https://youtu.be/VwzsmUAXs7s

By Brandon R.

I know Australian comic Jim Jefferies’s anti-gun gasser has been highlighted before on TTAG, but this video just will not go away. I keep seeing it on Facebook, and I have even had it emailed to be by family and friends with an implied, “See? You’re wrong!” I will admit that this is best summary of the gun control lobby’s arguments that I have ever heard. Jefferies’s delivery is flawless, his timing is perfect, and some of the material is good for some positive introspection. But in light of the bit’s growing prominence, I believe that it deserves a thorough fisking . . .

Ultimately, this video does nothing more than confirm the presuppositions of a firm believer in a gun-free utopia. However, comedy has a pronounced impact on the fence-sitters. So once you see just how ridiculous and disingenuous Jefferies’s arguments are, I hope the bit can be seen for what it is: a well-polished, but hyperbolic comedy routine.

Here are each of his main points form his routine and the rough time at which they begin:

  1. “[Anti gunners] don’t get excited, because the other people have guns.” 15 Sec.

Funny, but you’re implying that the people with guns are a danger to you and your audience. I can take a joke, but let’s all remember that everyone walked out of there alive that night.

  1. “In Australia, we had guns… right up until 1996 Australia had the biggest massacre on Earth. Still hasn’t been beaten.” – 40 sec

A morbid point of fact is that Australia’s Port Arthur massacre had been topped. I don’t know how Jim defines massacre, but he doesn’t count Anders Breivik’s Norwegian rampage, or the dozens of bombings and arsons around the world that have matched or beaten the thirty-five killed in Port Arthur. Let’s always remember that guns kill people more dead than other things (sarc).

  1. “After [Port Arthur] they banned the guns.” -49 sec

That is a broad statement, but the guns that were banned are essentially the same guns that the anti-gun crowd wants banned here: AR-15s, AK pattern rifles, or, to use the anti’s invented term, “assault weapons.” In Australia, they didn’t just end the sale and manufacture, they confiscated them. They gathered them up, paid the owners some consolation money, and melted them all down for scrap. So if Jefferies or anyone else wants to promote an Aussie model of gun control, then I suppose the President’s incessant lie that “no one is coming for your guns” rings pretty hollow. And you wonder why gun owners are so “paranoid.”

  1. “Since the gun ban in 1996 there hasn’t been a single massacre since.” – 53 sec

Actually, trusty old Wikipedia lists quite a few. I doubt Jefferies or anyone else will concede that the arsons, stabbings, and yes, shootings listed constitute massacres, but people have killed other people in Australia, with and without AR-15s.

  1. “I think you should be able to have guns. It’s in your constitution. What I am not for is bull**** arguments and lies.” – 1:59

In total agreement there, but we probably define the last two items differently.

  1. “There is one argument and one argument alone for being able to have a gun…, “F*** off! I like guns!” – 2:09

I would present other possible arguments here, but Jim is about to attempt to destroy them all. I’ll let him try. However, the libertarian in me agrees with him whole heartedly.

  1. “Don’t give me that other bull****. The main argument is, “I need it for protection… Really? Is that why they’re called ‘assault rifles? I’ve never heard of these f****** protection rifles you speak of.”– 2:20.

That popping sound you’re hearing are gun owners who came of gun-owning age in the 80s. Thanks to the Violence Policy Center’s founder Josh Sugarman, the public is in total confusion about the terms “assault rifles,” “assault weapons” and the like.

Why? This was/is the low-hanging fruit. Sugarman wrote, “The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.”

You see, gun owners who lived through that time saw the power of semantic invention play out in real time. Gun control activists love to push their agenda at the points of greatest public ignorance and do everything they can to bamboozle voters with hyperbole and creative turns of phrase.

I won’t fault Jefferies here. He was a kid then and we are so far down the “assault weapons” road that it’s a bit like trying to reassert the original definition of the word “gay.” It’s here. Let’s deal with it. Still, it isn’t a fair argument at all when an anti-gunner invented the term assault weapon. I know he said assault rifle, but… I could explain myself till I am blue in the face here, and I don’t think it would matter to most people.

  1. “You have a gun in your house, you are 80% more likely to use that gun on yourself than to shoot someone else.” – 2:49

I think Jefferies may be referencing one of many “studies” churned out by anti-gun “researchers” on the Bloomberg dole. He is probably right though. There are something like 18,000 gun related suicides in the U.S. each year. I don’t think that the number of people killed in self-defense approaches anything close to that number. However, I wasn’t aware that the only way one could defend one’s self with a gun was by killing their assailant. Even the most anti-gun of anti-gun “research groups,” Johns Hopkins, says that there are 70,000 gun related self-defense events a year. Comparing those two numbers gives you a different statistic than our intrepid comedian, but I digress.

And yes, suicide is a problem, but there are plenty of developed countries where guns are practically non-existent, that have much higher suicide rates than the U.S. (see Japan/South Korea). Yes, suicide is a risk, but I think it is a calculated risk. For the vast majority of Americans, it is a risk worth taking. With Jefferies’s logic, we should probably ban belts, rope, painkillers, gravity, trains…

  1. Jim describes a traumatic assault that he and his girlfriend experienced in merry old gun-free England. Spoiler alert: he concludes that a gun would not have helped him because he “didn’t have his holstah.” – 3:20

I guess a gun couldn’t have helped in this situation either. I’m sorry Jefferies doesn’t like the idea of being prepared for an attack. I think most gun owners in America have a firearm that they could access and fire in ten seconds or less.

  1. “None of you give a s*** about home security. None of you go to home security conventions. None of you read padlock monthly… [or] have a picture of you behind a secure door going ‘f****** yeah!’” – 3:50

This guy doesn’t know gun owners. But hey, affordability, portability, and practicality matter. I think most of us would rather have a $500 gun that we can take anywhere, than sign up for expensive subscription security system that allows someone in India to listen to your murder live over the internet. Still… Jim has clearly not been in some of the homes that I have.

  1. “ ‘ I’m a responsible gun owner. I keep my guns locked in a safe.’ Then they’re no f******* protection!”– 4:30

Jim, first makes fun of us for being prepared with a readily accessible gun. Then he makes fun of us for safely securing that firearm in a safe. I wonder if Jim realizes that there are quite a few options out there other than a vintage turning combination safe? Ironically, we use the exact same argument when making fun of mandatory safe storage laws in Australia, which render gun ownership for self-defense pointless. But hey, that was the law’s intent, and Jim probably love that law, so…

  1. Jim thinks the NRA’s proposal to allow teachers to be armed in schools is bad because an angry substitute will shoot some middle school bullies in righteous indignation. – 5:50

I don’ think anyone is proposing that we arm unstable people against their will. Likewise, there’s nothing stopping an unstable teacher from getting a gun and killing someone right now. The law makes precious little difference. Being a teacher myself, I have known dozens of public and private school teachers who wished desperately to be able to carry guns in school to protect the lives of their students. I was teaching in an inner city school when Sandy Hook happened. I have to say that almost every teacher in that school had quiet conversations about changing the school district’s gun ban. And we were union.

  1. “That average security guard in America earns $16 an hour. Not a lot of wiggle room to be a f******* hero!” – 6:50

A private in the American Army earns $1600.000 a month at E-2, most of our firemen are volunteer, and the last time I checked, malls employ unarmed security guards. So if we are going to ask a guy with a radio to be our first line of defense, why don’t we give “Kevin” a fighting chance?

  1. “The last ten percent [of you]… are f******* furious… Ten percent of you are f******* seething for a couple of reasons. First, I am making good points.” – 8:00

Yes we are seething, but only because a significant percentage of Americas believe him.

  1. “Number two. I’m foreign.” 8:40

I’ll give him the xenophobia joke. We don’t like foreigners telling us why our country sucks. We’d rather tell them what’s wrong with theirs.

  1. “Please understand that every country has a [Constitution], it’s no more special than any other Constitution… I’ve had people… come up to me going ‘You cannot change the Second Amendment. Yes you can. It’s called an ‘amendment.’” 9:40

Perhaps Jim doesn’t understand what these people who allegedly approached you were saying about the Second Amendment. You see, Americans have repeated witness dramatic reinterpretations of the Second Amendment which began during the Progressive Era. Liberal justices and politicians have worked very hard to make the Second Amendment say something other than what is written on the paper. So when Jefferies argues for asinine gun laws that violate the “shall not be infringed” language, he is asking us to ignore plain English.

