Liberals have good reason to love Stephen Colbert. He is unabashedly a “big government liberal.” He isn’t funny like Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, and he doesn’t need to be to maintain his third place ranking in the late night talk show competition.

No other late night entertainer so readily panders to any one political ideology, giving Colbert a base audience.

Sure, there are other partisan late night talk show hosts, but we’re talking about entertainers here. While The Late Show showcased David Letterman’s liberal slant on the world, it was most often couched in genuine humor.

Unlike Colbert, Jimmy Fallon doesn’t have fun at the expense of his guests or foils of his political jokes. He has fun with them.

The Late Show has changed. Colbert now lectures his usually receptive audience unencumbered by any requirement to entertain. After the Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Colbert preached, “There has to be some way to make it harder to build up an arsenal. The San Bernardino shooters had 6,000 rounds of ammunition. Why is it so easy to buy bullets when I have to show three forms of ID to buy Sudafed?” (And the “Applause” and “Laugh” signs flash so the audience responds as though great comedy was just performed.)

Colbert also claimed that if guns were outlawed, and outlaws were then the only ones with guns, at least we’d know who the outlaws are. (Cue the audience to laugh and applaud with such deep comedic insight.)

This might feel good to the uninformed, but it’s already been tried with the opposite effect Colbert and his fellow travelers expect.

In 1976, the Washington, D.C. City Council passed a law prohibiting residents from possessing handguns and requiring all firearms in private homes be kept unloaded and rendered inoperable by taking them apart or installing of a trigger lock.

During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the D.C. murder rate averaged 73 percent higher than it was the year the law was enacted. The nationwide murder rate averaged 11 percent lower

Homicides and non-negligent manslaughters per 100,000 people increased from 20 per 100,000 in 1976 to 81 in 1992.

The gun ban was struck down as unconstitutional in 2008 and in 2014 homicides and non-negligent manslaughters per 100,000 people was 15.9 per 100,000.

Darn. History just buzz-killed Colbert’s gun fantasy fun.

Since it’s gone this far, we might as well take an historical peek at Chicago’s gun ban “success.”

Chicago’s gun ban was introduced in 1982 when about 42 percent of all murders involved handguns.

By 1995, over 95 percent of all murders were committed with handguns.

The gun ban was very effective at proving the adage, “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.” In fact, studies have demonstrated that criminals do not acquire their weapons legally.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Chicago’s ban unconstitutional.

Two years later, Illinois gun owners celebrated the passing of a bill giving them the right to carry concealed firearms.

According to Colbert, Obama, Hillary and Nancy Pelosi, this would certainly lead to Chicago becoming the Wild West.

In April 2014, the Chicago Police Department reported the lowest murder rate in 56 years.

Still, Nancy Pelosi enjoys her media tour, calling for gun laws that would not have prevented Islamic State terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik from acquiring their weapons.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton will continue to blame inanimate objects, not an insane apocalyptic ideology or criminal intent, for causing the deaths of innocent people.

And Stephen Colbert will continue to flash the “applause” sign after feeble attempts at gun control humor because he won’t let facts get in the way of a joke, be it good or a brick.

I wonder how Fallon will make us laugh tonight.

Rick Jensen is Delaware’s award-winning conservative talk show host on WDEL, streaming live on WDEL.com from 1pm — 4pm EST. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL.

26 replies on “JENSEN: Colbert wrong on humor and guns”

  2. Mr. Jensen like most gun advocates manages to cherry-pick statistics to support his own closed-mindedness. If he were to look at FBI statistics on gun fatalities in the 5 states with the least gun restrictions he’d find a 15%-30% higher death rate by guns than the 5 states with the most restrictive gun laws. If I.S.I.S. killed as many people as our gun saturated citizenry do every year we’d all be wanting to do something about it – but hey, the solution to too much gun violence is more guns!?! Jensen’s sense of humor is as well developed as his intellectual curiosity!

      1. Thanks for your kind praise. Remember that fundamentalists are neither – fun nor mental. Have to speak in simpler terms for simple close-minded people. Have you ever known many conservatives to be truly curious?

