>> stephen: that's it for the report, everybody. good night. [cheers and applause]

>> from comedy central's world news headquarters in new york, this is "the daily show" with jon stewart. ["daily show" theme song playing] [cheers and applause] >> jon: welcome to "the daily show." [cheers and applause] i'm jon stewart. oh, we've got a good one for you tonight. general billy mc-- stanley mcchrystal. last night we talked fiscal cliff. in the wake of things that happened. newtown a roara, portland,

tucson -- it's a 22 minute show so i'm not going to list everybody but finally everybody is ready to talk about gun violence. the patrol has been ready for quite some time now. let's have that conversation people. nothing is off the table. no bad idea. it's a safe space. let's start the discussion on gun violence. let's talk about the gun control. >> gun control is not going to make any kid safer. we have to get the real problem, the real causes. >> jon: sorry, i just assumed that beginning a conversation about gun control meant starting with guns but you want to talk about the non-gun cause of -- [ laughter ] -- gun violence. you know what? it's a conversation no bad ideas maybe there's other factors we should look at. let's -- what other none-gun causes are we talking about

here. we have violence surrounding us we think is okay. >> violent video games with names like bullet storm, grand theft auto cano, film like american psycho, natural born killers. >> jon: natural born killer and american psycho. holy -- has it been that long since we've had a conversation with gun control. been that long that we've deflected the gun control argument with the corrupt hollywood media argument? that french guys had a point. [ laughter ] it may be an indirect influence but there's no question we glorify violence in our culture. if a massacre occurs in a schoolhouse and tv network heads have to scramble to see if it's going to bump up against the primetime epid sic schedule

that's a (bleep) problem. is this terrible massacre going to effect our new show "massacre" fridays at 8:00. the hot lead to corps raper svu starring -- as for violent video games i guess they are out there. the dutch spend more on video games than we do and have less violence. to be fair their video games are the first person dike plugging drawma. [ laughter ] we have to talk about the culture and see if it's adding to the soup. but let's look at all of our culture, hollywood's influence on that but are there other media influences that should be examined. >> are interest terror cells in your neighborhood? >> the new black panther party

outside a polling place. >> the sharia mosques. >> four years into tyranny winning. >> if you live in the east, may i recommend get the help out of east. >> it's armageddon. >> your religion will come under al tackth if obama is reelected, this country is over! [ laughter ] >> jon: i'm not sure what happened. i thought -- i -- i blacked out in the middle of that and woke up with an ak -- whatever this is. i'm sure i'll get letters about what this really is. which is plastic is what it really is. [ laughter ] it brings us back to the more direct issue of guns. >> gun control doesn't work. >> jon: or not. [ laughter ] i keep forgetting what else? >> we have a mental health system in this country completely and totally collapsed. >> jon: okay, okay. again, 100%. thank you, wayne lapeeer far

bringing this up. the mentally ill live on the streets and are in prison. it's up to us to help them find proactive care. this is what we have to address. >> we have no national database of these lunatics. >> jon: or that. or that. [ laughter ] i was going to say compassionate total care of mental illness or lunatic database. although isn't that what the internet is? isn't that a national database. what would be the criteria for the lunatic database? what would you say to get on it? >> americans don't want to be added to that pile of dead people that have been left defenseless by the u.n. policies. [ laughter ] >> jon: lapierre with two rs

or one? i don't want to cull a conversation britt starts. mental health cares that be on table but that leads to other problems, crimes, gun, violence. >> we don't have a crime problem, or a gun problem, or even a violence problem. what we have a sin problem. [ laughter ] [ laughter ] >> jon: is this about me masturbating? is in a -- is that what this is about? look, i didn't know that that was considered a national issue. [ laughter ] look, we can dance around the issue all we want. we can blame movies or the video games or the mentally ill or god and we have to put it's a complex problem and all solutions have to bone the table

but it's time we talk about guns. >> i don't want to do this. i don't want to do this gun control discussion right now. there's a day, a place and a time for all that. >> jon: it's today, right now. it's absolutely the time to talk about gun control and nothing is -- sorry. [cheers and applause] we need take a commercial break. guess we'll talk about guns when we come

