Let's talk about gun control. I've heard you say that the United States is really two countries depending how you want to slice things. It could be lots of different countries in one. But on gun control, since there are big swaths of the country where they're pro-gun, there are parts of the country where they're more anti-gun, how do you have one set of policies that apply to everybody when some are pro and they probably would be better off with guns and some are anti and maybe they'd be worse off with guns? So what do you do?

Here's what I would do. Here's my proposal for gun regulation. Are you ready? I think the federal government should draw up a number of proposals that are complete. So a number of proposals on gun control that are complete proposals that the federal government then does nothing with. So I'm not asking the federal government to pass any laws. None. Zero laws. I'm asking the federal government to create some standardized suggested laws for the states. And what makes it more powerful is that they would be complete laws. In other words, smart people would look into it and they'd say, "All right, background checks. What's the smartest thing we can do with background checks?" Maybe it includes doing something with the gun shows and having background checks there. Apparently then 90 percent of the country is in favor of that.

But what if there's a state that's not? What if there's a state that doesn't want to do that? Why not give them the option? Why not have the federal government come up with a set of standardized, state-friendly regulations that can be approved by any state or not approved by the state, and then just see how it goes?

Now I know what you're saying. The motivated people will drive across the state border to do whatever they're going to do. Yeah, but I think we would be able to pick up on that over time. In other words, we could interview criminals and mass killers and say, "Where did you get your gun?" We can usually figure it out. And we would find out if the only thing that happened is that nothing happened. People just went across the state line and nothing changed. That might happen. But generally speaking, whenever you introduce friction, people do change behavior. So I would expect anything with friction would change behavior.

So I would take the federal government out of the business of passing laws because they can't. Apparently our federal government is not capable of passing laws about guns because of the politics, the NRA, etc. But they're certainly capable of putting together a set of standardized suggested policies. Different states would adopt different ones of them and maybe tweak them a little bit. But you'd have a standardized set of smart things to do. And then you would be using your states as the laboratories of democracy as they were intended.

The states, far more capable of passing laws, would say, "All right, we passed this one. This other state on the other side of the country did not pass it. Let's see how we do. Let's see if this new law makes us have fewer problems over the next five years compared to the other states."

Now if you do this, you have a system which everybody can love. Yeah, it's a system instead of a goal. And of course there's no end to how much you could keep improving these little suggested changes. But I think states should get every upvote on a set of restrictions for themselves, and other states may say we don't need it.

Now here's another thing that I was looking at on gun control. I didn't realize that almost half, say half of people or half of gun owners, I'm not sure, but there's a lot of support for a mandatory buyback of all assault weapons. When I say a lot of support, something like half the country supports that. Now that's not nearly enough to make something happen. And probably the majority of you on this Periscope are saying good, we don't want it to happen. We don't want some irrational buyback of AR-15s just because they look scary. So I get that.

But how about this? Would you be in favor, instead of a buyback, just changing the laws about who can own one? So I made some off-the-top-of-my-head suggestions. Suppose you said you can get an AR-15 if you have experience in the military or law enforcement. So you already have some credentials as a person who can handle a gun. And maybe secondly, if you are already a gun owner for a while, one more gun probably isn't going to make a difference because you already own a bunch of guns. So maybe that's an exemption. And maybe over 50, veterans, etc., maybe if you're over 50, maybe no restrictions because people over 50 don't tend to be big criminals. And suppose you're a woman. If you're a woman who wants to buy a weapon, I would say that should be okay too because there's no history of women being big shooters.

Somebody says, "Oh my God, Scott is totally drinking the Kool-Aid." If you're saying that, you don't understand what I'm saying. You should understand me to say that there are a variety of things people suggested and there are a variety of states that could test it. What I'm not suggesting is that everybody have their guns taken away. I'm very pro-Second Amendment. And I do look at Hong Kong like the rest of you. The Hong Kong situation just couldn't happen here.

Imagine all those people who are marching in Hong Kong now. You move that to the United States and it's a life-or-death question for your republic. How many of those people would be armed to the teeth? Quite a few. You would have a lot of weapons come out in this country if the republic were actually at risk. A lot of weapons would come out and it would make a difference. It would absolutely make a difference.

So I'm pro-gun for all the same reasons most of you are. But I don't believe this slippery slope. I don't believe that we just start going in some direction and we can't change anything. Almost everything that we do in this country that is dangerous has regulations. It doesn't kill us. I put my seatbelt on every day. It doesn't make me unhappy. I have safety features in my car. It doesn't make me unhappy. Children can't buy cigarettes. That doesn't make me unhappy. We already have lots of regulations and they mostly work. Mostly. So I don't mind them on guns.

If you're an absolutist on guns because of the Constitution, I would say that's not really a supportable position, to be an absolutist on guns. It's not supportable to be absolutely in favor of no restrictions. It is not supportable to have them all taken away. All right, so that's where I stand.

I think we should do a better job of slicing and dicing the public. And let's just be honest, it's men under the age of 50 who are doing all the gun violence. So why should they be treated the same as everybody else? Let's discriminate. Let's discriminate against young men who don't have training, that are not part of the NRA, don't already own guns, haven't been in the military, have not been in law enforcement. So I would make lots of exceptions, lots of exceptions. But if you're just a loner who wants to buy your first AR-15 and you're not a member of the NRA, you've not been in the military, you've never been in law enforcement, that's not good enough for me.

Now we already have 10 or 20 million AR-type weapons in the country. I'm pretty sure we have enough already that if the government wanted to make a play, we could pass them out. We'd have all the guns we needed. So I'm not too worried about that. In fact if everybody, if the women all bought the guns, they wouldn't necessarily have to do the fighting because if we had a revolution in this country the guys would end up with the guns whether the women were the ones that licensed up in the first place or not.