Speaker 1: You're listening to the Buck Sexton Chow podcast, make sure
Speaker 1: you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. A number of recent mass
Speaker 1: shootings have caused the left to renew their efforts to
Speaker 1: implement new gun control laws around the country that includes
Speaker 1: red flag laws, universal background checks, and even calls for
Speaker 1: a band on assault weapons. But do any of these
Speaker 1: laws actually work the way they're intended? On the special
Speaker 1: edition of Hold the Line will examine the left's latest
Speaker 1: calls for new gun restrictions and bust some of the
Speaker 1: myths of gun control. Welcome to the special edition of
Speaker 1: Hold the Line. I'm Buck Sexton. This is the usual rhythm.
Speaker 1: This is, unfortunately the psych that we go through after
Speaker 1: a horrific mass shooting in this country. Democrats start immediately
Speaker 1: shouting about gun control, and I do mean shouting. They're
Speaker 1: angry at anybody who does not want to go along
Speaker 1: with these policies. They immediately forget all about the myriad
Speaker 1: laws out there with regard to gun purchasing, gun transfer,
Speaker 1: where kind of guns you can have, fl's background checks,
Speaker 1: all of this. They pretend like it doesn't exist and
Speaker 1: that there's some kind of a free for all, like
Speaker 1: we're living in some other period in our history. Just
Speaker 1: get a gun, go wherever you want with it, and
Speaker 1: nothing matters. It's dishonest, it's wrong. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of emotional impulse that they use to mobilize people to
Speaker 1: call for this gun control. Joe Biden, for example, just
Speaker 1: saying this, we need to do something about guns. Watch
Speaker 1: this time we have to take the time to do something,
Speaker 1: and this time it's time for the in it to
Speaker 1: do something. Do what? That's always the question that we
Speaker 1: should run anounce. Okay, do do what. We already have
Speaker 1: background checks, so we need universal background checks. Really do
Speaker 1: we think that increasing background checks to private individuals and
Speaker 1: engaged in a private sale of their own property that's
Speaker 1: going to stop shootings? Really? Do we think that's going
Speaker 1: to work? We don't think that's also just going to
Speaker 1: harass a lot of people who are selling their own
Speaker 1: property to somebody else. Is that how many shootings is
Speaker 1: going to stop? I'm just wondering. I think we should
Speaker 1: ask these questions. I think it's worth at least getting
Speaker 1: into it and then banning assault weapons. Assault weapons are
Speaker 1: used in less than five percent. Some would say less
Speaker 1: than two or three percent. I think of all shootings
Speaker 1: across the country, very very small percentage of shootings. But
Speaker 1: Vice President Harris, for example, it is calling for an
Speaker 1: assault weapons ban because she says, we know it works.
Speaker 1: We are not sitting around waiting to figure out. We're
Speaker 1: not looking a vaccine. We know what works on this
Speaker 1: It includes let's have an assault weapon span. You know
Speaker 1: what an assault weapon is. You know how an assault
Speaker 1: weapon was designed. It was designed for a specific purpose
Speaker 1: to kill a lot of human beings quickly. They don't
Speaker 1: know what works actually, And these are the same Democrats,
Speaker 1: by the way, who think that we're all going to
Speaker 1: be safer if we just don't punish criminals, including violent
Speaker 1: criminals very much, that if we have progressive prosecutors, if
Speaker 1: we have defunding of police, if we take social justice
Speaker 1: over criminal justice as our mantra, that will be better
Speaker 1: off as a society, safer as a society. We've seen
Speaker 1: that's not true. You're thirty percent spike and homicides in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nationwide. You have some of the most violent
Speaker 1: ears in recorded history for dozens of city across the country.
Speaker 1: So they don't actually know how to stop violence, gun violence,
Speaker 1: you name it, but they keep saying they do. And
Speaker 1: then there are some abject morons like Congressman Swollwell who
Speaker 1: says things like this, So, I think we've debunked the
Speaker 1: idea that the answer to a killer with an assault
Speaker 1: rifle is to have more quote unquote good guys with guns.
Speaker 1: The good guys with guns are outgunned by the bad
Speaker 1: guys that we've given guns in our country. What is
Speaker 1: he even talking about. First of all, no one thinks that,
Speaker 1: no one who knows anything has that been debunked. And
Speaker 1: there are many shootings every year that are either stopped
Speaker 1: in progress from being a mass casualty event or stopped
Speaker 1: from becoming a casualty event at all because of somebody
Speaker 1: who did have a lawful firem who's able to bring
Speaker 1: it to bear in the situation. But look, here's what
Speaker 1: we have to do, because this is a national conversation,
Speaker 1: and the Democrats are insisting, let's have a discussion, let's
Speaker 1: look at what they want, and then we will debunk
Speaker 1: gun control myths. We'll go through this with real experts
Speaker 1: on the subject. We'll address each of the primary policy
Speaker 1: proposals of the Democrats and we'll see what we actually are.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. We come back. Editor Bearing
Speaker 1: Arms dot Com, Cam Edward stops about to discuss the
Speaker 1: constitutional basis for Americans right to keep in bear arms.
Speaker 1: Starting right there, Stay with us. Support from my podcast
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Speaker 1: When we speak of the of the gun control movement,
Speaker 1: we have to begin with the text of the Constitution itself.
Speaker 1: Second Amendment to the US Constitution reads, a well regulated
Speaker 1: militia being necessary to the security of a free state,
Speaker 1: the right of the people to keep in bear arms
Speaker 1: shall not be infringed. Seems fairly simple, the right of
Speaker 1: the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed.
Speaker 1: But many proponents of gun control seating quite differently. So
Speaker 1: I'm arguing that the right only applies to people in
Speaker 1: the context of a government regulated militia. So is membership
Speaker 1: in a state sanctioned militia a prerequisite for owning a firearm?
