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Glenn's Show Prep

Interview with Colorado Sheriff Terry Maketa

May 24, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Colorado was once a staunchly conservative state but things seem to be shifting, at least when it comes to gun laws. The state jammed several new restrictions down the throats of the citizens - but some Sheriffs are standing up and vowing not to enforce the measures. Glenn interviewed one of these brave Sheriffs on radio today.

Full transcript of the interview is below:

we have a Colorado sheriff Terry Maketa on. He is a guy, he's one of the 55 of the 62 sheriffs in Colorado who are signed on now to a lawsuit to stop the new gun control measures in Colorado. He says that they're vague and unenforceable and he's going specifically after the high‑capacity magazine ban and the background check. We had him on the TV show a couple of days ago and I want to make sure you heard of his cause and his name because I think these guys need some help and need some people standing behind them. Terry, how are you, sir?

MAKETA: I'm doing real well. How are you doing?

GLENN: Very good. How far is El Paso County from Denver?

MAKETA: It's about 70 miles to the south, straight south of Denver. And what's surprising to a lot of ‑‑ what's surprising to a lot of people is we are the most populated county.

GLENN: Really?

PAT: Really? What cities ‑‑

GLENN: What towns?

PAT: Yeah.

MAKETA: It's Colorado Springs, and a lot of people don't realize, but the Denver metro area is made up of numerous counties, and El Paso County, Colorado Springs has the highest population.

PAT: Hmmm.

STU: That's interesting. We're always told, Sheriff, that law enforcement is very much behind the left's movement of gun control. They don't want guns on the street and yet in your state it's 55 of 62 sheriffs are standing with you, right?

MAKETA: That is absolutely correct. And one thing that isn't talked about a lot is there are also a lot of chiefs of police that are behind us at the municipal level, but they don't have the freedom to speak their opinions that the sheriffs have.

PAT: Now, this was brought on, Sheriff, by the fact that Colorado just passed, was it four gun measures, and two of them in particular you take exception to. What are those two? And can you describe them a little bit? What do they do?

MAKETA: Well, yeah, there were four bills passed. And of those four, there are two that the sheriffs really have a problem with. The first is the background check, which was really sold to the public in vague terms as a universal background check under the auspice of "We're trying to keep ‑‑ stop criminals from buying guns." And the reality is that it is not limited to just the sale of private firearms. It's far overreaching and it extends to, I like to give the example of a real life scenario of a military friend who goes off on deployment, leaves a firearm with his fiance with whom he shares the house and they are violating the law not only because he doesn't obtain a background check every 30 days but because the magazine possesses more than 15 rounds, which leads me into the second law, and that's the magazine ban. And they banned ‑‑ they set the number arbitrarily at 15 rounds when so many very common firearms are sold and designed with magazines that hold more than 15. But more importantly is they put language in there that if, if it has a removable base plate and can be modified. And when you get into language like that in law, it just subjects law‑abiding citizens to being criminalized and that's really the problem we have with those two in very general terms.

STU: Is there any possible ‑‑ this is interesting because I can't think of anything, in any category of anything you could possibly own that could not potentially be modified in some way. Of course it ‑‑ but anything you buy can be modified if you wish to modify it. How can that ‑‑ I mean, how can you add a restriction like that?

MAKETA: Well, that's our contention is number one, there's some other language that says, you know, what was the intent of the manufacturer? Did they design it with the intent that it could potentially be modified? How is law enforcement supposed to know the intent of the manufacturer? And, I'm not familiar with a magazine that does not have a removable baseplate. They all do because of maintenance and cleaning and so forth. And then for a family ‑‑ or let's say you have a 30‑round magazine. You can never transfer them. I think that's an infringement on your property rights. I mean, we're all ‑‑ we all share a common goal of keeping criminals from obtaining guns. But to be honest common sense should tell us criminals usually don't go to the retail outlets and subject themselves to a background. And when I talk about the lack of empirical evidence to support it, look at how many people are prosecuted who are turned down for checks and it's a dismal, dismal number.

