, but you don't hear that here.
11:09
But it's like, it's a thing. And I say this all the time too, way more people in the history of
11:15
humanity have been killed with pointy things, you know, sticks, spears, knives, swords, you know,
11:23
gladius, like those types of things, they've been killed with those things. But we don't hear all
11:27
these people in the streets yelling about how we should ban pointy things, right? Again, kind of
11:31
goes back to narrative. I guess another thing that I've thought about a lot over the last several
11:35
weeks is it's times like these that you realize people don't know crap about guns. I mean, they
11:41
don't know anything about guns. And here's the thing guys, I've told you this before, I did not
11:45
grow up in a family that talked about guns at shotguns. I knew there were guns in the home,
11:50
but I never saw them. I certainly never went out and shot them. And so as an adult, I started
11:54
learning about guns on my own, like very, very basic, basic one of my friends who is quite the
11:59
gun collector, he basically set a bunch of guns down. He showed me single action and double action
12:04
and, you know, semi automatic and automatic. And he really broke it down into these different
12:09
categories. And I mean, that was about 12 or 13 years ago. And I've just continued to learn
12:13
along the way. But you hear people say these things in public or on Twitter, on television or on
12:20
podcast. And it's like, like, this isn't that hard to understand. Like you don't ever have to have
12:26
shot a gun before to understand the difference between a semi automatic and an automatic.
12:31
I mean, I'm listening to, uh, who was at Brennan's job was on the Joe Rogan podcast,
12:35
right? Again, this is supposed to be about MMA. But sometimes they veer off into other subjects.
12:39
Usually it's about drugs or cars or something like that. But they got on to gun violence and
12:43
Brennan's job is like, no one needs a semi automatic weapon. Why does anybody need a semi automatic
12:48
weapon? And you could tell by the way he said it, he was thinking machine gun. And even if not,
12:55
he was thinking that an AR 15 is like a machine gun. And it's not like that's a semi automatic.
13:01
He doesn't have the foggiest idea that almost every pistol owned by a person in the United States
13:05
is a semi automatic weapon, right? One trigger pull one bullet. And so you just hear these things
13:13
and it's like, Oh, like it just it's like your brains being split apart. And it's just so frustrating
13:20
and infuriating because part of the reason why you can't have debates on this is because most
13:24
people are stupid on one side. And then this specific debate, it's usually the anti gun people
13:30
that are really, really, really ignorant about guns. But in this type of situation, it's like,
13:35
look, we've got to define our terms, but we've also got to define our shared knowledge if we're
13:39
going to have a very cogent and a very productive conversation on this issue. But people don't know
13:46
anything about guns. It's really hard to do that. The next thing is it's, you know, I've thought
13:51
about this a little bit, but the same people that want so desperately to decry white supremacist
13:57
violence as any sane person would be included, they tend to go silent in the wake of Islamic
14:05
fundamentalist violence. And you know what, just for categorization purposes, let's not even talk
14:10
about, you know, Boko Haram or the Taliban or ISIS, let's not talk about that. Because some people
14:16
kind of put that in a category by itself, right? They put that over there. I'm talking about just
14:21
the random people that will scream Allahu Akbar in a coffee shop and then start stabbing people.
14:27
I saw a video here recently, I think it was in Sydney, Australia, where a guy was basically going
14:33
around stabbing people. And then he started jumping on cars, screaming Allahu Akbar. And then he kept
14:38
saying, shoot me in the face, shoot me in the face. I was kind of like a suicide by cop thing.
14:42
And all these guys got together and they basically stopped and they put it, it was kind of weird.
14:46
They put a bunch of chairs on top of them. And they were like sitting on these chairs to basically,
14:50
you know, they had dearmed the guy and then they had kind of gone on with that. But when we see
14:54
Islamic fundamentalist violence, we don't seem to hear the same cries from the same people.
15:00
Like, why is that? Because to me, white supremacist violence is sinful and needs to be eradicated
15:09
and stopped. And Islamic fundamentalist violence is sinful and it needs to be eradicated and stopped.
15:18
Like, why can't you say both? Can two things be true at the same time? Is that possible?
15:23
So that was interesting to me. Like, we just, we see these voices get really, really loud when
15:30
the narrative fits what they want. I guess, you know, the theme of this podcast today could be
15:33
narrative. But then the next thing I was thinking about is there's been a lot of entities and
15:38
companies that have responded to this in just the dumbest ways possible. Like, it's absolutely
15:43
incredible. So there's a company here in Oklahoma where I work that I'm very, very familiar with.
