RUSH: Here’s Matt in Phoenix. We head back to the phones on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Dittos.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’ve been listening since 1993, so quite a while now. I just want to say, just real quick… I know you don’t like all the compliments. But you’re an excellent talk show host. I can see your professionalism, and I really appreciate it. On a scale of one to 10 radio talk show hosts, you’d be the 10. Everybody elsewhere, everybody else is about a four or less.

RUSH: I really appreciate that, but more than anything, let me tell you what I do not take for granted. You’ve been here since 1993. That is a long time, and I really appreciate that. You cannot know what it means.

CALLER: Rub it in, I’m getting older. (chuckling)

RUSH: But you’ve stayed here as you’ve gotten older. That’s a great thing. It’s an amazing thing. And I don’t take it for granted, is my point. I really appreciate that.

CALLER: Well, you’re welcome. You put on a great show. But here’s the thing. We’re not gonna agree on this issue I’m gonna talk about, and, you know, and actually my views have changed over the years, but I won’t get into that. I used to be very, very conservative and just recently I’ve kind of gone the other side. But, anyway, the point of my call was to say that the CNN town hall thing and all the anger and vitriol that’s coming from the anti-NRA, anti-gun lobby I think is a valid part of the argument.

Meaning, you know, this is outrageous, what happened to these kids. And it’s outrageous that it keeps on happening. You know, in October we had the Vegas shooter. You know, shot 800-some-odd people. We’ve got, you know, the Texas shooting where he killed all the people in the church, and then every year there’s three or four, and they’re horrible. People are getting tired of this, and they’re looking for a solution. Now, armed guards in the schools? That’s a good temporary solution, but do we want to live in a society where the solution to gun violence is more guns? Because that’s just gonna add… I mean, do we want to live in the Wild West where everybody’s packing heat all the time?

RUSH: I’m so glad that you called. Can you hang on through the break?

CALLER: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

RUSH: ‘Cause I addressed this in some detail last week, and I’m gonna run by you everything I said in case you… You probably missed it.

CALLER: I did.

RUSH: Because every question that you have just asked, in my humble estimation, I blew to smithereens. But we’ll run through it again, ’cause you’re asking what a lot of people think are very sensible questions. I don’t think they are. But a lot of people do, and so we will address them if you hang on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And we are back, and we have Matt in Phoenix, a listener since 1993. He began as a conservative, and the program’s turned him into a leftist on certain issues. You’re still there, right?

CALLER: Yeah. I’m listening. Great bumper music. That’s one of the things that hooked me. I always loved it about your show. The bumper music’s great. But — (laughing)

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: The bumper music. Well, we’ll take whatever can get. I just want to restate, he… (crosstalk) By the way, Matt is… Look, one thing, Matt. Because of the phone service, you and I cannot hear each other when we’re talking at the same time. It’s not your fault. We have a phone system that, if you’re on cell, it’s like you’re on a speaker and when you’re talking, your own speaker’s blocked out. You can’t hear reactions. So take a pause now and then. Nobody’s gonna shortchange you on time, okay?

CALLER: Okay. I’ll —

RUSH: Nobody gets hung up on on this program. Well, I mean, not usually. Doesn’t happen.

CALLER: Hmm. Well, I’ll try not to be one of those that gets hung up on. (chuckles) But even if that were to happen, it’s been just a… I’m actually tickled to death that I’m talking to you. I can’t believe this happened.

RUSH: (laughing) Yes. Okay. So Matt is calling to tell me how… He wants to explain the CNN rally that he thinks was justified and he wants to explain to me why it was. I think it was garbage. I think it was a disgrace. I think it was an example of what happens when people are indoctrinated and propagandized, and the anger on that show last night or whenever it was was totally worthless and misplaced. You said people are angry. That was unjustified. They’re angry at people had nothing to do with anything that happened in that high school. Now, you —

CALLER: If you look at it from the point of view of… You know, if you think that part of the problem with all the gun violence that we’ve had in this country, you know, from a leftist perspective is just the sheer number of guns out there, right? And so — and so it’s gonna be avoidable for the crazies to be able to get a hold of one. I have a… This isn’t exactly towards the CNN thing, but it’s related in the sense of the anger that’s out there, the outrage that these kind of shootings and these murders keep going on again and again and again and again and again.