In reality, there’s two ways to change the Constitution. We can actually amend it a through the process that Article V spells out, or we can just reinterpret everything to the point of meaninglessness. You know, like Plessy vs. Ferguson’s gutting of the 14th Amendment, the FISA Court’s post-911 mockery of the 4th Amendment, or the dozens of recent lower court decisions banning the carry of weapons, mocking both the 2nd Amendment and the Heller decision. Amendments in America are rare. What is far more common and politically expedient is to just redefine the Constitution to suit the fancies of the time. That is basically what he is proposing. Here in America, we like to think that the Constitution means what it says, and that we try to hold pretty firmly to the letter. It is that loose double standard stuff that paves the way for despoots and tyrants. I guess that is why we left the Commonwealth and Australia didn’t. We had to use guns to do it.

  1. “You know what else was in your Constitution? Slavery!” – 10:40

Slavery and gun ownership are not really analogous, but I will chuckle along.

  1. “We have to play to the one percent of society that are such f*** wits that they ruin it for the rest of us. We have to walk as slow as our slowest person to keep society f****** moving. I take drugs like a f******* champion, but I can’t take drugs because Sarah took drugs and stabbed the f******* kids! Ah thanks Sarah!” 11:10

And this is why so many of us want Jim to go back to Australia. You see, a large number of Americans have yet to buy this collectivist mentality. We do not, in fact, accept that our sovereign rights must always be sacrificed on the altar of the “common good.”

Now, the irony of what Jim is saying here is not lost on us. He mentions drugs. Does he realize that drugs aren’t enumerated natural rights like the right to keep and bear arms? But Jefferies doesn’t really care about Constitutions, so I guess that fact is lost on him.

  1. “Who’s to know you’re not crazy…? – 12:50

Concealed carriers commit crime at a lower rate than the police. I am fine with the risk that a few nut jobs will “slip through the cracks,” because if I am disarmed, they’ll still be crazy, and I will be screwed.

  1. Paraphrase “In America, Bushmaster rifles cost $1000, in Australia, they cost $34,000. That prevents crazy people from getting guns” – 15:45

So? There’s a lot of other way to kill people. However, I don’t think depriving me of my chance to defend myself against crazy with a knife is worth the cost. Sorry. Like I said before, that crazy person will still exist after the guns are gone… if their gone. I want the best tool available for the job.

  1. “The real reason [the Second Amendment] was written was so you could form a militia against a tyrannical government. In case the government became a bunch of c**** you could all get your guns and fight back. And that made a hell of a lot of sense when it was just muskets, but you do know the government has drones right?”

For a second I thought we were getting somewhere. I HATE this argument more than anything else the antis throw out. First, the “enemy’s” ability to wage war is not the measure of the justice of a cause. If it is, then you’re just measuring your cowardice. We just watched the most advanced military in the world fail to subdue peasants with Ak-47s in two Middle Eastern countries. The Taliban averaged about 30,000 active fighters at any given time, which is a figure orders of magnitude smaller than the manpower of the coalition arrayed against them. Why do the antis even trot that argument out? They must live in an alternate reality or something.

Knowing what I know about the gun world, if things ever got to the point of Revolution in this country, I would venture a guess that a sizable proportion of the military would be sympathetic. Our army is loyal, but they also swore an oath to protect and defend our Constitution. The rumblings continue to build that the politicians that swear the same oath are not holding up their end of the bargain.

  1. Ah yes, the “ye olde musket” argument. – 15:45

Way to bring it full circle and remind us once again that gun owners are hot heads, who use their guns to settle petty scores.

Conclusion

Look Mr. Jefferies, you’re funny. I’ll give you that. You have an exceptional talent. However, your entire routine is really just a rehashing of almost every worn out anti-gun talking point we have heard for decades. You just make it look better than most. I hope you’re not out there somewhere seething. If you are, it’s probably because I am making some good points.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

189 COMMENTS

  2. Sounds like an angry, delusional young man out to deny others their rights. Maybe he shouldn’t be allowed access to a gun?

  3. Well, Australia is still a country that was and still is under the monarchy in curious ways. Democratic up to a point, it has not really delivered the full expression to its people that the US enjoys. It moves in very conservative baby steps vis-a-vis any freedom allowed its people that expands things beyond it’s pseudo-feudal (yes….) heritage. A heritage that wants to see the crown in place…firmly attached. That is why the Queen is on many things as yet.

    • Exactly Tony. Australians have no rights and are apathetic about getting any.

      In the 1990s Australia held a referendum on removing the Queen as head of state and creating a right to religious freedom – and it was voted down by the majority! Can you imagine Americans ever voting that way? We fought a war for rights and independence and Australians are too scared to even vote for the same.

      There is also no equivalent to freedom of speech in Australia. All manner of media are regularly censored by bureaucrats and their Internet censorship system is second only to China.

      Finally, there have been plenty of massacres and criminal gun use since the gun ban. But even before the ban, the numbers were very different to the U.S. It’s a sparsely populated socialist country, with an extensive welfare system and none of the gangs or inner city crime common in the U.S.

      • Haha. You guys have no idea about Australia obviously. The Queen has absolutely no influence over anyone’s lives and as far as being Socialist well if that means that even the poorest of people have access to quality schooling and health care then it works for us. Australia is the greatest and luckiest country on earth not to mention one of the wealthiest. We just don’t have automatic or semi automatic rifles. Everything else we shoot regularly.

        • Also our deer hunting season runs for 8 months to 12 months of the year depending on the species. Who has greater freedoms in that respect?

        • Isn’t it amazing how the Aussies have to ask permission to exercise a right, kinda like Morgan freeman in Shawshank Redemption asking the guard for permission to shake the dew off his toy every time he has to pee…..

          But hey those unannounced inspections in your homes aren’t a hinderance to those used to being prisoners or slaves getting their cells tossed for contraband……

          Of course since your 1996 lie, we see only a-4.34% reduction in murders w a gun compared to our -52.1% reduction…. Criikey you blokes really suck at reducing violence…..

          Oh yeah, since anyone with clue about statistics knows any outlier data spike is removed as it doesn’t reflect the trends which of course reviewing you blokes data the trend was already in decline……

          Of course the majority of that reduction was due to the end of your bikie wars and the baby boomers getting old and not one thing to do with gun control……

          But hey, we understand it baaaaaaaahhd to not knuckle under down under in udder submission to politicians who lied and stole from you for no other reason than your all neutered

        • Funny, my friends in Australia are consistently complaining about the Socialist government. One is a retiree who gets barely enough to live on (actually, he and his wife both work part-time to get by), who sees immigrants and others getting free everything from government. As for medicine, there’s just enough to be comfortable until something kills you.

        • Mark,

          Good luck talking any sense to these people….Australia is the nicest and safest place to live in the world. Jim Jefferies statements were just plain logical but unfortunately these nuts don’t know what logic is.

        • Hey Mark,

          So the Governor-General appointed by the British government (Monarchy) didn’t invalidate its juvenile colony’s government back in the 70’s?

          No Constitutional right to free speech.
          Mineral wealth doesn’t belong to property owner, only the crown.

          The list goes on but lets just start there.

        • Wow, so much ignorance on Australian culture, values and governmental system.

          Yes, Australia is part of the Commonwealth. No, the Queen and British government don’t have any say in the way our country is run. The last time they asked us to go to war with them, we said no. The Governor General is NOT appointed by the Queen (even though they are the highest power in the Australian Government system), they are appointed by the Parliament, but still act independently of the parliament – as you noted in the 1970’s when they overthrew the Whiltlam government.

          I find the rebuttals in this article to be a little bit disturbing. The comedian mentions that we haven’t had anymore massacres in Australia since Port Author. The article then draws a link to what’s happened in Norway and other countries as having bettered what happened in Australia. First of all, Norway is in Northern Europe in the northern hemisphere, Australia is in the southern hemisphere and is NOT the same country. Secondly, it is a not a race as to who has more killings (how is one massacre better than the other!?!?).

          Additionally, no gun massacres have happened since in Australia. Yes, people have died from other means (like fires, assults etc.), but not mass gun violence.

          A number of people here have also said that Australia is a socialist country that’s only second to China for being a horrible country with no freedoms. Really? Have you actually travelled to Australia? What about outside of the USA? Having travelled and lived extensively around the world (including in my home country of Australia), I can say that Australians enjoy a level of freedom that is almost unmatched around the world. We are a very fortunate country to have a lot to be proud of, and yes, some things that we’re not so proud of. We have a government system that occasionally oversteps the market (internet laws are an interesting example), but as a democracy, these are constantly checked and adjusted – in the case of the internet laws, they have already been watered down and I would expect them to be killed off entirely soon.