[cheers and applause] >> jon: welcome back to the show. i apologize for my voice. a little cold. we've learned in our conversation about the country's stagering number of gun related deaths but it's based on a surprising amount of none non-gun factors. god, immediate why and crazy people. that's a busy graphic. can be streamline that and represent all three stittencecies? there you go. [ laughter ] i'm going to say this conversation is taking place between parties governor faith and that all of us on any side of the debate are anti-massacre. if common sense firearm regulations might cut the number of these killings, why not try? >> we have many, many laws pertaining to guns already. >> we have laws banning murder but we still have murders. >> drunk driving do we go to the ford motor company and tell them

stop making automobiles because people get drunk and kill people in cars? >> jon: so we do charge bartenders who serve drunks, and launch public awarance campaigns and have tougher drunk driving laws because it might just bring drunk driving rates down by -- i don't know -- two thirds in a few decades. like magazine sizes smaller magazines for guns. make them have to reload more. >> can i do that pretty quick. >> jon: you are fast fingers graham the foremost gun enthusiast slash speed or gamy champion? the world. how he uses his gun hands to make such delegate paper art. why it's a mystery. [ laughter ] all right.

magazine restrictions won't help. how about we keep all the guns except weapons designed purely to go after enemy soldiers. >> we've had a so called assault weapons ban for ten years. studies said it made no difference. it was ill conceive and it didn't work properly. >> joe: you know what they say, if at first you don't succeed (bleep) it. [ laughter ] we're not looking for magic, flying solving projectile. we're looking for a series of steps from different areas that could improve the situation as opposed to what we have now which is legislation riders that prevent the atf from checking inventories and bills making it harder won't get do not buy list and laws for -- people god

forbid mcdonalds doesn't tell you how hot their hot steamy coffee is. that happens when you are taking the money train to mcpunitive damage town. an epidemic of gun violence. our hands are tied. we can't do everything. we are a nation of over reactors to everything. we have step-by-step child proofed this entire country. 20 years ago a guy through a rock over an overpass and hit a car windshield and now every overpass is blocked. there's a net over the goalpost. we can't do anything about this? make guns less sexy so they wouldn't be so cool. the next jason borne movie stars woody allen. not really a gun person. not so much the killing but the

loogd and the cleaning. it's a lot of work. [ laughter ] or even better creative sound editing to take away the cool gun factor. [sirens] see. those silly sound effects completely stopped by desire to get caught in a bloody three-way mexican standoff. we would love to your ideas. there are no bad ideas. i refuse to play the game of you is assault weapon. it's a hammer. an article cl came out this week of a massive number killed well hammers. [ laughter ] >> jon: okay. if you want to regulate hammers, we could try that. would it be possible to regulate bags of hammers or anyone as

dumb as that? [ laughter ] but aside from hammer control which, by the way, was a great mc hammer album, do you have any other idea treers -- ideas for reducing gun violence? >> the only thing that stops a bad guy with is a gun s, is a good guy with a gun. >> jon: so a school principal with a gun is going to stop a guy with a bullet proof vest and a gun. i don't think principal belden is as bad ass as we think. it's weird to me that gun enthusiasts won't even entertain the idea -- let me restate that some won't entertain some moves to rein in this violence. what is really going on here? >> we have constitutional freedom the right to keep and bear arms in this country.

