Good evening, everybody. Thanks for having me here in beautiful Colorado. I love it! We don't have these mountains in Texas. It's flat, flat, flat, hot, hot, hot and Republican, Republican, Republican. Thank you guys so much for having me here.
I understood that we had protesters outside and God bless y'all, I love you. Thank you so much for expressing your First Amendment right. Now just let us express our Second Amendment right and continue our pro-choice right of self-defense. It's all we ask, all we ask.
You know, I was thinking about this and I brought a whole bunch of, a book of statistics that I probably won't even refer to because this is a very interesting time in which we find ourselves right now. It's interesting because the Second Amendment is restricted now more than it ever has been. That's a fact. That's number one.
And number two, speech is more restricted now than it ever has been and it's continuing, its growing, this restriction, this strangulation of free expression.
The Parkland massacre that took place. I want to share a couple of things about that with you all that you probably didn't hear if you watch cable news because cable news doesn't like to talk anything about it.
How many of you saw the video that came out of one of the resource officers named Andrew Medina, when he was speaking with FBI investigators? Are there are a lot of you that are familiar with that? Some of you are.
So Andrew Medina, he's a security officer there at Marjory Stoneman Douglas—was, he's been reassigned since—and he was talking to the FBI and he said that when the murderer walked into the school, that he immediately knew something bad was gonna happen. He walked in with a couple of duffel bags.
This was a kid who was known to be violent. This was a kid who was known to have problems. He was in the Promise Program, even though everyone was lied to and the superintendent, Robert Runcie, who's yet to have a die-in at his office or to even get any criticism at all whatsoever—they protected his criminal activity—and so this guy said, you know, he had 666 on his backpack. He had swastikas on his backpack and I knew something, and I started texting the other officers, saying who is that kid? Who is that kid that's constantly in trouble? Who is that kid that got in trouble for beating up another student? Who is this kid? Who is this kid?
And meanwhile he walks right into the school because there's no secure access points. There's no secure entrance, no secure exit. The gate was open. The doors are open. Everything's unlocked. And as he's texting, this guy walks in and we know what happened.
There were things that led up to this and I'm gonna make this a broader argument. Several years before this…. And one of the things that particularly you parents that I want all of you to do when you go back to your neighborhoods, when you go back to your schools, is I want you to contact your school and ask them if they have the Promise program in their school or some sort of disciplinary program.
Several years before this massacre took place, under former President Barack Obama and Department of Education ran by then Secretary Arne Duncan, they created the Promise program and it was all about reducing the school-to-prison pipeline. Sounds amazing, right? Let's make it to where there are fewer crimes committed. Except they didn't actually focus on creating fewer crimes, they just stopped reporting them and then pretended that they didn't happen.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas school in Florida—that district had the record for most student arrests in the entire state of Florida. It's the sixth biggest district in the country. They implemented the Promise program. It was around 2013 when this took place. That was several years before all of this happened. And the Promise program—kids who were committing misdemeanors or even those who demonstrated felonious behavior, criminal activity, they got, you know, music therapy and any…. I don't know. I mean seriously—music therapy? They did all of these things except report them to the Broward Sheriff's Office.
And the Broward sheriff, Scott Jay Israel, was very supportive of this. He signed this whole thing with Robert Runcie. They had a photo op. They were proud of it. They implemented it. And then wouldn't you know in the first year, arrests dropped by 63%. I mean, they'd…Robert Runcie was so successful as the superintendent. They literally stopped reporting the criminal activity and then said it's because of the Promise program. It's because of Superintendent Robert Runcie. He's so gifted. They didn't report the crime. And Sheriff Scott Israel happily kneecapped his entire department so they couldn't follow up on anything.
Several months before the massacre. There were numerous reports, there were 45 reports total that went to the Broward Sheriff's Office, two reports to the FBI. This murderer had been in trouble because he punched his mom so hard he knocked the teeth out of her mouth. Family members called the sheriff's office because he had previously held a gun to another person's head. He was taking bullets and knives to school. He was all over social media. He was on YouTube saying, I'm going to be a school shooter. He took cell phone videos bragging about how people were gonna know who he was. He was sending death threats to other classmates through social media platforms, which under Florida law, under the state statute, that's a felony.
