The Megyn Kelly Show - Guns in America： A Megyn Kelly Show Debate, with Stephen Gutowski and Mike Spies

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.080 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, which we are styling today

00:00:17.740 a show about guns in America. This is one of our signature debate shows, and today we are going to

00:00:23.660 take a deep dive into one of the most divisive issues in America, guns. While the majority of

00:00:29.260 gun owners are responsible, we are also all too familiar with the tragedies involving firearms.

00:00:36.140 And we are going to have a thoughtful, fact-based conversation today to help get you educated on

00:00:41.720 what's real and what's not, and what are, if any, gun reforms that could actually help prevent

00:00:48.700 future mass shootings, or in particular, teenagers or people who are not mentally well from getting

00:00:55.600 their hands on guns and using them against innocent victims. We're going to talk about

00:01:00.380 whether there are real solutions that we as a nation can agree on. We have brought together

00:01:04.700 two of the best minds on gun rights and gun control. Both men have broken countless stories

00:01:10.000 while covering the gun beat. Stephen Gutowski is founder of The Reload, and Mike Spies is a

00:01:16.340 senior writer for The Trace. Stephen and Mike, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:20.220 Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me, Megan.

00:01:23.940 All right. So Stephen, you are, the Reload is, I don't know, I don't want to say pro-gun

00:01:29.740 exactly, but just for the audience to understand, Stephen, you're more sort of on the pro-gun,

00:01:34.340 and Mike, you're more on sort of the gun control beat and focused on what measures we could take

00:01:41.000 to sort of roll back some of the problems we've been seeing. So let's just kick it off with this,

00:01:45.740 some stats for the audience. We, according to what I read, we had more than 45,000 people shot

00:01:52.700 to death in America in 2020. We had a spike in violence in 2021, and the vast majority of those

00:02:02.080 gun deaths were suicide. So it's not all homicide, but a fair amount of homicide too, and America is

00:02:09.300 the biggest gun country in the world. And in particular, what keeps people talking about it

00:02:14.580 is the mass shootings, right? Like what we saw in Michigan, this kid, Ethan Crumbly, going into the

00:02:20.120 school and shooting, you know, other teenagers. His parents have now been arrested. It's a fascinating

00:02:25.620 case. But we also see it when innocent civilians or police officers are shot to death by people who

00:02:33.140 had no business having guns or the kind of gun that they had. And that's where I'll kick it off,

00:02:37.300 because here in New York overnight, the second police officer died, who was shot by that 44-year-old

00:02:43.900 suspect. He also died. The suspect has died since. But these cops were called to this house in Harlem

00:02:49.660 by the suspect's mom. They were walking down the hallway to go into his room and see what was wrong.

00:02:55.860 And he came out. They didn't stand a chance. He came out guns blazing, shot the cops, both of whom

00:03:02.140 are now dead. One was 22. He was shot and killed. And now we have, and his name, by the way, was Jason

00:03:08.880 Rivera. And then there's Wilbert Mora, just 27. It's so awful. It's just so awful. And Stephen,

00:03:16.140 I'll start with you as somebody who is used to sort of defending gun rights. A lot of people looked at

00:03:20.820 that modification he had on his gun, which I understand was not lawful. I don't know that

00:03:25.280 that was the reason the cops died. You know, he could have shot him just without that modification.

00:03:28.700 But should that guy have had a gun, career criminal? And is there a gun law that could have

00:03:33.580 prevented it? Yeah, certainly. I mean, there's a lot to unpack with a situation like that,

00:03:39.780 domestic violence call that leads to, you know, the death of law enforcement officers. It's a

00:03:46.500 horrific tragedy. And obviously, I think most people would question, well, how could this happen? How can

00:03:51.900 we prevent this going forward? And there are a number of ways. I mean, oftentimes in situations like

00:03:57.600 that what you'll find, and this is true for many mass shootings as well, some of the most famous ones

00:04:05.140 that we know, the shooter was prohibited. They weren't legally allowed to own guns in the first

00:04:12.540 place due to their either mental health history or their criminal history, such as in this case. And

00:04:19.340 you know, the question is, how do you keep somebody who is already prohibited from owning guns

00:04:26.020 under federal law? So the entire country from obtaining them? And that's where a lot of the

00:04:33.140 controversy comes in, because, you know, there's different proposals on that range from better

00:04:40.420 enforcement. Let me just stop you there. Let me stop and forgive my interruption, but I want to make

00:04:44.480 sure we all stay on the same page. So he should not, this 44-year-old man now dead, the shooter,

00:04:49.980 should not have had a gun. Why? Well, if he had a criminal history that

00:04:54.540 included either a felony conviction or misdemeanor domestic violence conviction,

00:05:01.620 then he shouldn't have been able to obtain it, or at least he wouldn't legally have been able to

00:05:07.020 possess the gun in the first place. So we see it all the time, though, with criminals. We see it all

00:05:12.500 the time with criminals who can commit domestic violence or some other crime, some other felony,

00:05:16.260 they go to jail. It seems very easy. It seems very easy for them to get a gun. Am I wrong?

00:05:22.620 No. I mean, it can be very easy for people who are prohibited, people who are known criminals to

00:05:28.360 obtain guns illegally outside of the current, you know, system that we have in place to buy guns,

00:05:34.880 you know, through licensed dealers with background checks involved. You know, there's obviously

00:05:40.380 proposals to expand that system to private sales as well. That's where a lot of the controversy comes

00:05:45.760 in with the so-called universal background checks, because the idea there is that private sales should

00:05:52.760 also have to go through the background check system like sales from licensed dealers do. Although,

00:06:00.100 of course, in this case, you're talking about New York, which has a law like that in place already.

00:06:04.440 And obviously, a lot of criminals just don't comply with it. And they sell guns knowingly.

00:06:11.460 That's the problem. And this gets right to the heart of it right off the top, right? So it's like,

00:06:15.240 Mike, we do have tough gun laws in New York City. And yet, there was this guy sitting with this gun

00:06:24.700 with this unlawful modifier on it. Again, I don't think it wasn't the modifier that led to the death

00:06:30.280 of the cops. A regular old gun could have killed these cops just as easily. But the point is just

00:06:34.940 how easy it is, despite the fact this is a career criminal sitting there with a gun.

00:06:39.780 You know, I don't know. I'd love a real solution. I would. I'm not. I'm so open minded on this issue.

00:06:46.080 I've been the victim of a crime. And I've so I appreciate guns with the good guys who protect us.

00:06:52.620 But I have three kids and I certainly worry about, you know, school shootings and the other stuff,

00:06:56.480 too. So I'd love to see a gun reform that could actually stop the bad guys from getting the guns.