          As Mark said, ultimately, if you consider a country to be socialist when it helps its citizens, gives them free access to world class health care and medication, and where if you’re too poor to afford a home, it will put a roof over your head, then yes, we must be socialist. For that matter, so is all of Europe and pretty much every other developed country around the world (including Canada).

          If you consider that, well then good luck. Enjoy your guns and constantly living in fear. We’ll enjoy our socialism and living happily knowing we’re safe.

        • Cracks me up to think of hot headed Aussies with the lack of gun laws that the U.S. has. When I say ‘cracks me up’, I mean scares the living daylight out of me. The death rate per head of capita, would be even worse than America. Yes, guns don’t kill people, idiots with guns kill people, and that’s why we need legislation.

      • um…have you been to Australia? Because I’m right here, using my internet, freedom of speech (so obvious a necessity for democracy we didn’t think it needed a law) and not being ruled over by dear old Lizzy. And really not missing my guns– I mean please, I live in a country where everything can kill you and I really don’t think I need a gun to protect me. Also you are obviously a moron and have no idea of Australia #fuckenay#straya

        • The Bill of Rights is an articulation of the inherent rights – self-evident – of humanity, not “laws.”

      • Yes we are still part of the Commonwealth, the Labour Party has pledged to raise a referendum (again) about leaving in 2020 or at the end of QEII’s reign. Regardless, we still have, in some respects, more freedom than the US. For example, we actually have the choice of who gets elected, the citizens of the USA do not get ot choose their President, evidence by President’s Haynes, Adams, Harrison and who could forget old George W. Bush. If that system works for you guys then great, our gun laws generally work for us. I would agree our laws could be more lax but I still advocate that firearms should be regulated and have some form of control over who can and can not have them to the point where the ‘crazy’ couldnt get them but the normal and abiding citizen can and I believe we are closer to that than the US. As to the stats, again taking it out of context, Aus. suffers so little gun related murder that it makes national news regardless of where it is. Also our Police Force are generally pretty good at protecting people from the crazies. If you want to play with full auto rifles, join the Reserves which I advocate strongly for.

        Don’t come and tell me that our country is not free cos we can do anything w want as long as it does not endanger people or property. Yes we are welfare state, yes people bitch about it but that is because no one ever bloody looks into out budget and see’s that only 4% of our budget is spent on welfare that does not include disabled and elderly and carers, we have a welfare issue because we have such a heavy burden of people on the pension that it makes up 20% of our budget. Im not saying cut them off, im saying that we have a population problem where we are very ‘top heavy’ and its something that is difficult to get around.

        And the Revolutionary War, happened shortly after Australia was first colonized. We didnt have an identity yet and by the time we hit the age where we were at the same development as the US was in that war, we the Boer War, WW1 and WW2 to deal with so revolution was less important to us and by the time it became important, it would be silly to wage a war with England (just look at the Falklands, we were not gonna go against the Iron Lady, jesus, she would have wiped the floor with us). Better to do it democratically and besides, the Queen has already given her blessing to both us and the Kiwi’s to become fully independent, an Australian Republic isomething that will happen, its a question of when and if we will lose any political freedoms we have now in the process

      • What a lot of crock. You are ignoring the elephant in the room. I am about five times less likely to be harmed by guns than you are. And the reason is because there are no guns. I don’t even know anyone who has a gun. Aussies know gun control works. Nothing you say and no facts you twist can alter that truth. I feel sorry for you. You obviously can’t see the truth. Probably because you have your head up your arse!

        • Hi Marc,

          Let me begin by saying I have no interest in an argument as to what country is “better” or the like. That’s all nonsense. I’ve grown up around native Aussies, and I think very highly of Oz and her people.

          As to the specifics of the argument, I also have no issues about Australia’s self-determination as it relates to guns or anything else. But where I feel I must respond is to the claim that there are no guns in Australia. In fact, there are 15 guns per 100 residents in Australia as of 2014, about the same as Mexico. Australia ranks 40th out of 175 countries in gun ownership per capita. You not knowing anyone who owns a gun seems to say a bit more about the group with whom you associate than it does about the statistical reality of the number of guns in the country. Another interesting statistic is that firearms-related homicides in Australia, expressed as a trend line, were dropping well prior to the post-Port Arthur “ban.” This is irrefutably true: http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html. This follows an overall declining trend that began in 1989 and continued through 2007. There was, of course, a peak in homicides in 1999, after the ban. What’s really interesting is that the SAME trend occurred during this time in the USA. Declining violent crime and declining firearms crime as a percentage. We had no such ban (the so-called assault weapons ban notwithstanding — this had no teeth and was circumvented with certain design elements almost immediately after its passage), and this still held true.

          Australia can ban away, no worries. In the US, many of us would prefer to retain our freedoms related to firearms ownership, and we will not accept assaults on them.

        • Outside of the inner cities the U.S. has a lower gun homicide rate than Belgium. Almost all of us are at no greater risk than you are. We have a gang problem – deliberately, through our ” Welfare State” – not a gun problem. And most of our gun “murders” are suicides counted as homicides.

    • First of all, Jim Jeffries is a comedian, so his stand up material is primarily for entertaining his audience. Being overzealous and picking apart his act for factual veracity is really missing the point here – guns can kill people.

      Secondly, for the Americans who made disparaging comments here about Australia, your combined ignorance astounds me. I’m not even going to bother wasting my time explaining why you are all wrong about Australia. However, I will say this, if your nation is so much more advanced than ours – with all the freedoms that you enjoy that us socialist, backward Aussies are supposedly denied – then why are so many of your countrymen killed by firearms within your country each year? Do you really think it’s got nothing to do with people having access to military-style weapons that frankly doesn’t belong anywhere except on the battlefield?

    • You Americans do not understand the concept of a constitutional monarch which Canada, New Zealand, Australia , and the UK share. That is one who has no real power with the exception that the Monarch can dissolve Parliament and force a general election. The monarch has no direct involvement with running any of the governments but ensures through the monarchs constitutional rights that no government can be a dictatorship. By the way list of countries who constitutional monarchs; Andorra[15]
      Antigua and Barbuda[16]
      Australia[16]
      Bahamas[16]
      Barbados[16]
      Belgium
      Belize[16]
      Cambodia
      Canada[16]
      Cook Islands[16][17]
      Denmark
      Grenada[16]
      Jamaica[16]
      Japan
      Lesotho
      Luxembourg
      Malaysia
      Netherlands
      New Zealand[16]
      Niue[16][17]
      Norway
      Papua New Guinea[16]
      Saint Kitts and Nevis[16]
      Saint Lucia[16]
      Saint Vincent and the Grenadines[16]
      Solomon Islands[16]
      Spain
      Sweden
      Tuvalu[16]
      United Kingdom[16]

  4. Tyranny with manners is still tyranny…

    Hate with humor is still hate…

    Lies with a thesaurus are still lies…

    A cleverly told lie is worse, not better…

  5. Only one response to EVERY anti gunner…

    Every citizen has the right to lawful self protection.

    And that is the beginning, middle and end of the the debate.

    • Except it isn’t the end because the U.S. Constitution is written so that the people are allowed to make changes via amendments, clarification by amending specific verbiage within a current law, completely reversing/negating a current regulation, or submitting a new bill to override in tota a current law.

      So, it is never the end as long as people have the ability to hold the government responsible for representing the majority of the registered voters. Even that process could be subject to change. It all is. So, suffice to say you are of the 10% who feel that the Constitution should be immutable. Wrong. Just admit it, “Screw me. You like your guns,” and fear that an actual vote of the majority of the country would curtail your “fun”.

      • Prohibition taught us that it is one thing to pass a law, but quite another to enforce it.

        Go ahead, Janice. Pass all the laws you want. End our “fun.” Because the second you do, every American who sees the government as the enemy will not only feel vindicated, but will finally see the green light to refresh the Tree of Liberty. We’ll make Bleeding Kansas look like a skirmish, and I promise you it won’t be fun.

        Do your worst, honey, and see what happens.

        • If there are no reasonable restrictions to the access to “protection” weapons, then society goes on fearing the mentally unstable and sociopathics who can get access to such weapons. But if reasonable restrictions are made on such access by rightful law, the so-called “responsible” gun advocates want everyone to fear that their “response” weapons will be used against them. You’re not offering a better suggestion, and threaten to make it worse. Sounds Un-American.

      • The Bill of Rights has never been amended. And the fundamental human right of self defense is not about “fun.”

    • Shouldn’t children have the right to go to school without fear of being shot by their fellow classmates?