But because of that Promise program in which he was enrolled in, none of it was reported. It was all under the radar. He didn't have a criminal record because Robert Runcie and Scott Israel prevented him from having one. They might as well of walked into the gun store and bought the gun for him. And this was just months before.
In December, two months before this massacre, Scott Wexler, a retired Secret Service agent who was very concerned about the state of security in Marjory Stoneman Douglas—and he was because he had children that had graduated from this school and he also knew about the criminality and he knew about the Promise program—so he decided to volunteer his time and perform a security risk assessment on the school.
He just now—we broke this story over a month ago, Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald, who've done great reporting on this—they've spoke to Wexler just this week. Wexler said pulled up in a truck, and no one came. He sat in the parking lot for almost a half hour. Nobody said anything. Nobody came up to him. He was able to go into the school—gate was open, door was open. He had a stack of post-it notes and he went through the school and began tagging people. Walking down the hall, sticking post-it notes on to people who would have been casualties in a stabbing or a mass shooting. And he walked right by Scott Peterson's office, whose office was situated so that his back was to the hallway.
He presented his findings to the school. You think this would be valuable information, right? Right? I mean anybody would be, anybody would think this. He presented his findings to the school, said, this is what you need to do. When you hear a fire alarm check and make sure that there's a fire or there's an emergency. Check the origination of this. Don't have students go from a known area—the classroom—into the unknown—a hallway.
Have someone, have any adult at the school be able to call a Code Red and lock down the school. Because the way that the system was set up, the assistant principal had to talk to the principal and then the principal had to check and then they could call a Code Red. And the principal, according to a teacher whose anonymity we protected, said the principal was hardly ever there. They couldn't get ahold of them very well. And so that didn't happen. That whole phone tree fell apart the day that the massacre took place.
And he said you need to make sure that you have secure entry and exit points. Lock the doors. Okay, well, they didn't do any of this. None of these recommendations were put into place.
And then that day—back to Andrew Medina, who saw this murderer go in to the school, walk through the gates, walk through the door and it's…. All of this could have been prevented if those recommendations would have been put into place.
So, to recap: 45 calls; a superintendent and a sheriff who knowingly prevented a criminal record from being established that allowed this very dangerous, mentally unstable individual to legally purchase a firearm. they could have Baker-Acted him, they could have followed up on the felony charge. He would have been immediately a prohibited possessor. They did nothing. He murdered 17 people and it's all the fault of the NRA and Dana Loesch.
Now here's the difference between me and Sheriff Scott Israel. I'm not a coward.
Here's another difference between me and Sheriff Scott Israel. He said at the CNN town hall—where they knew all of this, by the way—that I didn't stand for kids. Hmm. He didn't stand for kids, either. He ran for the cameras. That's exactly where he went. He ran for the cameras, and lost 17 kids as a result.
Robert Runcie knew all of this stuff. The difference between me and Sheriff Scott Israel is I would have followed up. I would have made this dude a prohibited possessor and I would have had him adjudicated mentally unfit. He wouldn't have been legally able to purchase anything.
And if I were Robert Runcie, I would have never implemented this program so I could, what, get pats on the back from Arne Duncan? This is why this program is dangerous and it's in schools all across the country, which is why I ask for you to check and make sure your child's school does not have this program because it's protecting criminals. And it contributed to this.
You know, we've had so many discussions about this and gun, you know, gun laws and discussions about the Second Amendment. This is what's been the focus for the country. Nobody talked about Dixon, Illinois. No one talked about Sutherland Springs, really. No one said anything about Steve Willeford, who stopped the worst mass shooting in Texas with an AR-15. Good guy with a gun.
This is why I have this up here. I want to throw two statistics at you. Ninety-eight percent of mass shootings since 1950 have taken place in a gun-free zone. Only seven have actually happened where people are lawfully permitted to carry a firearm. Think about that.
Second statistic and then we'll reconcile these two. Sixteen percent of mass shootings from 2014 to 2017 have been stopped by a lawful gun owner. Think how much more that would be if not every area was a gun-free zone. If we allowed…if we treated criminals like criminals and law-abiding Americans like law-abiding Americans and stop protecting criminals at the expense of the innocent.
See, they mention universal background checks and they mention red flag laws and they mention all of these things, and you know, I thought, what would a universal background check have done in the case of Parkland?