00:07:02.220 But we passed every single one of the gun reforms Joe Biden's pushing right now. That guy still would

00:07:06.540 have had this gun. Yeah, I think the problem across the board in America is that we're pretty weak

00:07:12.220 on accountability measures, which is what fuels the illegal gun market. So, for example,

00:07:17.440 one thing and this in some ways also in a different way relates back to the Michigan shooting that you

00:07:22.520 were talking about is we have we have pretty poor storage laws and regulation, especially when it

00:07:28.380 comes to firearms dealers. For example, it is as as investigations have shown that the trace is

00:07:35.160 done. There's no real requirement in federally licensed firearm dealers or places that sell guns

00:07:42.320 to store them in such a way that they're not easily accessible, which is why these like the smash

00:07:48.720 and grab situations where people basically just drive a car through the front door and take a hammer and

00:07:53.600 break glass and remove all the weapons and run out or saw a hole through the ceiling and drop in and

00:07:59.900 take all the guns like that. It's a big it's a it's a it's a it's a gaping hole in our system that allows

00:08:07.560 legal guns to be trafficked into an illegal market. And I think until we're a lot more serious about

00:08:16.060 regulating gun sellers, that's going to continue to be the pipeline. And obviously, the other issue,

00:08:21.600 which we have, how frequent an event is that, Mike, where people are doing this? We've been

00:08:25.780 following the smashing grab of the Gucci bags. But how often does that happen with respect to the

00:08:30.680 guns? Well, I wish I could give you like a good statistic on that. I mean, I think it's pretty I mean,

00:08:36.180 I think they are they're recognized as pretty easy targets. And definitely, you know, per the

00:08:41.500 investigation that I was referencing, we have quite a lot of video showing the ease with which people

00:08:46.240 were able to break into gun shops and steal a ton of weapons. So I just want to make a quick point

00:08:54.500 here. These are this is certainly a phenomenon that happens. This is one way that criminals get their

00:09:00.720 guns. Mike's correct on that point. But I would sort of question the idea that it's easy because given

00:09:06.520 the tactics that are often employed, like, as Mike suggested, they're literally crashing cars

00:09:12.380 through buildings to get to the guns, I don't know what, you know, that that adding an extra safe after

00:09:18.700 you're willing to knock down the wall of a building to get to the guns is going to be much more of a

00:09:24.320 deterrent in preventing these sorts of one tactic. Yeah, you know, sure. I don't mean it. I mean,

00:09:31.320 maybe that, you know, referencing the car is sort of an extreme example. There are myriad ways in

00:09:36.780 which people break into all manner of facilities, including gun shops. You know, it's it's it's it is

00:09:45.120 I mean, there's obvious there's there's never like a panacea. But in this case, I think another issue

00:09:50.800 when we're talking about like, how did this person get the gun? Another issue is, we don't trace data is

00:09:57.480 not publicly available per the law, right, Stephen. So that's something that we can't and and what do

00:10:03.420 you mean? There are there are the argument for meaning like, we until I believe was like the

00:10:09.300 1980s, 1986 used to be able to it was the ATF was required to make trace data on guns public. So

00:10:16.840 which is to say that the public could assess or can see where like a where where a particular gun

00:10:24.700 came from that showed up in a crime? Is that right, Stephen? Some some? Yeah, I mean,

00:10:28.420 getting this right. Right. Yeah, that's correct. There used to be more more granular data on exactly

00:10:33.580 what store sold, you know, how many guns that ended up being traced by the ATF. Of course,

00:10:39.040 obviously, the industry counterpoint to this. And the reason that it's not done anymore is because

00:10:43.960 doesn't imply necessarily that the stores are doing anything, you know, illegal or wrong,

00:10:51.580 just because some of the guns eventually end up years later, sure, using crimes. This became a

00:10:58.360 controversial thing. And that, you know, because basically, just any gun store that was near

00:11:02.680 a city would be labeled a bad Apple gun dealer. And that that was one of the reasons that that happened.

00:11:09.220 The only reason I point to is it just makes it more difficult to assess like trafficking patterns,

00:11:16.740 which is to say, it's not as if the ATF can't do it itself. But we all know that federal agencies are

00:11:22.000 usually fairly strapped. And as a public investigation recently showed with the FPPA,

00:11:29.020 they're not they're not necessarily that great at utilizing their own data. But sometimes

00:11:34.160 enterprising journalists, such as yourself, or many others, given the opportunity to do that,

00:11:39.940 you know, could potentially add an extra layer of protection, or at least transparency,

00:11:44.060 when it comes to some of the questions that we're dealing with right now. What did it say? I guess,

00:11:49.960 I think it's I think, you know, when it comes to a useful proposal, accountability seems to always

00:11:58.520 be the best deterrent, in my, in my personal opinion. So you know, when it comes to universal

00:12:04.520 background checks, which are far from a panacea, I would totally agree with that and are sort of

00:12:09.520 better than nothing, but don't even necessarily account for the most important, like, factors.

00:12:14.340 Let's stop. Let's go through it. Let's go through it. Let's have a let's have an easy to understand

00:12:18.080 discussion on the things that are being proposed and that get kicked around. And that, you know,

00:12:22.720 we know that Joe Biden wants, he definitely wants universal or uniform background checks.

00:12:28.540 So what does that mean? Right? Don't don't we already have universal background checks?

00:12:34.460 I don't know if you can call them universal, but background checks in most of the states, Stephen?

00:12:40.220 Yes. So under federal law, what the way it works is there's a specific system that was built for

00:12:47.260 commercial gun dealers. And so if you want to sell guns commercially, if you want to make a business out

00:12:52.600 of selling firearms, you have to obtain a federal license from the federal government. And if you're

00:12:58.240 selling a gun to somebody who is not similarly licensed, then you have to perform a background

00:13:03.200 check. That's how the system was designed to work. It specifically targets commercial sales and does

00:13:09.700 not regulate non-commercial sales. So used gun sales by just regular people who aren't selling their guns

00:13:17.440 to make a profit or build a business around that. So just to give a practical example of that. So if I

00:13:23.460 walk into a gun store in Connecticut where I live now and I say, I want to buy a gun,

00:13:29.920 they would do a background check on me. But if I went to my neighbor who I knew had guns and said,

00:13:37.020 can I buy your handgun from you, your pistol? She could sell it to me and I wouldn't have to go

00:13:43.060 through any sort of a check and it would be a lawful sale. Well, not in Connecticut because they have

00:13:48.120 state laws that deal with this as well on top of the federal regulations. But in Virginia where I

00:13:52.640 live, well, sorry, no, Virginia also just recently passed this. But Pennsylvania where I'm from,

00:13:58.020 that would be the case. Yes. If you're within state limits, if you want to buy a handgun,

00:14:02.680 handguns have also added regulations on top of them. You can't buy them across state lines without

00:14:08.380 going through a licensed dealer first, even used guns. So there's a lot of sort of complication that

00:14:13.660 goes into this stuff. But your example would be accurate in a state that doesn't have a universal

00:14:19.180 background check law in place, which is, to be clear, the vast majority of states in the United

00:14:25.340 States. So the vast majority of states would require a background check even in a private sale?

00:14:30.620 Would not. Yeah, would not. It's just a commercial sale. Okay. And when they do the background check

00:14:35.180 on me, what are they mainly looking for? Whether I've committed a crime or I'm on some sort of a,

00:14:39.980 you know, if it's a state that has a red flag law, I've been red flagged for some mental deficiency or

00:14:46.420 risk. Yeah. So under the federal system, what they're looking for is whether or not you've

00:14:51.360 committed a felony. So a crime that's punishable by over a year in prison or a domestic violence

00:14:58.600 misdemeanor. And there's, we can talk about this later, but there's some controversy over what exactly

00:15:03.660 constitutes a domestic violence misdemeanor. People want to change the definition there.

