Part Two: Harlon Carter: the Man Who Militarized the Cops and the NRA

Robert is joined again by Matt Lieb for part two of three of our series on Harlon Carter and the NRA.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Wire, the podcast that created the hit
TV show The Wire. But we were first. Our idea
was stolen by that hack David Simon. We went to
hbod Have you ever considered making a should out Wires? Yeah,
and we said, you know who understands Baltimore Me and
Matt lead That's right, exactly, that's right, baby, we understand

(00:27):
Baltimore more than anyone understands Baltimore. I stopped there once
for gasoline on a road trip, so I get I
get it. I was I played for the Baltimore Orioles.
That's a lot of people are talking about that right now. Yeah, yeah,
and uh, you know, yeah, I feel I feel like
I mean, it was in Los Angeles, it's right, and

(00:49):
I was in fifth grade, but yeah, I was an
oriole so and you know, we famously Season two was
based on the fact that I once bought a sandwich
from a Polish man. That's right, that's right. I said,
what if this was a a whole show, But if
this was a whole season about yeah, yeah, just like longshoreman,
like see the doors and like, you know, that's a
word that doesn't get used enough. I love the word.

(01:10):
Steve a door. It is an incredible job title. It's
the coolest job title. I don't know, like what about
moving like it makes no sense to me based on
what the job is. Why there, I imagine there was
just like the first guy to ever do that was
named Steve Steve, and he was just so good at
it that they were like, everybody's we're all Steve out

(01:31):
here now. Yeah Steven doors? How good? He isn't moving
crates shipping crates like Steve did. Oh man, I want
that job. This was a meandering way of introducing the
podcast Behind the Bastards. Guest also host of a podcast, Yeah, yeah,
Pod Yourself a Gun, which is a Sopranos podcast, and

(01:52):
then soon to be a Wire podcast coming out shortly so,
which is excited for that. We were talking about the Wire. Yeah,
it's a good show. Also soon to be the host
of a baby I know, I'm having a baby dude,
will subsequently launch a podcast called google Ga. Yeah. I

(02:13):
can't wait to do a Barney Rewatch podcast. Yeah, with
my little baby. Just like analyzing like, you know, the
role of American imperialism in The Happy Purple Dinosaur. Well,
you know, there was that whole season of Barney that
took place in a contra camp in Nicaragua. Yeah, that
was great choice. You have to give it to them. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Barney was like teaching, you know, classes over at the

(02:35):
School for the America's Yeah. A lot of people don't
realize that he worked hand in glove with Oliver North
those missiles to Iran exactly the only person the show trusted,
or that the shot the totally trusted the dinosaur. Yeah,
he did sell a lot of crap, but that was
that was completely unrelated. Um, we should probably talk about

(02:57):
were you when we last left off, we were about that.
We were talking about Operation Cloudburst, this attempt by Harlan
Carter and the Border Patrol and this guy General Swing
to cleanse the border area. We should probably have a
little bit more background about what's happening order in this period.
So this is kind of again, I think Harland's primary
motivation is racial, but there's other stuff happening. Um. So,

(03:18):
in the early nineteen forties, the U. S. Government had
created a this thing called the Brascero program, which is
like a guest worker visa program that would let Mexican
farm workers into the country legally temporarily um to work
for American farmers. This gets started during World War Two
because like, we don't have any we don't have any
dudes left in the country. We send them all over there,
you know, like we need we need, we need some

(03:39):
more dudes. Shortage of dudes at this point. But it
also one of the reasons why it's popular even with
people who like are pretty racist, is that it by
providing kind of a legal, regulated way for them to
work here, it also provides a legally regulated way to
get them out of here. They can't become residents, right
the Bracero program does not. These people are supposed to leave,

(04:00):
but in fact, part of the deal is that like
ten of the migrants wages are taken out of their
paychecks and deposited to an account that are given to
them when they come back to Mexico. Right. So that's
part of why this is popular, is that it allows
them to do the work that the country can't function without,
but it also ensures that they don't stay right Like,
that's why this is such a big deal, UM for

(04:23):
a lot of folks. UM. So it's actually very popular. UM.
And one of the things about it is it doesn't
limit the number of workers, because why would you write
because they're not anyway. UM. Millions and millions of Mexican
workers use the Borscero program UM over the years, and
from the perspective of the US government, it works UH
pretty well for a while UM, and it certainly keeps

(04:45):
workers in farms UM. But and so by like the
early nineteen fifties, there's like two million of these workers
or there's like five million people have worked in through
the Broscero program. But also UM, like unauthorized migrants continued
to cross into the border, and by the early nineteen
fifties there's like two million of these people UM. And

(05:07):
part of one of the things like that happens in
this period is that there's suddenly like a big surge
of folks coming in unauthorized in the early nineteen fifties UM.
And this is part of what like inspires Operation Cloudburst,
is that like border patrol UM has never had to
deal with like these kind of numbers of people crossing
post war UM, and they're not really capable of handling it. UM.

(05:29):
So by the early nineteen fifties, UM, the number of
like voluntary departures and had raised really in nineteen forty six,
like a hundred and one thousand undocumented migrants voluntarily leave
the United States in nineteen fifty two, more than seven
hundred thousand do. And you can, like these numbers are
just kind of useful in seeing like how many folks
are coming in. Um So, this a lot of people

(05:55):
are not wild about this because again you know, uh racism,
racism and such. Yeah, um So, Joseph Swing part of
his motivation here is that, like he wants to get
the employers of unlawful migrant workers to cooperate, um so
that they can like increase the number of folks who

(06:16):
are working there under the Briscero program and shrink the
unauthorized workers. Um And so his justification for like participating
in some of the stuff that that Harlan Carter is
building is that he wants to cut down the supply
of unauthorized workers in order to get more of these
employers on board with the Brissero program. Um So, again,

(06:37):
a lot of there are a lot of like kind
of wonky aspects to what's happening with migration here that
you can as always justify as like not based in racism,
is based in like well, there's a lot of these
undocumented people coming over and it's like great, the problem
for the border patrol and the conditions they're working under
are like really bad, and we want to reform this
program so that you know, everyone is is documented and

(06:58):
legal and like we're not We're not trying to stop
them from coming over. But also one of the things
you're trying to do by expanding this program is making
sure that they don't stay right. And I guess again,
you can look at what's happening with the Bracero program
in a couple of different ways. But if you really
want to know what's going on with the immigration sweeps
that Carter and Swing eventually enact, the main thing you

(07:22):
need to know is what they call it um And
this is Harlan Carter's name for this is Operation wet Back.
That is the official name of the this immigration purge
that they're going to do it against. Did they invent
the term or was no? It existed for a while, Okay,
so they did just explicitly name it after a slur. Yes, yes, yeah,

(07:45):
that's exactly it. And and obviously, like again for folks
who maybe are not aware of this, I know we
have a lot of European listeners Canadian listeners who may
not have heard this. Like we back is a racial
slur for Mexican immigrants to the United States. It takes
its name from when people would cross illegally. They would
do so through the Rio Grand often and like so
you you know, you get wet when you do that, right,

(08:07):
and so like that's the that's the origin of the slur.
Part I don't I don't know why they specify. I
don't know why they specific but this happens. There's like
a history of this. Like an old anti Italian racial
slur is whop, which means without papers. I don't think
it was entirely just for Italians, but like, you know,
this is like the late eighteen hundreds, I think, yeah,
so yeah, um and and Carter again, so Swing Swing

(08:31):
is the kind of guy who can sit down and
explain to you, like, well, this is where the BURSCERO
program is broken down, and like these are the problems
that we're having, and these are the different violations that
we're seeing, and like we need to get these, you know,
employers on board with this program to reform the system.
And the only way to do that is to cut
down on the like so he can get very wonky
with it in a way that doesn't sound racist, whereas
Harlan Carter's like, yeah, operation we back, let's get him

