I’m David Feldman coming to you from an airshaft overlooking a parking garage somewhere in Manhattan where the temperature is 68 degrees and sunny.

On today’s show, Kelly Carlin, author of A Carlin Home Companion and executive producer of the new HBO series George Carlin’s American Dream.

And in about an hour we meet Benjamin Hernandez
From Indivisible Houston.

Benjamin confronted Senator Ted Cruz while Cruz was in Houston eating dinner after he spoke before the NRA convention.

I’ll play the video later, and we’ll talk to Benjamin who, unlike Ted Cruz, is a great American. A patriot.

Ted Cruz takes more money from the National Rifle Association than any other senator or congressperson.

There have been at least eleven mass shootings this Memorial Day weekend according to the Washington Post.

A mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot or killed not including the shooter.

As of Sunday, since the massacre in Uvalde, 10 Americans have been killed and 61 injured in mass shootings.

That’s lowballing the number.

I’ll have more to say about the shooting in Texas in just a moment.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi was arrested in California’s Napa Valley for drunk driving after he crashed his 2021 Porsche into another vehicle near one of the couple’s multimillion dollar vineyards.

After the accident, Paul Pelosi said he was confused, didn’t know what he was doing, where he was going and lost complete control. Which are also the exact words Nancy Pelosi will be muttering right after this year’s Midterms.

The field sobriety test consisted of the officer asking Pelosi to stand on one leg and count backwards from one million inside trades.

Pelosi, worth close to two hundred million dollars, was released on $5,000 bail. Gee. I wonder where he was able to scrounge up the money. Was it the glove compartment, or the coffee cup holder near the stick.

$5,000. Always nice when the bail is cheaper than the bottle of wine you got arrested for drinking.

Pelosi is in his 80s and never worked an honest day in his life.

This lazy sack of human excrement considers drinking and driving multi-tasking.

Paul Pelosi’s blood alcohol level registered higher than .08 which also happens to be wife’s latest approval rating.

Nancy Pelosi wasn’t with him. She was back East doing the people’s business taking on climate change, assault weapons, and income inequality by accepting an honorary degree from Brown University.

Who says the Democrats are out of touch? Paul Pelosi crashes his Porsche while driving to one of his Napa Valley Vineyards while his wife is giving a pep talk to one of the Ivies and I don’t mean Ghetty.

Nancy Pelosi was late for the big climate summit because she had to officiate the San Francisco wedding of oil heiress Ivy Getty.

Who says the Democratic Party is out of touch with the working people?

Speaking to graduates, Speaker Pelosi addressed the world’s problems by telling graduates to heal America’s fractured soul. Brown costs 75,000 a year. That’s exactly what these kids are focused on. Healing America’s fractured soul. That’s the very first thing on their mind right now. That’s why they choose Brown– to heal America’s fractured soul.

On behalf of every student not attending an elite college, Hey Pelosi, instead of my soul, how about you heal my fractured student debt?

Back to her criminal husband Paul Pelosi. People are saying it’s not fair to judge her by the actions of her husband. Right. He just happens to have been a 200 million stock and real estate portfolio by accident. It had absolutely nothing to do with her being Speaker. In fact, the couple only lives on the money she makes as Speaker. All those vineyards they own. They bought them from her salary as speaker. They’re a regular Herbert and Dorothy Vogel.

Before being administered the field sobriety test, Paul Pelosi called Nancy and said, “Honey? It’s me your inside trader idiot of a husband Paul. You know how you always complain that you’re the one who has all the inside information? Well guess what! Now I got some inside information for you. Call our broker. You ready? Guess who’s just about to get arrested for drunk driving? Me! That’s right! And you say I never do anything on my own. So, call the broker. We’re going to make a fortune… And tell the kids! No reason they shouldn’t dip their beak too. OK, I love you.”

A spokesman for the family denied Paul Pelosi has a drinking problem, and that the reason he always looks completely shit faced is from all that time spent kissing Jeff Bezos’s ass.