00:15:07.200 Uh, or if you've been adjudicated mentally ill as a threat to yourself or others, uh, through,

00:15:13.640 which is really a legal process as well. Um, and, and those are the main prohibitive.

00:15:19.860 What if I, what if I were adjudicated mentally ill five years ago? And, but now I'm fine,

00:15:25.220 you know, cause you see this, like a young man who, when he hits 20 has a schizophrenic outbreak,

00:15:29.760 he's showing signs of being threatening. And so let's say he gets a two month commitment and that's,

00:15:36.480 that's been documented, but now it's five years later, he's 25. He hasn't had any other issues.

00:15:41.340 Would that prevent him from getting a gun? It would, unless he has had his rights restored in

00:15:47.360 some way, which is a process you can go through. It's pretty arduous, but it would prevent him

00:15:51.560 forever. Yes. Yeah. Oh, forevermore. Okay. Well, that's good. I mean, that is not one area in

00:15:57.600 which I am pro gun at all. I feel like if you've shown signs of having, especially one of the

00:16:01.980 mental illness, mental illnesses that we know are often linked to gun crimes, you are one of the few

00:16:07.260 who's not going to get a gun. And I mean, as a country with over 400 million guns, sorry, not

00:16:12.560 everyone can have one. Certain things preclude you. And those people are on the list as far as I'm

00:16:17.980 concerned. Um, okay. So that's, that's the background check. So how many States then you, you tell me,

00:16:23.080 Mike, how many States, um, are more like Pennsylvania where it's like, well, the feds,

00:16:27.600 can do what they want, but if you want to have a private sale inside of our state, go for it.

00:16:31.140 We don't need any background check for you. I don't have the number on hand, but, but as

00:16:36.140 you're saying, it's definitely the majority. And I think in the States that have tried, you know,

00:16:41.120 more purplish States like Nevada that have, well, for instance, Nevada is a good example,

00:16:45.520 right? In the wake of that horrible mass shooting there, uh, at the, at the music festival, they,

00:16:52.460 through a ballot measure, I believe they, the, the, the citizens of the state of Nevada,

00:16:56.580 um, passed a background check law. And then the attorney general refused to enforce it by arguing,

00:17:03.800 uh, that privates like by, but it was effectively unenforceable. You couldn't, how could you,

00:17:10.580 how could you enforce the law? Like how could you, how could you require people to conduct background

00:17:14.640 checks if they're not, um, if they, if they're not, if they're not licensed stewards, right? Like

00:17:19.960 how would my neighbor who I love be saved? Like what dead database would she be looking at to figure

00:17:24.180 out whether I was a criminal or had a mental health issue? Well, I guess the, the way most of

00:17:29.760 these work with most of these state laws work. And I, if I remember correctly, I believe there's

00:17:34.200 only eight States actually, it's probably more like, I think it's like 10 now that have passed

00:17:39.600 universal background checks at the state level. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's somewhere around. It's

00:17:44.400 not, it's not a big majority, although they are, they do tend to be very large population States

00:17:48.400 like California, New York, Massachusetts, you know, so it's a lot of people live under this sort

00:17:53.560 of regulation already, but the way it usually works is they require you to go to a gun store,

00:18:01.340 go to a licensed dealer in order to sell the gun to the, the private party. And one of the common

00:18:07.260 criticisms of this policy is that it's basically unenforceable. There's how would law enforcement

00:18:12.780 know if you ever did that. Right. I mean, unless, unless the gun later on shows up in some other

00:18:18.080 crime, maybe they can trace it back to this, but, but that's one of the main criticisms that it's

00:18:23.540 basically unenforceable. Well, that's, and that I, what I was going to say is I think the way

00:18:28.840 there is that, that will always be a problem. So I think the only thing you can do to mitigate that

00:18:34.320 issue is to build in an accountability measure, which is to say like, you know, it's a backend thing,

00:18:39.220 but if you don't do a background check and you sell a gun to someone through a private transfer,

00:18:44.640 then they go and commit a crime with it, then you can be held responsible for it, which is

00:18:48.860 obviously it would be preferable to prevent that in the first place. But it's also like a, I mean,

00:18:54.380 it's a deterrent. And as long as you make it clear that that's built into the law, that seems like the

00:19:00.300 old, that seems like at least a potential way to address the issue that's reasonable.

00:19:05.060 Well, there's also obviously the concern that the other way of enforcing

00:19:08.720 universal background check laws is through a registry of guns, which is how some of these

00:19:14.480 states do enforce this. And, and obviously that leads to a lot of concern over gun confiscation

00:19:21.920 down the line, because if there's a registry, it makes it easier to, to confiscate the guns.

00:19:26.660 As you're actually seeing right now in Canada, where they have recently banned the possession of

00:19:34.560 AR-15s and similar rifles. And they have a registry of who owns those guns. So it'll,

00:19:41.200 once that goes into effect in April, it'll be interesting to see from certainly from down here

00:19:46.420 in the States, how that plays out.

00:19:48.760 Oh my gosh. How do you like to be the guy who has to go seize the AR-15s from the gun owners who love

00:19:55.240 them? And I actually, I'm dying to talk to you about AR-15s because they, it's a gun that's been

00:20:01.020 very maligned. It's, it's, it's used in a lot of these mass shootings. But is it really any different

00:20:09.440 from a semi-automatic pistol that you'd see any place in, you know, in most women's handbags in

00:20:17.560 Texas, right? We're going to pick it up there right after this break. And we've got a bit of

00:20:21.880 breaking news to bring to you when we come back. Don't, don't go away.

00:20:34.160 Stephen and Mike are back with me, but first, before we get back to them, let me bring you the

00:20:37.700 breaking news. Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court has apparently decided to step down

00:20:45.180 at the end of the current term. This first report was NBC News and Pete Williams, very long-term

00:20:51.400 Supreme Court correspondents, a correspondent over there and justice correspondent.

00:20:55.840 NACNN going with it as well. Stephen Breyer to retire. He's 83 years old. He'll step down from the

00:21:01.360 current court again at the end of the current term, which would mean June. And that means they,

00:21:07.000 that Joe Biden will have another new Supreme Court justice on the court by its next term,

00:21:13.600 which would begin October 1st of this year. That's huge and will come as big news and welcome

00:21:20.600 news to the liberals out there who have been pressuring this guy to get the hell off the court

00:21:25.640 while they still have a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate that could confirm him.

00:21:32.480 And keep in mind, the Democrats do confirm the Senate. This won't be one of those things where

00:21:36.640 Manchin or Sinema will stop a Democratic nominee from getting up onto the bench. I mean,

00:21:41.980 unless it's somebody who really is totally unqualified, like we saw, for example, Harriet

00:21:45.840 Myers, who George W. Bush withdrew once he realized he couldn't get her through. And so this will mean

00:21:52.080 that a liberal seat on the high court remains liberal for all intents and purposes. I mean,

00:21:57.120 if you want to read the tea leaves, that's what will happen. He'll step down. Biden will choose

00:22:01.600 somebody else nominate and then they will have to be confirmed by the Senate. And that means

00:22:06.260 the current balance of 6-3 on the Supreme Court this time next year will probably look exactly the

00:22:12.800 same, except instead of having an 83-year-old man, he's the oldest man on the court right now,

00:22:18.500 in that one seat, they'll probably have somebody in their 40s if the Democrats play this right,

00:22:24.040 because you want to get somebody younger who can sit on the court for a long, long time. Big news.