(08:52):
out of here. Um and and Carter is not great.
It's like he says, he just kind of says the
loud part loud um. In interviews with the press, he
describes it as the biggest drive against the legal aliens
in history. He tells the Los Angeles Times that he
intends to deploy quote an army of border patrol officers
complete with jeeps, trucks and seven aircraft in order to

(09:13):
declare quote all out war to her ol Mexican wet
backs into Mexico. So he's not added a subtle man,
he added Hall after every single yeah, you have to
imagine he's shooting his six guns into the air as
he gives these speeches to the press in the middle
of burning across he has has he lit across on

(09:34):
fire on someone's lawn. Harlan statement to the l A Times, Um,
So what followed was close to again, Operation wet Back
is kind of he tried. It's a lot of what
he had tried to do with Operation cloudburst only just
toned down a little bit so that they could get
the federal government on board. Um, obviously this is follows

(09:56):
like a massive hiring campaign of border patrol men and
they take thousands of Border Patrol agents and they separate
them into mobile task groups and they set up mobile
immigration systems to block roads. So basically doing like this.
They've already put this, like started putting these fences up,
but they do like a kind of a you could
call it a kind of like racist defense, like defensive
white supremacy in depth, where they're setting up blockades deeper

(10:19):
into the country and they're also carrying out raids on
factories and restaurants and just through whatever mean they can
arresting and containing huge numbers of Mexican migrants. And I'm
gonna quote from Megre again. To hold the detainees, the
officers turned to public spaces into temporary detention facilities. For example,
in Los Angeles, the Border Patrol transformed Alsian Park, a

(10:39):
popular public park, into a temporary holding station where apprehended
Mexican nationals were processed for deportation. In countless fields and
along many country roads, border patrol officers set up mobile
immigration stations to process sanctioned Mexican immigrants for official deportation.
They use trucks on loan from the Armed Services to
transport the apprehended immigrants from California to Nogales, Arizona for

(11:00):
deportation to Mexico. To showcase the large numbers of migrants
being processed for forced removal into Mexico, officers were directed
to raise Mexicano communities, leisure spots and migrant camps, ranches, farms,
and parks. They also paid close attention to urban industries
known to employ undocumented Mexican immigrants. Between June seventeenth and
June nineteen fifty four, two thousand, eight hundred and twenty

(11:21):
seven of the four thousand, four hundred and three migrants
apprehended by the task force assigned to Los Angeles had
worked in industry. After border patrol raids during the summer
of nineteen fifty four, three Los Angeles brickyards were left
without sufficient numbers of workers and temporarily closed down their operations. Similarly,
border patrol officers paid close attention to the hotel and
restaurant business, which routinely hired undocumented Mexican immigrants. As bus boys,

(11:43):
kitchen help waiters, et cetera. Officers reported apprehending such workers
at well known establishments such as the Builtmore Hotel, Beverly
Hills Hotel, Hollywood, Roosevelt Hotel, Los Angeles Athletic Club, and
the Brown Derby. At times, border patrol raids created moments
of chaos at popular restaurants when migrants attempted to a
scape by running through the servant area. Everywhere they went,
the officers were chased and photographed by journalists who had

(12:05):
come to witness what General Swing had promised would be
a spectacular show of US immigration law enforcement. Swing pledge
that the Border Patrol would deport or otherwise purge the
one million undocumented Mexican nationals estimated to be living in
the United States at the time. Oh, that sounds like
a lot of fun. Just uh, yeah, there's just going
buck wild with journalists in the back, like this is

(12:26):
great footage. Yeah, and it's interesting because a huge number
of these guys are immediately let back into the country.
Like a lot of times what they're doing is they're
pushing them across the border and then making them recross
under like the Briscero program. So again, they can be
because they need the labor. Right, they don't want the
brickyards shut down. They don't write these places to go
to business. They just don't want these people to be

(12:48):
able to actually build a life in the United States, right,
they want to guarantee that they go back. Um So,
that's like a huge chunk of what's of what's happening here,
Like it's it's basically taking it's taking the natural movement
of people across an area where like their ancestors and
relatives have been moving freely for centuries, and it's stopping that,

(13:10):
stopping like the ability of populations to move and build lives,
and turning them entirely into economic units. Right, You're not
a member of the community, your your labor. Yeah yeah,
yeah yeah, You're an entirely different class of citizen, which
is non citizen, which means, uh, you have your rights,
you have no rights. You're you're not entitled to any

(13:32):
of the human rights that we give to our citizens.
Super super normal and definitely a natural state of things,
certainly not definitely the way things are supposed to go, exactly,
not an invention of humans at all. No. Um So,
at the same time as they're doing this, and obviously
the media is a big part of like why this

(13:53):
is such a hit because you know I and says, hey,
we're going to raid the Bilt more like yeah, you're
gonna show up there, and like that's like who who
doesn't want to see that? Um as like a journalist,
So like part of like what part of like what
increases sort of the because the people hadn't really the
Border Patrol had not been probably most Americans have only
been kind of vaguely aware of its existence top until

(14:14):
this point. This is part of what turns them into
like an institution within the United States. Is like all
of the press around Operation wet Back, right, it's like
the you know, they took a cue from the FBI.
They're like, we need we need to be flashy, we
need to uh, we need to look cool as ship
doing a bunch of horrid ship. Yeah, I mean like

(14:36):
and you're talking about like what the FBI does against
anarchists and socialists and like the late you know, the
early nineteen hundreds. Yea, this is this is like the
Border Patrol's equivalent of that, yes, and creating like you know,
an entire propaganda arm that made like you know the
g man cool Yes, yes, UM. And at the same
time they're doing this, Carter and Swing are like meeting

(14:57):
with these influential ranchers and farmers and industrialists, the people
using the undocumented migrant labor, and they're getting them in
line between like a revamp of the Briscero program. That
UM is again like supposed to fix some of the
issues the program and had. I'm not going to get
terribly into the weeds on that kind of stuff. There's
plenty of places to read about that, UM if you'd like,
there's a pretty good article. UM. Yeah, we'll have some

(15:20):
sources in here. But the book Migra goes into a
tremendous amount of detail about it. So in the end
it was a wild success. More than one million people
are deported, potentially as many as one and a half
million people are deported. UM. Beyond that, the precedent was
established that the U. S. Border Patrol could and should
conduct operations from deep within the United States. Border Patrol

(15:43):
is legally able to carry out immigration checkpoints within a
hundred miles of the border right any border like that's
the exactly of any border right which includes the coast
in Canada. So basically all of the places where most
Americans live are covered by the too. About two thirds
of the U. S population are in this area, which

(16:03):
was why the Border Patrol has like the whitest ranging
purview of any law enforcement agency pretty much. Um I
guess yeah, like the FBI technically has more, but like
their mission is more limited any it's whatever, um like,
this is like the Border Patrol. This is what turns
them into what they are, to this monster, this jugger.
Not they are today as opposed to like some dudes

(16:24):
literally on the border, you know, like say which like
again and not that Like they weren't getting up to
problematic ship earlier in their history, but their ability to
do harm was limited by geography. It's not after operation
went back, and we can thank Harlon Carter for that.
Um and it's it's it's worth kind of noting here.
I'm not gonna get too much into Trump, but he

(16:45):
Donald Trump consciously looks back to Harlan Carter's period of
time running the Border Patrol as as an inspiration. During
a two thousand fifteen presidential Republican presidential debate, um, Donald
Trump said, quote, let me just tell you that Dwight
I Sinhower. Good president, great president. People liked him. I
liked him. I like Ike right the expression I like Ike.