15:49
And right after this rash of shootings, they sent out a memo, right, to most of the managerial
15:55
staff at this office, basically saying that they have a strict no guns in the office policy.
16:01
Okay, and here's the thing, if you run your company and you would prefer guns not to be there,
16:06
and that's your thing, it's your company. Hey, that's your right to do that.
16:10
But in your response to criminals going around, killing innocent people, if in that response,
16:18
your knee jerk reaction is let's make sure all the people that work here who are not, in fact,
16:24
criminals, let's make sure that they have less of a chance to defend themselves.
16:28
Let's make sure that the full smart, the, you know, the, the, what am I trying to say here,
16:34
the, uh, force multipliers. There we go. The force multipliers are on the other side of the
16:39
equation on the evil side of the equation. Like really? These are really smart people
16:47
that are coming up with some of the dumbest ways possible. Okay. So because here's the thing, guys,
16:53
98% of the mass shootings that have occurred in the United States since 1950 have occurred in
16:58
gun-free zones. You dummies. Come on. So making an office, a gun-free zone does not make that
17:08
office safer. I mean, you don't need a lot of paper to prove this. You give me one sheet and I
17:14
can draw it out pretty quickly. It makes you all very much less safe. And so if you're a concealed
17:20
carrier and you are in that office and now all of a sudden they are checking you every day to make
17:25
sure that your gun's just in your car. Hey, hey, we're not saying you can't carry a gun. Just keep
17:30
it in your car. What good does that do the people in that office as someone comes into that office
17:35
intent to kill them? What good does that do them? What are they going to throw a stapler at them?
17:41
My goodness. It's unbelievable. I don't understand it. But you know, you have people that are
17:48
anti-gun people or more leftist or more liberal. And when something like this happens, it's a way
17:52
that they can virtue signal. It's a way that they can, you know, make them feel good. Like, oh,
17:57
you know what? These, these guns, we're just, we're going to get them out of the hands of
18:00
everybody because these guns are so dangerous. But then the last thing I knew you guys were
18:05
probably waiting on me to talk about this red flag laws. Okay, red flag laws. So if you're not
18:09
familiar with red flag laws, this is something that's kind of making the rounds right now. And
18:14
even in conservative circles or public in circles, but basically it's a way that you could petition
18:19
the local government or the local judiciary. If you feel like someone that you know, right?
18:26
Maybe your brother or your best friend or someone at work that you think is a harm to themselves or
18:30
other people. And they own guns that you could, it's basically a temporary gun restraining order
18:37
that the government can come in and intercede and take those weapons away for a period of time.
18:43
That's not been defined. But for a period of time until you cool off or they determine that
18:48
you're able to own guns again or whatever the case may be. And there's a lot of hay being made
18:52
in conservative circles about this that people are actually on board with this. And I'm pretty
18:55
sure if I went back to my podcast 10 that I talked about these types of laws and how in
19:00
general, I liked the idea of that. But at the same time, there's a caveat, which is who exactly is
19:06
determining who gets the guns and who doesn't, right? Because here's the thing is if I don't like
19:12
somebody, like, why wouldn't I just go to the local government and petition them to take take
19:17
their guns away? Just screw with them. Here's another thing. What if I know somebody and I really
19:23
want to steal their crap? But I know they have guns. What inside of a red flag law would keep the
19:30
government from being able to take those persons guns away, thus making it easier for me to break
19:36
in and steal their crap? Like what? That's the thing with these red flag laws is the biggest
19:43
concern to me is right now people feel comfortable because red candidates have the Senate and we've
19:49
got a red candidate in the White House. But would you be talking about red flag laws if it was
19:55
blue across the board? Like it was when Obama was a first made president and that he had the house
20:00
and the Senate, like, would be, would we be okay with that for pro second amendment, pro gun
20:07
people would be, would we be okay with that? So I like the idea of red flag laws, but with a lot
20:13
of grandiose ideas, once you start talking them out, the issues start rearing their ugly heads
20:19
and it becomes very, very complicated very quickly. And so to be honest with you, I would be surprised
20:26
if there wasn't some sort of gun legislation that was passed in the United States. But if
20:30
something is passed, it's really not going to stop these things from happening. So if you go from
20:35
being able to have a 30 round magazine to only being able to have a 10 round magazine in certain
20:39
states, it's not going to stop mass shootings. You know why? Because there are millions and millions
20:42
and millions of 30 and 40 round magazines already in circulation. Right. If there's certain guns,
20:48
if they go back to the assault weapons ban, right, that we had in the 90s, which did not curb violence
20:53
with assault weapons at all with assault rifles at all. If we go back to that, it's not going to
20:59
stop anything because the most popular rifle in the United States is the R15. It's already in
21:04
circulation. But here's the other thing. With a lot of these mass shootings, and we start getting
21:10
into a lot of different articles and a lot of different things like that with a lot of those
21:13
types of things, people just don't understand the statistics. And I'm going to, I'm going to link to
21:18
an article later that I'll talk about. But basically, when you start getting into the statistics around
21:22
guns, most of the gun deaths in the United States, like two thirds of the gun deaths in the United
21:26
States are suicides. Okay, which are tragic. But that's a coward taking the cowards way out and
21:32
shooting themselves. Again, let me say it's tragic. It's horrific. I can't imagine what it would take
21:38
for someone to get to that place. But that's the overwhelming majority of gun violence.
