Joe Rogan warns against punishing law abiding gun owners following Texas mass shooting

Joe Rogan warned against giving the government more power by taking guns away from law-abiding citizens following the mass shooting at a Texas school last week.

On Thursday, Joe Rogan spoke with AI researcher and fellow podcaster Lex Fridman. The pair discussed a wide variety of topics, including the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left twenty-one people dead.

Both Rogan and Fridman took the opportunity to condemn gun violence, but suggested the government should use caution when crafting policies to deal with it, and not act in ways that hurt law-abiding citizens.

It was a "completely f***ed up situation," Rogan said of the shooting, "where a sick person got a hold of a bunch of guns and decided to go kill kids.

Fridman agreed, saying it was "much more a mental health problem." He added that "it's dangerous to generalize from those problems into something like what I hear about 'there’s a race war or there’s a gun control problem."

"No one knows how to stop that," Rogan said, pointing out that mass shootings "happens in this country every now and then."

"Is the answer to take everyone's guns?" Rogan asked. "Well, they're not gonna give their guns up. So, you're gonna have, only criminals are gonna have guns. It's not gonna be a good situation."

He went on to discuss the idea of having armed guards outside every school, a solution that has been pushed by a number of politicians and pundits, saying "that’s not something we want either."

Rogan then turned his attention to the notion that punishing law-abiding gun owners would help end gun violence.

"I don't think it's wise to take all the guns away from people and leave all the power to the government," Rogan said. "We see how they are even with an armed populace; they still have a tendency towards totalitarianism. The more increased power and control you have over people, the easier it is for them to do what they do."

"Freedoms lost are rarely regained,” Rogan continued, adding that given the fact that "police are horribly understaffed," it is ridiculous to leave unarmed people at "the mercy of a criminal."