John Oliver Bashes USCCA Over Armed Self-Defense

(Eric Liebowitz/HBO via AP)

John Oliver isn’t a newsman. He’s a comedian who riffs on the news.

However, like many comedians who have taken on that role, he tends to forget what he is. Instead, he believes he’s got the power to affect actual political change and that he somehow has any place doing it. For Oliver, though, it’s especially annoying because despite becoming a U.S. citizen in 2019, he seems to be trying to turn this country into the nation that he left.

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His latest nonsense was an attack on the United States Concealed Carry Association.

The United States Concealed Carry Association was in John Oliver’s sights as he delved into stand-your-ground laws as the main topic of “Last Week Tonight” Sunday night.

Oliver said that the USCCA — a group with over 592,000 members that advocates for gun rights and provides legal assistance to people in stand-your-ground cases — is part of the reason that gun safety in America is so fundamentally flawed.

People who own guns don’t need to pay upwards of $30 per month for a membership to USCCA to carry a concealed firearm legally if they already have a permit and states allow it. But Oliver pointed out that organizations like USCCA — part of a “cottage industry” that sprung up to advocate for gun rights in stand-your-ground states — also provide legal assistance to gun owners.

In particular, Oliver had issues with the USCCA’s membership card, which has instructions on what someone should do after they shoot another person on the back. See here for a more detailed view of what that looks like.

“The USCCA insists it’s primarily concerned with teaching conflict avoidance, but it also gives you a wallet-sized card with tips on how to handle the call you make to police after you’ve shot someone, a handy feature that their founder proudly touts to its members,” John Oliver said before cutting to a clip of USCCA founder Tim Schmidt gushing about the card at a membership meeting.

The card tells people who’ve just fired a gun at another human to say they were attacked, in fear for their life and advises compliance with the police. Since the other person likely isn’t capable of talking, and the shooter has a readily rehearsed explanation for why the violence occurred, Oliver argued it’s basically a free pass for murder and called the instructions “Rosetta Stone for justified homicides.”

“They’ve essentially created a get out of jail free card,” Oliver angrily said. “And that, mixed with that man’s get out of jail free complexion, is a pretty awful combination,” he added, talking about Schmidt, who is white.

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And now we see just how idiotic Oliver can be; as if we didn’t already know.

What that advice actually does is keep you from saying something in the immediate aftermath that might get used against you even in a justified shooting. What it doesn’t do is make it so you’re going to walk no matter what. If you’re a USCCA member and you use lethal force inappropriately, that membership isn’t going to save you from going to prison.

Instead, what it does is help keep innocent, law-abiding people from ruining their lives because they needed to fire a weapon in self-defense, no matter the color of their skin.

The problem with Oliver is that he shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than navel lint, but he’s one of the people who doesn’t seem to understand that. He’s a comedian who thinks he’s an intellectual, a shaper of public policy, yet this illustrates just how idiotic his understanding of reality actually is.

Tell you what, John. Don’t like the Second Amendment? Then move back to merry old England where they have all the gun control you could ever want. I’m absolutely positive that no one on this side of the Atlantic will really miss you.

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