21:43
And then you start getting into other like one fifth of all gun violence and gun deaths in the
21:47
United States are gang related. Again, tragic. I wish these people wouldn't do these things.
21:53
These gangs of all colors, right? Of all races of all types of people. And so we can't
22:00
basically put all of these gun violence cases in the same category. A crazy lunatic loser walks
22:08
into a Walmart and starts shooting people indiscriminately. That is very different than a gangbanger in
22:13
Chicago, driving by seeing rival gang members and shooting at them and killing them. They're not
22:18
equivalent, right? These are all people that have the Amago day. It is tragic in every single situation,
22:25
but it's different. It is just very, very different. But again, most people don't know their stats.
22:31
A lot of stats can be manipulated. And depending upon what entity it is, again, they're just going
22:36
to play back into their own narrative. So again, guys, that kind of wraps up me talking about just
22:41
generalized issues about these mass shootings. But now I want to get in and talk a little bit
22:45
more about issues with the shooters. And so from the top, I'm going to go and say this,
22:49
don't expect me to come up with a way that this can all be fixed. Okay, which, you know, if you're
22:57
going to oppose something, you should be able to propose something. I kind of try to live by that
23:00
mantra. And the thing is, there's a lot of things that I'm about to talk about. I'm not saying that
23:05
these are the issue. I'm saying that a lot of these things are contributing factors. Because I can,
23:12
I can kind of hear some of the negativity and some of the responses I'm going to get already.
23:16
But the thing is, is a lot of people have been jumped on for making some of these similar arguments.
23:20
But I'm just saying, if we look at all of these things individually, maybe they don't describe
23:25
a negative outcome. But if we look at all of these things, you know, as a whole, as a whole of a
23:32
narrative, then maybe we can start figuring out ways to fix this. Okay. So one of the first issues,
23:39
I think it's just a generalized issue is just the internet. And I know I'm not an old curmudgeon.
23:44
I'm not going to say, you know, cut off your internet and all those different things. But
23:47
the thing about the internet, if you think about it in 2019, the internet is not just a thing that
23:52
we do from time to time, we live in it. So when I think back to the first time I had the internet,
24:00
which was seventh grade, we had a gateway computer. And you know, a friend of a friend built it for
24:04
my parents, the computer that is, and we were able to get on AOL, right? And we had instant messenger,
24:11
and we had the 56K modem and the dial up in the hole, the whole nine yards. So what the internet
24:17
was for me, for a lot of my life growing up, it was a thing that you went to, and you farted around
24:23
on for like 20 or 30 minutes, and then you moved on with your life. Because you basically spent 15
24:29
minutes going to two different websites, you know, clicking from thing to thing, you couldn't really
24:33
download anything at the time. There was no YouTube, there wasn't any of that. So it was a thing you
24:38
did, you didn't live in it. And so for a lot of you guys out there that are into particular sports,
24:43
you know, me, what you get to, or maybe you with golf, or maybe like playing pickup basketball,
24:47
you don't live in it. That's still kind of a thing that you do, even if you do it a lot.
24:51
But just think about how often you're on the internet. I mean, for iPhone users, remember when
24:57
you started getting those updates on your screen time? Like, did it kind of make you sick?