Listeners to this show will recall that Paul Pelosi spent the past year trading millions of dollars of stock in Amazon, Google, and Apple—big tech companies that are subject to regulation by his wife.

In Paul Pelosi’s defense, you don’t need inside information to trade on the fact that the Speaker and the Democrats will never do anything to regulate Silicon Valley.

I mean what’s this idiot asking his wife. Got any inside skinny for me? Are you going to do nothing about Big Tech? Or are you going to do absolutely nothing about Big tech?

That’s what the Democrats do. Nothing. Nancy and her husband couldn’t even be bothered to show up in Uvalde, Texas for the funerals.

She’s busy picking up honorary degrees, and he’s get pickled at one of his vineyards while we’re burying school children.

That’s how much Nancy Pelosi cares about you.

Shahid for change dot us. Go to Shahid for change dot us. He’s running against Pelosi. It’s time to get rid of her, her husband and the entire democratic leadership.

We’re burying school children, and Nancy Pelosi and her husband are partying it up.

Anybody ever check on the workers at Paul and Nancy’s vineyards. The people who pick their grapes, are they United Farm Worker?

This is the Democrat who we rely on for Medicare for all, the pro act, universal background checks for guns, addressing climate change.

They couldn’t care less. Schumer’s daughters are lobbyists for Amazon and Facebook.

We haven’t even touched the type of law the vice president’s husband, Doug Jagoff practiced in Hollywood.

And Joe Biden? What can I tell you that won’t come out in the six impeachment trials scheduled for 2023 once Pelosi loses the House.

Let’s turn to the incredibly sad story coming out of Texas.

People are really angry. At the cops.

That Uvalde, Texas police chief now has two officers stationed outside his home sitting in a patrol car.

His cops will keep him perfectly safe. Unless of course an armed intruder brandishing an assault weapon storms inside. Then that chief’s completely on his own for at least an hour.

This was the week America woke up and finally realized the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good armor-plated robot guy with a gun.

Half that town’s budget went for police.

Had the town’s entire budget gone for police they still would have been too terrified to confront a semi-automatic assault weapon designed to butcher a nest of enemy snipers, not a classroom.

The conversation on mass shootings shifted dramatically last week. For the first time the Right is shamelessly blaming our cops for Tuesday’s staggering body count.

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said of his police’s lackadaisical response that he’s “livid.” Because he couldn’t possibly blame his precious assault weapons, or the laws he passed that makes AR-15s easier for an 18-year-old to purchase than a pack of cigarettes.

Greg Abbott is livid. And he’s going to do something about this. Blame the police.

When Republicans are wrong, they send out a posse searching for a scapegoat. They found one, our pusillanimous cops.

Yes, the cops are to blame for all those dead children.

And so, America was promised from now on every police officer has been put on notice that when there’s an active shooter DO NOT wait for the SWAT team. Go in there with the weapons you have, not the weapons you wish you had.

Starting now, the rules of engagement couldn’t be more explicit.

All cops are expected to walk directly into a shower of bullets. Failure to do so will render them cowards and legally liable.

From now on, mass shootings are the fault of our police. Not my words. The words of Republican governors, mayors, police chiefs, the NRA and NRA owned politicians across America.

It’s not the guns. It’s the cowardly police not wanting to get ripped apart by an AR-15.
Nice.

But maybe, just maybe, the REAL cowards are America’s police chiefs.

Maybe the REAL cowards are America’s police unions.

Maybe our police chiefs and police unions are too chickenshit to take on the NRA and all those gun manufacturers who shower the chiefs and unions with money, vacations, side hustles and other assorted goodies.

Maybe American police chiefs and police unions don’t really care that their officers are unhinged from these assault weapons flooding our streets.

Maybe American police chiefs and police unions are as afraid of the NRA and our gun manufacturers as our cops are of getting blown apart by weapons of war.