STU: I always find it fascinating. There he an a law in New York that passed, there's this sort of new flurry of gun control laws after Sandy Hook obviously and the one in New York was fascinating in that it said you can have ‑‑ you can't have over, I believe it was seven ‑‑ ten rounds in a magazine, I think it was ‑‑ or seven rounds in a magazine. But, of course, a lot of these guns had a 10‑round magazine. So they had to adjust the law that you can have a 10‑round magazine but you can only put seven bullets in it. That is ‑‑ there is absolutely no way a law like that can have an effect on a criminal. It can only have an effect on a law‑abiding citizen. No criminal is going to stop loading bullets at seven when he's going to shoot up a school. He's going to load as many bullets as he can into there. I mean, do you see any other motivation from these laws, of these laws other than just to take guns?

PAT: Criminalize.

STU: Is there any sort of law enforcement purpose that could possibly be applied to these rules?

MAKETA: Absolutely not. I mean, that is what is absolutely ridiculous is there is absolutely no fact to back these laws, to arbitrarily set numbers at 7, 10, 15 is absolutely absurd. And that clearly shows there's an agenda. And what we saw in Colorado probably is a Republican indication of what occurred in New York, where facts were not allowed into the debate. It was purely emotional and it was purely political posturing and agenda‑driven with one goal in mind: To disarm law‑abiding citizens. Let's focus on the criminals, let's pass laws that hold them accountable and not punish law‑abiding citizens for the actions of one.

And I'll tell you another thing that was forgotten in all of the tragedies involving mass shootings is in most cases the gunmen had multiple firearms. They didn't just have one weapon that they had to reload. They had two and three and four weapons.

STU: Mmm‑hmmm.

PAT: That's not important to those who are just trying to take our guns, though. They don't care about any of the facts. They skip over them. They ignore them. They lie about them. But your contention is right now that not only are these laws unenforceable but you and your fellow sheriffs have no intention of ever enforcing them, right?

MAKETA: Well, we've made that position clear because you can't enforce them without violating citizens' constitutional rights.

PAT: That's fantastic.

MAKETA: Under the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.

GLENN: How do you expect this ‑‑ how do you expect this to end up? I mean, we are headed on a collision course here.

MAKETA: Well, I'll tell you I think we've assembled a phenomenal group of people to defend the citizens and their rights and I think we've raised some very key points in our lawsuit, and I'm pretty confident that this could be a pivotal time, a historic time at least in Colorado to start pushing back. And we've got tremendous ‑‑ it's shocking how much citizen support we have. But I think we're going to be successful ‑‑

GLENN: How can we help you?

MAKETA: And I think the lie told in the legislature is going to come true. And to answer your question, I think the key is to get the word out, get the truth out, and I think citizens will apply the common sense and say, okay, not only was I misled on what these laws are but the facts just don't ‑‑ the facts they were sold to us on just don't add up.

GLENN: All right. Thank you so much and, Terry, let us know how we can help El Paso County, Colorado sheriff Terry Maketa who is leading the fight, new lawsuit now to stop the new gun control measures in Colorado.

You know, as I'm listening to him, I'm thinking the sheriffs like him are going to be the first that are targeted. You know, the ‑‑ I don't know if you saw those pictures on TheBlaze a couple of days ago when there was the small protests that were happening around the country at the IRS offices and these protests were happening and there were police cars there, and in very fine print it said "Homeland Security." In big print it said "Police." And I thought when did we have ‑‑ when did we develop a national police force? When did that happen? We've never had a national police force before. We don't want a national police force, a national police force that would report right directly to the president. You need a national police force, that's the National Guard. And they are called out by the governors, not by the president. By the governors. What they've done is they've destroyed the Tenth Amendment, and this national police force is going to be there to back the other police force, and the first ones that they will bust will be the sheriffs. And the sheriffs are the only ones elected by you. They are elected directly by you. To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. And these guys are going to be outlaws. They really are. I really, truly believe they are going to be in real trouble. Preachers, look. Follow their lead. Follow their lead. If you are a preacher or a pastor or a rabbi, if you are a so‑called community leader, if you don't ‑‑ if you don't know in your heart of hearts that if a tyrant, left or right, ever took control of this country and you don't know that one of the first doors that would be knocked on would be yours, you are not doing your job. You're not standing for man's freedom. What is it you are doing? If you're not the first to be targeted, what purpose do you serve?

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: Chart-topping ‘singer’ has no soul at all

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.