00:22:28.180 And who knows if Monica Crowley was right? Remember her theory? If she was right,

00:22:34.860 who knows? It could be Kamala Harris. Biden has previously said that he sat on the campaign trail,

00:22:42.580 he can always change his mind, that if he were to have a seat, open up, he would nominate a black

00:22:48.100 female. She would qualify. Monica's theory was that they would turf Kamala Harris off to the Supreme

00:22:54.140 Court. They would draft in somebody. She believes the Hillary Clinton team would make it would really

00:23:00.700 want it to be them as VP. And that would pave the way toward better electoral returns for the

00:23:07.660 Democrats in 2024. It's fascinating. My goodness. OK, we'll continue to follow the news back to our gun

00:23:13.020 debate. Stephen and Mike are back with me. And let's talk about the AR-15. AR-15 rifles,

00:23:19.480 they look scary. They look like a machine gun. They're not a machine gun. They're nothing like

00:23:24.840 a machine gun. They're actually much more like the Glock that you pull out of your side pocket

00:23:30.000 and shoot. It's a semi-automatic rifle. That's my understanding. Stephen, you're the expert. But

00:23:35.720 more and more, there's a focus on these weapons in particular, trying to ban them. We talked earlier

00:23:42.780 about how there's about 400 million plus weapons in the United States. I read that there are 434

00:23:49.720 million guns in the United States, according to the Trade Association for U.S. Firearm Industry.

00:23:54.040 They estimate 20 million of those are ARs, some sort of AR weapon. So your thoughts on whether

00:24:00.860 that gun is getting a bad rap?

00:24:04.520 Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot to talk about with the AR. I think,

00:24:07.620 for one, it's the most popular rifle in the country, which is probably why it occasionally

00:24:14.380 will turn up in some of these high-profile shootings because, I mean, it's just so ubiquitous.

00:24:20.600 There's one literally over my shoulder here for those watching on YouTube. But it is a derivative

00:24:27.600 of the military rifle, a similar platform. But as you alluded to, a different firing mechanism

00:24:35.400 inside of it that only allows for semi-automatic fire, which is one round per pull of the trigger,

00:24:40.820 whereas the military version is capable of fully automatic fire, which is continuous fire

00:24:47.340 when you pull the trigger until you let go. So that is one significant difference in the gun's

00:24:54.480 operation. But otherwise, it's similar design, which is also probably one of the reasons why it's so

00:25:00.980 popular, because you have a lot of veterans who come back and want to own the gun that they

00:25:04.840 trained with, or at least the same platform. And it's the same reason that the 1911, the old

00:25:10.920 Army sidearm is extremely popular in America. You know, it was a gun designed for use in military

00:25:17.440 context. And it's now probably, if not the most popular gun design in the handgun market,

00:25:25.200 certainly one of the most popular. And, you know, they are really not used that often

00:25:32.080 in crime. Rifles as a whole, which ARs are just a subset of, are only used in about 300 murders per

00:25:41.660 year, according to the FBI. That's out of about 15,000 per year. And over the last two years,

00:25:46.920 that number has actually increased quite a bit, as you alluded to earlier in the show.

00:25:51.160 And so, you know, they get a lot of attention, probably because of how they look. They look similar

00:25:57.280 to the military gun. They are a similar design. But when you look at the data, they're clearly not

00:26:04.600 drivers of the crime epidemic in America. And I don't think they were drivers of the murder spike

00:26:12.560 we've seen over the last two years, either. These aren't guns that are commonly used by criminals

00:26:17.380 in their activities. So that I think is an important distinction to make.

00:26:23.140 Mike, we saw them used, an AR-15 was used in the Parkland shooting in Florida, in the school

00:26:28.500 shooting there, where I think it was 17 kids were killed. Then there are AR-style, AR-15 style

00:26:40.020 rifles, because AR-15, I guess, is a brand name. So you have guns that look just like that.

00:26:45.260 One was used in Aurora, Colorado, that movie theater, mass shooting.

00:26:49.720 Sandy Hook, the worst. I mean, I mean, honestly, just the most unfathomable mass shooting of all

00:26:56.760 time. So that this leads people, I think, in great frustration, including myself, saying,

00:27:03.940 what the hell can we do? What can we do? Do everything. Do everything. That's that leads

00:27:11.700 people to say, get rid of the AR-15s. But I I just don't. That's not the that's not realistically

00:27:16.420 the answer. It's the same thing as a handgun, which is what was used, for example, in Virginia

00:27:21.300 Tech, the most deadly mass shooting we've had of all time. I mean, at least in recent history

00:27:28.180 at a school, I mean. So you tell me whether the AR-15 is being sort of wrongly targeted

00:27:35.020 or singled out.

00:27:35.960 Well, I think, first of all, everything Stephen said is right. And so it's worth like looking

00:27:44.140 at statistics and numbers. And the point you're making is also correct, too. I mean, ultimately,

00:27:48.620 it's a small it's a it's a small figure in a much vaster scale of gun homicide. I mean,

00:27:54.500 it's just the problem, I guess, is it has an outside presence because of where it has shown

00:28:01.480 up historically, which are these like milestone mass shooting events that are really if you

00:28:08.120 think about it, they're they're they're fairly akin to acts of terrorism in the sense that

00:28:13.500 like it's while they're ultimately still not frequent, they're persistent enough that they

00:28:21.000 upset the social contract, especially in places that we expect to be safe, whether that

00:28:26.680 be our children's schools or the, you know, church, a concert, the movie theater, any of

00:28:34.280 the places that you're talking about. So it obviously it's it's more it's it becomes like

00:28:38.840 it's a it's a it's a symbol. And and that, I guess, is why people are so drawn to it, because

00:28:44.600 it's it creates an obviously visceral reaction, especially because think about the things that

00:28:50.200 are tied to or the deaths of children. That's, I think, the first thing people come to mind,

00:28:56.120 I think the AR first became widely recognized after Sandy Hook as like as a tool, as a tool of

00:29:03.080 terror. But but if you were if you were actually seeking, and I think that everybody is most people

00:29:09.240 we are anyway, to address like everyday gun violence, then, of course, like banning the AR

00:29:15.800 is really not going to make a dent in that. And that's not going to be the thing that's going to

00:29:20.280 change the lives of people who actually live with this on a daily basis, which is, again,

00:29:25.560 why I could come back to just it's why it feels like accountability is the most important thing.