25:01
And so for the kids that are growing up now, for a lot of these young males that are perpetrating
25:07
these crimes, you know, you got to think these are people that have lived on the internet,
25:11
the internet, internet seems real, but it's not. And I also was thinking about cyber bullying.
25:17
So, you know, I think I was very normal in school in that, you know, I did a little bit of bullying,
25:22
and I got bullied as well. You know, I was a, I was a fat redheaded freckle face kid,
25:27
kind of an easy target. And so that's kind of one of those things where bullying was something that
25:34
you could go home from. So if you got bullied mercilessly, and I'm just guys don't think that
25:40
I'm trying to diminish bullying in any way, shape or form, I'm certainly not doing that.
25:43
But let's just say you were bullied from before first hour until after the last hour of the day,
25:48
all the way through lunch, you still got to go home. You got some sort of reprieve, right?
25:55
And I know there's guys listening to this right now that we're bullied mercilessly. And I'm so,
25:59
so unbelievably sorry that that happened to you. It's, it's wicked and it's terrible and I wish
26:03
it wouldn't have happened. I hope it made you stronger. I hope you didn't pick up any bad habits
26:08
along the way, but you know, it's a bad deal. But now in this internet culture that we live in,
26:12
kids are going home and the bullying continues, if not intensifies. And so let's say you're the
26:19
quiet kid, you're kind of the weird kid, maybe the goth kid, you know, you didn't play sports,
26:23
you're not really that smart, you're kind of on the fringes. Well, you're going to get picked on
26:27
at school and then you're going to go home. And if you get online, it's not going to stop.
26:31
Like you don't get a reprieve if you get on Twitter or Snapchat or Instagram,
26:37
like you just don't get a break from it. And so bullying can literally be a 24 seven cycle for
26:43
people. I hear I hear from guys that have daughters, it's absolutely horrific for their girls,
26:47
because maybe they kind of go on and go out of limb and do their hair a different way and go to
26:52
school or they wear a different color that they weren't sure look good on them or not. And then
26:56
they just get picked on at school and then, you know, people send a message as soon as they get
27:00
home saying that they should kill themselves because they were the wrong sweater, right? It's
27:05
absolutely terrifying. But then the other thing I thought about with these shooters is video games,
27:09
okay? And so this has obviously been brought up before about the kind of ubiquitous nature of
27:14
violent video games that we have in kind of the glorification of violence inside of these video
27:19
games. And I know a lot of people as soon as you bring up video games, in terms of its correlation
27:24
to gun violence, it's like, well, there's not been, you know, any things that definitively prove that
27:28
this guy played Call of Duty and then he went out and shot people like on Call of Duty and all those
27:32
different things. So you're not gonna hear that argument from me. Okay, guys, you're not gonna
27:35
hear that video games lead to that. However, however, we have to be clear about something.
27:41
Video games that are incredibly violent. They absolutely desensitize us to violence.
27:48
There's no way around it. Because if you've never seen gore, and I'm talking the same thing,
27:57
and so the desensitize the violence, that expands out into TV shows and movies as well. But even
28:01
within video games, I mean, as a kid, you know, you're playing Mario Carter or Ken Griffey Junior
28:07
Baseball or just, you know, something like that. And even Goldeneye, the kind of the first, first
28:13
kind of first person shooter that I can remember on the N64, like there wasn't there wasn't like a
28:17
lot of blood and it was kind of hard to play. And it was kind of it was just fun. But video games
28:22
now, video games that I play like Call of Duty, they're unbelievably violent. Unbelievably violent.
28:31
And so how could we say that a lot of these boys that are going out perpetrating these shootings,
28:36
a lot of these young men that are doing these shootings, how could we say that these violent
28:41
video games didn't have an impact? There was one shooting that I heard about at a school where
28:47
there was a firearms expert that came in afterwards and you know, they're kind of surveying the scene.