Speaker 1: Join me now just spell some of the myths around
Speaker 1: the gun grabbing movement. Is the editor of bearing arms
Speaker 1: dot Com, Cam Eledwards. Cam thanks for being with us
Speaker 1: absolutely bug, thanks much for the invite. So Cam, we'll
Speaker 1: get to the well regulated part a moment here, but
Speaker 1: let's start with the notion of the militia. The militia
Speaker 1: component here, just as James Mcreynold's writing the Court's Opinion
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, USB Miller defined the militia as he
Speaker 1: debates in the Convention of the History and Legislation of
Speaker 1: Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators show
Speaker 1: plainly enough the militia comprised all males physically capable of
Speaker 1: acting in concert for the common defense. So what do
Speaker 1: you make of what we know here of the history
Speaker 1: of this as well as the reality, the constitutional reality
Speaker 1: of the second Amendments. Yeah, so, I mean you can
Speaker 1: get even more specific, right, because there's the organized militia
Speaker 1: and there's the unorganized militia. The unorganized militia is basically
Speaker 1: us right as the body of the American people according
Speaker 1: to US Code, it's males between the ages of I
Speaker 1: believe seventeen and sixty five comprise the unorganized militia. But
Speaker 1: I think a fair reading of the unorganized militia today
Speaker 1: is basically the body of people capable of burying arms
Speaker 1: in either defense of themselves or the state if necessary.
Speaker 1: We the people are the militia served well regularly. Someone
Speaker 1: the anti gun, anti gun movement will say that that
Speaker 1: phrase empowers the federal government to regular militias. Justice Scalia though,
Speaker 1: to find well regulated in dcv. Heller as the objective
Speaker 1: well regulated implies nothing more than the imposition of proper
Speaker 1: discipline and training. But what do you make of well?
Speaker 1: I think Justice Scalia had a right. But again, what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is a well regulated militia, right,
Speaker 1: not a well regulated body of people, not a well
Speaker 1: regulated group of gun owners. What this basically means is
Speaker 1: that in the service of a militia, Absolutely you want
Speaker 1: those militia members to have training, to have some sort
Speaker 1: of experience where the firearms and the equipment that they're
Speaker 1: going to be using. But does that mean that every
Speaker 1: regulation that a gun control advocated wants to propose is
Speaker 1: all of a sudden going to comport with a Second
Speaker 1: Amendment because the Second Ament has the word regulated in it.
Speaker 1: Of course not. And that's the type of misreading of
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment that we've been seen frankly for decades now.
Speaker 1: And cam Let's talk also about the argument. You'll sometimes
Speaker 1: hear that that the Constitution would only protect the firearms
Speaker 1: in usage at that time. You know, I know that
Speaker 1: this is this is not as common as some of
Speaker 1: the other arguments. People say, well, fine, you're allowed to
Speaker 1: have a musket as part of a militia. What do
Speaker 1: you say to that? Sure, and I guess journalists are
Speaker 1: allowed to have quill pens and printing presses, right, because
Speaker 1: the First Amendment could never apply to any sort of
Speaker 1: means a communication that weren't around in seventeen eighty seven
Speaker 1: or seventeen ninety one. I mean, look, this is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and frankly, the Supreme Court has addressed this as well,
Speaker 1: first in the Heller decision and then even more explicitly
Speaker 1: in a procurium opinion that was handed down. Surely, after
Speaker 1: Justice Stanton as Galia passed away case called Katano versus Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and the state of Massachusetts had banned stun guns, and
Speaker 1: they claimed that stun guns weren't protected by the second
Speaker 1: maybe because electronic weapons weren't around at the time of
Speaker 1: the founding. The Supreme Court said, no, that's not the standard.
Speaker 1: That's not the test arms that are in common use
Speaker 1: for a variety of lawful purposes are prima facie protected
Speaker 1: by the Second Amendment, and so that would include semi
Speaker 1: automatic firems. Somebody include lever action rifles. I also find
Speaker 1: an odd buck that they stick to this when it
Speaker 1: comes to modern sporting rifles. Nobody ever says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: revolvers weren't around when the Second Amendment was ratified, so
Speaker 1: revolvers can't be protected. They use this argument specifically to
Speaker 1: go after the guns that they're trying to ban. At
Speaker 1: this point, their argument, as you say, taken to his
Speaker 1: logical conclusion, would be that you can't own anything other
Speaker 1: than a perhaps a brace of single fire pistols, a
Speaker 1: muzzleloading rifle, maybe a blunderbuss. And again, that's just not
Speaker 1: how we treat any of our rights. As technology progresses,
Speaker 1: as time moves on, those rights remain sacrosanct, even though
Speaker 1: the tools that we might be using, you know, change
Speaker 1: from our grandfather's day. Yes, and as cool as a
Speaker 1: blunderbuss may look, it is not the most reliable firearm
Speaker 1: to be using, especially if one has to defend oneself.