      • There’s no need for children to be frightened when they go to school. Yes, there have been a few massacres done by deranged people with guns, but children should be taught to think of all the massacres that have been prevented by the protection provided by the relevant amendments to the American Constitution, Think of all the schools where there HAVEN’T been any massacres yet. Does anyone know how many children would have been killed in US schools and colleges had the Americans adopted the same stance toward gun control as the Australians? There must be some facts that the NRA and others could provide to clarify this. Or perhaps a silence on this issue would indicate a level of uncertainty.

        • ‘Does anyone know how many children would have been killed in US schools and colleges had the Americans adopted the same stance toward gun control as the Australians?’

          Um, none? If you are aware of a single school massacre in Australia since gun control please link

    • The king may not agree with the opinions of the court jester, but the reason for having a court jester is for the king to see who laughs at his jokes. A wise king watches the jester and gets a feel for the sentiments of the court by its response to the jester’s antics. Keep your ears closed at your peril!

  7. Jefferies doesnt like being questioned or his ideas challenged on his Facebook page. He will block you almost as fast as Moms Demand or Center To Support Government Violence.

  9. I watched his “comedy” skit a while back, before I even knew he was an anti-gun gasbag, and he’s just plain not funny in my opinion.

    Heck, George Carlin was anti-gun and he was more funny on his worse day than this aussie at his best. LOL

  10. I really like Jeffrey’s show on FX, called “Legit”. It was probably one of the funnier shows on TV, except in one episode, where his character’s house gets robbed, and at the end his girlfriend says he should get a gun, in which he replies, “Smart people don’t own guns. Only stupid people own guns. Smart people can look out and see all bad things in the world and can’t take it”. Seems to me Jeffries has both suicidal self-projection and a disgusting amount of narcissism.

    • “Smart people can look out and see all bad things in the world and can’t take it”

      What does this even mean? Seriously. Is this verbatim?

      • I’m paraphrasing. The line in the show boiled down to “smart people shouldn’t own gun ’cause they’ll commit suicide.”

        • So in short, the usual hand-wringing, panty-bunching projection we have all come to expect from the anti-gun left.

          If *I* owned a gun I’d definitely eat it in a moment of irrational, dramatic liberal despair, and that’s why we must force you to be defenseless against those who choose to eschew society’s rules. For the children.

        • That’s because he actually suffers sever depression. He is essentially talking about himself in a slight 3rd person manner.

    • Yep. The liberal/-progressive ideology is based on self-hate at their own level of subconscious awareness of their self-imposed condition of being helpless, powerless and defenseless.

      Human beings thrive on challenge, and feeling competent in facing that challenge.
      Liberal/ progressives are conditioned from birth to be everything they internally loath, and so they end up loathing themselves.

      As a consequence, they project this self-loathing upon those that are competent, capable and self reliant. Everything they are not. Which is why they are so full of hate, and why most of the mass murderers have been of the leftist bent.

      • Most mass murderers are ‘leftist bent’?

        Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichol, David Pedersen, Holly Ann Grigsby, Wade Page, and Frazier Miller – all homegrown American killers and perpetrators of violence based on conservative ideology.

        Anders Breivik, Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Benitto Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, etc. – all internationally renown right-wing killers.

  11. Some of us find his foul language extremely offensive and thus a violation of our “collective” first amendment rights. But I have a simple and safe solution. Just require him to wait 72 hours before spewing his comic bile, and make sure it first passes a censorship test, lest it be judged hate speech. We don’t want anyone to be offended, do we? I thought not.

  12. If Jefferies was home with his family one night, and three mean looking hoods broke into his house and said they were going to rape his mother or wife, and then shoot him, and God suddenly appeared and told him he could have a magically acquired gun to defend himself, do you think he would turn it down?

    • Absolutely he would turn it down. Rumor has it that he’s terrible in relationships and the reason they break up is so that they don’t kill each other first. 3 mean hoods is cheaper than a divorce settlement. That, and again this is only rumor, his rampant drug use prevents him from making good decisions and he couldn’t honestly answer a 4473. Again, it’s only rumors.

    • In a similar way, if you had the choice between having your family raped and killed or giving up the 2nd amendment, what would you choose?

    • It’s a sad indictment of a community that its citizens live in constant fear of having their homes invaded and their families raped.

  14. If it really were only one percent or even ten percent of the population that believed in the right to bear arms, the 2nd Amendment would have been repealed long ago. The fact it hasn’t been makes it clear the civilian disarmament lobby doesn’t have nearly the majority they claim to have.

  15. 2: “In Australia, we had guns… right up until 1996 Australia had the biggest massacre on Earth. Still hasn’t been beaten.” – 40 sec
    A morbid point of fact is that Australia’s Port Arthur massacre had been topped. I don’t know how Jim defines massacre, but he doesn’t count Anders Breivik’s Norwegian rampage…

    It would have been so easy to fact check that, so it’s painfully obvious that he couldn’t care less about facts.

    • Not to mention that just two years earlier, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered, the vast majority with machetes. A few judiciously distributed “assault weapons” could have made a huge impact there.

      • ‘Judiciously distributed’.

        Thank you for bringing this up. That is the crux of the issue: How do you prevent the wrong people ending up with guns?

        Imagine guns were available to Rwandans (from their local Walmart equivalent etc) during the conflict. Obviously, you would need to prevent the genocidal maniacs from purchasing them, otherwise you’d simply be making the genocide faster and more efficient. Would you conduct background checks, to make sure the purchasers weren’t the ‘wrong’ kind of gun owner (maniacs)? Because if you would, you already agree that some controls are necessary.

        Remember, genocidal maniacs don’t think they’re maniacs. Better for no one to have guns than for genocidal maniacs to have them. Which is one of the points Jefferies made.

        • Agree!! Also if you think there is no one that shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun then you are obviously insane and *you* should not be trusted with a firearm.

    • Don’t know why this flew over your head’s, he meant GUN ONLY massacre’s, its bloody hard to do anything about ANFO bombs cos we kinda need Ammonium Nitrate for farming. But even so, its bloody easy to beat 35 when you have a fucking bomb and guns isnt it? And bombs had nothing to do with the show, he meant where guns were the only weapon used. Why wasn’t that obvious?

  16. I for one don’t find people who threaten my freedoms to be very funny. He can take his “talent” back to Oz, where the collectivists don’t care much about freedom. Why is America unique in the world? Freedom. That’s what the experiment was about, and nothing has changed. Those who threaten my freedoms, whether they are snarky “comedians” with “talent” or the POTUS, are enemies of every American. I will not apologize for loving American freedom. For more than 200 years, it has WORKED. It even freed the slaves in America, although not soon enough. How are the African countries doing on eradicating slavery? God bless this great country that recognizes and guarantees, in writing, our God-given natural rights.

      • You do realize that most of the signers of the Constitution considered the right protected by the Second Amendment to have been granted by that same “imaginary friend”, right?

      • Well Jon – the imaginary friend you refer to serves as a figure that stands above all worldly things, including the common man as the so special political figure, known as the lawmaker. He serves as an indicator that the designer of these lines wanted to include a limitation on the lawmaker in regard on these, as they serve a special purpose.

        See, the 1st. is nice and dandy – but got no bait to really keep the lawmaker away – history proves this manifold – it takes some force to enforce the first ten amendments. And to provide a legal base for that force, the 2nd was written as it stands to this day. And Congress shall not infringe on this right, as it is the last line of defense for all other natural civil rights. The will be not 1st or 4th amendment without the 2nd.

    • Umm you guys do realize this is a comedy bit right? The fact that the author took the time to write a whole rebuttal is downright sad. Now, I don’t have a side on gun control, but this bit was pretty funny. It was not to be taken 100% seriously, and yes, obviously there are exaggerations in here. It’s comedy for christs sake, not a news article. This is quite funny that someone took the time to write this, and that so many people are getting butthurt over his COMEDY bit. L

    • Well good for you. I only have one issue with America, been to America myself and thoroughly enjoyed it, you yanks always want to make sure your visitors have a good time, though none of you seem to know an Australian accent unless we start quoting Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee but there is just one thing that nags me about the place. The term ‘freedom’ seems to be different to what my understand of freedom is. Far as I can tell, Im free to do exactly what I want here in Aus. I go to uni, not cos I can afford to but because the is the freedom to do so regardless of if u can afford it outright or just pay it back once you have full time work, in the US my current understand is that you have to pay one way or another up front to go to University or get a loan. I can go where ever i want in the land or sea. I can get my pilot’s license, even if i dont have the money right now to do so and I can vote for who i want to be in power. Looking at history I see 4 POTUS’s who have won without the popular vote, Haynes, Harrison, Adams and George W. Bush. Until the USA’s electoral system reflects the peoples choice I refuse to agree that America is the land of the free. Because if you dont have the freedom to choose your own representative then what freedom do you really have? That is all that really bugs me. That and that your Congress seems to have it’s head up it’s arse but again…so does our Parliament so i guess thats just politics isnt it

      • The Electoral College is based on the popular vote and is for the purpose of giving smaller populated States and areas representation so that heavily populated areas don’t have sole say in determining the Presidency. It guarantees a true representative vote. And yes, we do have a different understanding of freedom. Such as not having to pay for someone else’s life choices. It’s about individual responsibility as well as personal freedom. There are no “free” social programs anywhere. Taxpayers pay for them all, without a say so.

