BUCK: I also want to bring it back to the issue of gun control, ’cause a lot of states now — as we’ve been discussing, Clay — are coming up with New York I think is pushing some kind of an assault weapons ban, magazine limitations. We’ve gone through this before in these states; so they’re just figuring out new ways to… It’s like a new coat of paint on an old idea that was bad in the first place.

But it is happening. And there’s also this pretense on the left that I find just among many things that they say so dishonest and gross and unfair that they want to stop violence, but the right doesn’t. If you don’t want to get rid of assault rifles, you don’t care about dead children. This is… They did this in Sandy Hook; they’ve done this in Uvalde. This is the Democrat talking point on it.

Here is Joy Reid over at MSNBC.

BUCK: Now, very clear, Clay, she doesn’t like white male Republican gun owners, right? She despises these people. I think she makes that clear, ’cause she lumps them all together and they’re apocalyptic lunatics and all the rest of it. I want your take on the Joy Reid comments, but I also want to address this problem, come back this problem of do they really want…? Does the left and the Democrats really want to limit violence? Because I’ve got the receipts, so to speak, about what’s going on in cities.

CLAY: Mt reaction on Joy Reid is this is why the midterms and 2024 are so important, because right now the MSNBC talking points are Republicans are all racist, Neanderthal, rube, red state, knuckling-dragging imbeciles. I mean, that is basically their perspective. Deplorables. They are irredeemable. I don’t know what the response is going to be when the Red Wave happens here in 2022 in about five months and Hispanics, Asians, black people overwhelmingly break in favor of Republicans.

Because the same thing that has destroyed Seattle which we’ve been talking about, certainly Portland and San Francisco, Buck, is the woke virus. And it’s typically a woke white virus, right? It’s not something that is actually embraced by minorities. Hispanic people around running around saying, “Call me Latinx!” Most black people are not running around saying, “We gotta defund the police.” In fact, those groups overwhelmingly support more police and support more safety.

Asians certainly are not saying, “Hey, we’ve gotta have more diversity and inclusion in schools so there’s less Asian students in gifted programs like New York City and the Thomas Jefferson school in Northern Virginia.” What I believe we are seeing is a revolution that is anti-woke in nature that is going to be destroy the Joy Reids of the world in terms of their political prerogative, and we just need it — in five months — to happen ’cause I see that wave, and it ain’t racist white people that are leading this charge. It is people of decent sense, white, black, Asian, and Hispanic all over this country.

BUCK: Agree with the political analysis of where we’re going and of course, Clay, it will be fascinating to watch even in some more specific cases the lectures we’ll get about how all those Georgians — including a lot of white Georgians — who are gonna be super excited to vote for Herschel Walker for Senate are racist. Get ready for that, all the racist voting in Georgia that elected Herschel Walker.

CLAY: But it’s gonna be hard for them to make that argument, I think, ’cause I think there’s gonna be more black and Hispanic support for Republicans overall.

BUCK: I agreed it will be hard. Do you think they won’t make the argument?

CLAY: I think they’ll try but I think that he will set up them up for an more crushing defeat in 2024.

BUCK: Okay. Totally on board with that. I also think, Clay, this idea that they want to stop the violence — you know, Beto standing up on the table (impression), “We’re gonna take all the guns. We’re gonna stop all the evil Republicans.”

CLAY: He does have an unbelievable voice.

BUCK: “I, like, never had a job and my wife is rich, but other than that, you know…” So he’s evil Keanu Reeves…

CLAY: Yeah, evil Keanu Reeves is a great analogy.

BUCK: Here’s the reality. As you and I pointed out, I think you actually cited this stat a day or two ago. Mass shootings are a horrible, emotional gut punch. We all know that. We all know that, okay? We all are very aware of it. Less than 1% of fatalities from guns across the country, year in, year out, less than 1%.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Really more like .0 or .3 or .5%. Okay. So all the other shootings that are happened where are they happening and how are they happening? And how do gun laws actually play into it? What’s fascinating is while the left — and I’ve been digging into this I spoke to a friend of mine, long-time contact of mine in the district attorney’s office in New York.

I’ve spoken to friends of mine who are prosecutors in recent weeks about this or really usually have been prosecutors and now are in private practice just to be clear what’s really going on, here’s what we’re satisfying, Clay, they want to talk about magazine limitations, you know, lecturing U.S. on that; they want to talk about assault rifles. Murders are committed with handguns, overwhelmingly.

CLAY: Overwhelmingly.

BUCK: Ninety-five percent of them. And where are murders being committed, and by whom? Overwhelmingly in cities, overwhelmingly by young males — disproportionately young African-American males, who disproportionately target young African-Americans males as well.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: This is what the data tells us. You look at New York City — and hat tip to my friend Joe Borelli of the city council here. Clay, in 2021 there were about 4500 arrests for carrying or using a firearm. Of those, only 46 — he published all this in the New York Post — were prosecuted under federal law; 983 of those cases were outright dismissed. Now, I know what the talking points will be from the libs. “Oh, but maybe was there an evidentiary problem?” Really?

Possession cases… Clay, you’re a lawyer and you tried cases. Usually, you catch a guy with an illegal gun you’ve got him with an illegal gun. You’re telling me that almost a thousand cases dismissed? No what happens is they get put into diversion programs. Philadelphia. Firearms possession by “prohibited person,” meaning somebody who is not allowed to have a firearm under any circumstances, right? It’s criminal for them to have it because they’re a criminal.

There were 232 arrests, dismissed 145. So more than half, if my numbers are correct here, are being dismissed out of hand. Clay, what’s happening in the cities are that people with criminal records who are arrested for gun crime violations are, for social justice reasons, being told, “Don’t do this again. We’re not gonna prosecute. Don’t do this again. We’re putting you in deferred prosecution.” Well, how are we pushing for magazine limitations with criminal sanctions when you’re letting a third, half, more, people who are prohibited possessors go without consequence? And they want to sop violence?

CLAY: This is what soft on crime is. Remember our good friend Jen Psaki was like, “Look at Fox talking about ‘soft on crime.’ What does that even mean?” Well, it means that you don’t prosecute people potentially when they commit violent felonies because you’re trying to avoid putting too many people behind bars because you’ve decided that’s racist, right? So here’s the big question. Joe Biden is incapable of this.

And, by the way, he’s speaking on “gun violence” tonight at 7:30 Eastern as they desperately try to find something to grab a hold of as a part of the midterms. Here’s the deal. You should look, if you truly want to solve a problem, at where is the problem coming from? And as you just mentioned, Buck, if you eliminated all mass shootings — which I wish we could do it, right; no one is in favor of mass shootings — you would still have 99% of the violence problem.

And what you see is in order to go after the violence problem, the solution we know. Do you know what it is? Put more cops on the street in inner city neighborhoods and allow them to enforce the law in terms of arrest, and then have prosecutors who actually prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. You have to go from soft on crime to hard on crime. This ain’t hard, right? This is basically…

For those of us who remember it, we’re reliving the early nineties and the late eighties when crime was going up and we finally decided, “Let’s solve crime-related issues,” and we brought to bear police and prosecutors, and we went after them aggressively. That is, criminals. That’s the solution. Putting guns, going after guns is a red herring that allows Democrats to avoid having to acknowledge their failures when it comes to police and prosecutorial decisions that are being made. They’re hiding the ball from what is actually the underlying cause of much of the violence that’s going on in America today.