Because remember, Sheriff Scott Israel and Robert Runcie did everything they could within the Promise program to make sure that an individual…this record was not able to be actually developed, this record couldn't be established. And there was no record to check. There was nothing to report to the National Crime Information Center, NCIC. That's what the NICS system, when you fill out your 4473, it checks it at point-of-sale. There was nothing to check, because he was protected.
Well good. How many criminals are gonna follow a universal background check? They don't follow basic background checks. You're gonna create more? That's why they're called criminals! Because they commit crimes! This isn't rocket science. Whoo.
You know, after…. The problem isn't a lack of sensible law, it's a lack of enforcement of said law. Remember when former FBI director James Comey came out and said Charleston, the reason that bowl hair-cutted thug was able to go and shoot up that church in Charleston was because he was charged with a felony, and in South Carolina you just have to be charged with a felony to be a prohibited person until after which time you are either exonerated or you're convicted and then you're a permanent prohibited possessor. And there was a paperwork error and that's how he was able to legally purchase a firearm.
So when I…I could go…I could sit here and I could spend three hours minimum going through every single one of these incidents and I could tell you where the ball was dropped. Sutherland Springs—Air Force didn't report it. Garland, Texas—FBI had that guy on the watch list for what, six months? Orlando was on the watch list. Or what about Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Cho? That guy was supposed to be following up with his psychiatrist and he slipped through the cracks and that was court-ordered.
I mean I could… This is why no one wants to debate me on this issue, or talk to law-abiding gun owners or talk to the NRA, because they're terrified of facts. They want to demonize all of you.
The problem is the enforcement of the law. The system is only as good as the people running it.
Here's the other thing I want to mention, as well, because everyone loves to throw…I love how people like Alyssa Milano—which good for her for getting work again. Can we get a round of applause? Alyssa Milano is getting work again. God is good all the time. I'm trying to get right with the Lord and I'm being tested right now. Just saying.
They always like to talk so much about women and protecting women and making sure that women are safe, except when the NRA was like, hey, why don't we make it to where if a woman takes a protective order out against a domestic abuser we can fast-track her concealed handgun license and the Everytowns and the Moms Demand Boxed Wine said, no, we can't do that, that's horrible.
Well, whose side are you on here? Women had the right to bear arms before we had the right to vote. Period. I'm not giving it up. And all of these…we're told two things simultaneously. We are told that we women are so empowered. We are empowered to go and have one-night stands. We're empowered to go and have casual hookups. We're empowered. We can have starter marriages. We can go and get abortions when we don't understand how birth control works. We can go and do all of these things. Women, you are so empowered you can actually even go and serve in combat.
But you can't carry a gun at home. You're not empowered enough for that.
Well, how do you reconcile that? How are you saying that women can go serve in combat but they're too dumb and too stupid to carry a gun at home?
I mean I know several years ago during the Magpul thing we had this huge discussion in Colorado. I was here for that and you all had such amazing Coloradan hospitality. But it was amazing to see people like, you know, just all these gun control groups out there saying that well, women, you could just pop around and shoot someone. You could just…you don't know. Women you really…no...a domestic abuser could wrestle it out of your hand.
They're citing a horrible study which I'm not gonna go into because the methodology is horrible and I'm just gonna get all worked up cuz it's so bad. I can't stand it when people do bad studies and hide their methodology. (cough) Arthur Kellerman. I'm sorry. But….
They truly empowered women. I noticed this, too. They don't, they don't…we don't outsource our guns.
So the first time that I met Shannon Watts, it was in Indiana and they had a rally and it was catered with box lunches and they had Porta Thrones—which were very fancy porta-potties, like they were fancier than what I've seen previously. I didn't even honestly know that was there was a market for that. Kudos to the person who did that. I asked if I could have a box lunch because they had turkey and ham sandwiches, and I was denied.
But they had, she had armed security who was trying to push me off the sidewalk and just…they were quite rude. They had armed security, though. They don't they don't hate guns. They love firearms. They love guns. They just don't love you having them. That's the big thing. They don't like you having guns. [in fake posh accent] They don't want, they don't want poor people who can't afford private security to be able to have guns. Oh, my heavens! They can't have that. That scares them for some ungodly reason.
Like Michael Bloomberg, you know, that Everytown guy, the Moms Demand Zima guy. Honestly, I don't know why you would name your organization that. Side note. I mean, for real.
