Blame and Punish Podcast
Episode: O-0012
Posting date: 03/25/21
[This written episode was used as a guideline to the spoken one. To hear the exact words, find it at https://www.blameandpunish.com/podcasts ... ry/latest/.]
This is not an episode on gun control!
Please do not jump to a conclusion on how I’m going to start this episode. It is NOT about gun control and I am NOT going to take a position on the subject. There is a reason I will not and I will state that at the end but let me just lay the groundwork. This is week 12 of our Blame and Punish Podcast.
A few days ago, I read the following on the CNN website. Listen for a few minutes:
“Colorado incident is seventh mass shooting in US in past 7 days”
“Monday's mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, comes less than a week after eight people were killed in a series of attacks on spas in Atlanta.
“The two incidents are likely to spur discussion about gun control legislation in the United States, where firearm deaths are tragically common. They are also among at least seven mass shootings in the past week across the US -- including three incidents on Saturday alone.
1. Atlanta, March 16: Eight people, including six Asian women, were killed when a White gunman stormed three spas, police said.
2. Stockton, California, March 17: Five people who were preparing a vigil in Stockton, in California's Central Valley, were shot in a drive-by shooting, the San Joaquin Sheriff's Department said. None had life-threatening injuries.
3. Gresham, Oregon, March 18: Four victims were taken to the hospital after a shooting in the city east of Portland, police said in an initial report on Twitter.
4. Houston, March 20: Five people were shot after a disturbance inside a club, according to police. One was in critical condition after being shot in the neck, the rest were in stable condition, according to CNN affiliate KPRC.
5. Dallas, March 20: Eight people were shot by an unknown assailant, one of whom died, according to police.
6. Philadelphia, March 20: One person was killed and another five were injured during a shooting at an illegal party, CNN affiliate KYW reported. "There were at least 150 people in there that fled and believed they had to flee for their lives,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.
7. Boulder, Colorado, March 22: Ten people, including a Boulder police officer, were killed in a shooting at the King Soopers supermarket, according to police.
“It's unclear how this number of mass shootings – in which at least four people were shot – compares to an average week in the US.
“Though some official gun violence data is available, the US federal government does not have a centralized system or database to track firearm incidents and mass shootings nationwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks some gun violence data, nearly 40,000 people were killed in incidents involving firearms in 2019.
“So far this year, there have been at least six mass shootings with four or more killed, including those in Atlanta and Boulder.
“These are the other four:
1. Jan. 9: Five killed in shooting spree in Evanston, Illinois, according to CNN affiliate WLS.
2. Jan. 24: Five people shot dead in Indianapolis, Indiana, according to police.
3. Feb. 2: Six people killed in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
4. March 13: Four killed in dispute over stimulus check in Indianapolis.”
- CNN, 8:37 a.m. ET, March 23, 2021
In those episodes, I just mentioned there were various types of guns used: handguns, rifles, automatic weapons – there wasn’t one type of gun that everyone bought from one place on the Internet. They were gotten from various places under completely different purchasing circumstances. One thing I do not know is how many guns were owned legally or not. I’m not talking about that right now.
Anyway . . . that’s not the problem.
Also, I would like to point out that not all of these mass shootings were conducted in one type of place: In other words, they weren’t all at church with people coming out and they were all shot at once. They were in various places during various actions.
So that is not the problem.
The shootings were on different days of the week and they were at different times of the day, some were in one place and some were in a few places and at least one was while being on the move – during a drive-by.
So, location and time are not a factor.
This year there have already been people who have been stabbed to death, there have been people who have been killed by cars, there are people missing who have been kidnapped and not found yet, some people were reported missing and they were later found dead. One story that made the news was about a girl who was raped and murdered in Florida by two men who got arrested and they allegedly gave her a “green pill” that murdered her.
Yep, there are a lot of ways to kill someone. They don’t all have to be with guns. If you want to kill someone, you can do it by bludgeoning them, stabbing them, starting them on fire, throwing them out of a window, drowning them . . . jeez, I could keep this up for a long time and I don’t even know all the ways to kill someone cuz I never have killed anyone. Imagine how many ways an actual murderer knows!
You can think anything you want about me. I know some of you have already formed an opinion from previous weeks and you don't like me. Well, I'm not trying to get anyone to like me. I'm just trying to save people's lives, lives of people who I love. And I'm trying to help you save people's lives, of people you love.
I know guns are easy to get. I know that for a fact. I know I can get one if I want one and I'm not even allowed to own one. I know you could buy them legally: quickly. I know you can buy them illegally: quickly. I know you can buy illegal guns, quickly. The illegal ones are the ones who shoot a lot of people, quickly – the automatic ones.
You know – there are other things that kill even more people even quicker.
From the CNN article that I read a few moments ago, if you total up all of those people who were killed, the number would've come to 40 from January 9 of this year to March 22 of this year in the murders that I spoke of . . . there were 40 people who were killed with guns in those ones I listed.
Does anybody remember a few years ago when there was a guy named Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel (I am absolutely sure I did not say that right but if you want to see how it’s spelled, look at the printout of this Podcast on our website)? Anyway, the bottom line is, that on July 14, 2016, on Bastille Day, in Nice, France, he drove a 19-ton-cargo-truck through crowds of people and he killed 86 of them. Here's an astonishing number: that same night, besides the 86 he killed, he injured 458 more while driving through the crowd. GEEZ!
Okay, that was a truck. You can kill more people quicker with a truck than with a gun. What's my point? It's coming!
Does anybody remember September 11, 2001? I do. If you don't, I'll bet you can look it up on any news site on this planet and see that someone didn't take a truck – but they took planes – there were nineteen people who took four planes and flew them into the twin towers of our World Trade Center in New York City, our Pentagon building (the home of our Armed Forces), and the fourth – heading toward Washington, D.C. – was taken down by our own citizens so the murderers couldn’t do any more damage! We simply refer to that massacre as 9/11. Remember that? They knocked down our two welcoming towers to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Those were our welcome to the world.
They killed 2,977 people that day and injured over 6,000. Now, what point am I trying to make? Okay, okay, I guess you are wondering where this is going so I’ll finish up. Here's my point. I told you that I would tell you at the beginning of this podcast what this was about. I told you it wasn’t about gun control. Now I’m talking about plane control so let me come back to the issue at hand!
I'm going to tell you now. It's not the gun, not the knife, it's not the plane – it's the person. You can't argue with me! You can't argue with me! It's the person.
If that person would not have been on this earth, that person: whether it was the stabbers or the plane flyers – if that person, or more correctly, those persons, would not have been on this earth, they could not have killed the people they killed. Who put them on this earth to do the killing?
Their parents! NO ONE ELSE! THEIR PARENTS PUT THEM HERE! If the parents put them on this earth and didn't build them right and didn't teach them that they are not supposed to kill people, then the parents are to blame even more than the killers are because the parents put the killers here. The killers could not have been here if the parents had not put them here. That's my point. The killers couldn’t put themselves here!
Are guns bad? Are knives bad? Are planes bad? Everyone's complaining about guns.
I'm not saying don't complain about guns but run a test. Go put a loaded pistol on a table in the middle of Grand Central Station. Leave it there. Watch it. Watch it for an hour, watch it for a day, a week, a year: watch it for 200 f’n years! I'll bet it never kills anyone by itself!
I'm not saying I'm pro-gun, I'm not saying I'm anti-gun! What I am saying is that I am anti-parents who bring killers into this world!!!
I'm done talking about this. If you want to come back. I'll be here next week. This is Bruce Carlson and I hope no one flies a plane into my head before then! At least no one who came from parents . . .
[END]