Speaker 1: Throwing that one out there, you mentioned a DCV Heller,
Speaker 1: and also the idea of common usage that obviously comes
Speaker 1: up cam now because of the huge push. I think
Speaker 1: the primary push we're seeing from the gun grabbers is
Speaker 1: that is the assault weapons ban issue. And this this
Speaker 1: goes a little bit away from our constitutional analysis. But Biden,
Speaker 1: for example, we'll say we know that that work, and
Speaker 1: so we know that if we do that again, it
Speaker 1: will work again. For one thing, I want, I want
Speaker 1: to know what you think of the claim that the
Speaker 1: assault weapons ban of nineteen ninety three I believe, or
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four that it worked. And the other part
Speaker 1: of this is if a R fifteen is the most
Speaker 1: common rifle owned in America, which I believe they are,
Speaker 1: and DCV Heller says, common usage is the standard for
Speaker 1: firearms ownership, how can they ban something that's the most
Speaker 1: common rifle that's obviously in common usage. Sorry, I'm throwing two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'll answer the second question first, and that is
Speaker 1: the sort of sixty four million dollar question, right, how
Speaker 1: can you ban some they look, there are more AR
Speaker 1: fifteens in the hands of American citizens. There are four
Speaker 1: f one fifty pickup trucks on American roads. Right, the
Speaker 1: AR fifteen is in common use, and I think that
Speaker 1: is the biggest barrier to an acting a nationwide gun band. Now,
Speaker 1: the appellate courts around the country that have upheld quote
Speaker 1: unquote to soberban bands in places like Maryland and California
Speaker 1: have used different arguments, but basically they come down on
Speaker 1: the side that, well, these arms are actually covered by
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment. The Fourth Circuit, which covers Virginia where
Speaker 1: I live, ruled egregiously that because AR fifteens are like
Speaker 1: machine guns and that they look like them, that they
Speaker 1: are covered under Justice Gale is a comment in Heller about,
Speaker 1: you know, this decision shouldn't cast any doubt on long
Speaker 1: stead and prohibitions against you know, ownership of machine guns
Speaker 1: and the like. So again you've seen the courts abuse
Speaker 1: and misread what the Supreme Court has said in order
Speaker 1: to try to uphold this band on what is a
Speaker 1: commonly owned firearm. Now, as for the efficacy of Biden's
Speaker 1: gun band back of the nineteen nineties, you know, he
Speaker 1: is talking about one specific study that used one very
Speaker 1: narrow definition of what constitutes a quote unquote match shooting, right,
Speaker 1: and that was I believe a shooting in which six
Speaker 1: or more people are killed or injured. If you were
Speaker 1: to change that dynamic, if you were to lower the
Speaker 1: number to five, for example, from six, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the statistics change. But what we do know overall is
Speaker 1: that any homicide in which a rifle is used is
Speaker 1: a pretty rare event. In the United States. There are
Speaker 1: actually more people who are killed, according to the FBI
Speaker 1: Uniform Crime Report, with fists and feet than with a
Speaker 1: rifle of any kind in any given year. So the
Speaker 1: idea that we're going to focus on this one particular
Speaker 1: firearm that isn't used in a lot of crime and
Speaker 1: think that it is going to make an impact on
Speaker 1: violent crime nationwide, I think is absolutely absurd. This is,
Speaker 1: I believe, pardon parcel of the gun control advocates and
Speaker 1: the anti gun democrats plan again to try to turn
Speaker 1: our segment right into a privilege. Damn. Let's look at
Speaker 1: some more of the gun control policies and some of
Speaker 1: the myths that they are based on when we come
Speaker 1: back here in a second. The recent mass shootings in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: New York, and Uvalde, Texas have led both Democrat and
Speaker 1: some Republican lawmakers to propose new gun control measures. Tam
Speaker 1: Edwards is going to return with this in a moment
Speaker 1: to take a look at what the new laws would
Speaker 1: mean and how effective they'd be, if effective at all,
Speaker 1: We return with this special edition of Hold the Line.
Speaker 1: We intend to do. Raise the age to buy weapons
Speaker 1: of war, restrict access to ghost guns, outlaw high capacity magazines,
Speaker 1: banned civilian bump stock sales, cracked down on gun trafficking,
Speaker 1: and advanced safegun storage. Recent shootings in Buffalo, New York
Speaker 1: and you've all the Texas have led the federal lawmakers
Speaker 1: to propose a whole host of new gun control measures.
Speaker 1: As Nancy Pelosi was just describing. There, one proposal seems
Speaker 1: to be gaining bipartisan support, or so called red flag laws,
Speaker 1: which allow law enforcem to confiscate the firearms with people
Speaker 1: deemed to be a threat to themselves or others by
Speaker 1: a court. Join me now again, is the editor of
Speaker 1: Pairing Arms. Cam Edwards. Caam, good to have you back,
Speaker 1: take us through this red flag laws? Have they worked?
Speaker 1: Would they work? What are the problems as you see
Speaker 1: it with them? All? Right? So have they worked? First
Speaker 1: of all, it's really hard to prove that the presence
Speaker 1: of a flag law prevented a crime from occurring, right,
Speaker 1: It's hard even for advocates to say, well, if we
Speaker 1: hadn't had this, then X would have happened. But the
Speaker 1: one study that I keep hearing advocates of red flag
Speaker 1: laws site is a study of Connecticut's red flag law
Speaker 1: in terms of reducing suicides, and they say that for
Speaker 1: somewhere between every ten to twenty firearms that were seized,
Speaker 1: or I should say every ten to twenty red flag
Speaker 1: petitions that were initiated, one suicide was prevented, which means
Speaker 1: at best maybe a ten percent reduction in the number
Speaker 1: of suicides for every person who was disarmed. So my
Speaker 1: question then becomes, well, what happened to those other nine
Speaker 1: to nineteen people? Do they go on to commit suicide
Speaker 1: by another means? Or were they not dangerous to begin with?
Speaker 1: You know, this is one of the issues that I
Speaker 1: have here, Buck, is that red flag laws, we are
Speaker 1: told are designed to keep danger people from doing dangerous things.
Speaker 1: But under every red flag law that I've seen an effect.
Speaker 1: What happens is someone is deemed by a judge to
Speaker 1: be dangerous. There may or may not be in a
Speaker 1: medical evaluation. Most of the time there's not there's a
Speaker 1: lowered standard of evidence that needs to be presented by
Speaker 1: the prosecutor. And then once a judge says, yeah, we
Speaker 1: believe that person's dangerous, they take their legally owned firearms
Speaker 1: and they leave the dangerous person alone with their knives,
Speaker 1: with their pills, with their cans of gasoline, and their
Speaker 1: matches and their car keys. It doesn't actually do anything
Speaker 1: to address the individual. This is a gun control proposal
Speaker 1: that mask raids as a sort of mental health bill.