    • Ohhh i forgot to mention the one thing that seems to always surprise yanks, it doesnt cos us any money from our wallet to have a kid. Nor does it cost money to receive most general treatments and any that do a tax write offs. I am aware that Obamacare is supposed to do a watered down job of what our Medicare does but still I can’t understand how the human right ot have a child is something that can be charged for? Again, your interpretation of freedom is different to ours. I just wish people realized this

    • However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

      Gotta love those God-given rights.

    • However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

      Don’t you just love those God-given natural rights.

  17. It’s a mildly, amusing comedy bit, not an ethos to live your life by.

    Bill Burr has one about hitting women which is hilarious, doesn’t mean I’m going to slap my wife tonight.

  19. I don’t find him funny. He is simply riding the coattails of what passes for comedy now… passive aggressive snark attacks against a target that has been targeted by main stream media. Let’s see how he feels when he becomes the target of some tabloid or muckracker looking to make money off his dirty laundry….

    • Considering he suffers severe depression, he will likely take self-harm or suicide. Much like many other entertainers both American and Australian

  20. So we have another white man coming to this country who thinks we have to many guns? Hey Mr white man with a funny accent, I think black people have been denied the ability to firearms for self defense long enough in America.

    Gun control is racist. Does he think if all guns were banned in Chicago that the black on black crime rate would not exist? How many guns does his private security detail have?

    • Private security detail? I think you’re dramatically overestimating this guy’s wealth and fame.

      • Going by some of the comments on this thread if he doesn’t have someone he should start hiring – never dramatically underestimate a psycho with a gun

  21. Yet another “caring” person that lives in a fantasy world where facts, logic and reason don’t matter as long as they really believe they care. Oh, and if you would just follow their false, ignorant, yet caring “remedy” all will be well, except, of course, it wouldn’t be.

  22. Look at all the naive fascist gun-nut oppressors trying to used re-hashed NRA garbage that gets spoonfed to you gun-sheeple than get soundly defeated by a forienger with common sense.

    The civilized world doesnt want your vile “right”.
    There is no place in our civilized world for your “right”.
    The civilied world no longer wants nor needs gun.

    How is australia some nightmarish darwinian dystopia despite thier low crime, social safety net, good economy and good education?

    In fact, How is the civilized world a “tyranny” to you paranoid sheeple?

    How many innocent people have to suffer because you brain-dead hicks want the latest tools of evil to harm, oppress, and hold us hostage with?

    Who is going to protect us from you and the rest of the “Law-abidding gun community”?

    • Why do you need to be protected from us? The fact that wet own guns possess no that to you. In fact, the permit holders are literally safer than the police.

      Do you think there is no distinction between us and gang members? That’s a bit insulting. Do you think that because I bought a gun I am now more likely to be violent than if I hadn’t bought one?

    • The problem with statists like you is the fact you would support gun violence to enforce Australian style bans. And predictably you will not consider use of force by government as gun violence, which makes you a hypocritical fraud.

      • I’m just pointing out how ammosexual gestapo thugs like you continue to spout soundly debunked garbage from the tyrannical NRA & other “pro-gun” crap which was debunked many times by jim jefferies and other international members of the community.

        Yet you tyrannical thugs continue to hold your vile debunked outdated beliefs as if they were gospel.

        You accuse me and those who want the madness of gun violence to stop of being acoltyes of evil, but you brain dead right-wing klan thugs fail to see the irony of your own statements.

        You, TTAG, the NRA, the gun lobby and your outdated right are the real tyrants.

        You people are the real threats to the liberties and freedoms of this country.

        • What sort of “freedoms and liberties” of yours are we threatening? Perhaps it’s that “freedom” to feel safe we hear so much about today? Let me file that in the trash along with all the other “rights” that don’t exist. The world is a scary place with murderers, rapists, and other heathens in it, grow up and get used to that reality. You’re trying to hold a country of 310,000,000 people accountable for the annual death of less than .01% of the population, and I’m not willing to cede my right to own and defend myself with the most efficient tool available because of a statistical anomaly turned into a politically manufactured “epidemic” by your lot. Also, nobody is advocating that people be required by the government to keep a gun in the house, so stop acting like Glocks are going to be thrown onto your doorstep against your will.

    • B*tch and moan, that’s all you can do.

      If you, and your ilk, had the numbers and pull you claimed, you would achieve the mass scale gun-control you desire. But, you cannot, because you do not.

      So, the b*tching and moaning continues.

  23. “We just watched the most advanced military in the world fail to subdue peasants with Ak-47s in two Middle Eastern countries. The Taliban averaged about 30,000 active fighters at any given time, which is a figure orders of magnitude smaller than the manpower of the coalition arrayed against them.”

    Yeah, but if it ever comes to that, the rules of engagement against us will be much looser than they were against the Taliban.

      • There wouldn’t be many real deal soliders willing to turn on their neighbors. Weekend warriors, that’s another story.

        • As someone who spent five years in the Active duty Army and five years in the Reserve Army, I would say the Reservist and NG are more connected to the immediate community they serve. Active duty service members are drawn from all over the country to various specific locations.

  24. “The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.”

    Yup.
    It’s still on their website:

    http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm

    highlighted for your convenience:

    http://www.drgo.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/VPC-STRATEGY.png

    • B-b-but that’s not true! You’re using tire stereotypes and completely misrepresenting the people you’re talking about.

      Oh, right.

    • Coming from a redneck inbred gun loving American…..

      Yes that’s the stereotype for most people who frequent this page I’m sure……

  27. Well, Jim. You’re welcome to believe that. But, all of the chemicals you’ve invested have ruined your liver, you’ve spoken openly about that. But the brain is much more delicate than the liver, isn’t it reasonable to believe you’ve damaged that as well?

    To paraphrase you: it’s not my fault, your brains broken!

    Now, I think I will have a beer; because I can do so without dying.

    • Whatever you do, do NOT drink Foster’s in the oil can. Personally, I’d rather drink 10W-40 from a Foster’s can.

      • I am convinced that we make Foster’s purely for the entertainment of watching tourists try to drink it. Kinda like vegemite except vegemite is actually yummy and good for ya, but tourists never eat it correctly, they always take it by the spoonful hahahaha but yea not many aussies actually drink fosters. I reckon more foreigners would than Aussies. Though i dont drink beer full stop, can’t stand the taste or the way it gurgles so I wouldnt really know. Ill stick to Rum, Whiskey and Cider regardless.

  28. Aussie shooter here. Have loved the articles you’ve done on Australia so far. This guy’s a wanker, we don’t want him back and you’ll be amazed how many people here cite him as their first and only line of defence in the anti-argument. Couple of things:

    1. We didn’t ban all guns like he suggests. They were “re-classified” but they put ridiculous and nonsensical restrictions on them.

    2. The compliance rate for the buyback was only 19%. So out of 3.2 million guns at the the time the government claimed 640000 handed in. Less than 3% were Cat D (semi and auto rifles) and most owners handed in their old Model 70’s and 700’s for cash and then went out and bought new ones instantly. It was a joke. Corrupt police sold a lot of those handed back to crims on the street. It was such an embarrassment that the government refused to release records of what was handed back in each state except for in Victoria.

    3. Gun ownership is now higher than it was pre’96. The amount of illegal guns too on the street is in the millions. A Bushmaster doesn’t cost $34k, the crims sell them for about $5k. Even they aren’t that dumb and they are having no trouble importing them.

    4. Our gun homicide rate was never that high to begin with and was already going down since the 80’s. 3 studies have proved that. Homicide and violent crime rate are about the same. Our sexual assault rate against women has gone up every year. In the 5 years after the ban robberies went to Australian record levels every year as the crims had a field day. They all knew they could act with imputiny. GO have a look at the AIC stats if you don’t believe me.

    5. F*ck Jim Jefferies

    6. Re: Port Arthur. It took Police SIX HOURS to respond to that shooting. Many Aussies don’t believe Bryant with an IQ of 66 and no firearms experience outside of his .177 Webley Air Rifle did it and he was the fall guy. If you go and research the shooting performance inside the cafe I’m sure you’ll concur. There is currently a 30 year ban on any investigation of what happened there and the victims’ families still to this day are asking for one. Some of the Police audio is leaked out on the internet which is an interesting listen.