00:29:31.320 I mean, you're talking about the Michigan shooting and the fact that the in the school

00:29:35.640 there that the the parents are being prosecuted for that. That's an incredibly, as you know,

00:29:40.440 an incredibly rare outcome. People who traditionally don't secure their firearms in such a way in which

00:29:48.680 their children can't get a hold of them are not you are even even when states have laws that seek

00:29:55.400 to hold people accountable for for failing to secure their firearms in such a way that minors can't get

00:29:59.880 them there. Those cases are rarely prosecuted in the first place. So let's just let's pause there,

00:30:07.480 because that kid, he's 15 years old. His parents wanted him to have it like that case is an outlier in

00:30:14.280 that they got him the gun. They knew he was having trouble. The school certainly had identified him

00:30:19.960 as a disturbed kid. And the parents were celebratory of him having the gun. I mean,

00:30:24.760 even if you had a law that said you must secure the gun from the child, do any of us believe these

00:30:29.720 parents would have said, make sure you lock it up so that he can't get it? They were thrilled that he had

00:30:35.240 it. No, I, I, presumably they're, I mean, well, they bought him a gun to use, which is less,

00:30:42.440 which is, I think the less typical scenario than a parent owning a gun that is not the child and

00:30:47.160 just leaving it unsecured so that somebody can like go easily retrieve it. So it's, I mean,

00:30:52.120 in some ways the scenario is unique because it was, in theory, it was his. Whereas like a more typical

00:30:57.080 scenario would be like Newtown, right? Where the kid gets his mom's gun and then wreaks havoc with it.

00:31:02.600 Right. So yeah, that's also, but that's also in, in also in that situation though,

00:31:08.680 just knowing what we now know about that sick, sick killer at Newtown, nothing would have stopped

00:31:15.800 him. You think about if the mother put a lock on the gun unit cabinet that he wouldn't have

00:31:20.360 broken it and got like, it's absurd. These mass killers will kill. They will find a way. This is

00:31:27.560 what drives me nuts about the gun debate. Look, and I said this, I was on the air at NBC after Florida

00:31:32.040 and Parkland. And I said, everything has to be on the table. You know, this has to stop happening.

00:31:38.360 Everything needs to be on the table. There can be no NRA shutdowns of the discussion. There can be no

00:31:43.080 nothing's on the table, like something's off limits. But the thing I always come back to is

00:31:49.080 show me the thing that would have stopped it. And for me, and I'm happy if you want to talk me out of

00:31:55.240 this. For me, I always come back to we need better interventions when we see somebody's mental health

00:32:02.120 going south. It's talk about red flags. Red flags are almost always all over these mass shooters.

00:32:08.520 Almost always. It's very rare that you can look back and say there was nothing we should have seen.

00:32:12.600 What we need is a meaningful place to put them and make it easier to commit them while that aura of

00:32:18.600 concern suspicion is around them. I think that's true. I don't I don't. And it's certainly like I

00:32:26.280 don't you know, I don't think taking stricter measures when it comes to like, you know, gun

00:32:31.720 storage and having like a robust public education campaign in support of those laws to like let

00:32:38.920 people know that they exist would be at the exclusion of also having like a far better system for dealing

00:32:45.160 with people who are like struggling with their mental health. I mean, I think that those things

00:32:49.080 probably, in fact, should and ought to go hand in hand with each other. You know, I and I so that

00:32:54.760 that's, that's true. Can I say for sure that like, if there was, you know, if there was a law on the

00:33:02.120 books that said, like, if you have a gun, you're required to secure it in such a way, so your minor

00:33:08.360 can't get it. And if they do, you're going to be held liable and prosecuted in some way with,

00:33:13.240 you know, whatever, whatever the penalty is, if that was widely understood to be the law,

00:33:19.640 would it eliminate like these situations? No, no, no, not any more than having like a limit on

00:33:25.320 the legal limit on alcohol consumption, for when you're going to drive a car has eliminated drunk

00:33:29.880 driving. But what I mean, I usually the function of the law, most of the time is, is, is to be like,

00:33:39.000 is to, is to be a deterrent. Is it, is it not? I mean, that's sort of the, it doesn't fix everything.

00:33:44.520 You're looking to diminish, not to, not to entirely eliminate. I mean, you'd like to eliminate,

00:33:49.160 but I see your point. Well, what about, what do you make of that?

00:33:52.920 I just have two points to make here real quick.

00:33:54.760 Yeah, go ahead, Stephen.

00:33:56.600 Because, you know, that's fair, right? Obviously, certainly, sometimes you could get arguments that

00:34:01.160 if it doesn't completely eliminate the problem, you know, it's completely useless altogether. And,

00:34:06.120 you know, Mike's point there is fair that about diminishing and how law works in real life,

00:34:10.520 that you're not going to, by making murder illegal, you don't eliminate murder, but it

00:34:14.760 doesn't mean it should be legal. I understand that. Two points, though. One, you know,

00:34:22.040 a lot of these mass shooters, if you look through the history here, have, have been able to obtain

00:34:27.880 guns legally, including the Parkland shooter, because a lot of the red flags that they exhibited

00:34:33.880 along the way went unnoticed or undealt with. The Parkland shooter is a very good example of this,

00:34:40.520 because he had actually been involved. One, he had, you know, had suicidal ideation that he expressed

00:34:48.840 to school officials. He could have been committed for that. He was involved in several domestic

00:34:53.800 violence incidents, which he could have been charged over. Either one of those things would

00:34:56.840 have at least made him a prohibited person. And it would have made it much more difficult for him

00:35:03.560 to obtain a gun in that circumstance. You know, and there's, there's a number of shooters, including

00:35:09.560 the Virginia Tech shooter should have been prohibited, was prohibited, but was his records weren't in the

00:35:15.080 system. Same thing for the Texas church shooter. There's a lot of these examples of either situations

00:35:22.040 where the person ought to have been prohibited if somebody had taken action or they were prohibited,

00:35:27.400 but the system didn't work for various reasons. And, and so there should be more done about that.

00:35:34.840 Red flag laws have been one solution to this, but of course they have their own issues because,

00:35:41.000 you know, the NRA and other gun rights activists are amenable to this concept in theory, but in practice,

00:35:48.120 they've been opposed to most of the actual laws that have been passed because they don't deal with a

00:35:54.680 number of problems. One, they don't have the due process protections that a lot of people would find

00:36:02.280 necessary for something like seizing a gun from someone, even temporarily, because, you know, owning a gun

00:36:09.480 is, is a constitutionally protected right in America. And it's just very serious thing to, to, you know,

00:36:15.880 takes that right away from somebody, especially with things like ex parte hearings or without,

00:36:21.240 you know, legal representation for the person being accused. And then on, on the other point,

00:36:28.360 you know, assault weapons bans have been sort of the common response to most mass shootings,

00:36:34.440 including Parkland or Sandy Hook or any number of, of these attacks that have, as you guys mentioned,

00:36:41.400 featured AR-15s being used. Um, but the way that they work in practice, it's very questionable as

00:36:48.840 to how much of an effect they would have. Well, what's included in an assault weapons ban? I mean,

00:36:53.960 in a semi-automatic weapon, they're like, we, how are we going to get all those?

00:36:57.640 Right. Well, so usually the way that they are written is that they go after effectively cosmetic features.