But he was at the Aspen Institute—I'm getting off topic here—but he was at the Aspen Institute a couple of years ago and he said that he really supported stop and frisk and that he was trying to blame black men for all of the crimes ever and I don't know if he had his white hood on or off when he was making these remarks, the reporters never actually clarified that, but he said we just need to throw, you know, these young black men up against the wall and frisk them. That was his actual direct quote, by the way, and I have the audio of it. It's published to my website.
But he got so mad when he realized that they caught what he said that he hired a lawyer and tried to stop them from releasing it, and then the Daily Caller got it and then they went to town with it. So, yeah. It's how Jim Crow of him, you know? Just….
But that's what these people are. I mean it's, honestly, they love guns, they just don't want you having guns.
Here's one other thing that I want to get to, and I am gonna go over because this is important. I want to switch gears here, because like I said, your second Amendment rights are more restricted now than they ever have been. Language is more restricted now than it ever has been. Thought is more restricted now than it ever has been.
I want to make a really quick point about Samantha Bee, this woman who John Stewart had pity on and allowed for her to come on his show, because…. I'm not being mean. If she was funny, I would say she's funny. I've never met anyone that had such a lack of comedic timing or just, like, humor or skill or any actual, you know, discernible quality.
I am…I'm not going to repeat what she said, cuz I'm a mother. I'm not gonna repeat what she said. But I did find it fascinating. She used a horrible term that…. I come from a family of sailors so I've never heard bad language, ever. And she used such a horrible term. And then she said she used it because she wanted to take it back. She was taking back that word.
And I thought, of all the…we don't want that word. We don't want that word. To take back a word—of course she was referring to Ivanka Trump, first daughter—to take back that word means that you are trying to neutralize the power of that word, not weaponize it to use it against another woman because you don't like her dad. That doesn't make any sense. That's probably why you're only on one night a week. I don't know. And nobody watches it.
But I just thought…there is…you get a progressive pass. If you are progressive, you get a pass. You can be Louis Farrakhan and you can tweet how the Jews are Satan and be on Twitter and that isn't taken away. You can be Keith Olbermann and say the horrific things that he does. You…I mean…all of this. You get a pass if you are a progressive and all sins are forgiven.
That's the double standard and that's what conservatives get so upset about. Conservatives don't like the fact that if they even...if they believe in the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of life and they just simply believe that they want to be left alone to worship how they want to and we want to be able to live our lives how we want to. That's apparently a greater offense than any of the stuff that I have just previously described these people doing. And it just doesn't make sense to me. I…it's… you can apparently….
And in the media…in the media—with very few exceptions—legacy media outlets only hire conservatives who are very, very critical of the GOP, the administration, or issues in which conservatives believe, with rare exception. I don't want to name names but I totally will. I'm…. I always see them and I hear them speak and I'm like you are so a Democrat. Stop it. Stop saying you're Republican. You're not.
But you can only dance with provocation if you're a progressive provoking conservatives. That's how they view it.
James Damore—he was fired for his thoughts. Peter Thiel was fired for his thoughts. I remember the situation with Kevin Williamson, who wrote a…who just did…had a quick quip in an interview wherein he was talking about abortion. It was a thought, not even a column, and he got fired from The Atlantic.
But yet Joy Reid can say that her website was hacked by hackers who wrote entire essays, by the way, which is the weirdest hacking I've ever seen. Who? Who sits around and they're like, you know, let's go to Joy Reid's website and let's write some essays? Sounds great.
Or what about like Al Sharpton, the stuff that he says? What was he…wasn't he on…there was…what was it…didn't MSNBC or something have like a town hall about like speech or something like that, and Al Sharpton was on it, the guy who made velour tracksuits popular before suburban moms in the 90s with Juicy Couture—that guy? The guy who incited the riot that burned down Freddy's Fashion Mart? That guy? He's still on. He can, he can say what…he can say all kinds of stuff and he's totally fine. See?
But the thing is, is I'm not gonna call for these people to get pulled off the networks because I'm not a fascist. And I'm using that word properly. I don't…. Let your freak flag fly because, you help me actually defeat your ideology. It's like a self-cleaning oven. I'm all for having to do less work. It's so great. I'm all for that.
