RUSH: Something you’re going to have to remember and constantly have to remind yourself as you listen to the program today: I am the mayor of Realville. I deal in reality. And not too many other people are right now.

And once again, Open Line Friday, whatever you want to talk about, the one day of the week that’s okay. Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address elrushbo@eibnet.us.

I want to start today asking a question. If you watch the media, if you watch television, if you read the media, you cannot escape the reality or the conclusion that everybody wants to do something; that people are shouting for something to be done about mass shootings. Somebody’s gotta do something.

It’s a natural emotional reaction borne of frustration, heartbreak, anger. Somebody’s gotta do something. But I don’t hear very many people at all actually coming up with anything to do that’s going to matter, that’s going to make a difference, and that’s even grounded in something even close to reality.

There’s also something happening here that is perfectly illustrating a point that I’ve been making for a couple of years. And that is that the American media has become the power center and the source of energy and guidance for the American left. Not the Democrat Party, but the media. The media gives the marching orders. The media are the activists. The media are not involved in news. The media are not reporting anything. The media have become full-fledged advocates of one particular thing.

They are not reporting anything. They are supporting the one particular thing they want, and they are ridiculing and condemning and lying about anybody who is not on the same page as they are. The Democrat Party used to be the organism that represented the American left and other people in the left followed the lead of the Democrat Party. Today, it is the media that is leading. And the reason this is important is because many people don’t know it. Many people don’t realize it.

Most people think the media is the news. Most people — well, I hope not most — but a sizable number of people think that when they turn on cable news or the three nightly newscasts, or now the late night comedy shows, that they’re actually getting news. And they’re not. They’re not getting anywhere near what is news. They’re not even getting correct facts. People tuning into cable news, the three nightly newscasts, or reading the big newspapers, are simply reading radical activism that is disguised as news and perpetrated as news because of the people who are presenting it.

And it’s important to keep this in mind throughout the entire lifespan of this particular story, because the only agenda here is political victory. Frankly — and I wish this weren’t the case — but I don’t think their primary interest is in getting rid of guns. They would love to take out the NRA. They would love to diminish the NRA as a powerful political organization in America. But getting rid of guns, that’s not what this is about.

This is about getting rid of Donald Trump. This is about getting rid of Republicans. This is about Republicans being characterized, libeled and slandered consistently and regularly so as to harm their electoral chances at the next election and all elections subsequent to the next ones coming up. Because if people were really grounded in reality, we would be listening to an entirely different set of comments, opinion, analysis and solution.

But the media is presenting one solution with a number of subsets. And that one solution is, if taken to its extreme, getting rid of the Second Amendment. Short of that, it’s somehow a piece of legislation getting rid of guns or preventing the sale of guns going forward. If they could, they’d wipe out the Second Amendment. That is the objective and that’s the sole perspective that we’re being presented. There are subsets of that that we are getting, but it’s all oriented around that.

The second prong is, of course, is that the Republicans don’t want that. The Republicans want to continue to let your kids get guns. The Republicans are totally supporting anybody who wants to get guns because they’re owned by the NRA. Well, the NRA doesn’t own anybody, except its members. I won’t even characterize it that way. The NRA is so widely misunderstood. The NRA is not the among the biggest donors in American politics. They donate a lot, but they’re not among the biggest. That’s not their power.

That’s not why the left so fears them. The reason the left fears them is that they have an unbreakable bond and connection with their members and their members are deep into the American culture and society all over this country. The NRA has deep connections with the American people. That is the threat posed by the NRA.

Now, the media would love you to believe the threat posed by the NRA is that they totally solely support Republicans and that they want anybody who wants one to have as many guns as they want. And then they want you to believe the NRA is not opposed to anybody getting guns and that the NRA is not opposed to anybody doing whatever they want to do with guns. That the NRA will defend anything that happens with a gun in order to protect the Second Amendment. This is in a nutshell the media message. And it’s disguised as news.

It’s not the NRA’s message. It’s not who they are. It’s not what they are. And it is nowhere close to what the NRA believes, teaches, practices, endorses, recommends. There is literally so much fake news today that it is impossible for an average citizen who is not devoted to analyzing it to pick it out and identify it. It simply is not possible.

And the amount of fake news that is part of this story from Parkland, Florida, is incomprehensibly large and impossible to wade through unless that’s all you spend your time doing. Ask yourself a question: Do all the people that you see on TV really want to do something about this? And I’m not being facetious.