RUSH: Right. Let me address that.

CALLER: The American people out there, they’re sick of it.

RUSH: Understandably. Everybody is! I’ll tell you what I’m sick about is: We don’t do anything to stop it, we haven’t done a single thing to stop it, and there’s not one idea that has come from any Democrat that will stop it. That’s what makes me mad. Let’s go through some of the questions you asked. You said, “Do we really want to live in a society where a solution to a problem is more guns in schools?” And then you talked about how all these other school shootings and nothing has changed. And bingo! Do you think maybe, Matt, that it’s time to realize this is our society? This is our culture? We don’t have the luxury of saying, “Gee, I hope our culture doesn’t become this,” because it has. Starting with Columbine, there hasn’t been one thing done to change this. Not a single thing.

CALLER: I agree. It needs to change.

RUSH: If you start banning certain guns you’re still not changing anything.

CALLER: Well, the thing is —

RUSH: We have guns when you get on an airplane. We have guns when you go to a sporting event. We have guns, we have metal detectors, we have armed security at every public entity — except schools. Why? Because bad guys have shown themselves to take action in these places. And we fixed, we stop the 9/11s. We have stopped airplane hijackings. We have armed air marshals. Nobody knows who they are, but they’re on many flights. There is a deterrent factor. We have left schools wide open, and everybody knows that there’s not a single deterrent in these schools.

And every incident that happens we get the same worthless, whining complaining about the NRA or assault weapons or semiautomatic weapons, and they don’t have a single thing to do with this. There are 300 million guns in America, and you’re not gonna get rid of all of them, and the crazies who get… You think the crazies, the way to stop them is to keep them from getting guns? Well, let’s stop the illegals from crossing the border. We don’t seem to want to do that. Let’s stop abortions. We can’t stop these things! We have to deal with them and come up with them as they exist, not sit here and wish they weren’t happening.

CALLER: Well, yeah, but that’s the point is, you know, yeah, this is the side we’re living in where there’s guns everywhere, there’s gun violence everywhere. We’ve got mass murders happening. Why don’t… I mean, as Americans, ’cause the Founding Fathers were progressives. They fault against injustice and things that were wrong in their time. Now it’s our turn to be the founders, to go and solve this problem — and if that means no more guns, then so be it.

If we have to worry about, you know, where’s the next hero cop that’s gonna come save me at the school? You know, this guy that — this coward that — didn’t go and the kids, are we expecting to hire heroes? We gotta hire heroes every time instead of changing society for the better? Now, I agree that, you know, armed guards in schools now would be a good thing, because we’ve got so many guns out there. But long term do we need all these guns? Really, the AR-15 is a prep for military style —

RUSH: It’s not… See, that is avoiding the reality. “Do we need all these guns? Do we need all these people on welfare? Do we need all these illegal immigrants?” Whether we do or not, we’ve got ’em. The Founding Fathers were not “progressive.” The Founding Fathers were the epitome of modern-day conservatism. The Founding Fathers wrote and included the Second Amendment. I wish they had done a less ambiguous job of writing the darn thing because it’s open to interpretation by any wacko that comes down from law school. But we’re not dealing with the reality of what’s going on in schools.

We’re dealing with the reality that happens in airplanes.

We’re dealing with the reality that happens in so many other areas where there is wanton crime.

But in the schools, we’re not doing a thing.

I’m gonna tell you something, Matt. I think the American left likes the opportunity to advance their agenda, presented by these episodes. They don’t like the killing. They don’t like any of that. I don’t think they do. But the opportunity to once again scream at the NRA… The NRA had nothing to do with this. Donald Trump and the Republican Party had nothing to do with this. Yet the CNN so-called rally was nothing more than an anti-Trump, anti-GOP, anti-NRA rally. It had nothing to do with solutions! At best, it was televised therapy. At best, it was televised catharsis. But it had nothing to do with dealing with this problem realistically, and it had nothing to do with any solutions that are out there.