The last thing I want to leave you with here—well, I have a million things here—two things. One quick note. They want to emasculate the male sex. I'm a boy mom. I'm very sensitive to this issue. Newsweek got so mad at me because I said that women need to stay in their lane and stop the matriarchal witch hunt. Which is true. We're replacing the so-called—was there ever really a patriarchy—we're replacing the patriarchy with the matriarchy and these women are bossy and annoying. No. They do that…. You know what—you can still promote feminism without denigrating masculinity.
You know the other thing that I noticed when I was making notes for this speech—and I swear I'm gonna bring this tugboat to shore, for people who are worrying—is that there is not a female equivalent for the modern usage of chivalry. What, does ladylike come close? Is that, I guess, kind of like the closest thing that you can bring to it?
And I was thinking about this because I feel so bad for our husbands and our brothers and our grandfathers and our sons today, because I feel like they can't speak without somebody who's wearing a poorly knitted pink hat—and if you really think that that's what that anatomy looks like, you really do need to see somebody—without them screaming that that our husbands or our sons or our brothers or our friends are sexist. I mean, they treat every man like he's a potential rapist, and men and boys do not get the benefit of the doubt in our society anymore.
So yes, Newsweek, I was absolutely right in what I said. Thank you so much for quoting it. And I'll say it again, too—women need to stay in their lane and stop using phrases like toxic masculinity. There's nothing toxic about it. Masculinity is marvelous.
I wanna rush through these, too. Equal pay is a myth. It is. It's a mythy, myth myth myth.
And women think—third-wave feminists, rather—think that equality is measured by how well women measure up to men's standards, which is probably why they get disappointed, because your…that's like apples and oranges. I know it's a fruit lesson for CNN, so I thought I'd throw that in there for them.
All right, last but not least—this is the last point, I promised you I was gonna bring this tugboat to shore—do not, do not give in to the rage mob. I'm gonna tell you a story and I swear I'll make it short…shorter, kinda.
When we wrapped up the town hall—and Jake Tapper confirmed this in tweets—when I walked up to the stage, when we started it, they queued me to walk in to a Black Eyed Peas Song—true story—and it was very bad from the get-go. I spent three hours in prayer on the way down there. The town hall was held on a Wednesday. I learned that I would be going on Tuesday. I learned that there would be questions Wednesday. And when I arrived I learned I'd be sitting on stage. I go where I need to go.
I spent the whole flight in prayer because I am a sassy feisty little person from the Ozarks and I needed all of God's guidance and all of God's restraint. So I spent that flight in prayer—longest prayer I have ever prayed in my entire life, because it's a serious issue and people are genuinely hurting, no matter how the politics are.
There's hurt. You know, guns haven't changed—people have. And that's where our problem is. And throughout the town hall, they called me murderer and they called me all kinds of things. I had never been more calm in my entire life. That was a God thing.
And when it was finished, there were people rushing the stage. There was a woman who was trying to get up on the stage to tackle me. They were…one…according to some of the students who were there and I heard a "burn." They had yelled "burn her." They started screaming "shame." As I was trying to exit the stage someone grabbed my arm. They were trying to remove the rollaway stairs. It was minutes away from turning into a 7,000-person strong riot.
And at all of the protests I've ever been to and all of the situations in which I put myself in, that was probably the hairiest. But I didn't realize it at the time because I was, you know, I had the peace that passes, surpasses understanding that was just over me and I just didn't even….
And I looked at every single person on that stage. I will not ever be afraid. I will not ever be ashamed. I will never feel guilty for being a law-abiding American who supports my Second Amendment right of self-defense. And I will stand for that until I can no longer stand. [in response to applause] Goodness. Wow, very kind.
When I left there, it was just a chorus of screams and insults and invectives, and my husband was quite shaken. We had a three-person detail and they were, you know…. Jake Tapper came up to me and said, "You need to go, right now." He's like, "If you have an escort, you need to get out of here." And as I walked through, people were screaming and just faces contorted into anger and rage.
And I held my head high and I looked at every single person right in the face, not to be confrontational. I bow my head to no-one but the Lord. And I looked at every single person right in the face. If I can do it, you can do it. Never bow to a rage mob—ever.
In closing, you need the provocateurs. You need the people of gentle manner. You need every single, single type of debater and persuader. People who say the culture war doesn't matter—it is the only war that matters, the only one.
Never bow. Never give in and always, always give it to God and be on the right side.
Thank you guys so much for your hospitality. God bless you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.