Speaker 1: Most red flag laws do not have any mental health proponent,
Speaker 1: proposals or components to them whatsoever. And that's by design
Speaker 1: because that's expensive, right to actually institutionalize somebody to ensure
Speaker 1: that they're getting the treatment that they need so that
Speaker 1: they're not in crisis and not truly a danger to themselves,
Speaker 1: or there's that cost money, and it's easier. It's simpler
Speaker 1: to simply, you know, red flag someone and claim that
Speaker 1: you've addressed the problem. So that's one issue that I have.
Speaker 1: I have due process concerns with red flag laws, but
Speaker 1: I also worry about the unintended consequences. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been talking to a lot of secondment advocates around the
Speaker 1: country over the past week, and one of the common
Speaker 1: concerns that I've heard from people in states that have
Speaker 1: expansive red flag laws that allow almost anybody to initiate
Speaker 1: these petitions is that it actually stops people from seeking help.
Speaker 1: So you may have had somebody who you know is
Speaker 1: going through a painful divorce, or maybe they just lost
Speaker 1: a spouse or a loved one or somebody they want
Speaker 1: to talk to somebody exactly right, and they want to
Speaker 1: talk to somebody, and they look, they're they're not suicidal,
Speaker 1: they're not a danger, but they are gun owners, and
Speaker 1: they're really concerned that some over zealous counselor is going
Speaker 1: to say, oh, my gosh, okay, so you're you're talking
Speaker 1: about depression and you own guns. We've got to get
Speaker 1: those guns away from you. And they're concerned about people
Speaker 1: who are actively going to withdraw from treatment or not
Speaker 1: seek out treatment because they're afraid that they're going to
Speaker 1: get caught up in one of these red flag laws.
Speaker 1: We need to be working towards destigmatizing getting mental health help.
Speaker 1: We need to be working towards encouraging people to reach
Speaker 1: out when they need help. And I just I can't
Speaker 1: help but think that these red flag laws are going
Speaker 1: to take us down a road we don't want to
Speaker 1: go down. Another measure, and I think it's based at
Speaker 1: some level on the myth that a lot of people
Speaker 1: believe that we don't have a lot of background checks.
Speaker 1: I mean millions and millions and millions of them being
Speaker 1: run all the time. A measure that seems to be
Speaker 1: getting some traction, including among some Republicans, is universal background check.
Speaker 1: That's the phrase, it's always used. Here's what Pennsylvania Centator
Speaker 1: Pat Toomey said recently. Is your proposal to expand background
Speaker 1: checks still in it? Well, I certainly hope we're going
Speaker 1: to have an expansion of background checks. You know, Senator
Speaker 1: Mansion and I have been working on this for a
Speaker 1: long time, and we've tried to establish that at least
Speaker 1: for commercial sales of firearms there ought to be a
Speaker 1: background check. So sales at gun shows, sales that are
Speaker 1: advertised over the internet. Okay, so Ken, you know this
Speaker 1: is we hear this all the time, so please walk
Speaker 1: us through this. Are there commercial sales where there isn't
Speaker 1: a background check? Let's start with that. Yeah, no, And
Speaker 1: I'm confused why Pat Toomey would try to cloud this
Speaker 1: issue here. So, no, every commercial sale of a firearm
Speaker 1: it needs to go through a background check. But again,
Speaker 1: if you're a private gun owner who is selling a
Speaker 1: firearm from their personal collection, that's not a commercial sale. Right.
Speaker 1: Once you are engaged in the commercial business of selling
Speaker 1: or buying firearms, you were required under federal law to
Speaker 1: get a federal firearms license. When we talk about universal
Speaker 1: background checks, what we are talking about again are those
Speaker 1: private sales from individual gun owners. And I'll be honest
Speaker 1: with you, Buck, whether or not you think everybody who
Speaker 1: buys a gun should go through a background check, A
Speaker 1: universal background check law does nothing to prevent violent crime
Speaker 1: because it is impossible to proactively enforce. How do law
Speaker 1: enforcement know if I'm going to sell my gun to
Speaker 1: my neighbor. They don't know. At best, this is something
Speaker 1: that would be discovered after a crime has been committed,
Speaker 1: and then you can go back and charge the original seller.