00:37:05.160 And this is the common critique of them, that you can't have a pistol grip with a flash hider

00:37:11.240 on a semi-automatic rifle that also accepts detachable magazines. And so, you know, you can

00:37:18.840 have a gun that looks, that has all the same functionality as an AR-15, but remains legal under

00:37:27.480 an assault weapons ban because it doesn't have the sort of cosmetic features that an AR-15 has,

00:37:33.400 or you can actually, and this, this commonly happens, you can modify an AR-15 to just remove

00:37:39.480 the cosmetic features that are actually banned under these proposals. And, you know, in the end,

00:37:44.600 they're kind of designed oftentimes, uh, to make it slightly more inconvenient for, uh, somebody who's

00:37:53.160 trying to perpetrate a mass shooting to carry one out rather than dealing with, you know, perhaps the

00:37:59.240 red flags of, uh, potential perpetrator instead, like the, the, you know, magazine capacity limits,

00:38:06.120 the, uh, one of the main arguments for why those might be effective against mass shootings is that

00:38:11.720 the shooter would have to reload their gun more often in theory, if you were able to eliminate the

00:38:17.560 hundreds of millions of, uh, high capacity magazines that are now in circulation in the United States.

00:38:24.840 And so this sort of, I think there's a lot of, uh, almost magical thinking that goes into some of

00:38:30.360 these restrictions that happen to be, unfortunately, the main policy prescriptions that we've been

00:38:35.720 debating for 30 years. There's a lot of other things that we, we could, uh, we could look at in

00:38:42.840 terms of how to prevent these things. I mean, red flag laws are more recent innovation that has

00:38:48.520 unfortunately become extremely polarized. Uh, they only really pass in blue states at this point because,

00:38:54.200 because of the opposition I mentioned earlier that there isn't really, it doesn't seem to be a lot

00:38:59.240 of actual, uh, interest among our political leaders to come together and try to work out,

00:39:05.400 uh, you know, a red flag law that deals with some of the critiques that people have of them.

00:39:11.160 Yeah. Like how can we make it, how can we ensure due process and make sure it's not

00:39:16.280 being used punitively, let's say by an ex-wife on a, on an ex-husband who doesn't deserve to have his gun

00:39:22.280 taken away. Just to correct something I said, it's not 70 million semi-automatic weapons in America.

00:39:27.480 It's 70% of the gun market is semi-automatic weapons. And again, the gun market has put,

00:39:33.320 has put 434 million guns into America. So, I mean, you're talking hundreds of millions of

00:39:39.000 semi-automatic pistols out there. There's no way of seizing them. That's not happening. That's just not.

00:39:44.600 Yeah. And so you, we, we pacify ourselves by saying, well, automatic weapons ban or

00:39:48.600 assault weapons ban. So we'll get like the worst of the worst. Okay. You're still going to have

00:39:53.000 hundreds of millions of guns in America. And don't forget, as I said, the shooter at Virginia Tech

00:39:58.680 had two, had two semi-automatic pistols. That's, that's what he did. You can unleash a lot of hell

00:40:04.520 with just a semi-automatic weapon, you know, handgun, a pistol.

00:40:09.240 And those are never going to go away. They're not going to go away. So, so what's the answer,

00:40:15.320 right? So let's talk to the guys right after this quick break about, is there something that we

00:40:19.880 actually could do to make our communities safer against bad guys who get their hands on gun guns?

00:40:27.480 Don't go away. Remember, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11

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00:41:07.800 And there you will find our full archives with more than 240 shows, including our other debates

00:41:13.080 and discussions on climate change, on Israel and Gaza, on trans athletes, and more. Don't go away.

00:41:20.360 There are suggestions that communities with stricter gun laws may not be any safer than those that don't

00:41:34.720 have strict gun laws. But is that true? One of the many things we're going to get to today on our debate

00:41:39.780 between Stephen Gutowski, founder of The Reload, and Mike Spees, a senior writer for The Trace.

00:41:46.520 Okay, so we'll get to that in one second. But just looking at the list of things that Joe Biden

00:41:52.200 had been pushing on the campaign trail, we've talked about two of them, assault weapons ban,

00:41:56.840 universal background checks. The others that he has been pushing are an end to internet,

00:42:03.340 internet, firearm purchases. And then there's just sort of a slew of executive actions, which he's

00:42:09.680 actually taken in part and is under pressure to take, which we'll get to. But you tell me,

00:42:14.740 I'll start with you as somebody who is reasonable and pro-gun. Stephen, is there anything that you

00:42:20.540 think we can be doing? You heard Mike say more accountability for gun owners. But is there

00:42:26.560 anything you think we can be doing to try to prevent? I mean, we can't always stop criminals

00:42:30.540 from behaving criminally. But is there any way of cutting down on the number of mass shootings

00:42:36.440 on just how mass they are? Yes, certainly. I mean, one thing I would note, just going off what

00:42:44.740 you'd said before the break, is that there, as you mentioned earlier, there's 20 million

00:42:48.740 AR-15s and similar style rifles in the country. And I just want to put that in context that people

00:42:55.500 can understand. Because I think when you get to these big numbers, it's easy to just think,

00:42:58.900 oh, that's a lot. Well, the Small Arms Survey, which is a nonprofit that estimates these things,

00:43:03.440 estimates there's about 1 million small arms in possession of police in the United States,

00:43:08.580 in the entire law enforcement community in the United States, and about 4 million

00:43:12.200 in the United States military. So that gives you some idea of how impractical.

00:43:15.660 You mean like their personal use? No, just a-

00:43:18.960 Oh, on the job? Yeah.

00:43:21.380 Oh, wow. The entire country's law enforcement has about 1 million small arms.

00:43:25.520 So U.S. civilians own about 20 times that number in just AR-15 and similar rifles alone. So it gives

00:43:34.240 you a better idea of how impractical it is to actually try and collect all of those firearms

00:43:39.620 as a solution to these issues. Because that is something that you've had people like Beto O'Rourke

00:43:46.660 suggest. Obviously, not every gun control activist wants this, but it is something that's become-

00:43:52.520 Yeah. But it's something that people do legitimately want to try. But as far as solutions go-

00:43:59.060 Well, stand by, because I'll let Mike respond to that point, and then we'll go back to solutions. Go

00:44:02.820 ahead, Mike.

00:44:04.000 I was just going to say, you just highlighted a very interesting point. I mean, it just-

00:44:08.140 Which is to say that you've just pointed out that law enforcement is vastly outgunned when it-

00:44:15.760 compared to the American public. And we're talking many, many, many, many, many, many, many,

00:44:21.300 many orders of magnitude. And I guess, I mean, that sort of, I guess, throws things in sharp

00:44:29.720 belief for me. I mean, one of the things that makes police encounters, one of the factors more

00:44:33.980 fraught, right, is that police have to assume that any situation they're walking into, somebody could

00:44:40.720 have a gun. And so then it raises the question of, what do you do about the guns that are already out

00:44:46.240 there, right? That's sort of the point you're making. Like, you can regulate what's not on the

00:44:49.840 market yet, but there are already, as Megan, I think you said, about 400 and something million

00:44:53.720 firearms that are already in the hands of Americans.

00:44:55.860 Yeah, 434.