28:52
And it was a especially horrific shooting. I think there were seven or eight students that
28:57
were killed. They were all killed with headshots. So for those of you that aren't very familiar
29:02
with guns, when you're practicing shooting, the silhouette that you're typically shooting at
29:08
has rings starting in in center mass. And when you're taught to shoot, you're taught to shoot
29:14
people's center mass and stop them. So when people are like, what do you have to shoot them
29:18
and kill them? Why couldn't you just shoot them in the leg? Because it's freaking difficult to do
29:22
you dummy, pick up a gun and try it sometime. It's really difficult to shoot someone in the leg,
29:26
especially if they're running towards you. Okay. But this kid had shot all these people point
29:32
blank in their faces and killed them all. He said it was an unbelievable display of accuracy and
29:41
marksmanship from a kid who prior to this shooting had never even shot his weapons. I think he stole
29:49
his weapons from from a family member. He had never shot these weapons. But if you've played
29:54
these first person shooter video games, your your hand I coordination and things that that can take
29:59
place, especially in games where you're given extra bonus points for shooting somebody in the
30:03
head or something like that, it absolutely aids in your ability to be able to perform and do that
30:08
in real life. No, having a PlayStation controller in your hands and having a rifle in your hands is
30:14
not the same thing. But if you've been desensitized to the violence into watching the blood spray all
30:20
over the screen and all over you and those things, if you're in the zone in that moment, how can we
30:24
say that that doesn't have an impact? And again, I'm not saying that that's the reason why we had
30:30
these mass shootings, but we have to look at again, I'm going to keep coming back to this. We have to
30:34
look at everything as a whole, like what direction is the world going in that and why are we seeing
30:39
more of these types of things? But like, why are the mass shootings getting bigger? Why are they
30:45
hap seemingly happening more often? Okay. So another thing that I kind of kind of getting off the
30:51
desensitized to violence side of things is kids don't really have an opportunity as they're growing
30:58
up and developing now of conflict resolution in the way that maybe you grew up or your grandparents
31:06
or your parents or something like that. You know, there's not a whole lot of communities right now
31:10
where the kids play outside. Like I live in a community that's gated and you know, just today,
31:17
there was I saw a kid on a bike and it was so weird. I was like, what the heck is this kid doing
31:21
in the street in the bike? Like that was my immediate thought whereas growing up, it's like, oh, look,
31:25
there's like 17 kids that we drove by on this one street just trying to get to our driveway,
31:30
kids on bikes. You don't see kids playing outside a lot. And when kids play outside with one another
31:37
without adult supervision, yes, they can get into trouble. But also, you know, they're gonna play
31:41
games where, you know, they're creating rules, they're creating hierarchies. They're doing all
31:46
kinds of things. They're they're learning how to have conflict resolution, like those types of
31:51
things. Because one thing that we've seen as well as there's been this big push towards this
31:56
postification of society that we can't let kids fight anymore. Now, no, I'm not advocating for kids
32:04
to be able to attack one another. But if two kids get into a disagreement, they need to figure it out,
32:09
why wouldn't we let them fight? Like, like, why not? Again, just think about, you know, I've sat
32:16
with my grandpa and there were stories and you've heard me talk about this before where it's like,
32:20
this kid's got a problem with that kid. They both have agreed that they want to figure this out.
32:24
So the teacher would say, son, you grab a friend other kid, you grab your friend, go down the road,
32:30
figure it out. Don't come back in here until you got to figure it out. So they've each got
32:35
someone that can hop in and help them and save them. If things get wrong, they go down the street,
32:39
they get in the dust up, they come back, and they might become best friends. But we don't see that
32:44
now. Maybe because fighting, Oh, gosh, we just can't do that. We got to use our words, but, you know,
32:49
specifically, we can't use, you know, charged words. We can't raise our voices. Like, we've got to keep
32:55
things very, very calm. And let's keep it very, very effeminate and feminine. And let's just talk
33:00
through this. Some things talking, sometimes talking doesn't get it done. And again, I'm not
33:06
advocating violence for children. I'm not advocating that you go out and poke a guy in his chest at
33:11
the bar and you tell him you got something wrong with him and you want to go outside. I'm not
33:14
advocating for those things I'm just talking about. We don't have kids playing outside. They're not
33:18
learning how to do conflict resolution. Kids are fat. Kids are ridiculously fat. Their parents are
33:23
stuffing nonsense down their throats. They're not outside working that nonsense off their inside
33:28
playing Fortnite or farting around on their phone or looking at porn or whatever the situation
33:32
might be. There's also just no outlets for their anger. I think that might be kind of the biggest
33:38
issue that I'm finding right now talking about these few things all once while I'm trying to
33:41
even work in it out work at work it out in my brain at the moment is there's no outlets for rage
33:46
and anger and angst for kids. Because you have some kids that, you know, they get into football
33:52
and they get into wrestling and they get into baseball and you know they just can't wait to,
33:56
you know, smash the ball with their bat and they just want to get that, they just want to get that
34:00
angst out. But most kids aren't doing that. There's a lot of communities where their sports programs
34:06
are falling apart completely because these kids are like why in the world would I go outside? It's
34:10
100 degrees. Why would I go outside and sweat and play baseball when I've got baseball right
34:15
here on my PlayStation? I can just do that right now. Why would I run around and do paintball when
34:21
I can stay inside and play Fortnite on my Xbox? Why would I do that? And their parents certainly
34:26
aren't encouraging them to go outside. Their parents are sitting there. They're fat and stupid too.