Speaker 1: But at that point, you know, again the damage has
Speaker 1: already been done. And frankly, states also have laws can
Speaker 1: where you can loan you know, if you if your
Speaker 1: brother in law wants to go hunting, you can give
Speaker 1: your shotgun as long as he's not a prohibited possessor
Speaker 1: to that individual. To go right, aren't there situations like
Speaker 1: that that are covered under the law that are lawful? Oh? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I mean again, that's listen to the status quo. The
Speaker 1: gold standard is it's your property. You know. Again, as
Speaker 1: long as you're not breaking the law, as long as
Speaker 1: you're not knowingly arming feminals, that your property. To do
Speaker 1: with what you want? Uh? What? What? Again? What the
Speaker 1: Democrats are trying to do? Here is up in that
Speaker 1: and here here's here's President Biden on the This is
Speaker 1: another one that comes up with all this, the gun
Speaker 1: show loophole. Why the question now is what will the
Speaker 1: Congress do? House representatives already passed key measures we need,
Speaker 1: expanding background checks to cover nearly all gun sales, including
Speaker 1: at gun shows and online sales. Getting rid of the
Speaker 1: loophole allows a gun sale to go through after three
Speaker 1: business days, even if the background check has not been completed. Okay,
Speaker 1: can I so, first of all, can I can I
Speaker 1: just like bough? I mean, obviously, in New York you
Speaker 1: can't buy anything, but in some states he's just buy
Speaker 1: an AAR fifteen and no background check and they just
Speaker 1: send it to you in the mail. Is that how
Speaker 1: it works online? And no, no, um no, it typically listen. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot to unpacks their Uh, let's start
Speaker 1: with the quote unquote gun show loophole again. If you
Speaker 1: are in the business of selling firearms, you have to
Speaker 1: put your customers through a background check. If you are
Speaker 1: a private gun owner who maybe has a table that
Speaker 1: you rented a gun show because you're selling a couple
Speaker 1: of guns from a private collection, or you run into
Speaker 1: somebody at the gun show and you're talking about you
Speaker 1: know what it is that they're looking for, and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've actually been looking to sell one
Speaker 1: of my pistols. I'll sell it to you. Those are
Speaker 1: private sales, and again, there's no way to proactively enforce
Speaker 1: a background check law to require those people to go
Speaker 1: to an FFL and have a background check run before
Speaker 1: that gun is sold. Even if you were to require
Speaker 1: this at every gun show, what's to stop those individuals
Speaker 1: from walking outside of the parking lot and saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll meet you up, meet up in
Speaker 1: the part, you know, at your house an hour from now.
Speaker 1: This is no solution to actually addressing violent crime. As
Speaker 1: for you know, selling guns out of state, the current
Speaker 1: federal law is that if you purchase a handgun, if I,
Speaker 1: you know, in Virginia as a Virginia resident, if I
Speaker 1: were to go to Meryl under Pennsylvania up to New York,
Speaker 1: god forbid, I would have to have that firearm shipped
Speaker 1: back to an FFL in Virginia before I could take
Speaker 1: possession of it. Some states may have laws requiring that
Speaker 1: for long guns as well, but that is not a
Speaker 1: federal requirement. So even if you buy a gunn retail
Speaker 1: in another state, under federal law, you can actually pick
Speaker 1: that gun up there in the state where you're at,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the state where you live. But the
Speaker 1: idea that you know, again, you're just seeing these massive
Speaker 1: amounts of people who are you know, popping up online
Speaker 1: and saying, Hey, I got a gun to sell you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ship at via ups. No, that's not happening,
Speaker 1: And even if it was, buck it wouldn't be addressed
Speaker 1: by a background check law. Amazing, damn appreciate the expertise.
Speaker 1: It's always man. Thanks for being with us. Yeah, you're bet,
Speaker 1: Thanks Bud. We'll be right back with more of this
Speaker 1: special edition of Hold the Line. Each morning, the President
Speaker 1: of the United States receives a highly classified briefing on
Speaker 1: the most important issues facing the country. It's called the
Speaker 1: President's Daily Brief or PDB. It's delivered by America's spies
Speaker 1: and analysts. Well, now you can hear your very own
Speaker 1: PDB in the form of a podcast hosted by me
Speaker 1: Brian Dean Wright, a former CIA operations officer. Each morning
Speaker 1: at six am Eastern, I'll bring you fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of the most important issues facing the country, giving
Speaker 1: you the critical intelligence and analysis you need to start
Speaker 1: your morning. This time we have to take the time
Speaker 1: to do something, and this time it's time for the
Speaker 1: Senate to do something. Do something. That's the refrain we
Speaker 1: constantly here. After every mass shooting, inevitably, the anti gun
Speaker 1: crowd calls for a more background check, stricter control over
Speaker 1: so called assault weapons, or more gun free zones. But
Speaker 1: a few people take the time to determine if the
Speaker 1: gun control measures being proposed would work to prevent crime
Speaker 1: or mass shootings. Thankfully, one man has actually done the work,
Speaker 1: looked at the data. John Lott is the author of
Speaker 1: More Guns, Less crime and the president of the Crime
Speaker 1: Prevention Research Center. He joins me, Now, John, thanks for
Speaker 1: being with us. Thanks for me in book, John, you
Speaker 1: literally wrote the book on the issue of crime and
Speaker 1: gun control. I want to go through some of the
Speaker 1: more common gun control measures and honestly gun control myths
Speaker 1: that we hear about here about Let's start with gun
Speaker 1: free zone. Right. The idea here that the left puts
Speaker 1: forward is gun free zones prevent gun crimes. What does
Speaker 1: the data tell us? Right? But I mean, let me
Speaker 1: first of all say, for twenty years, over twenty years,
Speaker 1: I've wanted to go and do something. I find it
Speaker 1: very frustrating. Unfortunately, I think the text proposals said gun
Speaker 1: control advocates people like prison buying put out will actually
Speaker 1: either make things worse or have no impact. One thing
Speaker 1: that I think would make a huge difference is getting
Speaker 1: rid of these gun free zones. Ninety six percent of
Speaker 1: the successful mass public shootings keep on occurring in places
Speaker 1: where guns are banned. I understand what's hoped for here.
Speaker 1: The notion is you simply go and ban guns from
Speaker 1: certain areas, then you won't have gun crimes in those areas. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I think this is one example where the opposite happens.
Speaker 1: That when you go and you ban guns in certain places,
Speaker 1: the most law binding good citizens who obey that, and
Speaker 1: rather than deterring criminals from going committing crimes in those places,
Speaker 1: it actually serves as a magnet for them to go
Speaker 1: and commit crimes. And that, you know, just look at
Speaker 1: the last few attacks that we've had. The Tulsa hospital
Speaker 1: shooting was a gun free zone. The school in Texas
Speaker 1: was a gun free zone. Thirty percent of the schools
Speaker 1: in Texas actually have armed teachers and staff, but this
Speaker 1: wasn't one of them. You look at the Buffalo grocery
Speaker 1: store shooter. If people actually go and read the murderer's
Speaker 1: manifesto there, he actually talks about how he picked the
Speaker 1: particular target that he did. He wanted to go to
Speaker 1: a place where he knew the civilians there would not
Speaker 1: have for many concealed handguns for protection because it would
Speaker 1: make his job so much more difficult. And he's not
Speaker 1: the only one. We have many cases where we've gone
Speaker 1: through diaries or manifestos or other things that these murderers
Speaker 1: and these mass public shootings have left over time. These
Speaker 1: people may be crazy in some sense, but they're not stupid.
