Mike Rowe: When There’s a Hole in Your Net, You Don’t Need a Bigger Net You Need a Smaller Hole
Television’s Mike Rowe went on a fun rant about the White House’s recent call for celebrities to support stricter gun control laws through social media–and why he probably wasn’t asked to help.
“I’ve just received a request from The White House,” said Rowe on his Facebook page. “On behalf of The President, I’ve been asked to share some talking points directly with each one of you, regarding the need to expand background checks on those citizens who wish to purchase a gun!”
“Just kidding,” he joked.
Rowe went on to criticize proposed expanded background checks, instead he argued in favor of enforcing and repairing the existing background check system.
“Currently, thousands of people deemed mentally incompetent by the courts are not registered in our national check system,” said Rowe. “That’s insane, if you’ll pardon the irony, in part because it’s so easily correctable.
“Likewise, The ATF says that most states report less than 80 percent of their felony convictions to the national system,” he continued. “As a result, nearly 7 million convicted felons are not currently registered. Is it any surprise that nearly every mass killer in recent memory passed a background check?”
“Our current system is only as good as the records in it, and right now, those records are laughably incomplete.”
See Also: Whoopi Goldberg: ‘No Reason Anyone Needs an Automatic Weapon’
Rowe went on to describe in detail many of the problems he has with the existing background system and offered solid suggestions on how to address them. He also suggested that the next time the White House calls for support, that people might do well to share what they really think of gun control.
He also laid out this challenge to other celebs: “If our elected officials are going to rely on actors and comedians to advance their political agendas, let’s not limit them to 140 characters or a list of pre-approved talking points. Seriously, where’s the fun in that? In the name of authenticity, let’s encourage our celebrities to use their own words.”
“It seems to be working for Trump…”
If you like this and want more pay a visit to Mike Rowe on Facebook. There’s plenty more where that came from.
Mike:
One issue that I have with the morass of anti-gun laws is this: How do individual States and local municipalities have the authority to regulate Constitutional Rights, and to such varying degrees? Can you imagine the uproar if the 1st Amendment was infringed upon in a similar manner?
Recently, the Federal government wanted to classify anyone who arranged to have their bills paid by another person as “mentally incompetent”, and not able to legally possess a firearm. Rich people and business owners have accountants who perform such functions, yet they are not deemed “incompetent”. Older people are merely trying to eliminate a repetitive task, that, if neglected, causes them even more problems. Further infringements upon law-abiding citizens are not the answer. We need fewer, less complicated laws to allow crimes involving firearms to be accurately enforced, without turning citizens into felons just because they choose to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.
The problem, “Mike”, is when the government itself decides who is and who is not “mentally unstable. Fearless Leader insists that head-lopping Muslims are peaceful, while hymn-sing, Evangelical Christians are terrorists!
I wasn’t aware that liberal celebrities were tongue-tied on the subject of gun control. Amy Poehler has Gun Tourette’s Syndrome lately, and in general if a celebrity is opening his or her cake trap about guns, it’s a liberal who thinks we shouldn’t have them.
But I appreciate Mike’s letting me know not to support him by watching anything he does, ever again. Since last time I checked, he worked for CNN, there’s damn little chance of that, amyway.
Whoa. Didn’t read the article right at all. Apologies to Mike Rowe, and I hope CNN doesn’t drop him for saying the blindingly obvious, that the Federal government has laws which could be used to prevent criminals from buying guns to begin with, and doesn’t use them as it should. And Rowe’s entirely right that we ought to deluge the White House, telling them we won’t support new gun laws, and that he needs to enforce the ones which exist (not create what are in effect new gun laws through legislation which exceeds and side-steps the clear intent of Congress).
Thank God for Men like Mike Rowe.
What part of ‘SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED’ do people not understand?????
What part of “Marxist” don’t YOU understand. You know, I’m getting tired of trite, sound bite comments on this and many other sites. Most of the commenters here are just blowing off steam, and, while I don’t know for sure, then going off and doing nothing to help. How about everyone here going to conventionofstates.com? How about you give a few bucks to them to get some Federal government shrinking amendment going? If that’s not your cup of tea, how about you start working the phones for your pro-2A candidate?
