DON’T SHOOT

Jordan Klepper Is Begging You, America: Be More Like the McCloskeys

“I know you have Second Amendment Rights,” said the “Daily Show” guest host. “But you also have First Amendment Rights. Use them!”

The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper said he hadn’t planned on spending every night during his first week behind Trevor Noah’s abandoned desk talking about gun control—“but this is America, and it’s not giving me a choice.”

In the past week alone, there have been three highly publicized “wrong place” shootings, during which an unsuspecting individual (in this case, two of them teenagers, and one just 20 years old) knocked on the wrong door, showed up at the wrong address, or attempted to get into the wrong car and nearly paid for those innocent mistakes with their lives. Which prompted Klepper to ask if “anyone else watching these stories feels like they’re losing their goddamn minds?”

“Call me old-fashioned,” Klepper continued, “but whatever happened to asking a person one fucking question? Are you confused about why a stranger is at your house? Before you open fire, open your mouth and just ask them: ‘Can I help you?’ It’s not that hard.”

“I know you have Second Amendment rights, America. But you also have First Amendment rights. Use them!”

And while these shootings have been in the news because of the sheer number of them that happened—all toward young people—in one week, Klepper noted that they happen pretty frequently. We just don’t hear about them as much. “Because America’s a country where, every day, too many people are armed, scared, and end up using lethal force because Google Maps didn’t update. I mean, what does it say when the most dangerous job in America is Jehovah’s Witness?”

Almost against his better judgment, Klepper eventually had to allow that gun violence in America has gotten so bad that we might actually need more people like Patricia and Mark McCloskey—the St. Louis couple who notoriously pointed guns at the peaceful protesters marching through their neighborhood in honor of George Floyd.

Because while they certainly dangled the threat of violence, Klepper noted that “they didn’t fire at anybody. And I never thought I’d say this, but: Please, America. Be more like these gun nuts!”

For more, listen to The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper on The Last Laugh podcast.

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Jennifer M. Wood

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