Speaker 1: Their goal is to try to kill as many people
Speaker 1: as possible, and if they go to a place where
Speaker 1: victims aren't able to go and defend themselves, they're going
Speaker 1: to be more successful. I mean, let me put it
Speaker 1: to you this way. Let's say God forbid, somebody was
Speaker 1: stalking you or your fami and it was really seriously
Speaker 1: threatening you. Would you feel safe for putting a sign
Speaker 1: in front of your home that said your home is
Speaker 1: a gun free zone. Do you think that if the
Speaker 1: attacker went up to the house and he said, well,
Speaker 1: there are no guns allowed in this place, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to take my weapon in there, that that's
Speaker 1: somehow going to determine if anything could have the opposite impact,
Speaker 1: He would know that people in there weren't able to
Speaker 1: defend themselves. Look at the penalty that you face for
Speaker 1: taking a gun into a gun free zone like a school.
Speaker 1: You face an additional two or three years in prison.
Speaker 1: If somebody's going to go and kill twenty one people
Speaker 1: in that place, you're already facing twenty one life sentences
Speaker 1: or twenty one death penalties. Do you really think an
Speaker 1: additional two or three year sentence is going to be
Speaker 1: well that that's going to be what's going to keep
Speaker 1: him from going and committing that crime. It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: These guys want to kill as many people as possible,
Speaker 1: and they know if they go to a place where
Speaker 1: victims can't defend themselves, they're going to be able to
Speaker 1: go and kill more people. Their goal is to try
Speaker 1: to get media coverage. I'll give you an example. You
Speaker 1: look at the Sandy Hook killer. He had done what
Speaker 1: police described as essentially a doctoral dissertation where he had
Speaker 1: looked at mass shootings over the previous forty years, not
Speaker 1: only in the United States, but attacks around the world,
Speaker 1: and he apparently had grafted out the relationship between the
Speaker 1: number of people killed and attacks and the amount of
Speaker 1: media coverage to god and his goal, according to one
Speaker 1: police report, was to go and kill more people than
Speaker 1: the Norway killer had killed because Norway killer, at that time,
Speaker 1: this was before the Paris attack, had killed the most
Speaker 1: people in a mass public shooting, and he believed that
Speaker 1: if he could only kill more people than the Norway
Speaker 1: person who killed sixty seven people with a gun, that
Speaker 1: he could get even more worldwide media attention. John, I
Speaker 1: want to also ask you about another gun control myth,
Speaker 1: the idea that just aggregate gun ownership effectively, the more
Speaker 1: people who own guns, the more crime there is with guns,
Speaker 1: legal gun ownership we're talking about here. What can you
Speaker 1: tell us about that, Well, that's simply not true. May
Speaker 1: I'll give you a simple statistic. Net is, there are
Speaker 1: a number of places around the world, not just in
Speaker 1: the United States, that have either tried to ban all
Speaker 1: guns or all handguns. People are experienced familiar with the
Speaker 1: experiences in Chicago and Washington, d C. And yet every
Speaker 1: single place that's banned either all guns or all handguns
Speaker 1: has seen an increase in murder rates. Afterwards, you think,
Speaker 1: out of randomness, once or twice, you'd at least get
Speaker 1: the murder rates and homicide rates to go down or
Speaker 1: at least stay the same. But yet every single time
Speaker 1: it goes up, often by large amount. Now, in the
Speaker 1: cases of Chicago and Washington, DC, gun control I advocates
Speaker 1: will say, well, that really wasn't a fair test, because
Speaker 1: unless you go and ban guns every place in the country,
Speaker 1: criminals will still get guns from the rest of Illinois,
Speaker 1: or from Indiana, or from Maryland and Virginia. You know,
Speaker 1: the thing is one it would have been nice if
Speaker 1: they had told us to begin with that they thought
Speaker 1: that the experiment was going to fail. But two, the
Speaker 1: problem that you face is that their countries around the
Speaker 1: world that have banned either all guns or all handguns.
Speaker 1: You have island nations that have done that that don't
Speaker 1: have a neighbor that they can easily go and blame
Speaker 1: for supplying the guns. And you see the same type
Speaker 1: of panttern whether it be Jamaica or Ireland or the UK.
Speaker 1: And the reason is pretty simple, and that is when
Speaker 1: you go and you ban guns, you may make it
Speaker 1: somewhat more difficult for some criminals to get guns, but
Speaker 1: it's primarily going to be the most law abiding, good
Speaker 1: citizens who obey the law and turning their guns. And
Speaker 1: if you disarm law abiding citizens relative to criminals, you
Speaker 1: actually make it easier for criminals to go and commit crimes.
Speaker 1: They have less to worry about been doing it, and
Speaker 1: they become bolder in terms of committing those types of crimes.
Speaker 1: But you know, again, there are other ways you can
Speaker 1: look at it. I personally find looking at lots of
Speaker 1: different places over time a lot more convincing. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that people will make comparisons with is.
Speaker 1: They'll say, look at the United Kingdom in the United States.
Speaker 1: The United Kingdom has very few homicides compared to the
Speaker 1: United States, and they have extremely strict gun control laws.
