Well, hello everyone. Here we are again in the aftermath of another terrible, inexplicable shocking and painful tragedy. This time in Las Vegas, which
happens to be my hometown and Cletus’s hometown. As you know at least 59 people are dead, hundreds of people were wounded in what they say was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, coming about a year and a half after the previous deadliest mass shooting in modern American history in Orlando where 49 people lost their lives. Of course we pray for the victims and for their families and friends and we wonder why even though there's probably no way to ever know why a human being would do something like this to other human beings who were at a concert having fun and listening to music. Jason Aldean was onstage. Luke Combs, who is here with us tonight, he played the show too and obviously no one could have ever expected that something terrible would happen, but it did.
A very sick person smuggled 17 guns into his hotel room and smashed off the windows, started firing indiscriminately from the 32nd floor into a crowd of 22,000 people across the street. And as a result of that this morning we have children without parents and fathers without sons, mothers without daughters. We lost two police officers, we lost a nurse from Tennessee, a special ed teacher from a local school here in Manhattan Beach, and it's a kind of thing that it makes you want to throw up or give up. It's too much to even process. All these devastated families have to live with this pain forever because one person with a violent and insane voice in his head managed to stockpile a collection of high-powered rifles and use them to shoot people.
That guy was an accountant. He had no criminal record. His brother, who lives in Florida, seems totally shocked, genuinely dumbfounded. He said he saw no sign of any of this. The owner of the store that sold the killer some of the rifles said he passed the government-mandated background check when he was in the store. He wasn't on any watch list. He didn’t seem to have been a religious or political extremists came out of nowhere and because of that because there weren't any of the usual signs, you know, yeah, I've been reading comments when people say this is terrible but there's nothing we can do about it. But I disagree with that intensely because of course there's something we can do about it. There are a lot of things we can do about it but we don't, which is interesting because when someone with a beard attacks us we tap phones and we invoke travel bans. We build walls. We take every possible precaution to make sure it doesn't happen again, but when an American buys a gun and kills other Americans then there's nothing we can do about that and Second Amendment, I guess.
I guess our forefathers wanted us to have AK-47, is the argument, I assume. Orlando, Newtown, Aurora, San Bernardino, every one of these shootings of murder used automatic or semi-automatic rifles which are not weapons you use for self-defense. They're weapons designed to kill large numbers of people in the shortest possible amount of time.
This guy reportedly had ten of them in his room apparently. Legally, at least some of them were there legally. Why is that allowed? I don't know why our so-called leaders continue it allow this to happen or maybe a better question is why do we continue to let them to allow it to happen? Five people got shot in Lawrence, Kansas, last night, three of them died. It didn't even make a blip because this is just a regular part of our lives now. And you know what will happen? We’ll pray for Las Vegas. Some of us will get motivated, some of us will not get motivated. Though bills will be written, they'll be watered down, they'll fail and the NRA will smother it worth all with money and over time we'll get distracted will move on to the next thing.
And then it will happen again and again. And last night the White House Press
Secretary Sarah Sanders said, this is not the time--or actually it was today this
morning she said--it was not the time for political debate. And I don't know, we
have 59 innocent people dead it wasn't their time either, so I think now is the
time for political debate.
President Trump is visiting Las Vegas on Wednesday he spoke this morning said
he's praying for those who lost their lives. You know in February he also signed a bill that made it easier for people with severe mental illness to buy guns legally. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a number of other lawmakers who won't do anything about this because
the NRA has their balls in a money clip, also sent their thoughts and their
prayers today. Which is is good. They should be praying. They should be praying
for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby lobby run this country because
it's so crazy right now. There are loopholes in the law that let people avoid background checks if they buy a gun privately from another party or if they buy a gun online or at a gun show.
So I want to show you something. These are the face of the senators who days after the shooting Orlando voted against the bill that would have closed those loopholes.
These are the 56 senators who didn't want to do anything about that now. Ninety percent of Democrats, I'm not talking about politicians here, I'm talking about people, and 77 percent of Republicans support background checks at gun shows. Eighty-nine percent of Republicans and Democrats are in favor of restricting gun ownership for the mentally ill. But not this gang. They voted against both of those things. So with all due respect your thoughts and your prayers are insufficient.
And, by the way, the House of Representatives will be voting on a piece of legislation this week. It's a bill to legalize the sale of silencers for guns. This is what they're working on. We have a major problem with gun violence in this country and I guess
they don't care and if I'm wrong on that, fine, do something about it, because I'm
sick of it and you know I want this to be a comedy show. I hate talking about
stuff like this. I just want to you know laugh about things every night but it seems to becoming increasingly difficult lately.
It feels like someone has opened up a window into hell and what I'm talking about tonight isn't about gun control, it's about common sense. Common sense says no good will ever come from allowing a person to have weapons that can take down 527 Americans at a concert. Common sense says you don't let those who suffer from mental illness buy guns.
You know in June of last year, the NRA fought to make sure people on the no-fly
list can buy guns. They aren't allowed to get on a plane, they're allowed to own a
very dangerous gun. Who thinks that makes sense? Them I guess, the people who voted with the NRA. Maybe I'm nuts but I would like to think we can put politics aside
agree that no American citizen needs an M-16 or ten of them and maybe that way we don't do this again.I mean that seems very reasonable to me.
You know in 1980 we had a big fire at the MGM Hotel in Las Vegas. It was
horrible, right? I mean 85 people died, you can see the fire, I was, I was 13 years
old I'll never forget a man jumped out the window. It was a terrible thing to
see and then a few months later there was another fire at the Hilton and five
people died. So you know what they did? They changed the laws. They made major
changes to the fire safety codes and it hasn't happened again. Why would we
approach this differently? It's a public safety issue and something needs to be
done already!
So tell your congresspeople to do something! I mean it's not enough to send your love and prayers. We send our love and support and whatever else is needed to Las Vegas and the families from all over the country and Canada who had the worst night of their lives last night.
You know, Vegas is a funny town. It's easy to forget people live there but they do. I mean lots of good people. These people showed up in droves today to donate blood.
Because it's the only thing they could do and so they did it but there is more
that we could do and we need to do it.
And thank God for the police in Las Vegas who risked their lives trying to locate the the man with the gun. Thank God for the doctors and nurses and firefighters and paramedics who rose to the occasion as they always seem to do when we need them to. And for the concertgoers themselves, who helped each other who threw their bodies on top of each other, who drove their private cars full of people who are bleeding to the hospital. You know, don't forget them and don't forget what's going on in Puerto Rico either, because just because they're not the lead story today they still need help.
And if you want to help either one of those cities, Puerto Rico obviously, but Vegas or Puerto Rico a good way to do that is to give to the American Red Cross. There's the information right there on the screen and we send all our love to our family and friends in Las Vegas and to everyone affected by this terrible event. I'm sorry for getting emotional. I'm, I'm not great with this kind of thing but it's important you know.