I’m sending money EVERY MONTH to a number of charities AND to the convention of states people.
Do something besides typing “What part of shall not be infringed” into your computer.
They oppressive commies. They don’t care and only wish to subjugate us all.
Agreed. That and the fact that they are called the Bill of Rights, and not a list of privileges.
Millions of people who suffer from mental illness are protected from being listed as a protection of their rights yet the divider in Chief would infringe on the Constitutional Rights of hundreds of millions law abiding citizens with NO mental health issues who are armed. DRUG dealing is a victimless crime(?) according to this supposed Constitutioinal Lawyer. Has he even asked himself WHY inner city thugs unite into gangs and used ILLEGAL GUNS? It is to protect the illegal sale of poison to the children of the communities in which they live from other thugs vying to sell the same poison. “Victimless Crime “????? It is wrong , according to the Mullah in Chief to condemn a religion “Islam” due to the violent illegal acts of a few yet there is no such protection of the LEGAL gun owners in this country . The condemnation of an entire segment of the United States is encouraged by this tyrant and his water carriers the PRESS. Weapon prosecutions are down 40%by this administrations Justice Department. Yet a war on legal gun owners has been declared. My opinion is he has tried in vain to redistribute wealth and now he attempts the redistribution of power. He fears that he cannot control the minds of armed Americans while he encourages lawless behavior in his inner cities.
The fact that millions (probably exaggerated) citizens are not listed on the “no buy list is due to the NRA and theie political arm, the Republican Party. Also the issue of felons. The NRA seems to believe that some felonies should not prevent you from owning a firearm although others might. They have prohibited the CDC from conducting research into gun related deaths, and see no reason why a person on the no-fly list shouldn’t be prohibited from buying a gun as well. Until this country gets serious about gun related violence nothing will be done except arguments based on anecdotal evidence that may or may not be true.
The CDC are actually abusing their power to collate death statistics in this country to inflate the number of non-natural deaths in general through its manipulation of the WISQARS database to increase each such statistic from every state and county-equivalent area in the United States of America to ten a year. This has the automatic equivalent of increasing the gun death rate as reported by CDC in counties which may never have experienced a gun death at all in a given area to ten.
Since, as of the 2000 census there were 3,141 county-equivalents (including consolidated city-county governments, Louisiana parishes and Alasaka boroughs) in the United States, simple math gives the CDC a minimum of 31,410 gun deaths to report – a number which by CDC regulations is unconnected to the actual number of gun deaths, which according to the FBI is 33,636 without the inflation in that number which CDC regulations (untouched by Congress) would require. Given that some counties don’t report any gun deaths in a year, this shows CDC;s not a reliable source for either raw statistics on gun deaths or for analysis of gun deaths.
CDC has had anything but a neutral stance on gun laws in our country. They are unequivocally anti-gun rights. It’s hard (from a clinical data analyst’s perspective – I was one for years) to see an innocent motive for inflating any vital statistic. In the cave of violent death reporting, which shapes public opinion and the passage of legislation, all this playing around with the contents of WISQARS and the current databases which incorporate the old WISQARS data does is make the CDC’s figures inaccurate and unscientific.
The Nanny State gave us armed drug gangs to begin with – if the only regulation on drugs was the original requirement that they be pure drugs, organized crime would be out of that business except for hijacking and tax evasion, as with alcohol and tobacco.
It’ll be interesting to see how much legalization will impact organized crime in the states which allow marijuana to be used “recreationally” (a bad term which makes me think of Shel Silverstein’s song about the Super Bowl of Dopers). I don’t think Colorado will actually ding street-dealing of illegal dope that much, because La Familia can still make plenty of money selling it for less than $400/ounce (the current price for “legal” MJ in Colorado). If the whole point of that law was to destroy the illegal trade in drugs, which it should have been, marijuana ought to have been taxed just enough to support active inspection of legal marijuana dealers to assure that they were selling a pure, unadulterated commodity to the public and not selling to minors.
