Appearing as a guest on Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, far left California Democratic Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom doubled down on the wisdom of being a sitting duck at a mass shooting as he refused to acknowledge any possible advantage to being armed in the event of such an attack.
After Newsom, who has already announced he will run for governor in 2018, and host Maher went through a liberal wish list of items already passed or soon to be pushed in California, Maher surprisingly hit Newsom from the right on the issue of whether it's better to be armed in a restaurant with the ability to shoot back if a mass shooter storms in.
After noting that Al Gore may have lost the 2000 presidential election partly because of the gun issue, the HBO host raised the terrorist attacks in Paris:
Let's talk about the gun one because that, I mean, Democrats are afraid of the gun issue because Al Gore lost his own home state in 2000 of Tennessee when he came out sort of for some sort of gun control. California has it. Donald Trump says if Paris had guns-
Newsom obliviously saw no benefit to Parisians being armed during the attacks as he jumped in:
I just simply, this sort of mythology, the guy with the gun that's going to come save the day, I mean, so right out of the movies, sort of this gun-slinging fantasy. The reality is, it's most likely to create more harm, more damage, more lost lives in those circumstances.
Even the liberal Maher seemed to have second thoughts about the virtues of being unarmed during a terrorist attack as he pushed back from the right:
Really? So if you were in a restaurant and a crazy gunman came in, you wouldn't want to have a gun? You'd rather just be shot?
Unfazed by reality, the Democratic lieutenant governor responded:
Well, I would hope that folks sitting next to me that haven't been trained, that don't necessarily, don't respond well under stressful circumstances, don't get up and then start pointing the trigger or pointing a gun and shooting-
Seizing on the obvious, Maher continued hitting Newsom from the right as he persisted:
But hasn't the worst thing already happened? A crazed madman who's bent on killing everyone? How could it get worse?
Newsom dodged the question and pivoted to complaining about the number of guns in the U.S., and hyperbolically claiming that the National Rifle Association is "promoting guns for terrorists." Newsom:
Yeah, well, I mean, look, you get worse when you live in a country with 300 plus million guns, in a country that the NRA is out there promoting guns for terrorists. Let me just repeat what I just said, as audacious as it... They believe that everybody deserves a gun, including terrorists. From 2007 in this country, we've been trying to close a loophole that denied people who are on the no-fly zone (sic) in the United States the ability -- those are the folks that can't get on airplanes-
The liberal California lieutenant governor added:
The terrorist watch list. They are still allowed to buy assault weapons legally in this country -- 2,000 have in the last decade. And the NRA has stopped that at every single effort, every single attempt. That's the perversity of the country that we live in.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Friday, November 20, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO:
BILL MAHER: Let's talk about the gun one because that, I mean, Democrats are afraid of the gun issue because Al Gore lost his own home state in 2000 of Tennessee when he came out sort of for some sort of gun control. California has it. Donald Trump says if Paris had guns-
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): Yeah.
MAHER: I know.NEWSOM: I just simply, this sort of mythology, the guy with the gun that's going to come save the day, I mean, so right out of the movies, sort of this gun-slinging fantasy. The reality is, it's most likely to create more harm, more damage, more lost lives in those circumstances.
MAHER: Really? So if you were in a restaurant and a crazy gunman came in, you wouldn't want to have a gun? You'd rather just be shot?
NEWSOM: Well, I would hope that folks sitting next to me that haven't been trained, that don't necessarily, don't respond well under stressful circumstances, don't get up and then start pointing the trigger or pointing a gun and shooting-
MAHER: But hasn't the worst thing already happened? A crazed madman who's bent on killing everyone? How could it get worse?
NEWSOM: Yeah, well, I mean, look, you get worse when you live in a country with 300 plus million guns, in a country that the NRA is out there promoting guns for terrorists. Let me just repeat what I just said, as audacious as it
MAHER: Yeah.
NEWSOM: They believe that everybody deserves a gun, including terrorists. From 2007 in this country, we've been trying to close a loophole that denied people who are on the no-fly zone (sic) in the United States the ability -- those are the folks that can't get on airplanes-
MAHER: The terrorist watch list.
NEWSOM: The terrorist watch list. They are still allowed to buy assault weapons legally in this country -- 2,000 have in the last decade. And the NRA has stopped that at every single effort, every single attempt. That's the perversity of the country that we live in.
