Overtime - Episode #465: Political Alliances, Gun Laws, Mental Health

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Near attendant, what should the Democrats be being doing, be doing, I guess be doing, to attract disaffected Republicans who are fleeing the GOP?

Are we catching them in the net?

You know, my view of this is that you're right that the country is facing an existential threat right now, and we have to make alliances wherever.

And so I think we should welcome them.

I think we have to recognize that accountability is only going to count.

You're a Trump voter, right?

Definitely.

Yeah.

We're friends.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We've got to talk to each other.

I agree.

We've got to share this country.

We've got to start talking and making inroads.

We can't just talk about it.

I 100% agree.

I 100%

agree.

You know, I think we have to recognize that democracy is at stake stake and welcome them with open arms.

Okay.

Let's see.

Black Knight asks Koleon, is there anything that could happen that would make you say, okay, we need stricter common sense gun laws?

It's interesting because it's amazing to me how everything always goes to we need stricter gun laws in response to everything with respect to firearms.

I think there needs to be a more holistic look and approach to it because if we take into account the way things were before,

we have more gun laws now than we did before, but yet supposedly we're still dealing with.

Because we did get rid of the assault weapons ban.

There are states that have actually deregulated gun laws over the last 10, 15 years.

So you say 20 to 30 years ago we have less phone laws.

You know, I'd say in the 1990s we had an assault weapons ban and that was actually

ended and that was important.

And in the South they've passed a bunch of things to undo restrictions on guns.

Like stand your ground.

Like stand your ground.

That's not

stand your ground.

Yeah, I'm poor poor, stand your ground.

Why wouldn't I be?

Well, for one reason, I mean, the statistics on black people standing their ground against white people versus the reverse does not come out well for black people.

Yeah, now so from a...

So

I should forfeit my right to own.

No, no, no, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that specific law, stand your ground.

If I'm scared, I get to shoot you, is the way I interpret stand your ground.

And that's really how it's.

And the police enforce it in no way.

And when it's a white person shooting a black person that that is forgiven a lot more than the reverse absolutely so

if that is the case right and then that's predicated on race right in terms of disproportionate effect of standard ground laws right then of course that's a criminal justice issue right

then yeah something needs to be done about that but the idea that if somebody is threatening my life, I shouldn't have to be forced to retreat to a wall before I decide to defend my life if they're threatening it, no?

Yeah, I mean, but that's just always been the law.

I mean, people have loosened.

Standard Ground has changed the...

So you're not inherently against the idea and the concept of standard ground, you're just against the way it's been applied.

No, I think standard ground

basically makes it so that it's easier to kill somebody, and I object to that.

I mean, it's basically like, you know, we had a rule, which is

your life has to be, the normal rule before standard ground was that your life had to be threatened.

And with standard ground, it's like anything that you perceive as a threat.

That's the problem.

That's the problem.

That's the problem.

It's like that's a slippery slope.

Again, that's predicated on a subjective standard, right?

Would that not be?

The standard is inherently subjective in a self-defense standard.

Well, because my understanding of standard ground from an objective standard is I have to be, I'm not forced to have my back against the wall if my life is threatened to defend my life.

Right?

So I don't think that's a requirement of standard ground.

I'm going on to the next question.

I'm standing my ground here.

Michael Pollan, do you see a future where the government sponsors care for mental health?

What would it take to get there?

Well, we have a real mental health crisis in this country.

One of the reasons people are interested in psychedelic medicine.

They're very involved with the gun crisis.

I mean, that's

we often get into that debate.

Is it the guns or is it?

Well, you have the suicide rate is up, what, 20% in the last few years.

Depression is up 18% since 2005.

Addiction is rampant.

And mental health care in this country has very few tools.

It's really broken.

If you compare mental health care to any other branch of medicine, oncology, cardiology, infectious disease, they've all accomplished important things.

They've reduced suffering, they've prolonged lifespan.

You can't say that in mental health.

That's not true.

Come on.

I mean, 100 years ago, the Kennedys were lobotomizing their daughter because that's how they did it.

That was 100 years ago.

I mean, that was a long time ago.

That said 100 years ago.

I think he means over the last few years.

I mean, the last few decades, right?

But haven't they come up with things that antidepressants help somebody?

I remember even somebody like Mike Wallace talking about they didn't have antidepressants when he was nursing.

When the research came in a lot of times, there's less stigma to mental health issues today than there were a few days ago.

Definitely.

But the point is you could just pour something in the test tube and make it better.

Right.

Well.

It's not that easy, but they didn't have that option at all 50 years ago.

But the antidepressants we have, actually, many people don't like taking them.

Oh.

Their effectiveness fades over time.

They're very hard to get off.

So the

suicide blamed on LSD, that's a huge story.

Right.

But it's kind of routine to be able to do it.

But can I just say that our problems are not a constant?