Speaker 1: Many types of guns like handguns and rifles or banned,
Speaker 1: and yet they have a lower homicide rates. So it
Speaker 1: must be the strict gun control laws that caused the
Speaker 1: lower homicide rate. In fact, if you look before they
Speaker 1: had the gun control laws there, they had even lower
Speaker 1: homicide rates relative to the United States. That they're homicide
Speaker 1: rates went up. They still may be lower than the
Speaker 1: rate in the United States, but they went up relative
Speaker 1: to what they had been before when they had those
Speaker 1: types of strict gun control laws. That we're there. And
Speaker 1: you know, I could go on just making other types
Speaker 1: of comparisons across places, but I think it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: that when you look at the data correctly, that there's
Speaker 1: a very clear relationship. Look, police are extremely important. Anybody
Speaker 1: who's ready my work knows that. I think police are
Speaker 1: the single most important factor for reducing crime. But the
Speaker 1: police themselves know that they virtually always arrived on the
Speaker 1: crime scene after the crimes occurred. And the question is
Speaker 1: what's the safest course of action for people to take police.
Speaker 1: I want to get into this with you some more.
Speaker 1: If we can just take a moment, you'll come back
Speaker 1: into that issue and more of the gun control myths
Speaker 1: that are out there in just a moment. Sure, it's
Speaker 1: hard to talk about gun control without discussing the left.
Speaker 1: Favorite target of it are fifteens, so called the salt weapons.
Speaker 1: After the break, we'll separate fact from fiction behind America's
Speaker 1: most popular rifle, this special edition of Hold the Line.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, so listen. I think there's a difference
Speaker 1: between what we should be doing and what is reasonable
Speaker 1: to expect from this Congress. What we should be doing
Speaker 1: is taking these weapons of war out of the hands
Speaker 1: of civilians. In nineteen ninety four, then President Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: signed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which prohibited the manufactured, transfer,
Speaker 1: or possession of semi automatic assault weapons, including the Air
Speaker 1: fifteen and AK forty seven. The band expired in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, and gun control proponents like Senator Chris Murphy,
Speaker 1: I've been trying to get it back on the books
Speaker 1: ever since. But what would another assault weapons ban actually
Speaker 1: mean for crime in this country? Joined me once again,
Speaker 1: as the author of More Guns, Less Crime and the
Speaker 1: president of the Crime Prevention Research Center John Lot John,
Speaker 1: thanks for staying with us. Thank you. Let's start with definitions.
Speaker 1: We hear the AR fifteen similar rifles being called weapons
Speaker 1: of war. How does the government actually define an assault weapon?
Speaker 1: I mean, with the original Assault Weapons Band, you had
Speaker 1: Senator Guyan Feinstein's staff go through and look through canalogs
Speaker 1: of guns and essentially but check marks next to guns
Speaker 1: that they thought look particularly scary. They would also they
Speaker 1: also had a definition where if guns had two or
Speaker 1: more of a different combination like you know, threaded magazine,
Speaker 1: threaded barrels, or you know, could hold a bayonet or
Speaker 1: a grenade launcher or other things. I had two or
Speaker 1: more of these different characteristics, than the guns would be banned. Look,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been a lot of academic research has
Speaker 1: been done. There's been research that was even paid for
Speaker 1: by the Clinton administration that simply hasn't found any benefits
Speaker 1: shall impact in terms of any type of buy on
Speaker 1: crime or any type of mass public shooting. There's a
Speaker 1: simple reason for that, simply banning guns based on how
Speaker 1: they look. I mean, they often refer to these as
Speaker 1: military style weapons where the keyword is style. Look at me.
Speaker 1: At least if you talked about banning guns based on
Speaker 1: how they function, it might make some sense. The three
Speaker 1: different types of guns out there. Generally, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about rifles, there's manually loaded guns where you pull a trigger,
Speaker 1: a bullet comes out, and then you have to physically
Speaker 1: yourself put another bullet in the chamber. You have semi
Speaker 1: automatic guns where one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out,
Speaker 1: the gun reloads itself, one pull the trigger, one bullet
Speaker 1: comes out, and so on, and then you have fully
Speaker 1: automatic guns machine guns where as long as you have
Speaker 1: the trigger depressed, bullets are going to come out. We're
Speaker 1: not talking about machine guns here, despite many times the
Speaker 1: media refers to them as that. We're talking about semi
Speaker 1: ont guns. Eighty five percent of the handguns sold in
Speaker 1: the United States are semi automatic guns. Very similar percentage
Speaker 1: of rifles in the United States or semi automatic guns,
Speaker 1: so the vast majority in If you're using a gun defensively,
Speaker 1: having a semi automatic gun can be very beneficial if
Speaker 1: you're facing more than one attacker and have to fire
Speaker 1: the gun more than once, or you fire and miss,
Speaker 1: or you fire and wound, but don't incapacitate the attacker.
Speaker 1: You may be very thankful that the gun quickly reloads itself.
Speaker 1: If you have to manually put another bull in the chamber,
Speaker 1: you may not have the luxury of time to go
Speaker 1: and fire the gun again. But here's the deal with
Speaker 1: the AR fifteens. They're essentially hunting rifles that just look
Speaker 1: on the outside like a military weapon. No military in
Speaker 1: the world uses these guns. In fact, they're considered small
Speaker 1: caliber hunting rifles. You know, point two two three, It
Speaker 1: tells you the diameter of the bullet. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit over point two two inches in diameter. People may
Speaker 1: be familiar with twenty two caliber rifles that are there.