(17:06):
Moved one point five million illegal immigrants out of the country.
Move them just beyond the border. They came back. Moved
them again, beyond the border, they came back. Didn't like it.
Moved him way south. They never came back. Dwight Eisenhower,
you don't get nicer, you don't get friendlier. They moved
one and a half million people out. We have no choice.
We have no choice. So first off, obviously it's probably
not gonna surprise people. That's again, as we've said, completely wrong,

(17:27):
for among other things, nearly all of them come back
under like the PA program. Like that's part of the point,
Like they're not um. But yeah, it's it's so carter.
And again there's the kind of folks who like again
Swing I'm sure has his racism. Ike there's racism, and
like his motivations, but it's also there's a lot of

(17:48):
economic and just like they're the kind of people who
believe all of this stuff should be done based on
a set of laws. So they're like kind of fundamentally
if they're probably more offended by the fact that people
are undocumented necessarily about the racial element that's chunk of
these people. Absolutely, lack of documents alone is just like
Jesus Carter's doing it for white supremacy. And that's the

(18:11):
thing you'll notice. The thing Trump takes out of Operation
Wetback isn't the way they established this kind of like
system in order to like documented, like make these workers legal,
in order to provide a labor for Like, that's not
the thing he takes out of this. The thing that
takes out of this is they got one and a
half million Mexicans to leave, right, Yeah, Like that's the

(18:31):
thing that has come down in history from Carter's period
is he's cutting to the heart of really what's going
on here behind all of the you know, I don't know,
respectability politics or whatever of it. Yes, that's what has
lived on that and of course the militarization of the
border patrol and the fact that it gets to work
every We get all of that from Harlotte Carter. And
here's the thing, Harlan's just getting started. This ain't even

(18:54):
this ain't even his whole thing, right this, Like this
isn't even his main gig. You know, we haven't even
gotten so yeah, the the beginning, which is like we're
going to talk about some n r A s and
some guns. We're not even into that ship yet. Like
this is just his first gig, right, um, this is
his like the the equivalent of the time like the
rest of us spent like working at a Windy's or

(19:14):
something that Harlan Carter, right, this is this is Hitler
at painting school. Yeah, this is yeah, this is Hitler
at fucking like hanging out in Austrian opera houses, arguing
with homeless people about the Jews, which was like a
whole chunk of his life. But anyway, because he was
homeless too, it's whatever they were living in a men's
shelter anyway, Hitler. Um. So I should note before we

(19:38):
move on to the n r A that while Harlan
Carter was massively expanding the reaching power of the Border Patrol,
he was also robbing it blind for his own benefit.
See Harlan loves shooting, right, Like, he's not one of
these nr like like Wayne Lapierre, the current head of
the n r A. I don't think Wayne particularly cares
much about like a lot of these guys like it's
a political thing as opposed to them, like Harlan Carter is,

(19:59):
you have to a loves to shoot guns. Um, but
here's the thing about shooting guns. Bullets cost money. So
three years after Harland Carter retires from government service in
nineteen fifty seven, the Justice Department opens an investigation into
what are termed quote various allegations against him, including the
claim that he had stolen forty to fifty thousand rounds

(20:19):
of ammunition from the Border Patrol quote, with the sole
intent of converting this property to his own use after
he retired. So he steals like a palata bullets to
go shoot privately. Um, I would love it if we
found out that he's the one who stole his mom's car. Yes,

(20:40):
I gotta find some Mexicans. Fifteen year old gets murdered.
So yeah, it's not that funny, but like it's not impossible, right. Um.
So I'm gonna quote from the New York Times here
about this theft of tens of thousands of bullets that
Harland Carter perpetrated. Quote. Asking an interview in Denver about
the allegations, Mr Carter said that he had testified before
a federal jury and San Diego for some hours, and

(21:02):
they covered a lot of things, none of which I'm
ashaved of and none of which I had any difficulty asking.
He added that he did not quote know anything about
the disappearance or a misappropriation of government ammo. The missing ammunition,
worth several thousand dollars, was never traced, according to an
agent who worked on the investigation, and no charges were
fired filed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very funny. Um. Now, obviously

(21:24):
Carter didn't need to steal those bullets because he's about
to get a new job that is never gonna let
this him run out of ammunition. So, as we stated earlier,
there's a little bit of debate about when he joined
the n r A, whether it was before or after
he killed Raymond Casiano. Probably he was like sixteen when
he when he joins UM and in nineteen fifty one,
the year after he becomes head of the Border Patrol,

(21:45):
he joins the n r a S National Board UM
And again, at this point in time, there's obviously there's
people who are right winging the n r A. There's
who wanted to be more of a conservative institution. It's
not really a political organization. Right, it's almost at this
point from just this just from what I remember, it's
almost an a political just kind of gun lobbying group

(22:07):
that kind of they're not lobbying there, not lobbying. They
do not lobby in this period of time. So they're
having a Sierra Club at this point. Yeah, they're they're
just kind of like, yeah, they're there to provide training
courses for people. They're there. They're there so that one
of the things they do is when the government demilitarizes
weapons right there, like, okay, we're not using like the
m one garand is no longer the gun that the
army uses. So we have a couple of million of

(22:28):
these things. We will sell them at a discount to
the n r A, who can sell them very cheap
to their members. And like it's part of this. So
there's like stuff that they're doing, but they're not they're
not getting in and they are they have some involvement politically,
we'll talk about that in a little bit, but they
are not like lobbying on behalf of the Republican Party
or something, right like, that's not really a thing that

(22:49):
the n r A is doing yet. Harlan Carter wants
that to be a thing that they're doing, but they're not.
In nineteen fifty one when he joins the board, they're
still not very political. Um. But now that he's on
the board, he starts to see the organization with friends
and comrades from the Border Patrol. Right, because he can
help get people hired, he can put in a good word.
So he starts all his buddies from the Border Patrol

(23:10):
who are like wanting a cushy job and the private
sector after, you know, working for the guy, like, he
starts filling them, filling the the n r A with them. Um.
So he finally leaves government service in the early nineteen sixties.
He he stops running the Border Patrol in fifty seven,
but he does some other ship. Um, not really that
important for our purposes, but he's he's he retires from

(23:30):
working for the government in the early sixties. Um, and
he gets pretty much immediately elected president of the n
r A from nineteen sixty five to nineteen sixty seven. Um.
But that doesn't mean he's actually running the n r
A like, right, it's just like a job within the organization.
You've still got this board of directors so he's an
influential figure in the n r A, but he's not
actually like directing it at this point, right, he's collecting

(23:52):
a check and he's probably getting like, uh, you know,
a bunch of free bullets, which is even more free bullets. Well,
he also wants it. He wants the n r A
to get more political. And again we're gonna we're gonna
chat a little bit about why in a second, um.
But one of the things that happens is like the
folks at the n r A who kind of don't
necessarily want that, No, they have to do something with

(24:12):
Harlyn Carter, right, Like you can't like ignore him, um,
so they stick him. They create a lobbying arm for
the first time of the n r A, uh, the
Institute for Legislative Action, and they put him in charge
of it. And again, this is the first time the
n r A had had a lobbying arm. Um. In
the early nineteen sixties it was like not they barely
funded it. Um. So there's this, you know, there's kind

(24:35):
of this growing fight and and Harlan is one of
these guys saying that like, hey, the n r A
needs to get more political, we need to be lobbying.
We need to be focused on Second Amendment advocacy that
was not had nothing like the n r a's planks,
like they're they're like stated purpose as an organization did
not include like protecting or defending the Second Amendment at all,
Like that was not on there even on their radar. Um,

(24:56):
he thinks it needs to be. And the old guard
who run the r A don't see it that way
They see themselves is essentially in partnership with the government
to ensure the development of a heavy of a healthy
shooting sports culture in the United States, right, And part
of what that means is that when gun control laws
get passed, they work with the government to formulate those laws. Um.

