Jon Stewart's sanctimonious argument goes like this:
- Trannies doing drag shows for kids = free speech!
He then baits the evil Republican into saying we need to protect children.
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The "leading cause of death among children in this country" is firearms! more than cancer! more than car accidents!
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You don't mind infringing free speech, but you don't give a flying fuck about dead children!!!!!!!!!!
As always, liberal arguments are lies, and designed around emotional manipulation. Take a good hard look at this chart showing the causes of death of "children and adolescents age 1-19" since it is Stewart's source.
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19 year olds are not "children". Nobody thinks when you say "children" you are including people age 18 & 19, and most people see "children" as more like ages 1-12. Stewart's source does not say "children" it says "children and adolescents" but even then, it has to explain how it defines the term because its wrongly roping in 18 and 19 year old adults. Let me assure you that the vast majority of gun deaths were from 18 and 19 year olds, and almost none were from 1-12 year olds.
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Existing studies show that street crime and gang violence peak at ages 17-19.
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Gun deaths were not the leading cause of death until a sudden spike in 2020.
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You will notice that firearm deaths were declining until 2014, when they started to rise, then SPIKED in 2020. Why did this happen? BLM. BLM caused liberal Democrat DAs and politicians to stop their cops from doing their jobs, and to stop prosecuting black violent criminals. This meant a large spike in crime which began to build in 2014, and spiked hugely in 2020 and 2021. And the source proves this hidden in an appendix, which shows the vast majority of these gun deaths are blacks.
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Therefore the real issue here is that Democrats and their soft on crime embrace of BLM & refusal to prosecute blacks, caused a large increase in black gang violence. Gang violence peaks in the group included in this chart, and it's no wonder why this age range was chosen to lend itself to precisely the kind of misrepresentation committed by Stewart here.
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Gun control would do nothing to stop older teen gang violence since the guns used are always illegal to begin with.
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Drag shows being considered adult and thus not being allowed for children is not a free speech issue. The 1A allows for "time, place, or manner" restrictions. Pornography is free speech, and yet we all know porn can't be sold to minors. Same thing.
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Many liberals take this a step further and like to argue or imply that this bodycount is the result of school shooters when it's really suicide and gang violence. School shooters, while they get all the headlines, barely kill anyone and don't even show up on the statistics if you tried to put them there. Typically lightning strikes kill more people per year than school shooters.
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Drag shows are not presently illegal but gun crimes already exist. It's unclear what Jon Stewart thinks the hypocrisy is or what he thinks the solution is, but we all know what he wants: total gun confiscation along the Australians & European models. All because libtard politicians and DAs let their black gangs run amok.
I know this isn't the 1st time I've debunked this trash. It isn't a new argument. It's been around since at least May 19, 2022 based on that misleading propaganda article.
Still good to put out the counterargument. Still might not be worth much, but this could help someone in a conversation with a leftist at some point. Leftists are nearly immune to facts, but not entirely, and sometimes something will make them stop and think.
The point isn't to change Stewart's mind, it's to potentially change the mind of someone who believes him. Or at least embarrass that person.
I have no issue with pointing out the errors and the like. I simply question the utility of sitting across from Stewart and engaging with him. It gives him a target to attack rhetorically -- which he is a master at -- and it legitimizes the idea that this is a simple policy debate instead of a philosophical/religious one.
Academics used to refuse to debate Creationists for these exact reasons. And ultimately they didn't need to "debate" because people who agreed with them philosophically/religiously used political authority to ban Creationism through the courts and legislature.
Do those two things instead of "debate".
Oh, I thought you meant OP shouldn't have rebutted. Yeah, I agree then; there's no point in agreeing to talk to Stewart. He won't treat you fairly, and it's on his terms. Stupid battle to pick, one that will be almost literally impossible to win. Stewart is a slimeweasel who uses underhanded tactics to appear to win debates. And has the final edit.
If you do insist on talking to Stewart...make sure it's on neutral ground or, even better, your own ground. Because most "neutral" ground isn't actually neutral if you're arguing against the leftist narrative.