Speaker 1: They know that in any type of mass production, that's
Speaker 1: the most common small caliber bullet that you have. In fact,
Speaker 1: most states won't allow you to use an air of
Speaker 1: fifteen to go and hunt deer because the concern that
Speaker 1: the caliber isn't large enough to make sure that you'll
Speaker 1: kill the deer. It's more likely that you'll just end
Speaker 1: up wounding the deer that's there. They don't want the
Speaker 1: deer to run off and suffer someplace, but look to
Speaker 1: go with John John. Let me ask, because because he
Speaker 1: touched on this, The Biden administration line on this is
Speaker 1: he will say we know what works, and he'll say
Speaker 1: specific Joe Biden will say I was a part of
Speaker 1: what worked, which was this nineteen ninety four assault weapons ban.
Speaker 1: What data do they point to? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they say, well, there are fewer mass shootings after this.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Well, okay, you may. If you look
Speaker 1: at mass public shootings, you may, depending upon which data
Speaker 1: set that you look at and how it's to find,
Speaker 1: you may find a drop of one or two, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the rate in the ten years before
Speaker 1: versus the ten years after. Or you may find no,
Speaker 1: you see no change in terms of the number of
Speaker 1: attacks with assault weapons. You know, it's not statistically significant.
Speaker 1: It's very tiny, even if you use the data sets
Speaker 1: that they want, with the way that they want to
Speaker 1: go and selectively define the things that are there. But
Speaker 1: even if you use the data sets and the way
Speaker 1: they want to use it, there's another way to look
Speaker 1: at it, and that is to go and look at
Speaker 1: the percent of mass public shootings involving assault weapons. So
Speaker 1: even if you take their numbers, okay, the way that
Speaker 1: they want. What you find is that the percentage of
Speaker 1: attack using assault weapons actually rose during the time that
Speaker 1: there was the assault weapons ban and fell afterwards. So
Speaker 1: if the band is going to be responsible for any drop,
Speaker 1: no matter how tiny it is, then surely the share
Speaker 1: of attack using assault weapons is going to have to
Speaker 1: fall over that period of time. And the opposite is true,
Speaker 1: because there's no way it's going to be driving the
Speaker 1: drop in the total if the share, if you don't
Speaker 1: have a relatively bigger drop in the number of attacks
Speaker 1: with assault weapons that are there, and so you know
Speaker 1: it just they I can't tell you the number. There's
Speaker 1: been dozens of studies that have been done looking at this.
Speaker 1: There's one guy named Rivas who's professor at the Teaching
Speaker 1: College at Columbia who's done work on this is his
Speaker 1: own definition of these things, different from Jones and myself
Speaker 1: and others that have put together these types of data,
Speaker 1: and he's the one that they cite. But even if
Speaker 1: he use his work, it's not a statistically significant drop.
Speaker 1: It's like a drop of like one or two between
Speaker 1: those periods of time. And even with his share of
Speaker 1: attacks with the salt weapons goes up during the band
Speaker 1: and then falls when the band ends. So, John, I
Speaker 1: got to ask you before before we close here, what
Speaker 1: does your extensive research many years on this topic tell
Speaker 1: tell you and therefore all of us, about what would
Speaker 1: actually be effective at reducing violence with violence with firearms
Speaker 1: in America? What actually helps bring that down? Well, it's
Speaker 1: not rocket science. You want to make it risking for
Speaker 1: people to go and commit crimes if you want to.
Speaker 1: First of all, people need to know that less than
Speaker 1: eight percent of violent crime involves guns. Okay, I know
Speaker 1: Biden wants to talk about violent crime is so a
Speaker 1: gun problem there. But the way you reduce violent crime
Speaker 1: generally is the same way that you reduce violent crime
Speaker 1: with guns. You have higher rest rates, higher conviction rates.
Speaker 1: So when Biden went to New York in February for
Speaker 1: his fourth big speech on violent crime, if it were me,
Speaker 1: I would have had a Sister Soldier type moment. I
Speaker 1: would say, look, you guys cut the police budget by
Speaker 1: a billion dollars a year. Is it surprising you get
Speaker 1: more crime. You have district attorneys who are refusing to
Speaker 1: prosecute violent criminals. You have over half the inmates being
Speaker 1: released from local jails during this period. Time you have
Speaker 1: bail reform so that violent criminals are being let out
Speaker 1: on no bail. You know, here you have people that
Speaker 1: have committed attempted murder okay, who are facing multiple felonies,
Speaker 1: who are going to be facing decades in jail if
Speaker 1: they're convicted. What did you know and you let them
Speaker 1: out on no bail? What's their cost for taking doing
Speaker 1: another crime? I mean, if you're already facing twenty five
Speaker 1: or thirty years potential prison term, what am I going
Speaker 1: to do? Is the second life sentence I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you going to be the sentence is going to
Speaker 1: law enforcement and basically the opposite of the trajectory of
Speaker 1: the progressive prosecutors and the Democrats. The Democrat matt and
Speaker 1: mass incarceration Lineman here for years, John, always appreciate your work.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being with us, Thank you for being there
Speaker 1: and getting rid of gun free zones with regard to
Speaker 1: man's public shootings. But thank you for being there. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's all the time we have for the special edition
Speaker 1: of Hold the Line. I'd like to thank my guest
Speaker 1: Cam Edwards and John Lott for sharing their deep expertise
Speaker 1: on this issue. Bill O'Reilly is up next. As always,
Speaker 1: Fields High. Each morning, the President of the United States
Speaker 1: receives a highly classified briefing on the most important issues
Speaker 1: facing the country. It's called the President's Daily Brief PDB.
Speaker 1: It's delivered by America's spies and analysts. Well, now you
Speaker 1: can hear your very own PDB in the form of
Speaker 1: a podcast hosted by me Brian Dean Wright, a former
Speaker 1: CIA operations officer. Each morning at six am Eastern, I'll
Speaker 1: bring you fifteen to twenty minutes of the most important
Speaker 1: issues facing the country, giving you the critical intelligence and
Speaker 1: analysis you need to start your morning.