>> jon: yeah, yeah for a well regulated militia. not a personal arsenal free for all. there's all sorts of things you can't have already. tanks, f-16 fighter jets, surface to air anything. people had muskets then. so, okay, you can have all the muss cetz you want. you can even -- muskets you want. you can have assault muskets for all i care. jazz it with a bayonet. go (bleep) nuts. why is it that we're unable to make the most basic steps towards putting together a complex plan of action to slow this spread. what is really going on here? >> i think you, like a lot of people, joshua, are worried the federal government is coming after our guns. >> jon: now we're getting

somewhere. it's about how close some people in this country feel they are living to a tyrant's rule. >> it's something we've seen happen time and time again in history with stalin. happened in cambodia and of course the third reich, coming. no one saul that. >> stalin took the guns, fidel castro took the guns. i'm here to tell you 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms! [ laughter ] >> jon: oh (bleep). no one is taking away all the guns. but now i get it. now i see what is happening. this is what it is. their paranoid fear of a possible distoppic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic presence.

we can't discuss the gun deaths happening in reality every year because a few of us must remain h(jú,xazvj[cheers and applause]

>> jon: welcome back. my guest tonight a refired four star general whose new people you're is called "my share of the task. " please welcome to the program general stanley mcchrystal.

[ applause ] sir, you served for many years in our armed forces heretically on many battlefields but i don't want to minimize the fact that i'm doing the show tonight with a cold. [ laughter ] so i'll let the audience decide who the real hero is tonight. how are you? >> very well, jon. thanks for asking. >> jon: thanks for being here. my share of task details your career in the militarism i want to talk quickly. you said this morning, with your talking about gun control and the issue at hand now. you obviously are in the military. what is the general, do you think, military position on that? they are in favor of a, i guess, second amendment but perhaps not with the kind of tech logical advances we've made. is that it? >> i can't speak for all military but if you've been on

the battlefield you carey a gun that fires at 5.56 round per second. it hits humans it does terrible damage. it's supposed to. that's what soldiers should carry. i don't want them on the streets or in the schools. i don't think that most people are prepared to carry those. i think we have to have a serious look at why we even would consider having guns like that. >> jon: you were heading up afghanistan. you worked with these guys, an impressive group of people. the thing i hear the most from the guys over there were two things the task of complex and impossible and they weren't quite sure how clear it was, and two, they would lick to finish it. is -- like to finish it. is that the ultimate contradiction and paradox that goes on in the military in these missions? >> it is. a lot of american people ask what are we doing over there? what are soldiers and sailors and marines doing? on any given day there's a

special operations raid in the middle of the night. it goes against a difficult target. i went on many of those and watched great special operators do heroic things. also on the same day soldiers patrolled an area where they don't have wood for trelises so we build mud roy walls. you created this terrain six feet tall, three feet wiesmed you can see 18 inches either side and 50 feet to the front. it's like fighting in a maze. soldiers doing that yet the same time there's a case where a young marine lance corporal near ferah out in southwestern afghanistan is with a small patrol and an afghan farmer comes up and says i would like permission to dig a ditch across this road to move water. he didn't want to be mistaken

for an ied placer. the young marine looked at it a while and helped the farmer dig. you have three very different things happening each in that person's perspective and probably all the right things. they are trying to give afghanistan a chance. because the thing about afghanistan is it's a country that has been tornd, turned upside down, shredded and mutilated for about 34 years. in a country where the life expectancy is about 44, there aren't a lot of people who remember normal. >> jon: right. >> american service members are by nature problem solvers. they want to help things get better. that's what i saw. i saw this wonderful desire to reach in and fix it. it's frustrating. frightening, frustrating. >> jon: they are also, let's face facts the main idea of fighting forces is fighting. we place upon them this complex

tax rebuilding csm we really have a plcy that at its foundation is we go into a country attack it, conquer it in the manner that the superior technology and our fighting forces, and then stay there and knit it back together? isn't that asking too much from these guys? >> i don't think so. they do what has to be done. you only fight to achieve an end. if you think about world war ii. everybody likes world war ii because it seems neat and clean and we won and it was over. i wasn't that way in reality. essentially counter insurgency was performed for a decade. the marshall plan was nothing more than helping europe regrow so that it would be protected against the growth of extremism and things. in reality, soldiers are natural people to help bind things back together. you fight when you have to but you solve the problem wherever

you can. >> jon: can you stick around for a little bit? we'll go to

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