  3. Wait wait wait, I have a question that I try to pose to both sides of any argument (even my own): do you have any data supporting the inverse? That is, do you have any data demonstrating that, prior to the ’73 ban in D.C. or the ’82 ban in Chicago that murders/n-n homicides were stopped or prevented by handguns?

    I don’t immediately discount that someone with a gun might be able to thwart an attack from another armed person, but, aside from one-off stories, I don’t know whether anyone’s attempted to track the number of people reporting they fended off homicide with a gun. Your statements make it sound like homicides were being prevented by guns before their bans. Are you saying that correlation is causation and it’s as simple as that?

    While you’ve stated the percent of homicides in Chicago rose from 42% to 95%, I’m curious about these things:
    1. What happened to the murder rate itself in Chicago after the ban? (Allowing for, if the murder rate fell in general but guns were more responsible for the remaining deaths then … well, that’d be interesting, no?)
    2. How much did the gun-ownership rate increase nationally – or, if that’s not fair, regionally, for the periods you mention? (Allows for the fact that people coming in from outside the area can’t be realistically checked for whether they’re bringing their guns with them into the area with a ban.)
    3. Likewise, in D.C., during the ban, was the increase in the murder rate due to guns?

    We know that, with every ban somewhere, there’s an increase in gun sales elsewhere – and with every mass-shooting, there’s an increase in gun sales everywhere.

    Now, I’m not arguing for Colbert or the direction he’s taken the Late Show, but I try and make sure that neither side enjoys cherry-picking their data to show misleading results. It seems you want to argue that guns can’t be blamed for shootings but they CAN be credited for a lack of them.

    You might be correct in all you’ve stated without supporting evidence (yours isn’t an academic paper or policy report, I get it) but at least we’ll acknowledge that you’re asking readers to believe your thin facts as easily as Colbert asks his audience to embrace his lectures as humor.

    1. Oh, do stop please being rational and sensible…you’ll nark the gun nuts with your voice of reason…

  4. All I could really read is “Whaaa Whaaaa Jensen annoyed, Colbert too good.”

    Seriously, you stupid republicans already have the entire FOX network, leave Colbert alone…

    1. Yeah, what a little bi#ch. “I wonder how Fallon will make us laugh tonight”. – Wow Jensen, way to end your article on a real zinger there! Clearly, that semester writing for your high school newspaper didn’t go to waste.

      Colbert has been the funniest, most intelligent thing on TV for the past 10 years. It seems that it’s not only that conservatives don’t like Colbert’s politics, they just genuinely don’t seem to get satire or comedy in general.

  5. Also if you want a REAL comparison, compare firearm murders between American cities and their Canadian counterpart (population-wise).

    Toronto has a population of ~2.6 millions, about the same as Chicago. Now in 2014, Toronto has seen 27 gun-related deaths. Chicago had 390 gun deaths (that is excluding non-fatal shootings) for the exact same period.

    That is just one example, but look at ANY Canadian city vs its American counterpart, and INVARIABLY the US city has 10x or more gun deaths. So, what should we assume, that Americans are savages, or that no gun control == more gun usage?

  7. Can you please mention that the DC murder rate fell from 1996-1998, under the gun ban, at a faster rate than it did after the repeal?

    I think you are glorifying a correlation and completely omitting societal factors in order to suit your argument.

  8. Shorter Jensen: “This leftist comedian is biased! More importantly, he’s biased in the wrong direction. Let me give you the *correct* set of biased statistics — they match up with what I already believed, so they must be the final objectively right answer here.”

  9. Jensen thinks the only comedy shows on Fox, ‘Red Eye’, and the ‘Greg Guttfield Show’ are hilarious. Well, Jensen and Ted Nugent.

  10. Mr. Jensen, It’s all relative. When your world view is centered on how accessible firearms are, then there isn’t much room for thought. Just look at the psychological studies between Republicans/conservatives and Democrats/liberals. You will see that the first group makes decisions based on emotions while the second is analytical. That’s easy to see in your emotionally charged views about guns. As an aside, you must have been in the audience yourself, since my TV doesn’t puck up an “applause sign”. Or did you just make that up, too?.