Police chiefs and police unions wield enormous political power. Republicans, especially, are terrified of them because Republicans purport to be the party of law and order so they desperately need the chiefs and the unions on their side.

Until American police chiefs and police unions stand up to the NRA, and stop taking money from gun manufacturers, they are responsible for every single mass shooting going forward.

Cops aren’t cowards. Police chiefs and police unions are the cowards for not demanding an assault weapons ban.

It doesn’t have to be this way.
And it wasn’t.

This wasn’t always the case. Our police demanded gun control until the NRA panicked and purchased their silence.

Police chiefs and the police unions spoke up in 1994, and that’s how we got the assault weapons ban.

Police chiefs and unions stood behind Clinton and the Democrats to get it passed.

That scared the NRA, so they began pouring money into police unions and police departments to purchase their political clout.

Ten years later, police chiefs and union heads sat back and said nothing as the assault weapons ban expired and the number of mass shootings exploded.

It’s been nearly 20 years since the assault weapons ban expired.

And it’s created a new breed of cop, a new breed of school children.

One with targets on their backs knowing nobody cares.

It’s made the cops and the kids sick in the head.

And now the new directive. Loud and clear. Police must not to wait for the SWAT team. Cops are teaching children to play dead. To dip their hands in their friend’s blood so it looks like they’ve already been hit.

This is deranged. America is demented.

Republicans now insist the mentally ill shouldn’t be allowed to buy a gun. Well, our entire country falls into that categorization. Our minds are defective.

What kind of twisted people would order police officers to run into a barrage of bullets pouring from an AR-15?
Where are the police chiefs and the police unions on this?

They used to speak for the cops. Not they speak for the NRA.

Think about this new directive for a second. Police must now run into the line of fire, without protection, and confront an active shooter even when that officer is completely outgunned. Otherwise, they are cowards who are legally liable.

I talked about this last week.

Former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson was arrested on 11 criminal charges, including child neglect and negligence and goes on trial this year for not pursuing the shooter firing that assault weapon inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were eventually killed.

It’s the police officer’s fault! Not the AR-15’s or the people who sold and manufactured it.

In America we put the cop on trial for not chasing after a shooter, but you can’t arrest or even sue the crackpot who sold another crackpot an AR-15.

The fact that we allow this is dispositive that not a single American possesses the compos mentis to own a gun.

What kind of sick country would rather protect gun manufacturers than its own cops and children?

The mentally ill shouldn’t be allowed to purchase a gun. Fine. That means all of us!

It’s time for American police chiefs and police unions to say their officers, just like our school children, refuse to be cannon fodder for gun manufacturers.

I’m seeing a huge swing against the police on the right.

Police chiefs and police unions better decide quickly. Who do you speak for? Your officers? Or the

NRA?

Right now, it sounds like it’s the NRA.

Protect your officers and demand an assault weapons ban.

Today is Memorial Day. Today I’d like to honor the brave men and women of the National Rifle Association leadership who served our nation in the time of war.

All none of them.

In all fairness, Colonel Oliver North was president of the NRA, briefly, and he served in Vietnam, but the NRA got rid of him because he kept asking too many questions about the NRA’s finances.

When Colonel North was president of the NRA, three years ago, he launched an investigation into NRA CEO Wayne La Pierre’s financial improprieties and concluded that if the government discovered any of this the NRA would lose its tax-exempt status.

There was a civil war within the NRA, Wayne LaPierre won, North quit, and the investigation stopped. Oliver North quit the NRA.

That’s how corrupt the NRA is. It’s too dirty for Oliver North, the guy who took a dump on our constitution by performing an end run around congress by illegally selling weapons to Iran, our nation’s enemy at the time, taking the proceeds from that sale and violating the Boland amendment, which specifically said American cannot give weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua, and North gave money and weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua.

North broke an entire constellation of laws. He’s a criminal. He defiled our constitution so he’s not a patriot. He disgraced the men and women in uniform.