    Cheers guys! Keep up the good work.

    • On Port Arthur: Are you implying there is some big ebil conspiracy theory or just that the police fucked up so bad they needed to cover the tracks of their fuckups and did so by pinning the blame on a mentally disabled guy? Because, to me, the latter sounds far more plausible than the former.

    • Thanks Dave-and is wanker the same as jagweed or azzwhole? I find this “guy” as funny as will ferrell…

    • Dave,
      Thanks for fighting the good fight in upside-down land. I know you’re not all statist, monarch-ass kissing jackwagons down there.

      1.) But certain guns were confiscated and made *effectively* impossible for mere peasants to legally own. If that’s not a ban I don’t know what is.

      2.) That’s fascinating. I wonder why nobody ever talks about that!

      3.) Yeah, the country kind of has a monstrous, un-patrollable coastline. It’s not like smuggling stuff in is going to be hard.

      4.) Matches with everything I’ve seen. 3 mass shootings in 20 years. Comparable to Ny State and Texas, which have similar population. 30% reduction in homicide in Australia in 20 years, vs the US nearly 50% reduction, without banning ‘assault weapons’. Where’s the benefit again?

      5.) Indeed.

      6.) 6 hours. He could have killed that many with a pen knife in that amount of time. Oh wait no don’t ban pen knives!

    • This place has never been safer since the gun ban. lol @ point 6 so you think it was all a conspiracy so the government killed 30+ innocent people just so they could take your automatic rifles? Give me a break…please move to the US where all the other gun nuts are.

      Can’t you shoot a pig without a semi automatic?

    • Id like to know your source for the illegal importation of guns cos u can’t get much through customs from the experince ive had and huge coastline or not, its under constant patrol and radar watch that not even the USAF could sneak in (the yhave tried with their B-2 bombers for bragging rights, we saw em coming from over 1000km off the shore and had a flight of F/A-18’s on their wing tips soon as they entered our airspace.) so im hugely curious to see some backed up proof on this claim.

  29. some things for the anti-gunners to consider/google.

    Kennesaw, Ga and their gun laws

    Athens, Tenn and the corrupt government in the 1940s.

    It’s data like this I would like to discuss in mainstream media. Maybe the Trace will cover it…lol

  31. That’s stunning information. Has the NRA or any other organization looked into this story further? From what little I recall of it, the shooter had murdered a gun collector or dealer and stolen his firearms, then went to the park where he began slaughtering people. If they caught the wrong man, then who perpetrated this abominable act?

    • Bryant swore he didn’t do it. Didn’t change his story for 5 months. So much so that the police prosecutor, John Avery, was then appointed AS HIS DEFENSE LAWYER, and within a week he plead guilty. A year after the conviction, Avery was struck off the register for embezzlement and fraud in a separate case You can’t make that up.

      Further, the AR15 he was alleged to have used in side the cafe was previously in possession of the Victoria Police SOG (SWAT). Exactly how he got it has never been revealed as Vic Police admit it was their’s but refuse to comment further. In terms of the firearms dealer, Terry Hill, he never sold Bryant the gun. He got a threatening letter from the Australian Federal Police about 4 months after the shooting telling him to “reconsider his position or they would revoke his dealers license”.

      It was a complete whitewash.

      • Can you source some of this stuff? This is really interesting, I would like to learn more.

      • yes it was all a conspiracy the government killed 30+ innocent people so they could take away your semi automatic rifles……Give me a break you nut job. I really hope you are American.

        • The fact that the Australia government killed and displaced many of the Aboriginals during settling, and that governments kill people overseas all the time, and that you cannot imagine that such an evil group could harm anyone for their own nefarious ends shows more about your naivete than anything else.

      • Are you right in the head?
        So all the eyewitness accounts of the Port Arthur massacre survivors were doctored too?
        You’ve just lost any credibility with that conspiracy garbage.

  32. My impression is that Australians don’t believe in self defense. If I’m correct, it’s understandable that they have no use for guns or any kind of weapon. That’s not the way Americans think. Sacrificing an individual for a statistical benefit to society in general isn’t acceptable here.

    • Uh – yeah, they do. It’s just that the Aussie version of self-defense involves using your body, rather than the cowardly weapon. I guess you can get away with not carrying a weapon when you’re not surrounded by people who are so paranoid about everyone else around them, that they all feel the need to be seconds away from a good old-fashioned shootout.

      • “Uh – yeah, they do. It’s just that the Aussie version of self-defense involves using your body, rather than the cowardly weapon. I guess you can get away with not carrying a weapon when you’re not surrounded by people who are so paranoid about everyone else around them, that they all feel the need to be seconds away from a good old-fashioned shootout.”

        The logical fallacies you use are Appeal to Emotion, especially Appeal to Ridicule, and Ad Hominem.

  33. That’s exactly what these little socialist f-tards do, make jokes to do their dirty work because they have nothing factual to go with. What they won’t admit is that they want to insult and assault people in the street, but they are afraid to do so because someone might have a firearm. “An armed society is a polite society”.

  34. I don’t take advice on how to exercise my rights as an American from foreign stand-up comedians, whether they are funny or not. And I similarly don’t take such advice from people who get their life’s direction from foreign stand-up comedians.

  37. Another Aussie here, and I find Jefferries statements distasteful.

    It is said to never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by laziness and stupidity. If there was any conspiracy about Port Arthur, it was one of bureaucratic neglect. Before the inquest was quashed, there were the head of the Tasmanian departments of police, health, and community services all saying that Martin Bryant wasn’t their responsibility and should be dealt with by the other two departments. So any inquest was going to be very damaging politically at both state and federal levels.

    We don’t want Jefferies back here. Perhaps he should do an encore tour of New York city, south Chicago, and East LA. And an additional tour of northern Mexico.

    • Please leave Australia and move to the US. Jim Jefferies was obviously a little too logical for you.

      Can’t you shoot a pig without an AK?

  38. I love me some good stand-up comedy. I hate when someone hops on their soapbox, harangues an audience with little in the way of wit or good humor, and then tries to present it as “telling jokes.” As a rule, if Maureen Dowd could’ve published the exact same screed in the NYT’s op-ed section, then it’s very shitty comedy.

    • I think Jim Jeffries’ material on gun control is funny and the audience at his show also thought it was funny.

  40. Well I laughed. Most of it was quite funny.

    My country’s highest law says I can legally own guns. I don’t have to own them. It’s my choice. And some might go so far as to say that the constitution encourages me to own them. But never mind that.

    Since I do like guns, and that reason alone seems to satisfy Mr. Jeffries’ question of my motivation for owning them, I’ll stop right there as I feel no need to expand on those motivations for his sake. So, I’ll laugh and bear arms, or not, as I choose.

    It’s tragic that Mr. Jeffries legally has but one of those choices; the other likely lost and forever unretrievable.

    • There’s that one felon who shot his girlfriend with a blackpowder revolver a few weeks ago.

      But in general, yeah.

  42. BTW, his comedy act is not comedy. A few jabs are funny. Beating the snot out of a single subject and position is rhetoric. Seek a professional accomplished comedian for further understanding. He’s not truly funny.

  43. “There is one argument and one argument alone for being able to have a gun…, “F*** off! I like guns!” – 2:09

    Um, no. I don’t really like guns. Firearms make me nervous, as do explosives and even fireworks. I’ve never like things that go boom and do kinetic harm.

    What I like is the capability of guns — the equalization they provide. I especially like the fact that I am alive and whole because I chose to carry one for self-defense. I like the fact that a group of kids under my care didn’t get molested by a creep because I had one. And I like the fact that a gal I knew did NOT get raped because she had one.

    It’s not a good argument, it’s just an argument. Yes, people should be able to have things they like. But it’s more important that people should be able to have things that are useful and beneficial, and guns fall into that class.

  44. What is it with these X-stream videos force scrolling us to the video every time it restarts ? Makes it hard to read or to comment.

  45. I’m glad that you can stomach sifting through this bullshit and pointing it all out. I sure as hell can’t.

  46. “There are something like 18,000 gun related suicides in the U.S. each year. I don’t think that the number of people killed in self-defense approaches anything close to that number.”

