In response to late-nite host Jimmy Kimmel's emotional plea about the need for federal gun control on "weapons designed to kill," 'Daily Wire' founder Ben Shapiro explained his view that the 2nd Amendment is intended specifically to allow the public to have military-grade weapons:



"The Second Amendment, I guess, our forefathers wanted us to have AK-47s is the argument, I assume. Orlando, Newtown, Aurora, San Bernardino, every one of these shootings the murderer used automatic or semiautomatic rifles, which are not weapons you use for self-defense. They’re weapons designed to kill," Kimmel said following the mass shooting this weekend in Las Vegas.



Shapiro responds:













BEN SHAPIRO: Not true. Number one, the founders would have wanted us to have AR-15s because the fact is that back in the day, all the weapons people had were military-grade weapons. A musket was a military grade weapon. Now, AR-15s aren’t even military-grade. Yesterday, as I said, I made the mistake about comparing basically an M-16, which has burst-fire capacity, with a civilian AR, that’s not correct. I was wrong about that; civilian guns are very different from military-issue guns; for him to say that the Second Amendment doesn’t cover things like AR-15s, a semi-automatic rifle, is akin to me saying that the First Amendment doesn’t cover TV, because the founders had never seen a TV, wouldn’t know what it looked like, and don’t understand how it works.



It’s just a silly argument. As far as the idea that ARs are not used for self-defense, again, asinine. I have a bunch of friends who use ARs for home defense, you can find stories, A W.R. Hawkins, over at Breitbart, has a good round-up of people who have used ARs for self-defense; it happens on a relatively frequent basis.



But again, you wouldn’t expect Jimmy Kimmel to know all of this because here is where the Left’s version of common sense means they have to be completely disconnected from the facts.



KIMMEL [CLIP]: This guy, reportedly he had 10 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 to allow this to happen. Or, maybe, better question, why do we continue to let them 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 won’t get motivated. The bills will be written; they’ll be watered down; they’ll fail. The NRA will smother it all with money and over time we’ll get distracted, we’ll move on to the next thing. And then it will happen again. And again.



SHAPIRO: top it there for a second. Again, what he’s saying here is also not true, when he says that the NRA is going to “smother it in money.” The NRA is not among the top dozen spenders in the American political system. The NRA does not give a lot of money to politicians. The NRA is a very powerful force because there are millions of people who are members. Millions of people. The reason the American people are not willing to elect representatives to repeal some of their Second Amendment rights is because we’re not willing to do that, not because the NRA is bribing people. It’s amazing: Democrats never make this argument about unions that give tons of cash to Democrats, that unions are bribing people, but they make this argument about the NRA that is not actively bribing people.



Kimmel continues along these lines. Again, all of this is ignorant; none of it is based on knowledge about guns, or firearms, or any of this stuff. This is what passes for brilliance and common sense in Hollywood...



The idea that the NRA has anybody’s balls in a money clip is just not true. It is just not true. Their constituents don’t want them to do the stuff Jimmy Kimmel is talking about because the stuff Jimmy Kimmel is talking about is not correct. The NRA is not bribing Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Again, this is just him attributing bad motives to these politicians. They don’t really believe what they believe, you see; they just don’t care enough and they’d rather be paid blood money for dead people in Las Vegas. Just absurd. And now he’s getting to the point of insulting, right? Now they’re all just weaklings, who, if they had a shred of heart, they would do exactly what Jimmy Kimmel wants.



(Transcript courtesy of The Daily Wire