In a wide-ranging essay in The Hollywood Reporter, HBO’s Bill Maher opined that Democrats–including President Obama–waste a lot of time piddling around with gun control when they should be focused on the environment.
He contends that the gun controls push–almost always unsuccessfully–would not really do anything to reduce access to guns anyway, so it is a waste of time.
Maher pointed to Obama’s renewed focus on guns, writing:
Personally, if I was going to pick one issue on which to lay down the law, it wouldn’t be guns. It would be the environment. I wish I didn’t live in the gun country, but I do. It’s not going to change in my lifetime. When Democrats talk about guns, they should understand that they don’t actually belong to a party that’s anti-gun. They belong to a party that wants to get rid of a couple of hundred out of more than [310,000.000] guns available in this country. There would still be nuts who go out and shoot places up — they just would have to reload a little more.
Maher admitted that he owns guns, but he said the difference between many gun owners and himself is that he does not “love” guns. Yet he suggested there are many people who do, and that the love for guns runs so deep that “people have been giving their babies gun names” in recent years. He cited names like “Trigger, Pistol, Shooter, and Remington” and said the use of such names for children provides insight into the differences between the passions of conservatives and the passions of liberals.
For example, he pointed out that liberals are not naming their kids “Prius” or “Juicer.”
As far as the presidential election goes, Maher suggests Trump has benefited most from America’s love for guns. He believes Trump has “leveraged” and capitalized on the Second Amendment allegiance displayed by so many Americans.
During the October 3, 2014, airing of Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher and guest Ben Affleck both spoke of the fact that they own guns for self-defense. Maher added, “I’m not disarming unilaterally.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.