I'm not a Luddite when I say this, but I think the technology has completely upended mental health in this country.

And we all love Uber.

We want to order a car.

I'm going to go to Open Table and get a dinner reservation.

But so many of our kids are now shut-ins, devoid of personal interaction, and instead creating identities that just don't match reality.

That's driving a lot of this.

It's disconnection.

It's really disconnection.

That's at the root of depression, addiction, obsession, all the time.

It's the phone.

It's the damn phones.

It seems to live on the phone.

It actually lives in the

respects.

That's another form of.

Terrible addiction.

Yes.

Okay.

I don't think she agrees.

I don't think she agreed with that.

I mean, we see suicide rates have increased amongst older men, rural communities, people.

I mean, it's not universal.

This is the gun problem.

A majority of gun deaths in the U.S.

are suicide.

And the research is much clearer on gun control and

gun ownership rates and suicide than with homicide.

The crime rate effects are unclear.

The suicide rate effects are very clear.

If there are fewer guns out there, people attempt suicide as much, but they don't succeed as often because...

That's absolutely not true.

Yes, no, that is true.

It's absolutely hard to see the changes in gun ownership and the budget.

If there was a direct correlation between the number of guns that were available and suicides, we would be leading the world in suicide.

There are also cultural flags.

We have different cultural makeups.

Suicides are increasing in the U.S.

You'd see fewer suicides among black and Hispanic people than among white and Asian people independent of

gun ownership.

So we have demographic advantages.

We should have an even bigger advantage over other advanced countries in suicide rates than we do.

And also, we do have most guns, but

they're in the hands of fewer people.

In other words, the people who like guns have many guns.

There was a guy last week that caught with 553 guns.

You have that picture of this guy's arsenal?

Oh my God, this is what they found in this guy's house.

Come on.

Is that too many guns?

That doesn't bother you.

They're not giving it.

Is there that many guns?

Okay, so here's the thing about that.

Not too many guns.

That was a lot of points.

What's one more?

I think the distinction is this.

Look, we have to understand something, right?

So I get it, right?

You're not a gun person, right?

No, I'm actually worried about a person like that basically killing a lot of, having the ability to easily kill lots of people.

He only has two hands.

But no regulation.

What does that mean?

He only has two hands.

People are getting slaughtered by one person.

Children are being slaughtered by the people.

You're inherently attributing a negative character to firearms.

Outright, right?

Yes, because lots of people die

at firearms.

That's why I do that.

That's the same.

The same could be said of cars, right?

But you're not advocating banning cars or limiting people's access to vehicles.

You can't take, I mean, the number of people who are murdered by guns is much higher than the people murdered by cars.

Well, the number of murders.

Murder is going to be.

Intentionally running over people.

Well, not intentionally.

Yeah.

Intentional murder is intentional.

It's still horrible, though, for someone to die in a car accident versus somebody deliberately killed by the money.

This is why we're never, no disrespect to either of you, we're never going to get anywhere on this issue.

The best we can hope for is a better integration of data, because I'm sick and tired of reading in the newspaper the following day, well, there was this warning sign, and this agency knew this, and this knew this.

The left hand and the right hand are just not coordinated.

That we ought to be able to get done.

And I don't disagree with that at all.

But also the last point I wanted to make with respect to you seeing the number of guns out there and you feeling some type of way is I look at guns differently than you do.

And there was a point in time where I looked at it, there was a point in time where I looked at it probably the same way you did, right?

I had about as an organic progression of firearm ownership as one can have.

I was against guns.

I didn't like them.

But I went to the range one time and I shot a gun, and that changed for me.

And so now I can see, I can see a myriad of reasons for why someone would own a firearm, whether it be recreation, sports, collecting, so forth and so on.

So when I see those number of guns up there, my mind doesn't automatically go to, oh my god, that's horrible and that's bad.

Okay, I totally hear what you're saying.

I guess what I'm saying to you is what you're trying to do is say that progressives, liberals, whatever want to ban guns.

No one's saying ban your gun.

We're saying regulate them.

So people with mental illness have background checks, a variety of things about certain types of guns.

No one is saying you can't have a gun.

And I know the NRA always wants to say people are saying ban guns, but they're not.

They're simply saying for my safety and the protection of children and other people,

we should have regulations like background checks on every single gun.

Now, how would you enforce that?

Okay.

You know,

if we're going to suggest, if we're going to suggest a solution, at least have something that's enforceable, right?

It is enforceable.

We have bedroom checks, do them for gun shows, do them for regular.

We have had discussions of bills.

The NRA fights them.

The Toomey Mansion Bill.

Support that bill.

Would you support that bill at that?

Can you answer my question?

I would say that.

How would you enforce?

When did I lose control of this whole show?

Okay, more of this.

Go on NRA TV and you can debate him for a whole hour.

We got to go.

I'm hungry.

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