I’m not trying to be outrageous.  I’m smack dab, square center in the middle of reality.  I want something done about this.  If I may be selfish, every time an event like this happens, I hate the fact that my job is to talk about it.  To have to professionally talk about these kinds of things is not something that I look forward to.  For a host of reasons, but primarily because they happen.  Everybody wants this to stop.  Everybody wishes this weren’t happening.  Everybody wants to do something about it — or do they?

Because the leading lights of opinion and the things they are suggesting are so impossible and impractical and blind that I sometimes have to wonder: Do they really want something done about this?  Because I’m here to tell you right now that doing anything with the Second Amendment or coming up with any new legislation that would have these people cheering — whatever it might be. I’m leaving it open. Get rid of all guns. Everybody who has got a gun has to turn it in. No more guns allowed to be made. Whatever, wouldn’t solve this.

It wouldn’t stop these events from happening.  Will not prevent the next one.  You know, folks, how many of you have — in your own minds — longed for what you consider to be the innocence and the simpler days of the past?  How many of you have thought about how innocent life seemed back in the ’50s?  Ozzie and Harriet.  In the ’50s we had a Second Amendment.  It was as robust and thriving then as it is now.  What did we not have in the 1950s and into the 1960s? What did we not have?  We didn’t have school shootings.

There were the occasional mass shootings, Richard Speck and the nurses in Texas.  They were really, really rare — and those were in the mid to late ’60s which itself was a decade of great turmoil and revolution.  But in the decade of the ’50s, the decade of innocence, the post-war economic boom decade — mom and dad, the 2.8 kids, white picket fence, family dog, station wagon gone in the garage. Whenever anybody reminisces about returning to those days, what are they told?  They’re mocked and they’re laughed at.  They’re made fun of.

“You can’t go back!  You can’t do that!  We can never go back to the ’50s.  The ’50s weren’t that great anyway.  We can’t do that. You’ve got to grow up.  You’ve got to understand that things change — and even if you don’t like ’em, you gotta learn to accept them.”  Now, in many instances the people wishing for a rebirth of those days of innocence are talking primarily about cultural things, when there seemed to be a more robust morality that the majority of the Americans abided by and agreed with.

It is cultural degradation that most people lament when they talk about returning to the ’50s.  And, of course, those who are benefitting from the cultural degradation who don’t want to return, mock those who long for those simpler days by telling them, “Grow up! Get real! You have to accept things as they are.  Things change — and if you don’t want to change with them, then you’re a so and so.”  Isn’t it interesting that the American media and its fellow radicals are essentially asking for a return to a more innocent time — a simpler time when these events did not happen?

When school shootings, mass shootings, church shootings, movie theater shootings, didn’t happen.  They are hell bent on believing that we can make that journey to the past.  They are convinced that we can get there by simply eliminating the Second Amendment or eliminating guns or what have you.  What would their reaction be if we were to say:  “Come on, get real! You can’t go back to the ’50s.  None of us can go back to the ’50s.  We can’t turn back the hands of the clock.  We have to deal with what’s now.”

Exactly what the left tells people who reminisce about the ’50s today. We can’t go back to the ’50s!  You’ve got deal with it! If you don’t like gay marriage, deal with it! If you don’t like transgender bathrooms, deal with it.!  If you don’t like open-borders immigration, deal with it!”  People who long for a more innocent and simpler time are mocked and laughed at and impugned in any number of ways, and yet now it is the American left somehow seemingly longing for those days in the past when these kinds of events didn’t happen.

They have a firm belief we can get back there.  All we gotta do is something with guns. We’ve gotta take them away from people that have them; we’ve got to prevent new ones being made or sold. We’ve gotta get rid of the Second Amendment.  Totally unrealistic demand and unrealistic expectations.  But even worse: A failure to recognize the current reality and deal with that.  And until they, not us — but until they — can deal with the current reality instead of lamenting and wishing for days that no longer exist, we’re never going to fix this.

We’re never going to solve it. Because their solutions require us to get in our time machines and revisit a previous age where things were simpler and innocent.  But if we can’t do it with cultural issues, if we have to sit here and accept the reality that has become our society, then doesn’t that hold for all areas of our country’s evolution?  And it does.  We can’t go back.  It isn’t the Twilight Zone.  It’s not Star Trek.  We can’t beam ourselves back.  We can’t beam the guns away.  We can’t go back and destroy those that have been made.

Even if we get rid of the Second Amendment, there’s still 300 million guns out there.