(25:18):
So again they're certainly like they're not anti gun, right,
but they're not anything we would recognize as like in
like a modern political context. They just wanna so it
sounds like they just want to make sure that the
gun control doesn't affect hunting and or like regulation of
people owning actual rifles. Yeah. Yeah, And it's again everything

(25:38):
is different, right, Like nothing the A R fifteen exists
in this period, but it's not what it's going to become,
right like because it's it's harder to make. They're much
less common like today, and they are like one of
the things that has made the a R fifteen what
it is is that it's a perfectly modular platform. Um.
So it's basically like gun legos. So there's like a
million you can customize it infinitely. You can make the

(25:59):
bay sit gun itself for a couple of hundred bucks
if you have something. It's not like that at this point.
Rights it's now it's it's like the Honda Civic of Yeah,
so they just haven't. Like part of why it's not
political in the way it will become is that there's
not really a need to you know, like no one's
there's not like, uh, there's not. The culture that that

(26:21):
the n r A helps to create doesn't exist because
they're not doing that. So yeah, their primary focus is
like hunting and target shooting. Right. Um And again, Carter
has his own interpretation of the Second Amendment and in
the nineteen seventies he's going to go to war with
the n r a's old guard in order to change it.
But before we get into that, we should probably have
some ads. I love ads, oh I do too, including

(26:46):
this ad for guns. The concept of yeah, guns, how
about the life card? The life card, it's a gun
that's built into a little credit card. Can't shoot? Well no,
is it accurate? Of course not? Is it? Is it
a stupid thing to carry in your pocket? Yes? Six

(27:08):
enjoy um, that's a real thing. Look look it up,
very simply gun of the of the of the of
the meme guns, easily the memest That's the whole thing
we have these days. There's no meme guns. In the
nineteen sixties. We haven't invented memes, you know, but we
had one. But yeah, which was the meme from the

(27:30):
nineteen sixties? And well it's it's earlier than that. You
know that this is getting way off topic. But you've
just heard of Kilroy was here. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah,
there's memes. But but I was thinking, I was like,
was this is the Suppruter film? Was that? I mean,
I guess that came out in the second case, Yeah, no,
it comes out a little later. That's like the sixties
or mid sixties, right, But when what did the did

(27:52):
people see the Suppruter film? I thought that was like,
I don't know. I mean, I will tell you my
entire life. I have specifically picked houses with a floor
plan where the bathroom is kind of like back into
the left of the living room, so that when people
ask where the bathroom is, I can say, oh, just
take a Kennedy, you know, go back into the left.
JFK getting murdered joke. Anyway, here's ads. Oh we're back.

(28:24):
Nobody's having a good time. You know. Robert Kennedy was
killed with the twenty two, which is the same caliber
as the life card, the gun that's built into a
credit card. There's a credit card. Yeah, yeah, I mean, honestly,
if Sir hn, Sir Hannah had one of those, RFK
would probably be alive. Is a really stupid gun. Um. Anyway,

(28:46):
the Second Amendment, well, actually, weirdly enough, that's getting close
to an argument Harlan Carter will later make, but I
don't want to. I don't want to get ahead of things. Um.
So the Second Amendment is I think it's fair to say,
the most politicized part of the Bill of Rights today.
That's probably not maybe the First Amendment gives it a
run for its money. Um, But even then, it's usually
people differing over interpretations of the First Amendment as opposed to.

(29:09):
The argument over the Second is really should it exist
or does it exist in the way that it's like
currently being interpreted, right, because awful lot of Americans I
think it shouldn't be the law of the land at all, um,
which is difficult to uh square with actually doing something
legislatively because it does exist. But anyway, in two thousand
and eight, the Supreme Court ruled in d C. Versus

(29:31):
Heller that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to
bear arms. Now, obviously, a lot of liberals see this
as terrible jewishprudence and claim that an individual right to
bear arms was basically invented by the n r A.
Conservatives will say the opposite, Um that you know, this
was clearly what the founders had intended. Uh. And the
reality of it is that while an individualist interpretation of

(29:52):
the Second Amendment at a federal level is only like
twenty years old, different courts have ruled very differently on
the Second Amendment for quite a long time. I'm also
the Supreme Court is stupid, so like, I don't personally
give a good goddamn about what the founders intended. Yeah,
that seems like the weirdest standard to uphold to this
day where we're just like, well, the Founders intended, and

(30:12):
it's like the Founders, first of all, none of them
had teeth. None of them had and it's one of
those this it's comprehensively wrong because again the rules will
often be like, well, the Founders would never have wanted
people to have a R fifteens And it's like, did
you know some of those guys, A lot of those
dudes would have been like, this will kill so many more,
like we should have these They all wore powder powdered

(30:33):
wigs because they all had like herpes on their heads
and they you know, they were all syphilitics, so yeah,
they were insane. Like the Founders wouldn't like that. It's
like no, no, no no, don't defend the Founders. Well, and
they would have. They would have liked it for a
variety of different reasons. Thomas Paine would have liked it
because it would allow you to shoot government agents much right,

(30:54):
Like Thomas Jefferson would have liked it because he was
scared of how many slaves he had, you know, like
different different people would have liked it for different reasons.
They love to have that gun, Yes, um. So Obviously, again,
as regards my personal standing towards gun control, I don't
care about what the founders thought about anything, including free speech,

(31:15):
because they didn't actually believe in free speech. Yes, because
a lot of the moments, well Thomas Paine did again
I he's he's he's our one, good one. Um he was.
You know, although kind of in a reactionary during the
French Revolution. You know, they locked his ass up. They
did lock his ass up, because they locked a lot

(31:35):
of people up. They really just kind of went overboard.
Ums left. So I think it's probably valuable to discuss
how interpretations of the right to bear arms have varied
over time, um, in the United States, because again, if
you're ever saying it's always meant this thing or that thing,
that's not you're not going to be correct because a
bunch of different courts have found a bunch of different things.

(31:56):
So the Bill of Rights was the brainchild of James Madison.
Uh And in portraits he's the founding father with just
massive bags under his eyes. Like you look up a
drawing of this dude. He looks fucking exhausted in every
and he was every sketch of it. He probably was
literally dying at all times in his career. He was
dying all the time. Uh, if only every American political

(32:18):
leader had followed in his footsteps of dying, you know.
So he was supposed to write way more of the
Federalist papers, but he was so sickly couldn't. We are
getting to that. So obviously he's a he's you know,
on that side of the federalist anti federalist divide. But
he drafts the Bill of Rights because the anti federalists
are worried, and they have a very good point that like, Okay, well,

(32:40):
we're establishing this supposedly democratic government, but if we don't
place limits on the powers of the federal government, they
could get the power to do anything one day, which
is a very reasonable thing about. Right. Um. Broadly speaking,
one of the better ideas the founders had was having
a Bill of rights. Um. So most of them are
terrified of the idea of a permanent standing army, which

(33:01):
is also a good thing to be frightened of. And
if we had stuck with that idea, maybe things would
be a little bit better. Um. One of the things
that like, these guys are all ancient Roman history nerds, right,
and they are well aware that, like the history of
the Roman Republic includes so many times where just like
a guy gets an army and takes over, right or
tries to take over, and there's a big fucking fight
over it. Um. So they don't like the idea of

(33:24):
like a big centralized standing army because it's very dangerous. Um. So,
the Second Amendment was initially drafted to guarantee people's right
to form a militia. The original text, and this is
not what's in the Bill of Rights now, but this
is the original text Madison rights is quote, the right
of the people to keep in bear arms shall not
be infringed semicolon, a well armed and well regulated militia

(33:46):
being the best security of a free country colon. But
no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled
to render military service in person. Now, this is interesting
because if that had been in the Bill of Rights today, right,
this would have done a couple of things. Among other things,
it would probably have made a draft impossible. Rights. That
second clause is like, you cannot force someone to render