00:44:56.860 And that does- 434. And those are legal guns, right? That doesn't include whatever's on the-

00:45:02.020 what is the unknown, the unknown firearms. So, you know, it is sort of a problem,

00:45:10.720 for sure, that, you know, law enforcement doesn't know where those guns are and that they can't

00:45:18.580 actually be accounted for. I realized that, like, making the argument for a registry, and

00:45:23.700 I'm not about to do that, is effectively a political non-starter, though it tends to be

00:45:29.040 the case that arguments for any kind of regulation, including red flag laws, as you're pointing

00:45:33.720 out, often are non-starters. So, you know, what does it even matter? So why don't I just say

00:45:38.840 whatever I want? And in that case, I don't- I don't- I don't really buy the- I think it's

00:45:46.320 a fairly weak argument, which is sort of how this is made, the sort of abstract, slippery

00:45:52.660 slope argument that if Americans were somehow required to register their guns, it would open

00:45:59.060 the door to a certain kind of tyranny in which, you know, there would be mass gun confiscation.

00:46:04.140 I know you're pointing out what's happening in Canada with AR-15s. All the points that

00:46:08.400 have been made here about AR-15s are valid and right. There is, I think, a question that

00:46:13.500 is asked, which is, like, what civilian application do these weapons have? You could say the same

00:46:19.740 thing about handguns, too. But I think that's sort of the point that gets raised, because

00:46:24.100 they show up, because they- because their analog is the military rifle that you were talking

00:46:29.140 about. I get it. You're explaining why they continue to be targeted without defending

00:46:35.460 necessarily the targeting. Because if AR-15s, if we could get rid of those and get rid of

00:46:41.800 mass shootings, I mean, every mom I know would be in line to do that, to vote for the guy who

00:46:46.160 would do that. But it's- we all know the truth. It's not going to. You know, as I said, 70- somebody

00:46:51.920 will do the math on 70% of 434 million and tell me how many semi-automatic pistols there are.

00:46:57.240 Okay, so one more quick break, because we do have to pay bills, and then get to the solutions

00:47:02.020 and about what Joe Biden's pushing now, and also whether more and more states should pursue

00:47:06.500 the equivalent of the Texas abortion ban approach on guns, because now at least three states are.

00:47:15.240 Will it succeed? Don't go away.

00:47:17.060 We're about to get into solutions, and one of the ones proposed by Joe Biden is smart guns.

00:47:29.060 Smart guns. He has said that he would like to see eventually 100% of all the new guns sold in America

00:47:35.720 be, quote, smart guns. Stephen, what is a smart gun, and is that a smart idea?

00:47:41.020 Yeah. Well, he's actually said something more extreme than that, especially during the debates

00:47:46.080 that he wanted all guns immediately to only be sold as smart guns, which right now is not possible

00:47:54.760 because there isn't a single one on the market. However, there are some coming to market this year,

00:48:01.180 and I actually was able to see one in person at the industry's trade show in Las Vegas last week.

00:48:07.840 But a smart gun is, the way that we talk about it generally in media, is a gun that has an internal

00:48:14.160 locking mechanism built into the actual firearm that uses either a fingerprint scanner or an RFID

00:48:21.760 reader paired with like a special watch or a special ring in order to unlock the gun so that the user

00:48:29.320 can shoot it. Whether they're a good idea or not is sort of up for debate about just whether,

00:48:37.520 you know, somebody would be interested in buying something like that, the more serious debate is

00:48:42.280 ever whether or not they should be mandated as what the president wants to do.

00:48:47.420 Well, what's the what would be the reason not to do it? Right. So to make it, I mean,

00:48:51.680 I guess the goal is that way your kid can't fire your gun if they find it loaded in your bedstand

00:48:57.800 or some thief who comes into your house and steals your gun isn't going to be able to make it operate

00:49:03.660 unless they steal your ring, which you presumably have on you and so on. So they're trying to

00:49:08.500 cut down on illegal thefts and other thefts of guns and to make them not usable.

00:49:15.380 That's the idea. Right. But as anyone who's ever used a cell phone with a fingerprint scanner could

00:49:20.500 probably tell you they are not the most reliable things. And you might not want to bet your life

00:49:24.760 on whether or not your fingerprint scanner can actually read your fingerprint at the moment you

00:49:30.160 need to shoot the gun. So you can see the sort of the obvious drawbacks of of this sort of technology.

00:49:36.200 It sounds great in practice or great in theory, and it could work in practice. And all these guns

00:49:42.280 that are coming market are still early prototypes. Frankly, I wasn't even able to actually manipulate

00:49:47.480 the gun or handle it at SHOT Show. So now we don't really know how well they work at this point.

00:49:53.040 And it's still in its infancy, largely because there was a mandate in New Jersey that said they

00:50:00.600 had passed the law in 2002. So that said, as soon as one of these sorts of guns becomes available on

00:50:07.260 the market anywhere in the country, that would be the only kind of gun that could be sold in New

00:50:12.000 Jersey, you know, eliminating completely traditional firearms, which a lot of people are highly skeptical

00:50:17.840 of the reliability of these kinds of guns. I mean, just think about, you know, the gun you use for

00:50:24.100 self-defense needing to be recharged in and of itself, even if the technology works perfectly,

00:50:30.060 is a problem that a lot of people are going to have.

00:50:33.740 Good point. The other thing is, Mike, that there was a writer's article pointing out that in 2014,

00:50:38.780 a German company put a smart, smart gun, 22 caliber pistol on the market, but it was pulled

00:50:45.500 after hackers discovered a way to remotely jam the gun's radio signals and using magnets,

00:50:51.820 they found a way to fire the gun when it should have been locked. So that seems like it should be

00:50:57.500 the end of the smart gun discussion. But am I wrong?

00:51:01.440 No, I mean, I look. In terms of just looking at the reliability of technology, it's definitely not

00:51:09.620 unfair to raise the questions that Stephen is raising. It's true. I mean, I struggle with the

00:51:14.660 thumbprint thing on my phone all the time. I guess, though, you sort of bring up a different

00:51:22.300 point, which is like, that's a problem because of a self-defense scenario. But the one thing that

00:51:28.480 we don't really address is that the vast majority of people who have guns for self-defense scenarios

00:51:34.540 are never going to be in a scenario in which they need them for self-defense. I mean, there's not like

00:51:39.620 an exact number on this, but they're just like traditionally the case that when it comes to

00:51:44.120 legal gun ownerships, specifically in outstates, rural areas, suburbs, that sort of drive policy

00:51:50.640 in a lot of places. Those are places that have generally fairly low rates of gun violence.

00:51:57.440 And again, I'm not saying, well, then that means that, you know, that's the point. I'm not trying

00:52:02.260 to make the point that that should mean, well, then, you know, for that reason, you should have

00:52:07.300 to have a smart gun because you're probably never going to have to use it. But it is also worth

00:52:11.400 stating that a lot of supply is driven by this theoretical idea that you're going to need a gun

00:52:16.920 in a situation that you're almost never going to be in. But that supply also then fuels the illegal gun

00:52:22.260 market, creating problems for those that are actually going to be in that situation.