The gun rights community ought to realize that the Nanny State’s the real enemy here. It supports a “War on Drugs” which only serves to load our prisons up with people who’d never have been there except that they used (shifting to a whisper here) illegal drugs! Drugs can no more commit crimes than can guns, cars, hammers or baseball bats. In each case there has to be someone with the ready mind to hurt someone else. The good things NRA has been doing (apart from increasing the political risk to anti-gun politicians) is to push for laws against criminal misuse of guns. I’m all for laws which tack time on when a gun’s actively involved in the commission of a violent crime. Guns ought to be for law-abiding gun owners.
I sort of figured that Rowe was a level-headed guy just from watching his shows. I’m glad to hear that he’s a 2nd Amendment supporter!
From everything I’ve read Mike Rowe is one of us . As I have been saying the gun community needs to go on offense rather than always being on defense .Perhaps the NRA should contact Rowe ,Kurt Russell ,Chuck Norris and Tom Selleck to go on offense for the 2A.
Chief, you hit the nail on the head. The NRA would be wise to use these celebs and let the hollywierd crowd know that they are not always right. A lot of the holywood stars are making movies that are very gun violent and making millions, yet they claim to be antigun. Very hypocritical!
I second the motion to get the NRA, NAGR and GOA to use the pro gun celebs to show that not every “celebrity” is an anti gun fascist that wants to take people rights away,…
We ought to strongly consider as well targeting anti-gun celebrities, television stations, broadcast and satellite networks, and those who advertise on those networks for attacking our civil rights. That’s worked out very well for Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other frequent White House guests, and since we wouldn’t be extorting funds from these guys, it ought to actually be easier to do.
When I had satellite, I’d watch Don Imus’s show regularly – it was one of the few places in broadcast television to go for unvarnished reporting. Not that I agreed with everything the man had to say, but he had interesting guests and didn’t bite his tongue much. I think his being knocked off of regular broadcast air had a lot more to do with his general irreverence for the Left than his remarks about that college ladies’ basketball team. Al Sharpton has been politically incorrect in every possible way, but MSNBC hasn’t dropped him – they hired after he’d said things that would have destroyed many other political commentators.
ABC’s a seldom guest in our home thanks to their decades of pushing left-wing commentary in features ike “The View” (notice they go through conservative and just plain ‘not-liberal’ panelists on a regular basis, but keep Barbara Walters, Meredith Vieira and Whoopi Goldberg as reulars – because they are regularly and reliable left-wing in their comments. CBS is not much more common a guest, because their new Late Show host, Stephen Colbert, has continued his predecessor Dave Letterman’s practice of pushing left-wing views and punishing everyone in the news with different viewpoints, skating up close to the edge of libellous comments about Trump. Needless to say, I don’t watch that show, but the commericals aired for it give a good indication of what Colbert’s up to.
If we keep watching the shows that peddle disdain for our civil rights and Constitutional government, we are paying to be enslaved. I have a large video collection and spend much more time on the Internet than watching television.
Mike Rowe continues to impress me. He’s too smart, but I wish he’d run for president.
He could run and win handily in the next election.
Rowe 2020!!
Hmmm… better idea. Cruz/Rowe 2016!!
We need more intelligent people like Mike Rowe, Chuck Norris, Jesse Ventura, Ice-T and Kurt Russell. These celebrities actually have the balls to speak the truth. We can’t forget the man I have always wrote in for president after Charelton Heston passed away, Ted Nugent. Please Hollywood stop being led by your noses and wise up. The current government is the enemy not law abiding gun owners. LEAVE OUR RIGHTS ALONE!!!!!!!!
Bravo Mike Rowe, Whoopi you can leave the country and leave your citizenship behind.
whoopi can go strait to isis. They can all get lost in her “cave” and die there.
Lord knows there appears to be enough room in there by looking on the outside.