That’s a reality we have to deal with — and we do in many other areas.  We have air marshals on airplanes.  We don’t know who they are but they’re there.  We have armed security at so many places in this country. Try to go to a Super Bowl, any public supporting event. The security you’re required to go through? (sigh) I mean, it never was ever like this. In the ’50s and the ’60s, you wanted to go to the ballpark; you went to the ballpark! You didn’t worry about a terrorist bomb or a lunatic shooter.  But now we have to, and we deal with it — except in schools.  For some reason, we’re told, “We can’t turn schools into armed security depots.”

Why?  It’s about the only thing that’s really going to stop this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Stick with me on this, folks, I’m developing a whole line of thought on this to a conclusion, and it may take a portion of the remaining part of the hour.  I have to tell you, I’ve watched a number of the students from the high school being interviewed and I’m dazzled.  These are 17 years old — 18, 15 years old.  The maturity that some of these students have is dazzling. It’s blowing my mind.  I watched a young student by the name… I think her name was Addison Jost, yesterday.  She was just as cool, calm, collected, mature as a 25 or 30yearold adult.  And she’s not alone.  Many of them have been dazzlingly impressive.  However, they’re also doing things that…

Look it, I’ve got to take a break.  Just stick with me here, folks, stick with me.  Just hang in there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  I knew this was going to happen.  I just checked the email.  I’m overflowing with people saying, “Rush, you don’t know what you’re talking about when you say the NRA is not among the largest of the political contributors! That’s just not right. That’s just not right.”  I can forgive all of you for thinking that the NRA is a major donor.  All of your life that’s how they’ve been portrayed in the media.  You think the NRA is the No. 1 donor for the Republican Party, probably.  You think the NRA is donating left and right.  The NRA has these politicians in their back pocket.

Well, let me give you the numbers: Between 1998 and 2017, the NRA spent $200 million on all political activities.  Ladies and gentlemen, that is 19 years, 20 years.  In 20 years, the NRA spent $200 million.  In 2016, alone, unions spent $1.7 billion on policy.  The NRA is not a major donor, and they are not running around with politicians in their back pockets.  The NRA is one of the largest special interest groups that has millions and millions of real American citizens as its members.  Not members of Congress.  Not the Senate. Not the House.

Not all of these lobbyists and so forth.  The NRA is powerful because of their reach with the American people.  Not politicians.  I’m telling you, there is so much fake news.  In this one story alone, it is impossible for an average consumer of news to know 10% of it.  The media is destroying so much of what we think of as a peaceful culture, because the media isn’t news anymore.  The media has become the largest activist group for liberalism in the country today.  The media.  They are disguised as presenters of news and people providing information that you didn’t know.

That’s not what’s happening, and particularly when you get to kneejerk issues like this or abortion or President Trump, and I’m going to demonstrate this in the next few minutes.  Now, I want to go back to the students. Addison Jost — and unfortunately, I didn’t catch any other names.  I don’t mean to single her out.  But she was amazingly composed and obviously intelligent.  Emotionally intact.  She’s what TV would call “a great interview.”  She presented well.  It was amazing.  I’m looking at a 17yearold, I think.

I’m not sure what grade.  But 17, 18, 16.  I’m not around people that age much, and so I was remarkably impressed.  Some others have been so overcome with emotion that they can’t get through these interviews without breaking down or nearly breaking down.  All of this is entirely understandable.  They’re kids.  They’ve been traumatized.  They were there.  They were the targets.  So whatever they say, you have to keep all of that in mind.  That’s not how the media is using them.  The media is using these students to advance the media’s radical agenda.

I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about.  There was a prayer vigil last night.  We have some audio sound bites of it coming up.  One of the spokesmen is Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz. Her district is close by.  She showed up and tried to turn that prayer vigil last night into the Wellstone Memorial.  She started hammering Republicans and started demanding that the kids and attendees vote Democrat — in the middle of a prayer vigil — just like the Wellstone Memorial.

What did the kids do?  The students there started chanting, right in the middle of “Blabbermouth” Schultz diatribe: “No more guns! No more guns!” It’s totally understandable.  The students want no more guns.  They were just targeted.  Seventeen of their classmates are dead.  They’re devastated.  Their world has been turned upside down.

