During the July 25 episode of Conan, comedian Jim Jefferies brought up the Nice truck attack that killed 84 people in France earlier this month and then proceeded to mock American gun laws.
Host Conan O’Brien introduced the segment by referencing previous gun control comments from Jefferies and suggested the comedian “connected with people” via the comments.
Jefferies concurred, but said that people are now holding his feet to the fire when shootings occur in other countries where gun control is strict. For example, he said pro-gun individuals emailed him following the Nice truck attack, asking how he would react to a truck being used to kill 84 people.
“What happened in Nice obviously was horrible. But as soon as it happened in Nice, [the gun nuts] all wrote to me because I’m the anti-gun guy, and they go, ‘Well maybe we need truck control,'” Jefferies said.
Feigning shock over the emails, Jefferies added, “We already [have truck control]. You’ve got to get a license. You’ve got to register the truck. I can’t get a truck. I don’t have a truck license. I can’t drive one.”
“And this is the thing about gun control,” he continued. “People go on and on saying, ‘If we have a little bit of gun control then they’ll take our guns.'”
“You already have gun control, we’re only asking for a little bit more,” he explained.
The comedian suggested that it would be nice to pass a law mandating that “terrorists can’t buy guns.” But in truth, the comedic attempt failed to cover the fact that what Jefferies called “truck control” really did fail in Nice, just as gun control really has failed time and again across Europe over the past 18 months.
Germany has background checks, licensing requirements, strict controls on firearm and ammunition storage, complete bans on whole categories of guns and so on. But on Friday, a gunman in Munich opened fire and killed nine people. All of the country’s gun control measures failed.
France has background checks, licensing requirements, complete bans on whole categories of guns and on and on. But on January 7, two terrorists in Paris opened fire with guns that Parisians cannot legally own, killing 12. More recently, on November 13, more terrorists with guns opened fire, killing 130. And on February 14, 2015, a terrorist in Copenhagen opened fire on civilians and police alike. This despite the fact that gun laws throughout Denmark are extremely stringent.
These facts undercut Jefferies’s comedic attempts to push more gun control. Perhaps he knows that, which could explain why he stopped pushing for gun control about four minutes into his Conan segment and instead settled into his normal routine of mocking states like Texas for allowing you to “open carry a machine gun in Target.”
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.
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