The NRA is too dirty for Oliver North who is perhaps one of the dirtiest Americans of the 20th century.

Can we get the guns off the streets? Can we get rid of the second amendment?
That’s going to be tough.

There are 400 million guns in this country.

12 years ago, gun makers sold 5.4 million guns. This year they are expected to sell north of 12 million firearms.

One of America’s leading experts on the Second amendment, Professor Adam Winkler, who was on this show ten years ago, writes in the Atlantic that
43 state constitutions specifically protect the right of an individual to own a gun.

It’s not just the US constitution that’s the problem. It’s 43 state constitutions.

We can make the argument against the second amendment.

In a piece for the Atlantic eleven years ago Professor Winkler writes that the same Founding Fathers who gave us a second amendment believed in gun control.

For instance, freed slaves were not permitted to own guns. Men who refused to swear an oath to the revolution were not allowed to own a gun.

And in 1792, three years after our constitution was ratified, any man who served in a citizen style militia had to register his rifle with the government.

There is an argument for gun control. But we’re losing it.

I think all guns should be illegal. I think the only people who should be allowed to carry a gun are the police. I think the police are more dangerous now than they have ever been because so many civilians are packing.

I know that we can’t come for the guns. I wish we could. Because I think people who collect guns, who celebrate guns are demented, and their love of guns masks a hatred for democracy, freedom, and anyone who isn’t white.

The gun culture is rooted in fear of black people.

In the Dred Scott decision, Judge Tawney wrote that freeing the slaves would be a threat to our second amendment because freed slaves would be allowed to own guns, and nobody wants that. Tawney said if we freed the slaves, we’d have to get rid of the second amendment.
One of the justifications for not freeing the slaves was guns. If freed blacks became citizens, then they would have a right to own guns and, according to Judge Tawney, therein lies madness.

According to Adam Winkler too much of our gun culture is rooted in the 14th amendment. So much of the legal precedent for gun rights is based not so much on the second amendment but the 14th amendment which guarantees equal protection under the law.
Equal protection means the right to bear arms.

There is, in other words, a panoply of laws and judicial precedents that would make it next to impossible to get rid of the second amendment.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

I wish we could.

What could we do right now?

I hate to say this, it pains me to say this, but there are responsible gun owners. In fact, three out of four NRA members support background checks, and making it harder for people to buy assault weapons.

The problem is the NRA doesn’t represent its members. The NRA represents gun manufacturers, specifically

Smith & Wesson; Sig Sauer; Sturm, Ruger & Co.; Glock and Kimber Manufacturing make up nearly two thirds of all the gun sales America.

These are corporations that feel a responsibility not to school children, or teachers, or cops, but to shareholders. They must grow each year, show more profits, and increase sales.

We can’t put them out of business. Because our military needs these companies to make their weapons. And these weapons must be tested.
I can assure you Buffalo and Uvalde are seen as proving grounds.

Gun manufacturers are studying the shooters to see how their AR-15s held up in the field. Did the weapons jam?

The guns makers are no different from Exxon Mobil or United Healthcare. They don’t care if their product kills Americans. Their job is to increase profits.

But here’s what we forget.

United Healthcare, and the gun manufacturer– their profits depend on the purchasing power of the United States government.

The fossil fuel industry, the health insurance industry, and the gun industry all spend billions convincing Americans that government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. And yet, when it comes to solutions for these corporations, the government has all of them.

Fossil fuels, for profit health insurance, and gun makers need the government, because the government is their biggest customer.

I told you this last week. It’s important to remember. One third of our economy is what the federal, state, and local government spends.
One third of our economy is what our government purchases.

You know who knows that? The people who tell you we need smaller government.

They want you to stop depending on the government, because the less money for us the more for them.

Our tax dollars subsidize Exxon, because the government is the single largest purchaser of its oil, plus we subsidize their drilling, providing tax breaks.

Our government is private health care and big pharma’s biggest customer. Forget the subsidizes and tax breaks. We’re Big Pharma and for-profit health insurance’s biggest customer.