34:30
And it's kind of one of those situations where it's like what do you do as a society? What do we do?
34:34
Because people love to define hey we're fatter than we've ever been. Okay, do you do you want to
34:40
advise us on how we can stop that? But my main concern is for these kids that what are they
34:46
supposed to do with all this anger that will surely come even for the kids that are you know nice
34:51
and even killed? What are we supposed to do with them? Do we have any idea? That's a big concern
34:59
for me. That's why I love it. I love it when parents get their kids into real martial arts.
35:04
So when they get them into you know kickboxing as a little kid or into jujitsu or into wrestling
35:10
like stuff like that and I guess if you're going to do karate or a keto or any of those
35:14
nonsense martial arts or something like that at least you're a kid and you're getting to kick
35:18
kick a bag and break a board that was already kind of broken like whatever who cares but it's
35:24
something it's something to get your anger out. It's just something to do. I mean how many of
35:30
you guys listening to this did not get in a single fistfight growing up as a kid. How many of you
35:36
like what did you do to get your anger out? And again again again I'm not advocating for violence
35:43
amongst kids. I'm not saying all right make sure your kids get in a fight once a week. It's not what
35:46
I'm saying. But what would push one of these killers that spent all this time getting bullied
35:52
and playing these crazy video games and you not really have in friends and not really you know
35:57
taking care of themselves physically like what are they supposed to do?
36:01
I guess another way that you could say this and this is a societal problem is what we don't have
36:08
rights of passage. Talk about that a lot. At what point did you become a man and who told you that?
36:15
Did you just kind of think it up on your own? Did you just kind of figure it out on your own?
36:20
Ah guess I'm a man now. How did you know? Because you don't really see
36:26
boys that had very involved fathers, very involved grandparents, very involved friends, male friends
36:34
of the dad in the life of that boy, doting on him, teaching him, instilling wisdom, giving them all
36:41
kinds of knowledge in all these areas that would help them be a better person and a better man.
36:46
You don't see someone that comes from that type of a background, some of that went through
36:49
rights of passage and not because of some religious community. It wasn't you know because they were
36:54
orthodox Jews or something like that. You don't see those kids going around and shooting up places.
36:59
You don't see it. Do you think there's possibly a correlation there? We don't have that.
37:06
So I think that's part of it as well. Then you can also talk about psychotropic drugs.
37:12
Like this is not going to be a long podcast about psychotropic drugs, but it is absolutely
37:19
astonishing the number of children in the United States that are on psychotropic drugs that are
37:24
changing the brain chemicals that they have. There are people that I know that are very close to me
37:30
that have like three year olds, three year old boys that are you know just a little too rowdy
37:35
and they put them on medication. It's like they're a three year old boy. Like what are they supposed
37:41
to do? Like what? Like they're just being themselves. They're rotten little three year old human beings
37:50
you don't need to dope them up. And here's the other thing with a lot of the mass shootings,
37:55
especially school shootings, almost 100% of these boys were on psychotropic drugs.
38:00
That's not to say that if your kid is on riddling that he's going to go shoot up his school again.
38:05
Don't hear me saying things. I'm not saying I'm being very clear with you, but there is a correlation
38:10
here. These these kids are depressed. These kids have mental issues. And what we're doing is we're
38:15
just jamming things down their throat, a lot of which things that haven't been fully vetted out
38:20
and fully researched to understand what the long term ramifications of these drugs are.
38:24
If you take them over the long term, we just jam it down their throat because we don't want to do
38:28
the hard part. For a lot of these kids, they just need to get physical. These kids needs to exercise.
38:34
There is a direct correlation between depression and people who are sedentary between mental problems
38:42
and people that just sit around eating Cheetos all day. Again, you don't see a lot of kids that are
38:48
highly involved and highly active and going around and taking care of business in a lot of these areas.