    Think about the beauty of that fact; guns are orders of magnitude more likely to be used to inflict self harm than to target another person. They are not designed to be fired backwards, into the brain at close range. If they were they would look nothing like the hardware we know and love. Purposeful misuse accounts for nearly 70% of fatalities with this product. It is often pointed out how bathtubs and swimming pools produce a more hazardous environment, statistically, than pervasive firearms ownership. I can’t really think of better proof for this than the fact that 2 thirds of gun fatalities were self inflicted. It would be like GM being able to truthfully say 7 out of 10 car related fatalities sucked on the tail pipe in their own garage.

  47. Will presenting facts that disprove his entire comedy routine convince this Tory to change? No. This is the kind of person that believes hard in this fictitious utopia. He is someone who will willingly sink to the lowest levels of humanity to push his ideology onto others.

  48. “Look Mr. Jefferies, you’re funny. I’ll give you that.”

    You’re far more generous than I. From what I read here, the guy’s just making another of those profanity-filled rants that passes for comedy these days. Where is the wit? Where is the satire? Where is the irony? Where is anything even approaching humor?

    And it’s not just that his points are bad, as I’ve seen plenty of comedians joke about political issues with which I disagreed, and they still managed to be funny. This guy simply isn’t.

  49. This is the only pro-gun argument I’ve heard that is done in a calm and rational fashion. I still find Jeffries more convincing, but thank you for allowing an honest discussion of this very important issue, rather than a bunch of pointless name-calling, ALL-CAPS RAGE-POSTING, and the like.

    And you do make some good points.

    • This blog is pretty full of good and generally polite commentary. Don’t judge us by the comments section. I am curious though. What was more convincing about Jim’s arguments? What points went unrefuted? I would really like to know.

  50. He is doing what he does, which is make fun of current hot topics, and to get paid for doing it. I don’t think he really believes this drivel anymore than we do, but he makes money from doing it. He’s just being the best comedic whore he can be, and I acknowledge him for being the best whore he can be.

  51. “Please understand that every country has a [Constitution], it’s no more special than any other Constitution… I’ve had people… come up to me going ‘You cannot change the Second Amendment. Yes you can. It’s called an ‘amendment.’” 9:40

    While this asininity is not confined to non-Americans, it is typical of non-Americans.

    They have NO concept of “unalienable”.

    The SCOTUS had this to say of the Second Amendment, in 1875:

    “The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” – U S v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 U.S. 542 (1875) 92 U.S. 542

    Note to Jeffries: If you’re going to ridicule something, at least understand what it really is.

    • Umm you guys do realize this is a comedy bit right? The fact that the author took the time to write a whole rebuttal is downright sad. Now, I don’t have a side on gun control, but this bit was pretty funny. It was not to be taken 100% seriously, and yes, obviously there are exaggerations in here. It’s comedy for christs sake, not a news article. This is quite funny that someone took the time to write this, and that so many people are getting butthurt over his COMEDY bit.

  52. Australia was started as a prison colony, his family must have gotten out. He openly talks about doing coke.

  53. This ‘rebuttal’ article only pointed out one significant factual error in Jefferies argument: Jefferies forgot about or failed to mention the Norwegian massacre of 2011. But looking at the facts of that massacre only strengthens Jefferies argument: 69 of the 77 deaths in the Norwegian massacre were caused by a gunman who obtained his weapon in one of the most relaxed gun control countries of Europe (according to Wikipedia 30 JUN 2015 ).

    The ‘rebuttal’ started to make a somewhat vague point about ‘peasants in the middle east with AK-47’s’ but failed to specify the particular country and date so it was not clear whether the rebuttal was trying to claim that the peasants were resisting their own government and if so, whether their AK-47’s were obtained legitimately under some analog of the 2nd amendment. Modeling American laws after near anarchy in failed states is not wise.

    The rest of Brandon R.’s ‘rebuttal’ is even weaker or nonsensical. I can respect libertarian views, but only up to the limits of logic and known historical evidence. This ‘rebuttal’, as every other pro-gun argument I have heard, fails the logic test. The rebuttal, as usual, comes down to “F*** off! I like guns!”.*

    *PS, saying you don’t like guns and arguing for the right to own assault weapons despite overwhelming evidence against them means you define ‘liking guns’ differently than most people. You just mean you like that they make you feel secure, whether or not that is really true, you believe it is so and therefore everyone else in the country should live with the massacres that result from guns.

    • Overwhelming evidence against them? That’s the funniest comment on this thread, bar none.

      If you’re saying I don’t need an AK-47 but the government needs plenty of them, you’re saying we just have to live with the occasional Ruby Ridge and Waco Massacre. You want the 10,000 Keystone Kops who illegally locked down Watertown (and did not find their suspect) to be able to lock down any American city on whatever pretense for however long they wish. Cops have certainly murdered more people than have died in the mass shootings you swines rend your garments over, and you’re just fine with the slow, steady trickle of Kelly Thomas’s and Jose Guerenas being put in the ground by “peace officers” riding around in kevlar and web gear like they’re up against the Taliban. In short, this was never about a safer environment; it was always about the fact that you worship authority. You’re the enemy.

      The good news is that Jeffries’s bleating and your own facile, childish arguments are moot. You’re not going to take the guns out of our hands, and you know it. Your president had a solid gold opportunity to do just that after Sandy Hook, and he balked. If we’re only 10% and your president fears us, what does that say about the political landscape? Go ahead and pass laws that mandate the confiscation of firearms, and you’ll get to experience what Afghanistan is like without leaving your own country. Our nation was born in an act of anti-government violence. If you think you can confiscate guns without creating an insurgency, then you have no earthly idea who and what you’re really dealing with.

  56. Would be nice if this rebuttal linked to some of these studies, like the John’s Hopkins study. For a rebuttal, it’s a bit lazy. This piece is the only place online i can find it.

  57. Fascinating redneck logic. Stupid, yet fascinating. Not sure which argument intrigues me the most: the ‘all people left his show alive’ or ‘the average gun owner only needs 10 seconds to locate and shoot the gun’. Your surprise gun attacker could not possibly pull the trigger in those 10 seconds then I guess…not sure how to read this. Oh my…

  58. So, Brandon R, basically EVERY single argument Jim Jeffries raises about guns is objectionable and wrong? Your list is completely marred by comments I think you just found personally insulting and needed to respond to. What I find most outrageous is your objection to his use of stereotypes, a comedian’s best friend, simply because they cast gun owners as dangerous, which they ARE! Allowing individuals surrounding you to carry deadly weapons is inherently more dangerous, regardless of who is behind the barrel.

  59. Many of these points are absolutely nonsensical. I take particular issue with the point about crazy people still being crazy. That’s all well and good, so let’s take the next weapon a maniac might use. Let’s use a knife! To make this extremely simple, guns kill people quickly and efficiently. A knife doesn’t. There is no way someone with a knife can execute mass killing with the same effectiveness as they can with a gun. Guns are made to kill people as effectively as possible. You don’t need guns.

    • When you use the word “need”, you have revealed yourself to be ignorant, and your point of view is now invalid.

  61. Here’s my response to your response: #1-22 You DO realize this guy is a comedian, right? “The truth about guns…” funny.

  62. “What is far more common and politically expedient is to just redefine the Constitution to suit the fancies of the time. That is basically what he is proposing.”

    Funny you should say that, because the second amendment was introduced to give the people the right to bear arms against a corrupt and oppressive governmental regime. It was never intended to arm citizens against their neighbours. Now who is redefining the constitution to suit the fancies of the time?

  63. I am an Australian and I work at an impound where we deal with a lot of angry and aggressive people every day.

    I am thankful none of them have access to firearms.

  65. The best point he made was,” My first amendment means I can say the second amendment sucks.” He’s right. As a lady from the southeast, probably the most narrow-minded place in America, we who are for gun control are made to feel like idiots if we say anything less than favorable about guns. Another great point he had is yes the word amendment means change. Finally I loved his reference to the thesaurus. Yes, many Americans need it, because the word control does not mean the same as abolish. Gun control supporters are not anti guns they are for controlling the type of guns available for purchase to everyday citizens as well as stricter background checks. Gun control advocates have become so insane in their paranoia about their guns being taken away it is a joke. Geez these nuts scare me a lot more than the government does.

  66. What is the solution and will responsible gun owners and the NRA be a part of the solution?

    How is it going for the people in Syria and their armed revolution?

    If more guns/weapons make us all safe then why not let Iran build nuclear weapons?

    Where to criminals and the mentally ill get their guns? Other criminals and mentally ill or “responsible” gun owners?

    Yes, we need information. Why then do you allow the NRA to lobby congress to suppress information about gun violence? Passing laws to suppress information so that a responsible citizen trying to participate in Democracy is the greatest threat to my liberty and this democracy.
    Are “responsible” gun owners and the NRA going to be a part of the solution or just pull out their bag of tired old bumper stickers, just like the anti-gun crowds does, and use fear and conspiracy, just like the anti-gun crowd does. Or maybe as the NRA so eloquently put it do we need more “jack booted thugs” in our schools.

