John Oliver Introduces The Easiest Not-Gun-Control Policy

By Emily Cutler | Last Week Tonight | June 20, 2016 |

By Emily Cutler | Last Week Tonight | June 20, 2016 |

If you need a quick reminder that the U.S. isn’t the only country in the world seemingly intent on ruining itself, I highly recommend watching Oliver’s segment on the U.K.’s proposed exit from the E.U or the Brexit.

But if you want to watch the simultaneously most and least optimistic bit on control gun, I’d recommend googling around for “John Oliver and the Dickey Amendment.” Something that might look like this.

Listen, I know it seems depressing. Not only can we not get any effective gun control legislation passed, we can’t even get a repeal of a prohibition on researching gun violence. Meaning we can’t even figure out what kinds of legislation might be useful in reducing the amount of gun violence we have.

But on the plus-side, this isn’t a gun control policy. There’s nothing about the repeal of the Dickey Amendment that would limit anyone’s ability to obtain a gun. And since the NRA is actually about gun-rights advocacy and preventing the government from limiting people’s right to bear arms, and not the lobbying arm of the gun industry, they shouldn’t have any problem allowing the CDC to collect data in order to prove that owning a gun makes people safer, right? RIGHT? RIGHT?!

Terrorist and NRA dipshits are vastly outnumbered. Call your congressperson and let them know that.