I love stand-up comedy. I grew up seeing routines from people like Robin Williams, George Carlin, Louis Anderson, and a host of other legends who are no longer with us. Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby–you know, before we found out that he was kind of terrible–and Eddie Murphy did more to shatter racism simply by being funny than a million activists ever could.
I love comedy.
But I also recognize that a comedy routine isn’t a debate. It’s a routine that’s meant to be funny, and while you can sometimes make a point–Carlin did it all the time–you’re still ultimately “debating” the strawmen in your head.
And, let’s be real here, hecklers aren’t going to engage in a debate on political issues from the audience most of the time. That’s not why they’re there.
Yet some people think a comedy routine is a slam dunk, and a decade-old routine from some guy I’ve never heard of was touted as just that.
Titled, “This funny but scary 10-year-old comedy routine about gun control should be required viewing for all Maga cultists,” tells you a lot about the “writer” of this piece–and anyone who thinks they can make me view anything I don’t want to is going to find out why we have a Second Amendment–but after choosing to watch the routine, it’s a good reminder why people need to understand what comedy is and isn’t.
@thehofstetter I used to re-post this video every time I heard about a mass shooting. But they happened so often, I was just exhausted. It’s been almost a decade since I first posted this and nothing has changed. Go ahead and tell me how dumb I am. How wrong I am. How much of an asshole I am. I’ve heard it all. What I haven’t heard is a single coherent solution from a gun rights advocate. And don’t you dare pretend that there isn’t a problem.
♬ original sound – Steve Hofstetter
He says he hasn’t heard a single coherent solution from a gun rights advocate, but I still haven’t heard a single coherent argument from him.
Let’s start with the whole “no one is coming to take your guns” thing.
They just want to register them, like cars, he says, and no one is taking our cars. No, they’re not. But no one treats guns the same as they treat cars. More people die from car accidents than firearm-related homicides, and yet there are no movements to restrict the size of one’s gas tank, how fast it can go, what it’s shaped like, or any of that.
The comparison is ridiculous because the views people have of these things are so diametrically different.
Further, as we hear more about things like climate change and how driving is creating greenhouse gases that is dooming the planet, are you willing to bet no one is coming for our cars?
Time and time again, though, there have been people talking about taking our guns. Thus far, most of them are so far out of power as to be screaming out clouds, but the will is there.
Claiming that Second Amendment people don’t care about the rest of the amendments is kind of a take. “Why does no one defend the Seventh Amendment?” Well, tell me, do we have an assault on the Seventh Amendment? Is anyone trying to take away our right to a jury trial for civil matters? No? Then how about you shut the hell up with your ridiculous strawman. The moment they do, I’ll stand up for that one, too. The same for the Third Amendment–and yes, Mr. Hofstetter, I do know what that one is.
When there’s an assault on an amendment, most of us stand there and defend against it, at least as we understand the Founders’ intent.
“But you all know someone you wish didn’t own a gun.”
Yeah, and I see someone I wish didn’t have freedom of speech because he’s a freaking moron, but I defend their right to speak freely because I value my own. Those people who I wish didn’t own a gun? I defend their right to have one because otherwise, no one’s right is safe. I offer corrections where I can, obviously, if they’re unsafe or just ignorant, but I won’t justify stripping people of their rights just because I got nervous.
Hofstetter finished off this part of the bit by claiming that those who want to resist tyranny don’t know how tanks work.
Well, that’s certainly a take. However, we spent 20 years in Afghanistan only to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, and guess what? The Taliban didn’t have tanks. The Viet Cong didn’t have tanks. They had guns, though.
Throughout the piece that brought this supposed comedy to my attention were a bunch of comments from people agreeing with this. However, what they didn’t get was that a comedy routine doesn’t have to address real arguments.
Hofstetter’s job isn’t to sway people. His job is to entertain them, and maybe he does that pretty well. I don’t know because I’ve never heard of him before.
But these arguments, while presented a little differently in the name of comedy, aren’t anything new. The people who think this will change minds are deluding themselves because we’ve all heard it before. The people thinking these are valid points and saying so in the comments are people who don’t want to listen to the other side.
The only thing I find funny here is that anyone thinks there’s a grain of reality in any of this.
Editor’s Note: The right to self-defense is no laughing matter.
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