Medicaid and Medicare all go through for-profit health insurance companies. Our government is their biggest customer.

And our government is the biggest customer when it comes to purchasing weapons.

Forget the big military contractors who make the bombs and the jets.
I’m talking about the gun makers.

The pentagon doesn’t make its own assault weapons. It must purchase each one. The police in America subsidize the gun makers because the police don’t make their own assault weapons either

The government is the single biggest customer of guns.

Daniel Defense out of Georgia made the Ar-15 used in the massacre last week at Robb Elementary.

According to the New York Times, Dan Defense received 3.1 million dollars from the paycheck protection act.
Why are gun manufacturers getting your tax dollars?
Biden could stop that right now.
That’s how you get reelected.

This year the Pentagon signed a contract with Daniel Defense to provide
$9.1million worth of weapons.
You’re the commander in chief. Cancel the contract.
Start punishing the manufacturers of ar-15s. right now. You sell to 18-year olds you can’t sell to our military.

According to the New York Times the CEO, Marty Daniel, got his start back in 2002 when US Special Forces paid him twenty million dollars to produce accessories for combat rifles.

More and more deals with the American military and the British military followed.

But that that wasn’t enough. Marty wanted more.
So, in 2009 Daniel began marketing to consumers. Its rifles had the military’s stamp of approval, and so Daniel began advertising to Americans with the slogan, “Use what they use.”

After Sandy Hook, Daniel told Forbes that gun sales surged, and he had to increase production. He reportedly became consumed with marketing to consumers, especially children.

He marketed his assault weapons to parents and children, even placing ads with the assault weapon in the lap of a child coupled with Christian language about raising your kids right.

Four of Daniel’s military style weapons were discovered inside the hotel room of the Las Vegas sniper who killed 59 people in 2017.

One of the ways to move on gun control right now is an executive order that says the military will not purchase assault weapons from any manufacturer who sells to consumers.

Right now, Joe Biden could sign an executive order that says local police departments are forbidden from using federal dollars to purchase any weapons from manufacturers that also sell to ordinary consumers.

Gun makers rely on the government for their profits.

If they want government contracts, then stop selling these weapons to 18-year-old sociopaths.

The president could do that right now.

Yeah, it will be challenged in the courts. But it’s something.

Something that will get you and your party reelected.

The political will is there right now.

Do it.
Let the courts overturn it. But do it. Make enemies.
Stand for something Joe Biden.
Tell the American people that the NRA is your enemy and you as president will do everything you can to put them out of business.

Why is Leticia James, the attorney general of New York suing to put the NRA out of business?

Why isn’t the Biden administration withdrawing the NRA’s tax-exempt status.

You want to win elections. That’s how.

There are millions of ways to keep hitting the gun makers.

The justice department should be prosecuting the gun manufacturers for the way they market to kids, the same way they took on the cigarette companies for marketing to kids.

If the NRA won’t give up, then we can’t give up.

We need politicians and lawyers constantly coming up with new laws, new lawsuits to bankrupt the gun manufacturers into submission.

It’s not about winning. It’s about punching and punching and punching and wearing the NRA and the gun manufacturers down.

We could get these guns off the streets. We’re going to do it by electing governors, mayors, sheriffs and presidents who will get down in the gutter and fight the NRA the same way they fight for the gun manufacturers.

This is a game of inches. It requires a ground game of dedicated professionals who never give up.

There is no deux ex machina that will solve the gun problem. There’s no easy fix like getting rid of the second amendment.

Never going to happen.

You have to stop feeling paralyzed and start fighting the gun makers in the courts, in the state legislatures and in the executive branch and congress—by any means necessary.

Teachers unions should demand gun laws.

Cities, sheriffs, cops should be suing the gun makers.

The NRA is our enemy.
We can break them.
Demand that your tax dollars don’t subsidize gun makers who sell to eighteen-year olds.