Tucker Carlson debated radio host Ethan Bearman over the efficacy of new gun control regulation on Fox News Thursday night.
The conversation opened with Carlson, a Daily Caller co-founder, saying “wondering why there are no calls from the left to ask real questions about American culture and perhaps the collapse of family structure… or the fact that, you know, a quarter of the population is on psychotropic drugs, or obvious things — why does no liberal ever mention those? It’s always about taking my firearms away.”
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Bearman took a step back from the question and attempted to “look at the bigger picture,” but Carlson pressed onward.
“Look, I don’t know the answer to this. I’m not a social scientist,” he countered. “Guns are tools and you can do with them a lot of different things. They don’t shoot themselves, it’s silly.”
“So why is there this willful blindness to obvious causes and instead blaming the tool. That makes me suspicious. Can you see why?” Carlson replied.
“I want to disagree with you on something,” Bearman answered. “Why give someone who doesn’t know how to hammer a nail and give them an automatic nail gun so they can accidentally shoot themselves with that? That’s the same thing idea here with 100 round magazines, bump stocks are absolutely meaningless and just done to circumvent automatic weapons laws. There are common sense things we can do to minimize the damage.”
The conversation soon turned to the subject of mental health, at which point Bearman accused President Trump and Republicans of “[wanting] to cut” mental health assistance.
“Don’t make it partisan,” Carlson shot back. “The Democrats closed the mental hospitals, OK. You can have the partisan debate, but I don’t care about that.”
“I don’t want to be infantilized with this dumb crap about, ‘oh, the fact that you have a rifle makes me less safe.’ That’s a lie, and everyone knows it. Why are young men doing this? Maybe — I don’t know why. Again, but why don’t we have the conversation? Why do we pretend it’s not real?”
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