    And, please, I have owned guns all of my life. I served in the military and took an oath to protect the constitution. I am a moderate reasonable person and gun owners are starting to lose me. And, yes I know liberals do the same damn thing.

    • Mark, you raised some really good common sense questions. As a life time gun owner and vet, perhaps you can use your influence to lead a political movement to prod the ‘do nothing’ congress to do the sensible. If we as a society cannot solve the problem of personal safety, we have no business calling it ‘society’. When news reporters, college and grammar school kids are being killed en masse only in our country and not so much in other civilized countries, we need to wake up and do what has to be done. Mental health is part of the issue, but frankly easy access to guns is too.

      Our constitution is grand and foresighted, but not omniscient and prescient about every possible technological development. That’s why the mechanism of amendment was designed (although I’m not sure one is needed — we didn’t need an amendment to limit personal nuclear weapon possession!). Thomas Jefferson would be rolling in his grave if he could see what the NRA twists that great document of human values to say, and he would positively rise from the dead to protest, were it possible, if he saw how congress panders to them.

      Now is the time for moral courage and action by sensible people like you who 1) have expertise in weapons and 2) have both a brain and a conscience. Do not understimate the value of this combination.

      For those of us left living in this country, please find out how to contact people that can help make a difference and encourage them to do so.

  67. I find it hilarious that this guy literally destroyed his own argument. He spends a good two paragraphs claiming that he needs to be able to protect himself from a crazy person in case they attack him. Then two lines later he says “First, the “enemy’s” ability to wage war is not the measure of the justice of a cause. If it is, then you’re just measuring your cowardice.”
    DO YOU NOT SEE WHAT YOU JUST DID. If the “enemy” is a crazy person as you put it, they are able to “wage war” by attacking you. Yet you say this is no justification for a cause i.e carrying a gun. You’ve obliterated your own argument my friend. Do you not think the way to reduce this is to make it harder for a ‘crazy person’ to get a gun in the first place?!?!

  69. Your right to defend yourself….hmmm, so you need a gun to defend yourselves from who? Whether crazed or not, you’ll be defending yourselves against a man with A GUN. If he didn’t have the gun in the first place because he couldn’t get one, then what? No doubt your argument would be “but he could have a knife” Well yeah, but he could have his fists or any weapon. Why don’t you start off with denying access to guns and work your way down gradually! You can cut off everybody’s hands after you’ve got rid of the big stuff that can kill lots of people very quickly and easily! If your only argument is to attack Australias constitution or freedoms, then you’re really not thinking it through. How many American parents would have their kids living somewhere safe rather than in a society where everybody feels the need to own a weapon! BTW Australia isn’t in California!!

  70. You should all understand one thing and that is the America.is the centre of the universe as they know it.

    Everything else is just a support system to make their life comfortable.

    But I wouldn’t trade your so called freedoms for a minute. To say that the majority of you are totally ignorant to anything that happens outside your borders is an understatement.

    I was a shooter when I was younger, both competitively and recreationally, and I never seen the point in having a weapon that could spray 20 or 30 bullets around.

    In fact not being able to shoot something the first time and kill it humanely was seen as being less than adequate.

    But you protect yourselves from all those crazy Americans. With so many of those mad bastards over there with their head stuck up there arse I can see why you feel you need a gun.

    I’ll go about my business in backwards Australia without fear and shake my head in amazement when I see another school massacre take place while you sit on hands and do nothing to help the next generation.

    Good luck to you all, you’ll need it!

  71. Dan, I got about a quarter way through your article and realised that simply by writing it, you’re a dumb cunt. I’m not sure why I’m telling you because it will only add to your conceited resolve. Perhaps I can’t resist pointing a finger at a complete wanker because you let me write this… You wasted my time. That’s probably why I’m resorting to personal insults, you dumb cunt.

  72. Ahahahahaha the writer of this post is such a degenerate redneck americunt.
    Ignorant americans, you’d think they’d change their ways after realizing the rest of the world is laughing at them, including a large portion of americans who hate america.

  73. Sorry buddy, but your arguments just to not stand up to Jim’s, and you sound more than a little crazy. This whole article sounds like a desperate thrashing about of a drowning ideology.

  74. The main point remains. After banning assault rifles, no person was able to commit mass murder using automatic weapons. They have to use other means to do so.

    However, the real response is that the founders knew that weapons would advance. Cannons, which were able to take out buildings, were already available. The Constitution was to limit government in order to promote individual freedom. The ideology of the 2nd Amendment was that in order to preserve and promote liberty, weapons of death must be available to the people in order to fight against tyranny. So any limits and/or restrictions on guns must be imposed onto government before it is imposed on the people.

    In regards to the counter argument that the government would just use drones (or whatever), the Constitution already has provisions that prevents the federal military to invade and attack the people of the states.

    Furthermore, the Bill of Rights, were established restrictions onto the federal government. One of the arguments against the Bill of Rights was that those rights were already established. You cannot amend the Constitution to limit liberty, let alone to repel the Bill of Rights.

  75. I am an American Expat living in Australia, and Jim Jeffries OWNS it. Egocentric Americans have NO IDEA how they are perceived by the outside world that they know nothing about. His speech is spot on, as in Australian TV, we see nothing BUT mass shootings in the USA. It is truly pathetic to what my country has become, and if you can only realize this, maybe you could see the truth in reality in Jim’s speech.

  76. too bad the author changed some of the words in jeffries quotes in order to make his points more solid, which in my opinion, strips him of all credibility.

  77. Well, you clearly changed around his wording to fit your means. Hilarious that you really found it necessary obsessively address a comedian. If there’s no merit in what he says, folks won’t put equity into it…but if what if he has valid points? Hmmmmm….

  78. What most of you failed to take into account was what Jim said in the beginning. “I know that 50% will agree with me and 50% won’t. Out of the 50% that doesn’t agree with me, 20% will realize that this is a comedy show and shouldn’t be taken seriously”. He then goes on to insult the intelligence of the other 20% and talk about the 10% who are angry.

    Don’t be part of the 10%. I am pro gun and pro comedy. I like my guns, and Jim Jefferies was funny.

  79. I see many posts from others on here giving their “it’s in the constitution” arguments on why we can’t get rid of guns as well as many other equally “credible” reasons, but the point of Jim Jeffries routine keeps being glossed over by these pro gun arguments.

    PEOPLE ARE DYING. Innocent people die all the time when drive by shootings happen. Kids are bringing guns to schools to deal with their problems like adults would (at least thats what they see in todays pop culture). Cops are shooting people, while not necessarily undeserving it’s still unecessary when you have tasers that make every muscle in your body tense so you can’t do a thing. Massacres happen far too often; to the point where we’ve grown numb to them… I mean seriously where do we draw the line? Does someone need to waltz into a maternity ward or newborn baby ward of a hospital with an AK-47 before people will get the hint that GUNS DO KILL PEOPLE (you’d think that after Sandy Hook where young kids died serious gun control would’ve happened but I guess it wasn’t a horrendous enough of an event to justify gun control…).

    I don’t understand this mindset of wanting to keep guns even after all the Massacres and deaths. I understand that not everyone is going to go out and murder someone but at the same time we as a society need to be dealing with the situation by asking “how can someone mess up the good thing we have here”. There once was a point where a gun meant you had dinner and meant you had defence. Now more often than not you have to worry about whether or not your kid can get a hold of your gun and accidentally kill himself or a sibling with it, or if he could bring it to school to show off or for dealing with bullies. Whether gang members know if you have a gun worrying about whether they’ll break into your home to steal it and possibly use it on you. Whether or not your kid is gonna come home alive from school because it’s the new trend to bring a gun to school. Whether walking through a shady section of town will get you killed because of a stray bullet. Whether a cop will shoot you cause you forget that putting a hand inside your pocket is a big no no while he’s questioning you about something. Guns at one point were necessary for survival, now because of the dumbest and craziest 1% of society they’re a huge liability. I don’t expect anything to change because of my opinion here but it doesn’t change the fact GUNS NEED TO BE BANNED ENTIRELY.

  81. Keep making excuses to own guns, keep bagging out Jim & others trying different angles to help change this out dated mind frame at the detriment of the people you love and/or care about. Not wishing that on anyone but if it did happen …….let’s just cross fingers and hope it doesn’t as that’s all you’ve got in place of real laws with balls. Australians have gun laws so our arguements are only because we give a dam about Americans.

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