38:53
And even if they don't do and act out in these violent ways until they were older,
38:57
we have to think about the environment that they were in as they were growing up.
39:01
So I think these drugs have a lot to do with it. Then also, we get into just the overall
39:09
fatherlessness within society. You know, that kind of goes back to rights of passage, but you've seen
39:14
this stark rise over the last several decades of households without the father in them.
39:20
And yet we're blown away that we're seeing little boys act out in these ways. And even
39:26
if these little boys are 25 years old, they're still little boys in their head
39:29
because they didn't have a daddy around. They didn't have that strong male role model. Again,
39:36
go back. How many of these mass shooters profile as a kid that was highly involved,
39:42
had active parents in his life, was an active church life that wasn't on medication. How many
39:47
of those do you see? Can you think of one? You know, the all-star kid that all of a sudden
39:55
has decided he wanted to shoot up his school or shoot up a store. We don't see it. And then I
40:04
guess even a more macro issue would just be secularization overall. We've seen the West become very,
40:09
very secular, especially in the last 10 years. But really, we've seen this gradual decline in any
40:15
type of Judeo-Christian ethic. We're all in enjoying the positives of being under that Judeo-Christian
40:21
ethic. Again, when it's convenient for us, but we want everything to be secularized. And we're
40:26
moving in that direction. We don't want God anywhere. We don't want prayer anywhere. Get your Bible
40:30
out of here. Like, I don't want that nonsense. Is it possible? Is it possible? Is it plausible?
40:39
That in addition to all these things that I've talked about, right? So, you know, cyber bullying,
40:45
the internet and, you know, kids not playing outside and are getting desensitized of violence
40:50
and just the overall personification of society, no rights to passions or drugs, the fatherlessness,
40:54
all that. Could that also be because of how secularized we are? Because fatherlessness inside of
41:03
religious communities isn't as high in non-religious communities. It's still high. It's still awkwardly
41:08
high. Right? I talk about the divorce rights and in the church and outside the church are
41:13
relatively the same. It's absolutely embarrassing. But again, these all kind of go in a certain
41:18
direction. And as we get more secular, we're getting more violent, it seems. How's that possible?
41:25
And again, guys, no one knows how to fix this. So, don't get it twisted. Even if you're
41:30
listening to this, which I don't know why if you're a leftist, if you're 41 minutes in here with me,
41:35
I doubt you're still hanging around. But if you are, none of the candidates you support know how to
41:40
fix this. Right? Yeah, I said it. Bernie Sanders can't fix it. Kamala Harris can't fix it.
41:46
Elizabeth Warren can't fix it. Joe Biden certainly can't fix it. None of these people know what
41:50
they're doing. And here's a trick. Got a little insider information for you. No one knows what
41:55
they're doing on the other side either. These are just slightly smarter, slightly richer adults than
42:00
you. They're not going to fix it. When people come out and say, well, in my first 100 days,
42:07
I'll give Congress the time to act. And then if they don't do it, I'm going to do an executive
42:10
order and we're going to bah, bah, bah, bah, whatever the thing is, it's not going to fix it.
42:13
It's not going to fix it. We will not be able to prevent all these shootings. We won't.
42:20
And don't give me that. Well, if we can just prevent one, it's worth it. If we can prevent one
42:24
shooting, then you start, I don't really want to get into the, you know, into the unit area or the
42:29
anyway, I don't really want to get on that side of things. But the thing is, guys, and this is kind
42:34
of where I wrapped up the last podcast as well is Satan is real. The dark forces on this plant,
42:39
they're real evil will always find a way. And yes, I am for things that could curb evil.
42:49
But at the same time, I'm a sheepdog. And I train to be one. And if the things that you say
42:56
are going to infringe on my ability to be able to defend myself and my loved ones and to push back
43:03
darkness in the process, I'm out, I'm out on it. And again, guys, this isn't a, you know,
43:09
this isn't a sermon. This isn't something where I'm going to like bust out. And this is the scripture
43:13
that proves my point. Like this, that's not coming, right? But Satan's real. And you have a bunch
43:19
of people on the political left that don't know anything about guns that just want your votes.
43:24
They will say anything to get into power or to stay into power. And a lot of these people don't
43:29
believe in Satan. They don't believe in evil. They think we're just highly evolved monkeys.
