Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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ople he worked with who probably did similar things, if they did not exist doing what they did, Republicans would not have said, wait a minute, this result doesn't look right. And maybe it was all legal, by the way. I'm not alleging anything illegal. They're probably just good lawyers and they made sure they changed laws that helped their clients or their interests. Here's another one. Apparently…

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e drive-by shootings by lawyers, and we're acting like it's some other problem entirely.

So there's that.

What about this gun control bill? So a lot of Republicans are hopping mad, I guess. A number of Republicans signed on to a Democrat gun control bill that includes some red flag law funding. So it's funding for states to look into and or implement red flag laws. And that means that if you think your neighbor or friend or family member is a little crazy, you can have the government take their gun away because you reported that they were somehow mentally unstable or dangerous or something.

Now as many people have suggested, doesn't that mean that everybody's just going to turn in every Republican that lives next door? And every Democrat who sees a Republican who has more than one gun is going to say, more than one gun? That's a little crazy to me. Why would you need more than one gun? And while you're taking pictures and put them on social media of you at the gun range. Oh, that's a little crazy. I think maybe the red flag is appropriate for you.

So there's definitely a slippery slope. It's not even slippery. It's like right there. You don't even have to wait for the slide, do you? Literally on day one your neighbor can turn you in for being a little too Republican with your guns. Am I wrong? I would think that being a little too Republican is going to start looking like a mental disorder.

Did we not see the mental disorder industry Trump in public when that's the last thing anybody should do if they're in that business? Like the last thing you should do is diagnose somebody's mental disorder and they're not even your patient. It's just somebody you see on TV. And these psychiatric industry just completely gave up their standard because it was Trump. It's like, oh yeah, well in this case we'll do it. Normally we wouldn't do it, but you know, Trump.

So when you see how flexible people can be under the right situation, yeah, there's a legitimate reason to be worried about these red flag laws. On the other hand, what do I always say when there's something that you don't know if it would work or not? What do I always say? Test it. Test it. Why are we even arguing? Just put it in one damn state. Let it run for three years and see if any Republicans get turned in. I think you would know pretty reliably if it turns out that Democrats are just going to be turning in Republicans. If you think that's the problem, and I think that's an entirely legitimate worry, you just don't know if it's true. Like you worry because you don't know, right? It could work. It could be exactly the opposite of that.

Here's the other way it could go. The Democrat calls and says I need to red flag my neighbor because he's a little too gun-obsessed. But maybe he's just a Republican with a hobby, right? It doesn't mean anything about violence. What happens when the police get that call? Do they act on it because now there's a red flag law? Or do they say, does your neighbor have a red hat that says MAGA on it? And then the Democrat says yes. And then do the police say, oh we'll put somebody right on it? Or the police say, don't worry, that's just how they act.

I feel

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like it might be the latter because the police are just going to want to use their resources for things that are useful, right? The police do not want to waste their time. So the counter to the slippery slope is that the police will hardly ever want to do anything with the red flag. I think it would be shockingly difficult to get the police to act at all on a red flag complaint. It would have to b…

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