(34:07):
military service, which, like you would think would make a
draft impossible. Um. That said, it also might have made
it impossible to do things that a lot of liberal support,
like banning weapons like the Air of fifteen, because when
you have well armed in there, it does kind of
seem too more specifically endorse heavier firepower than the current
text of the Second Amendment does. UM. That interpretation could

(34:29):
at least be argued. Now this is all academic because
the wording winds up being changed to the present text,
which puts well regulated up front and fun times also
makes it legal to draft people. UM. Obviously, people will
have argued for years and will be arguing for years
what the Second Amendment should mean about gun control and
how it should function. I'm not an originalist, UM. I

(34:52):
think the Constitution is too old for anyone to care about.
But obviously it does matter because it is the law
of the land, and how it's written and how interpreted
has a huge impact on what is legally possible within
the present situation. UM. And so I think the context
of how the Second Amendment like was seen at the
time is helpful to have. UM. Even though again I'm

(35:14):
not an originalist. Please don't take this as me arguing
because the founding fathers felt this way this is how
people should act. But we can stress enough we do
not care what the founding fathers thought about literally anything.
My my my stance broadly in support of civilian arms
ownership has nothing to do with the Constitution, because it's

(35:35):
a stupid document written a long time. Well again, given
the time, not a stupid document. Problem better than any way, whatever,
I don't need to have this conversation. I'm gonna quote
from the New Yorker here because I think it gives
some helpful context. None of this, this being the Second Amendment,
had anything to do with hunting. People who owned and
used long arms to hunt continue to own and use them.

(35:55):
The Second Amendment was not commonly understood as having any
relevance to the shooting of anim As Gary Willis once wrote,
one does not bear arms against a rabbit. Meanwhile, militias
continued to muster. The Continental Army was disbanded at the
end of the Revolutionary War, but the national defense was
increasingly assumed by the U. S Army. By the middle
of the nineteenth century, the US had a standing army
after all. And this is what one of the things

(36:17):
I think is interesting, because again the kind of especially
on Twitter, common takes on one side or the other
this is that like, well, you don't need these guns
for hunting, which is obviously the intent of the Second Amente,
which no, it's absolutely not. But at the same time,
the idea of the Second Amendment as referring to an
individual's ability to stockpile an arsenal is not really accurate

(36:38):
because it was within the context of a militia. However,
if you're bringing that up, it's one of the things
that they meant by Like, one of the things that
the Founding Fathers wanted with this militia was for it
to be the primary method of defending the country, as
opposed to a massive standing army. So again, if you
are if you are one for one reason or the other,
if you're arguing that we should do things, is the

(37:00):
way the Founding Fathers argued, probably the most accurate thing
would be to limit civilian arms ownership outside of the
context of a militia, and also ensure that the militia
is the only armed force in the country, including police,
so that like a massive civilian militia is the only
armed force. There's no federal power to deploy a massive
military and there's not really federal policing in any meaningful way,

(37:21):
because that's how things were in the eighteen hundreds, right
if you're seventeen, If you're arguing that, that's probably closer
to an originalist interpretation than anything being argued right now,
Which is not to say that that makes much sense
in the current day at all, although I would argue
there's a number of you could look at, like what
Switzerland does, right which is often brought up by Second

(37:43):
Amendment advocates. Do they do? I don't even know what
Switzerland has. Like Basically, if you want to own a
weapon in Switzerland, the government will give you one, but
like there's training and you're part of a militia to
get it. It is a military assault rifle, right um.
And a out of Switzerland's are The percentage of Swiss
people who own guns is not significant compared to the

(38:05):
United States, but it's one of the highest in the world. Right.
But it does come as you don't it's not well,
you can buy some arms in Switzerland. It's not like
you're not like just stockpiling guns for your own personal thing.
You are being armed by the state as part of
the state's defense apparatus, right um. But also not in
a way like the Swiss, Like the civilians who own

(38:25):
guns in Switzerland are not like deployed for obviously Switzerland,
right they don't. Um, But anyway, I mean, like this
is again when I talk about like ro Java, and
like what I think about in terms of the value
of the state not having a monopoly on the use
of force. These are some of the things that I
think about broadly speaking. You know, stuff has been different

(38:48):
about the Second Amende um, and and kind of as
a result, the Second Amendment, as heavily politicized as it
is now, was kind of like nobody it was like
the Third Amendment, Right, nobody talks about that anymore. Nobody
fucking talked about the Second Amendment on a national level
for like a century or so. Right, we talked about

(39:09):
like gun control earlier, but it was basically all state level, right,
Different states, different cities would have like different rules based
on ship that was happening there. Um, the federal government
left them alone. Like, there was not really any kind
of federal interest in regulating the Second Amendment until the
early nineteen thirties. And that is when we get our
first major piece of national gun control legislation. Now the

(39:30):
n f A or National Firearms Act was a response
to the era of the gangster. Right. Um. In particular,
you get this weapon starting in like I don't know
exactly when it was invented, I could have looked it up,
but like, it becomes popular in the thirties, the Tommy gun, right,
which is the Thompson submachine gun. And it is broadly speaking,
kind of like at least in terms of the way

(39:52):
it's interpreted by the media and the way it's used
in crime, kind of like the a R fifteen of
its day, because it is Thompson. It's an automatic forty
five caliber weapon. It's a submachine gun, right, so it's
not like a full sized rifle. Um. This will be
one of the most popular squad weapons that the United
States uses in World War Two. Right, A very effective
weapon for what it does, which is shoot a lot
of big, heavy, slow bullets very quickly um at people

(40:15):
at close range. So super good if you're, for example,
a gangster who wants to murder a bunch of people
in a in an enclosed room. Right, if you like,
finding a bunch of other gangsters up against the wall,
you can kill a shipload of people with a Tommy.
Very fun for you know, pulling off some sort of St.
Valentine's latible bank robbing weapon. Great for all sorts of stuff,

(40:37):
going to the local gobba guelery and shooting exactly. Um,
you could gobba a hell of a lot of gool
with this lot. It's it's nowadays, honestly not that impressive
of a weapon. Um, But at the time, right, like
prior to this, most Americans like their experience with this,
like single shot rifles and and lever action guns and

(40:58):
like revolvers and ship right, even semi automatic handguns are
pretty new and fancy in the thirties. Um, the Thompson
is just so much deadlier than anything else, and the
crimes that get committed with it, again, as with the
Air fifteen, unlike a national scale, very little gun crime
involves the Thompson sub machine gun. And again the the

(41:19):
Air fifteen not the most common gun used in crime
by any like, It's not super common compared to a
lot of other kinds of firearm. But the crimes that
it's used in are so spectacular and and kind of
like horrifying that they shocked the nation. And law enforcement
gets nuts about this because one of the things that
gangsters do with Tommy guns is shoot lots of police

(41:39):
officers with them. Um. So there's a whole kind of
America's first panic over a gun, right is what happens
with the Tommy gun in the thirties. Um. And it's
not just the Tommy gun. They're also freaking out about
sought off shotguns, which is actually pretty dumb. They're only
scared about them because you can like them, hide them,
but they're they're not even like anyway, it's dumb for

(42:01):
sawt off shotguns to be regulated more than regular shotguns.
They're actually less deadly, um but whatever they look and
then and that you see them a lot in the
hands of gangsters. Right. So it's again there's this part
of this is that like, yeah, the Thompson is a
lot deadlier than guns that had been available before. But
part of it's also just like there's this media sort
of panic around the Thompson. Um. And by the way,

(42:23):
I should note at this period of time, if you
want to Thompson, you right to Sears and they mail
one to your house. Like this is not there are
not like you don't have to go to a gun storey,
you don't do it they're like background checks, like they
just will send it to you. It's like if you
order like a book on Amazon. It was that easy
to get Thompson submachine gun. UM. So the n f

(42:44):
A puts an endo that UM. It heavily restricts the
ownership of machine guns, sawed off shotguns, and silencers. UM.
Now the n r A is again not a political
organization at this point. It does initially oppose the n
f A, and this is kind of the first time
it gets polit iCal. UM. The organization writes a descent
in their magazine, American Rifleman UM. And this is a

(43:06):
pretty like tamely phrased descent, and it prompts congressional leaders
to sit down with the n r A and work
to limit their bill. UM. The main thing that it
does is that like it stops the band from being
total UM. So rich people can still get machine guns,
guns and silences right. Well, and we could tell I,
I could rant about silencers, which are not what people
tend to think. They're not silent, they're not silent. UM.