43:36
So what is their reasoning for wanting to substantiate evil? They'll use words like evil, but they
43:44
don't have a foggiest idea what it means. And they're sorry, certainly not spending any time
43:47
thinking about where it comes from. And so again, like I said, there wasn't going to be some grandiose
43:53
finish to this podcast. It's just kind of one of those deals where I literally just sat down and
43:58
started writing. And I'm like, I feel like all these things have have something to do with it.
44:04
And again, I still support the Second Amendment. I still support people's rights to be able to
44:08
defend themselves and their property. I absolutely, I am that person. But at the same time, I'm not
44:14
excited when I see things like this happen. I can Gilroy or Dayton or El Paso or Chicago or anywhere
44:20
else. And for people to say that because I'm pro gun that I like when things things happen or
44:25
that the blood is somehow in my hands, it's egregious, it's gross. And I know not everyone
44:30
listening to this is a is, you know, thinks the same way I do about the Second Amendment. But
44:36
that's the thing guys, is if we're going to get together, and if we're going to have discussions
44:39
on this issue, we have to know what we're dealing with. This isn't about the guns. This isn't just
44:44
about the guns. This isn't just about thought analysis. This isn't just about kids not playing
44:49
outside. This isn't just about kids being fat. It's much bigger than that. We've got an enemy
44:55
that is going to continue to infiltrate people and encourage them to do these horrific things.
45:02
So we've got to pray. We've got to be in the fight and push back darkness ourselves.
45:09
And we got to get after in those ways. So again, don't have this grandiose ending for you guys.
45:15
Wish I did. I wish I had the answers, but I don't think any of us do. All right, guys,
45:19
before we let you go, we're going to do a quick resilience boost. As you know, by now,
45:22
we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating mainly resilience. Specifically,
45:26
we do that by providing content like this podcast that helps you forward spiritual
45:30
mental and physical toughness. So today I've got a couple of resources for you.
45:33
So one is an article that was very, very surprising, a very, very interesting read. It's back from
45:37
2017. But the name of the article is I used to think gun control was the answer. My research
45:42
told me otherwise. So this is by Leah Labresco. And surprisingly, this is from the Washington Post.
45:50
Okay, so not national review, not the daily wire, like not Fox News from the Washington Post,
45:56
not exactly a bastion of a pro gun thought going on over there. But basically, this is a
46:02
statistician and a former news writer from 538 that basically is she's a data person.
46:08
And when she started getting into the data about gun violence, it didn't really fit all the
46:12
narratives that people like the Washington Post were spouting. So I think that's an interesting
46:17
read for you guys. And then for some of you guys that are a little bit more interested in the
46:20
Second Amendment, you pro gun folks, there is a Steven Crowder video again, every time I give you
46:25
something from louder with Crowder, I have to tell you, no, I don't support everything he's
46:28
ever said or done. Some of the things he does are funny. Some of the things he does are ridiculous.
46:32
But this was a thing that he did. It was a Second Amendment American masterclass with a historian
46:37
named David Barton. And so it's like a 30, I can't remember 20 or 30 minute video where they're
46:42
basically talking about the Second Amendment. They're talking about a lot of history around
46:45
that around guns and different things. And so for those of you that are interested in something
46:49
like that, I think it's informative, even if you're not interested in the Second Amendment or guns,
46:53
this is going to be informative to you. Because even if you disagree with the fact that we should
46:56
be able to own guns, this is going to give you the information that will kind of give you an idea
47:00
as to why we even have them in the first place. All right, guys, thanks a lot for listening to the
47:04
podcast. As always, really do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud,
47:08
Spotify or Google Play or anywhere else where you get your podcast and refer your friends to listen.
47:12
Guys, if you share this on social media, use the hashtag Undaunted Life. We'll be sure to find
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the post and give it a thumbs up. Guys, if we deserve a five star review, please leave us one,
47:20
just take about 30 seconds to do that and let us know why you like the content. I'm currently
47:24
booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2019 and all of 2020. So if you want me to come
47:30
speak at your men's event on your podcast to your team, whatever, just hit me up, email info at undaunted.life,
47:36
iNFO@undaunted.life. The website is www.undaunted.life and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @undauntedlife
47:43
or Facebook.com/undauntedlife. Check out our free devotionals on the YouVersion Bible app. Just search
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"undaunted life" under plans. And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red for allowing
47:53
us to use their entire music library for our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is our song
47:58
King of Sorrow, which is off their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem. The links are in the
48:02
description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
48:08
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
48:32
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