    1. I don’t doubt there’s an “applause” sign, because practically every TV show with a live audience uses one. But this guy is acting like it’s the only reason why Colbert gets laughs and applause. Unlike conservative talk radio hosts, who seem to do nothing but rant and rave and preach intolerance into their microphone like lunatics, holed away in their studio like they’re giving marching orders from their safe little soundproof bunker. Most of the audience feedback these guys ever hear comes from the paranoid, self-congratulatory voices inside their own heads.

  11. If you live in Chicago, it takes a 20 minute drive to go to Indiana and get any gun you want. If you want to look at gun deaths, look at Hawaii and Alaska, the only two states a thousand miles away from a neighboring state with strict or lax gun controls. Hawaii has the strictist gun controls law and the lowest gun death rates per 100,000 of all states (3.2) and Alaska with the least restrictive gun laws and the highest gun death rate per 100,000 of any state (20.9).

    https://politicsthatwork.com/graphs/gun-deaths-by-state

  12. Colbert is not funny? Is this some kind of sarcasm on your part? Colbert won’t last (unfortunately) because he does alienate many people. And many people just can’t laugh at themselves. His interviewing skills are awful for sure and he can’t stop talking. However, I have watched all of these late night hosts and he is clearly the funniest of them all when he is doing his routines.

  14. I guess the author is late to the party. Stephen is in 4th place, google it. He’s doing terrible.

    He’s losing to another NBC late night show, that isn’t even in his time slot.

    His pandering to liberals worked on The Colbert Report, a show that was often bested by family guy reruns on adult swim and watched by less than 1% of Americans.

    It was a pretty dumb career move for him to alienate half of his audience. His ratings are in the toilet. This would be like Letterman losing to Conan, when Conan was on the late late show or whatever he hosted.

    I watched Stephen for almost all his career, then I grew up and realized liberalism is terrible. The left wing government the author talks about, well, left wing governments tend to become large and oppressive. I believe political correctness is definitely a form of oppression.

    1. “Caroline Starks was 2 years old. Her 5-year-old brother was playing nearby with his
      birthday present: a .22-caliber Crickett rifle. His mother stepped outside for a moment, certain the gun wasn’t loaded. She was wrong. Caroline was pronounced dead a few hours later at the Cumberland County Hospital in Kentucky”

      So, the solution to U.S. children’s deaths from gunshot is more guns?

      I’d rather be on the “liberal” side of this than allowing more of our kids dying from gunshot.

      Any rational, sane human being would say: “Let’s find a way to reduce this”

      But no, not the “illiberals” among us…

      1. It sounds like she didn’t know what she is doing. Look, if you don’t want guns, go to another country. We’re not going to change our second amendment because people are afraid. No one stops to think when guns saves lives. Like the papa john’s pizza driver lady who was being robbed.

        1. “…not want guns…”

          Nope, by all means let’s have guns…no prob.

          My point is this: How can we legislate gun control so less of our kids are killed by guns.

          1. I wrote a reply but I don’t see it. Maybe I didn’t hit reply.

            I’ll summarize it: In your example, clearly this is the fault of whomever gave the kid a weapon. If one does not know for sure, how to properly empty their weapon, then they definitely should not be giving it to their kid. You always have to account for a bullet in the chamber.

            What would you propose? I hear people talk about gun control, but they’re not specific. Also, they appear to not know what they are talking about. What is their definition of an assault rifle? The rifles we can buy as civilians are all single shot, not like the automatics and three round burst used by people in the military. There are weapons that LOOK like some of the weapons in the military, but again, not as effective.

            Then, let’s take into account the fact that not many people even get killed by rifles. I just googled 2014 rifle deaths, and articles are saying that last year, people were 5 times more likely to die from a knife than a rifle(I suppose liberals want knife control?)

            Hand guns are what takes the lion share of firearm murders. So we have out of touch legislators, who do not really know what an assault rifle is, and they’re focusing their effort on rifles when rifles aren’t really a problem. What do you propose we do?

          2. See, here’s the thing…you`re quite right, I don’t know how we “should” go about it.

            But, there are experts in this field who have useful opinions…and, while I’m no fan of the 2nd Amendment, it’s the Constitution, so the “right to bear” must remain.

            And not without controls of some sort…negotiated by people with expertise from both sides of the equation…

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