(43:28):
All of these things are still legal if you have
the money. Right in the case of like a silencer
or a what's called a short periold shotgun. It takes
like a two tax stamp in a couple of months.
It's technically like a similar legal process to get a
machine gun, but machine guns cost the cheapest machine guns
today are like ten dollars. So it's that's why you
don't see them like used in crimes. Um. Yeah, I

(43:49):
don't know what a machine gun is. An a R
fifteen is a semi automatic gun. The legal definition of
of a machine gun is a weapon that will fire
more than one bullet per trigger. Poll. Right, this is
all very wonky because like we had bump stocks a
while ago, which function more or less as a machine gun,
but legally weren't technically a machine gun. There's a couple

(44:09):
of weird kinds of triggers you can as with anything
with guns, because when you like, when you make a
law to ban a thing, you have to specify what
that thing is in mechanical terms, and so you find
a way to people do this with drugs too, where
it's like, okay, they banded m d M. A, let's
make a drug that affects the same parts of the
brain but doesn't like isn't explicitly banned, right, different Yeah, Um,

(44:31):
and the same thing happens. Now there are sought off
shotguns that aren't legally shotguns because of very anyway, whatever. Um,
this is getting off of the point a bit. But
the n r A works with it works with Congress. Right,
they don't do like a big political brujaha. They're like, hey,
we want to make sure that rich people can still
own these weapons. Let's let's sit down and work some
things out. And Congress is happy to work with them. Now,

(44:53):
some people in Congress are the Attorney General claims that
they emasculate the bill. But broadly speaking, then f A
seriously limits the types of weapons that civilians are allowed
to have, and this is the first time anyone had
done that at the federal level. And the n r
A is pretty happy with the resulting bill, and they
endorse the nineteen n f A. Now, there was still

(45:14):
no real like massive national discussion of the Second Amendment
as an individual right in this period. Um, not that
it was like particularly discussed much at all. Um, this
is just not super constitutionally uh controversial in the period
of time. It's not yet part of the culture war.
Yeah it has, Yeah, that hasn't really evolved yet. Um.

(45:36):
The context, the discussion of the Second Amendment as an
individual right to bear arms doesn't really start to take
off until the early nineteen sixties. Uh. And this is
when the very first law review articles arguing an individualist
interpretation are published. Now, this period coincides with the Civil
rights movement and the second big push for gun control
in federal history. This time rather than well, racism and

(45:58):
crime have a role to plays will just gus. But
one of the first things that sets it off is
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Um. Famously, John F.
Kennedy is assassinated by Bernard Sanders using a man Luker
Carcano rifle that he'd ordered from a classified ad in
the American Rifleman magazine, which is the n ra's magazine.
So the gun that kills GfK is ordered from the
back of a magazine, right, Um. And this is it's

(46:21):
not again, He's not killed with like anything you would
consider an assault weapon. It's like an old bolt action rifle. Um.
But the fact that he was able to get it
from like a magazine ad becomes like and like, you know, again,
background checks are not really a thing yet. Um. And
that's uh. That that makes a lot of people very angry,
and I a quote now from an article by Elena

(46:43):
Savadra Buckley quote. For years prior to Kennedy's assassination, America
had been watching television and learning how to shoot. In
the nineteen fifties, when Hollywood studios were churning out Western's
Popular Science estimated that half a million Americans had started
quick draws shooting for fun, and by the end of
the decade, three thousand Western style guns were selling per week,
according to Frank Smith and his book The n r A,
The Unauthorized History. At the same time, accidental gun wounds

(47:05):
and deaths were on the rise, and three out of
four Americans supported stricter gun control measures. As a result,
the n r A braced itself for new legislation in
the early nineteen sixties, sprinkling the first references to the
Second Amendment in American Rifleman. Eight months after Kennedy died.
The magazine had even added a new statement to its masthead.
The strength of the n r A, and therefore the
ability to accomplish its objects and purposes, depends entirely upon

(47:27):
the support of loyal Americans who believe in the right
to keep and bear arms. And a lot of this
push is coming at the direction of Harlan Carter, who
writes stuff for American Rifleman and who is a big
believer that the the n r A needs to be
a Second Amendment advocacy organization. Yeah, and that's again, that's
different from what they had always been pro gun because

(47:48):
obviously the n r A right, But when when you
look at what they're doing in thirty four that they're
not advocating for the Second Amendment. They're advocating for what
they see as sportsman right, and obviously there's problems with that.
It's based heavily on like the desire of rich people
to be heavily armed. But they're they're arguing for sportsmen
as opposed to Carter wants to turn it into an

(48:08):
advocacy organization for this thing. This this this idea of
the Second Amendment. And when you do something like that,
number one, if you if you kind of are an
essential list and you claim that this is like there's
this kind of inherent, timeless, essential interpretation of this rule,
and that's your guiding light, there's not any ability to
compromise there, right, Like you have to be kind of

(48:28):
a fundamentalist about it. It doesn't matter if a president
was just smirked in front of everyone in Dallas. Yes, yes,
you have the laws, the law, and this is uh,
you know, this is my interpretation of it. And and
and Carter understands. Again he's a very smart guy. What
he'd done with the border patrol shows he understands how

(48:49):
the media works. He understands how to advocate for white
supremacy without advocating for white supremacy, right, Um, And so
he knows that it's not just enough to like say
that you support gun ownership. And I'm going to continue
with a quote from Buckley here. In order for there
to be good guys with guns, there had to be
an opposing force to the n r A and many lawmakers.

(49:10):
That opposing force was usually black. Now this gets into
the aspect of the gun control plash again. There's an
aspect that's just based in these assassinations that's not at
all based in racism. And then there's an aspect that's
based on the Watts riots. So in nineteen sixty five, um,
the l A p D beats a black man named
Marquette Fry with a baton during a traffic stop and

(49:31):
protests erupt um. It becomes an insurrection um and spreads
throughout the country. The military is eventually called in to
augment and overwhelmed l a p D. This is part
of what jump starts the War on Crime, a period
of largely racist gun or crime bills that culminate with
the whole super predator panic that Biden is famous for.
And the n r A huge supporters of crime bills.

(49:52):
Anti gun control support crime bills. Right, So you see
what what they're doing here is you have some folks,
because people are during the watch right, it's using guns
to fight the l a p D. And so there
are like and this this is kind of there's there's pushes.
This is what starts. Some of the momentum for gun
control in California comes from this. But more than that,
with the n r A looks at is they see

(50:15):
these armed black people carrying out an uprising and they're like, well,
we can take away focus on on guns and on
legislating guns by focusing on legislating to criminalize black people, right,
And that's what Harlan Carter realizes, like, well, this is something,
this is the business the n r a needs to
be in and also like this is the business of

(50:37):
like arming the police, arguing that like because that's where
you know, that's where the good guy with a gun
argument starts, right, the idea that like you need to
the police need to have more and more weapons to
deal with today's like dangerous, heavily criminals. Right yeah. And
and also the you know, guns don't kill people. Uh,
this racial group that I do not like, yes, yes, yes,

(50:59):
which is you still see made today there's just a
fucking Republican UM congressional candidate who was arguing that, like,
America doesn't have a gun violence problem, black people have
a something like that, right, Like, this is an old argument,
and Harlon Carter is the one who first figures out
how to make it right. Um, So, two years after
the Watts Riots, the members of the Black Panther Party
start assembling and openly carrying firearms, which is lawful at

(51:22):
the time. They would have assemble with guns, and they
would audit police during traffic stops to ensure that cops
did not abuse members of the public. One could argue
this is in some ways closer to an originalist interpretation
of the Second Amendment than anything today. Um. Now their
activism scares the fuck out of white people and again

(51:42):
white people who are uh not pro gun right. Um.
And we're gonna we're gonna chat about all of that. Um.
And we're gonna chat about my favorite president, Matt, I know,
your favorite president, Ronald Reagan, star of Bedtime for Bonzo
um so are a monkey movie? Yeah, those McCarthy hearing.