They’re scared and they’re unsure and, of course, they want something done.  It makes total sense.  Here, grab sound bite No. 6.  This is the Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz sound bite.  This was last night in Parkland, Florida. They’re doing it again.  They’re turning a prayer vigil, a memorial, into a political rally.  At least Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz was.  This is how it sounds…

SCHULTZ: (screaming) We must hold other peoples’ elected officials accountable!

CROWD: (applause)

SCHULTZ: We must make sure that they hear us! The people behind me, they stand with us on these issues. So we will help lead you to help other communities elect people who will do the right thing —

CROWD: (applause)

SCHULTZ: (screaming louder) — who will make sure no one’s families have to go through this again —

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

SCHULTZ: — and we will stand with you every step of the way!

Crowd: (chanting) No more guns! No more guns! No more guns! No more guns!

RUSH:  Okay.  So now they’re thinking they’ve got 2018 in the bag, just like they thought they had 2002 in the bag after the Wellstone Memorial.  But I want to talk about the chant, “No more guns.”  Students pick up the chant — and, as I say, it is entirely understandable, in any way you want to look at it.  They’re mad.  They’re shocked.  They’re traumatized.  They are scared.  You can’t blame them for anything to do with this.  But what does the media do with this?  The media turns “no more guns” into a political movement.

So the students and their prayer vigil are now being used by the media to advance the media’s agenda.  If you had been in London during the Blitz and the German bombs are raining down on you, and you had run into the streets shouting, “No more bombs! No more bombs! No more bombs!” would it have mattered?  You had bad guys.  You had Hitler.  The Nazis.  They were armed to the teeth.  They had weapons like you can’t believe.

The citizens in London didn’t have anything like that kind of firepower.  They were totally innocent and exposed.  Here come the bombs! Had they run out into the streets led by Churchill shouting at the sky with clenched fists, “No more bombs! No more bombs!” would it have mattered?  Of course not.  “No more bombs” would have nothing to do with defeating Hitler.  But as I say, you have to forgive the students.  They need an emotional release.  They’re young.

They haven’t lived long enough to amass a set of life experiences to understand this.  They haven’t lived long enough to be able to clinically put themselves in this in terms of reality.  But we adults can and should.  And the reality here is that “no more guns” is irrelevant, just as was #BringBackOurGirls for Boko Haram.  But when you say this, as I did about #BringBackOurGirls, I was accosted and set upon in the media as having no heart and having no soul and having no understanding.

Because it isn’t about “no more guns.”

It’s about establishing emotional bona fide. It’s about establishing a superior moral position. For the students to shout “no more guns” and the media to then promote it is actually a targeted message to Republicans who somehow resist this massive demand to get rid of the NRA and guns. Because that’s what this is all about. But it is not heartless to point out that “no more bombs” is not going to solve the problem.

“No more bombs” might make you feel better. And it might make you think that you’re making a difference. But responsible adults have to step up and realize and understand that slogans and sloganeering are of zero value in terms of actually preventing this from happening. This is why I asked, when the program opened, are the people who are demanding no more such events, are they serious? Do they really mean what they are chanting and demanding? Do they really want to do something about this?

Or for the media and the leftist radical activists they are, is this just the latest opportunity, the latest political opportunity? And the students at their prayer vigil shouting “no more guns” is ideal. It is perfect for the objective and the agenda of the Drive-Bys. It’s the children, and we must listen to the children, they say. And we must satisfy and give the children what they want. We must keep the children safe. Except when you actually start talking about things that might do that, you are shouted down, kicked out of the room and they call you names.

There is a solution to this, but the media doesn’t have it. The left-wing advocates of the media, the people who are echoing the media’s actions do not have the answer, because the answer to this is not found in the Second Amendment. Again, in the innocent days of the past, in the 1950s, where we had a thriving, vibrant Second Amendment — do you realize in 1950s that schools were gun zones? Well, if you’re having trouble with that, why did we need to create schools as no gun zones?

Well, because school shootings started to happen. And so no-gun zones. That’s supposed to tell the bad guys they’re not supposed to get within 100 feet of a school. That’s going to stop them, right? What it resulted in is there’s no guns in the schools to defend anybody once the perpetrator starts shooting. In the 50s guns were all over the place but they weren’t being used like this, were they? I wonder why? Well, the answers there are social, they’re socioeconomic. They are cultural and indeed mental illness is a factor here. It can’t be denied. Yet it’s being pooh-poohed, ridiculed and thrown out.