(52:05):
We we we owed Ronald Reagan a lot, including the
beginning of the career of my favorite musician, John Hinckley Jr.
You gotta get his mixtapes. I like his early stuff better,
but he's still really creaking, creaking out some solid things.
You know, his early stuff is. Yeah, his early stuff unbelievable, unbelievable.
Just number one with a bullet. Here's here's here's our Atsuh,

(52:36):
we're back. And you know, I just wanted to give
a special statement from our sponsors that they completely support
the career of John Hinckley Jr. Um. And uh, I
don't know. So you're shaking your head. Probably shouldn't. Probably
not good. It's a boring bit. You think it's boring.

(52:58):
The John Hinckley Jr. Is making a comeback to her now, yeah,
he's touring and he's naing it. M hm. He's got
a guitar, and it says, this machine almost kills fashion
keep pretty close to killing a fascist. This machine's shot
the sight of an armored limousine with and it bounced

(53:19):
and managed to penetrate a fascist chest cavity. This machine
loves Jodie Foster and almost. Yeah, this machine heads. It
was very creepy. She did say she was impressed. She
should be. I mean it is impressive, right, yeah, I
don't know, mixed bag whatever, it was probably enough. John

(53:42):
Hinckley Jr. Jokes Look, he did he did shoot Ronald Reagan.
He did unarguably. Yeah. So uh so you get the
Black Panthers start assembling with guns in public, and that
scares the ship out of both kind of the progressive

(54:03):
liberal crowd in California and conservatives in California, and so
all of California gets on board the idea of banning
the open carry of firearms UM, and the n r
A happily endorses the measure. UM the Black Panthers a
symbol with their guns in the capital on one of
the last days it would remain legal to do so.

(54:24):
It's described in local news as an invasion, even though
again it was people legally protesting in a way that
was not again whatever that the same you know, like
white wackadoos do now. But again, fucking Harlan Carter totally
on board with criminalizing this as is again Ronald Reagan
is the governor at the governor of California. Reagan's totally

(54:46):
against uh so, yeah, some of these guys get arrested
during their protests in Sacramento as they are handcuffed. Bobby
Seal read from their executive mandate, which protested quote the
racist California legislature which is now considering legislation aimed keeping
black people disarmed and powerless. The measure passed, UM, and
it laid the groundwork for the extensive gun control that

(55:06):
the state of California now in joys to this day.
Those laws primarily impact poor black people. UM. Rich white
folks can acquire concealed weapon permits very easily. UM. You
just have to be able to have a second home
in a place like San Bernardino, and you can get
the license to carry a concealed gun in the state
of California. UM. They can also purchase So California, one

(55:27):
of the things that they have is a a handgun roster, right, so,
the only handguns you can buy in the state of
California are specifically ones that have been approved from the state.
Um However, you can bring handguns into the state if
you move there, as long as they they don't have
an illegal you know, as long as you don't bring
magazines with higher than a ten round capacity, you can
bring those into the state and then you can have them,

(55:48):
or you can sell them to people through inn FFL.
And if you're a police officer, you can buy any
kind of gun you want and you can sell it
to whoever you want. So there is a massive industry
in California of police officers selling handguns to people that
are illegal in the state of California to buy unless
a police officer sells them to you for twice the
normal price. Anyway, a whole bunch of sketchy ship happens. Yeah,

(56:08):
it's a nice side hustle for the cops, you know.
I mean, because hey, there was a gig economy back
then too. A lot of us are uber drivers slash
gun salesman now, so I get it, and it's one
of those things. Um, there's a number of things about
including like waiting periods and stuff in California that there's
a strong argument to be made in favor of um.

(56:29):
But this is where a lot of it starts. Um,
and it never entirely gets divorced from from this thing
of Like again, you can look at the same thing
in the n n F A of like, well, though
we want to we don't want rich people to be affected, right,
uh yeah, yeah. Anyway, the the you know they banned
what is that, the Saturday Night specials? Like any like, oh,
we're getting to that. That's where the handgun That's where

(56:50):
the handgun roster starts. Though, yes, with the Saturday Night special. Um,
but we're we're we're we'll get to that, don't worry. So.
Harland Carter's support of an individual right to bear arms
was not out of principled belief that all Americans deserve
to defend themselves or out of a desire to even
check governmental power. Again he militarized the border patrol. Um. Instead,
he believed that guns were a tool to enforce white supremacy,

(57:12):
and he wanted to ensure that white people maintained the
right to do this and back in California's open carry ban,
he was engaging in an intelligent strategy. You draw attention
away from guns and you focus on who is carrying them.
This is the origin of the quote guns don't kill people,
People don't kill people argument. But when Harlan made it,
the people were explicitly coated as black. I'm gonna quote

(57:33):
from Epic magazine now. The same year, American Riflemen published
an editorial titled Who Guards America's Homes? It depicted protests
like Watts as mob violence. Who then supports the police?
Who then guards the doors of American homes from senseless
savagery and pillaging. It read with home front safeguards spotty
and uncertain. The armed citizen represents a potential community stabilizer, right,

(57:55):
Nothing is more stable stabilizing for community. There a bunch
of armed white people. Well, and he's he's very much
making the written house argument here, right, armed citizen supports
the police. Black panthers are making what I might argue
is more of an original interpretation, which is the armed
citizen protects the community from government overreach. That's the black panthers.

(58:16):
He's saying, the armed citizen aids the police in enforcing
white supremacy. Right, that's the argument being made by the
n r A here. Yeah, yeah, it's funny because like
you know, obviously, you know, you do have your you know,
right wing insurrectionists, militias and ship like that. But for
the most part, what is being supported is like arming

(58:38):
the suburbs, you know, and anyone who supports the police
should be armed, and anyone who in any ways against
it shouldn't be. And that is, uh, you know, it
is a problem. It's a it's a problem that deserves
a more complex series of solutions than to get suggested
on on in debates over this. But that's a separate topic. Um. So,

(59:03):
after RFK and and Martin Luther King Jr. Are murdered
in nineteen sixty Senator Thomas Dodd reintroduces the Gun Control
Act to Congress. This has been put up through it
for it a couple of times. Um he puts it
through again in nineteen sixty eight after those assassinations, and
the Gun Control Act is intended to ban the interstate
sale of guns, um ban their sale to children, to

(59:27):
convicted felons, and because of some biggot treat mental defectives. Right.
So again, like like all of these laws, there's like, Okay,
you don't want people to just be able to like
ship guns through a mail order catalog across the country.
I can get on board their right probably shouldn't be
selling them to children or you know, although I have
issues with like who becomes a felon right like violent
history shure, that makes sense. You don't want somebody who's

(59:49):
like a convicted rapist buying guns. And then like and
mental defectives, well, how the hell do you define that? Now? Now,
now I've got some concerts. Um, But this this law again,
there's a lot that's very reasonable in here, and the
n r A rallies against it in huge numbers. Harlan
Carter and his partner in the and they are not
in They don't have an issue with the mental defectives part, right,

(01:00:11):
that's not the thing that's a problem to them. Um,
this is the first law that causes the n r
A to get like hugely political. And and Harlan Carter again,
there's this war still within the n r A that
hasn't been resolved between the old Guard and the New Guard. Carter,
because he has a lot of influence in American Rifleman magazine. Um,
he he enlists like the people that he's been seating

(01:00:32):
the n r A with these new guard folks to
start like coming up with a series of blistering editorials
in American Rifleman magazine that are urging people to write
letters to Congress to like this is the first real
concerted lobbying campaign. But he and I'm trying to figure
out what which part of it is? Is it the
children part? Is it the fact that they're like, no
children is neutral, racially neutral, So they're like wait wait

(01:00:55):
wait wait, wait wait wait, can't do that? Or what
is it? A big part of it this isn't attempting
to established like if you're buying a gun, you have
to do it through There has to be like this
this legal process, Like you could just be a dude
has a gun and I get it. Right. Um, And
that's that's the big that's the center of the problem, right,
is the idea that the federal government is now going
to be involved inherent like in all legal gun purchases,

(01:01:19):
which is obviously not what the Gun Control Act does.
There's these things called face to face sales in a
lot of states where if you're not a gun dealer,
you can sell a gun to anybody without there being
any kind of a background check. That is still the
law in a lot of the country. UM. But most
gun purchases you have to do you have to fill
out what's called a Form four FUR seven three, which
is and you have to have like a federal background check. Right. Um.

(01:01:42):
And the government gets involved. Right, That's that's the thing
that they're scared about. And again, you can't divorce this
from like the John Birch Society, from all of these
panics about communism, um about like you know, the government
getting increasingly centralized. UM. And I guess you might argue
that that's also closer to an originalist interpretation of the
Second Amendment. UM. But anyway, UM, So the n r A,

(01:02:06):
you know, Harlan Carter urges like helps to organize this
massive campaign of resistance against the Gun Control Act. Um.
And it's not popular with many of the folks running
the n r A at the time. UM. And again,
the way they've done things before, Congress would suggest a bill,
the n r A would usually have some issues with it,
but they would like make those issues clear than they'd
sit down and like hash something out as they did

(01:02:26):
in nineteen thirty four. So the vice president of the
n r A, guy named Franklin Or, figures, that's what
we're going to do, right. Um. He doesn't want the
organization to take like a really public political stance because
that's kind of permanently alienated from like one party, right,
And he doesn't that's not his goal with the n
r A. He doesn't want it to be like a
Republican or a democratic thing. Short sighted idiot. Yeah, So

(01:02:49):
for what would be the last time, because again Or
and his people are still in charge of the n
r A. Broadly, the n r A sits down with
Franklin Dodd and they reach a compromise on the bill. Um,
and they they they alter it and what not to
be a little bit whatever Earth describes it as a
law the sportsman of America can live with. Um. The
fact that anything had been passed at all enrages the

(01:03:11):
base that Carter has put together, and they respond with
a flood of hate mail so voluminous it nearly makes
Earth resign. Um. It becomes increasingly clear that the old
Guard did not speak for the increasingly radicalized masses of
the n r A UM and these again, these people
are they're they're frightened of black mobs, of the Watts Riots, right,
they're also have been stoked by Carter and his lackeys

(01:03:34):
with like fears of Communist infiltration and invasion. This is
all kind of coming together as part of it, and
obviously a lot of the right and this time sees
the Watts Riots is like it must have been the
Soviet Union. There's this is like a synonymous like you know,
any kind of black uprising synonymous with communism at this Yeah,
so kind of what you're seeing here is the radical

(01:03:56):
chunk of the n r A doesn't want like wants
to oppose any like this law under all conditions. Right,
there's no no way in which they'll be okay with this,
and they lose the fight to the old Guard, who
works with the government to pass this law. But the
New Guard, I guess you New Guard doesn't really a turn.
But like the Harland, Carter's faction becomes it starts to

(01:04:19):
become more dominant as a result of this because it
pisces off so many people and because it's so much
easier to electrify people with like threats of the communist
government is coming to like take your guns to stop.
You have to be able to protect your family against
these dangerous blu that that's easier to rile people up for.
Then we should work with the government to come to
like sensible accommodations. Right, that's compromised, that's not a selling point. Right.

(01:04:44):
So because of what Carter builds here over this fight,
membership in the n R A source to over a
million people for the first time in the association's history.
So this is part of what scares the old guard
and makes them silo. Harlan Carter off to the i
l A, which is the n R race first registered lobby,
and when they make this lobbying group for him to run,

(01:05:04):
they don't like fund it, so he's going to have
to raise his own money to do anything. And their
hope is that, like, this guy is dangerous, but we
can't kick him out. So if we give him this
lobbying organization but don't give him any money, he's going
to have to spend all of his time raising funds
and he's not going to be able to like cause
any trouble. Um. This proves to be a bad strategy

(01:05:24):
because Harlan Carter innvinced the concept of right wing fundraising. Yes,
the first podcaster. Yeah, he's the first guy to figure
out how everything is going to work for right wing
fundraising in the future. And he doesn't because he figures out,
he starts he uses computers, right, Like, that's the thing
he figures out is going to be critical. And I'm

(01:05:45):
gonna quote from Alina Buckley again. Their computer could print
even lines per minute, letting Carter's team produce thousands of
letters addressed to members over a twenty four hour period.
It was the latest iteration of a powerful tool, direct mail.
The medium had reached prominence by the early night seventies,
when it was first pioneered by Richard Vigary, who, as
a campaign worker had copied down the names and addresses
of people who had donated to Bury Goldwater's unsuccessful presidential bid.

(01:06:09):
With that list of Republicans and their addresses as good
as the gold bricks deposited at Fort Knox, he once wrote,
Vigory had developed away for conservatives to reach the people
most likely to become coveted single issue voters with the
right messaging. Carter hoped to use the tool to drum
support for i l a's legislative work. Vigory himself collaborated
with Carter to build their database. I LA did all
of this under the noses and the shoes of the

(01:06:30):
n r A executives, gaining ground for a hardened line
against gun control. I'm building an organization capable of public persuasion,
not only in Washington, but in the States. Carter said
at the time, we don't know the best way to
reach all the people yet, but of course we shall
so God damn it. He built a mailing list. He's
one of the very first people to do this and

(01:06:52):
is arguably the most successful of anyone in this period
to do it. Um and uh, yeah, that's what we're
gonna leave things for today. But first, Matt, you got
a mailing list. You wanna? I got a mailing list.
It's called Instagram. You can find me there, uh at
Matt Leave Jokes. Please follow me. Uh And also, hey,

(01:07:14):
if you like the Sopranos, listen Upon Yourself a Gun
and is a rewatch podcast where me and Vince Mancini
talk about every episode. We just wrapped it up and
uh it is the greatest and only Sopranos podcasts in
the world, and uh I would love for y'all to
check it out. And well, that's that's wonderful. I would
like to use this time to get everyone to get

(01:07:36):
involved in my fundamentalist right wing mailing list uh NAKA
the National Anti Quartering Association. We're Third Amendment fundamentalists, Matt.
Not only do I think that soldiers shouldn't be quartered
in houses, I don't think they should be quartered anywhere.
I think soldiers should be kept awake constantly with heavy

(01:07:56):
doses of amphetamines for the duration of the time that
they're serving. No ordering of soldiers anywhere, not even on
military basis. Keep them in the sea or in the
sky on drugs at all times. That's the knack a line.
So yeah, find find us online, give us your email,
send us money and act blue dot com slash an quarters.

(01:08:18):
It's no quartering nowhere. Good Times Behind the Bastards is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,

(01:08:38):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.