Jimmy Kimmel is beclowning himself now almost every night on his so-called comedy show on ABC. Joe Scarborough is beginning to beclown himself on his MSNBC show in the morning. The media at large are beclowning themselves. They’re embarrassing themselves. They’re not contributing a single thing here to an actual solution to this horrible problem, which makes me ask: Are they serious when they claim they want to do something about this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A couple more things here. Let’s talk home security for a second. When you want to secure your home and you want to keep burglars and people with guns out of your home, what do you do? Well, people take various steps. They all lock their doors, which is a defensive measure. Some people install a security system which again is a defensive measure. Seeking to be informed and perhaps have the cops called when the home is entered illegally. Some people own a gun. Some people keep guns in their homes. Again for defensive purposes. And still others have watchdogs.

How many people protecting their homes stand outside at night or during the day shouting: “No more burglars! No more robberies!” Nobody does that. Why? Well, because it’s completely unrealistic and ineffective. Your neighbors would laugh at you. If you live in Brian’s neighborhood and you got home one night and there’s Brian out there shouting, “No more burglars, no more burglars,” you’d call the cops on him. Or anybody else in your neighborhood braying at the moon, saying, “No more burglars.”

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I totally understand the kids. They’re kids. They were targets. They’re traumatized. They too are victims of this radical extremist media. They don’t know they’re watching fake news 90 percent of what’s reported. You combine the emotion that they’re experiencing here with whatever stimuli they’ve had, whatever ideological background they possess, the kids are totally understandable. It’s what’s done by the media with their slogan.

“No more guns” is treated as though it is a serious point to be considered in this whole debate because it’s coming from the kids, the victims. But it’s just using them. It’s entirely unrealistic. It’s not going to have one thing to do with preventing the next shooting. Just like standing in your front yard shouting “No more burglars!” is not going to stop your house from being robbed. And standing out in the streets in London during the Blitz, shouting “no more bombs” was not going to stop the Germans from dropping bombs on your city.

None of that is reality. That’s why you didn’t see it. You didn’t see people shouting out skies “no more bombs” and you don’t see Brian in his yard shouting “no more burglaries.” You do see students shouting “no more guns” because they’re fed up with it, they’re scared. But it’s not their job to solve this. They don’t have the life experience, the wherewithal, the ability.

I’m not saying don’t listen to them, but they’re not the solution. They’re the ones that need to be protected. It’s the kids around whom adults, grow up, be adults, treat this situation realistically. This is America. This is what our country is. It has become this. Why is for another day.

You want to stop this again? Then accept what might happen and take steps to prevent what we know has happened and we know will happen again. Instead of chanting and instead of insulting Trump and instead of insulting Republicans and the NRA. But they’re not doing any of that. No, that’s all they’re doing. Solutions, you don’t hear even one.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to continue with here in the monologue segment before we get to phone calls.  Just backing up some previous points that I’ve made.  I’m of the firm belief…

Folks, this is what our country is. The bottom line is this is who we are; this is what we’ve become.  You can lament it and say, “Gosh, I wish we could go back to the ’50s when this didn’t happen,” but this is. This has become a part of the American culture.  Mass shootings in churches, schools, movies, what have you.  I find it fascinating when people who don’t like transgender or gay marriage or whatever wish for a simpler time, the advocates of this p”rogressive” cultural change tell them to shut up.

“You can’t go back to the ’50s.  We can’t put genie back in the bottle! Ozzie and Harriet never existed anyway.  You have to deal with things the way they are. We’re making progress! America back then was a regressive regime.”  Well, now, the very people who are telling us, “You have to accept what is happening in your country today. It’s progressive change.  You have to accept it and you have to love it,” now are wishing for a more innocent time where these kinds of shootings didn’t take place.  The problem is that all of the so-called solutions being advanced here by the media — which is the leading agent on this.

They are the leading provocateur, the leading provocative agent. The media is running the radical agenda of the left and that’s no better demonstrated than in this story.  And every solution they have is unrealistic and irrelevant and wouldn’t stop the next one, wouldn’t prevent the next one, wouldn’t prevent the one after that.  Doing anything with the Second Amendment, trying to do anything with guns is not the answer here.  This is what our country is.  And it’s not because of the Second Amendment.  That’s not why these things are happening.

If we’re not going to be honest about why these things are happening, if we’re not going to get serious about dealing with the reality of these events and people like this, then we’re never going to solve this.  I mentioned that several media people are beclowning themselves in this story.  Jimmy Kimmel has done it yet again.  Joe Scarborough. The media at large is beclowning itself.