00:52:26.660 What about this? Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, I mean, as far as

00:52:32.400 how often guns are needed in self-defense, I mean, obviously there's quite a lot of controversy over

00:52:40.280 this and there's several different estimates you could look at. Gary Kleck, who's a criminologist

00:52:45.480 at Florida State University, well known for studying this topic and has come up, you know, he's done

00:52:51.160 surveys that indicate there's two to three million self-defense uses of guns each year. Others have

00:52:58.660 put the number, you know, significantly lower than that. Although there was a DOJ review during the

00:53:04.500 Obama administration that concluded that, you know, whatever estimate you use for how often guns are

00:53:09.580 used in self-defense, it's still clear that they're used far more often for self-defense than they are

00:53:15.240 to commit crimes by, you know, any estimate that's out there. So, you know, just to speak to that a

00:53:23.280 little bit, I understand what Mike's getting at as far as like, hopefully most people will never have

00:53:28.180 to use the guns that they have bought for self-defense because nobody wants to be in a

00:53:32.020 situation where you have to use deadly force against someone else. But people do buy them because

00:53:36.640 they want to have that option, just like you would buy a fire extinguisher, even though you hope never

00:53:42.500 to have to use it. And that's where smart guns also come into play. It's like people should be

00:53:47.180 able to buy them if they want them. You know, people buy biometric safes that have some of the

00:53:51.160 similar drawbacks, right, that put a gun into. So, you know, I can see somebody wanting to integrate

00:53:57.260 those two things. What about, you know, my history tells me that the real purpose behind the Second

00:54:02.580 Amendment was people wanted to be armed in case the government came knocking and in case a militia

00:54:09.020 organized by the government came to sort of take over their their their house, their their

00:54:14.200 belongings and so on. And I'm not saying that's going to happen in 2022. Yeah, I'm not saying

00:54:20.180 that that's going to happen. What happened at Concord and Lexington, right? That was the spark of the

00:54:26.160 American Revolution was the shot heard around the world was fired in opposition to the British

00:54:30.980 Army trying to confiscate guns from the gun colonists. So, yeah, that that is a big part of the

00:54:36.120 American gun tradition. That seems to me an argument against the smart gun, because it's

00:54:39.860 like, why would you give control to like who's to say the government wouldn't be able to interfere

00:54:44.140 with all of that technology to shut down the use of your gun of everyone's gun, you know, in some

00:54:50.060 crazy, you know, conspiracy theory world. But I mean, if you look at sort of the purpose behind the

00:54:54.740 Second Amendment, what people worried about and there are some people who worried about our government

00:54:58.300 or whatever they have a right, it's written right into their constitution. I don't think they want

00:55:02.240 to give anybody hackers or far more nefarious actors, the ability to stop their gun from firing

00:55:09.340 right from a remote place. And that would be a concern. I don't afford it. And, you know, I'm not

00:55:17.080 one to really say which is the best or most useful policy. And if I put it, I mean, my personal

00:55:25.840 assessment is, I do think smart guns probably rank pretty low on that list. I think there are more

00:55:31.080 useful things or smarter things that could potentially be done. I am curious, though,

00:55:35.220 if I don't mind backing up for one second. Stephen, did you did you say there are numbers that suggest

00:55:39.400 that self-defense shootings outnumber criminal shooting? That seems I've never seen it before.

00:55:47.860 One thing that is surprising, there's a couple of things that are surprising to me about that.

00:55:51.740 Well, in fact, just the just the the idea of it that that seems that seems very shocking to me.

00:55:59.920 But two, there's also this other question of how self-defense shootings get characterized as

00:56:05.860 self-defense shooting, which is to say, I mean, it's an app. It's a subjective scenario that I mean,

00:56:11.800 is is retroactively characterized as self-defense by the person who pulled the trigger. That's not

00:56:17.640 and so it's but um, um, what is the number? I mean, what do you have? Do you have numbers?

00:56:23.380 Yeah, well, this is from a DOJ review that was ordered under the Obama administration. And I

00:56:30.580 believe it was 2014, where they reviewed some of the the studies that have looked at how frequent

00:56:39.800 defensive gun uses are. And to be clear, defensive gun use does not necessarily mean that somebody

00:56:45.240 actually shot their gun at someone else. It can be a scenario where the gun to, you know, stop to

00:56:52.680 deter someone from attacking them similar situation. And those are Gary collects numbers are self

00:56:57.500 reported. It's a survey. So some of those uses may even be, you know, illegal. In theory, although,

00:57:04.420 you know, Gary collects written a lot about this, I'd encourage people to, you know, go and read his

00:57:08.700 his actual writing, uh, to get a better view of it and some of the critiques of it as well as as you've

00:57:13.980 mentioned here. Um, but yeah, effectively, you know, DOJ compared that and some other estimates that put

00:57:20.200 the numbers lower. Uh, there, there's a couple of, uh, uh, crime surveys, uh, that, that are done each

00:57:26.540 year, uh, by different institutions that, that somewhat address gun, uh, defensive gun uses that put the

00:57:34.400 number lower, maybe half a million instead of 2 million to 3 million a year. And then, uh, you know,

00:57:40.560 they looked at the number of, of, uh, crimes committed with a firearm as well, which tend to

00:57:45.780 be in the a hundred thousand range, not necessarily murders. Like we talked about murders earlier.

00:57:50.380 That's obviously a smaller number, but, uh, but you know, so you get, um, you, when you, when the DOJ

00:57:58.500 looked at those two comparisons, they found that whatever the estimates were, you know, and there is range

00:58:03.900 defensive gun use was still more common than criminal gun use in the United States. Uh, and

00:58:09.340 so that, that was just my, the point I was getting at as far as, uh, you know, what, what the information

00:58:14.880 is available out there on how guns are used. Um, certainly even with 3 million gun use, defensive

00:58:20.860 gun uses a year, that's still, uh, you know, what the less than 1% of all guns being used in self

00:58:26.420 defense, uh, you know, as we've mentioned earlier, cause there's over 400 million in the country.

00:58:32.000 So, uh, you know, uh, you know, go ahead, Mike, I mean, I think like this is one thing

00:58:38.520 that's interesting, you know, just to at least talk about is that the, the idea of, of self

00:58:44.380 defense as a right, I don't mean with a gun specifically, just in general, you know, I don't,

00:58:49.200 it's sort of inarguable. One should have the right to defend themselves, but it's interesting

00:58:54.600 you know, self defense is also, I mean, it's, it is, it is also, it's a, it's also a marketing

00:58:59.580 concept. Um, and the problem with that, going back to what I was saying earlier is that that

00:59:07.940 marketing tends to be directed at communities that are, again, have, have generally fairly

00:59:15.100 low rates of gun violence. And I think it would, it would be pretty hard to challenge the idea

00:59:19.020 that most gun owners will never encounter that kind of situation where they'll have to,

00:59:24.880 well, they'll have to pull their gun. But because, because that, I mean, again, it's because

00:59:31.020 that's a driver of supply. Um, and because we have this issue in which, uh, as I was saying

00:59:39.600 earlier, gun sellers are not really required to secure their firearms in such a way that it's,

00:59:45.240 it's, it's, it's ultimately they're, they're fairly easy targets for, for theft. And also

00:59:49.340 this is an ATF problem. The ATF does a pretty bad job at shutting down gun dealers that engage

00:59:55.700 in trafficking activity. You know, uh, inspections are, uh, not conducted as frequently as they should

01:00:04.540 be. As you know, you're not allowed to, you're not allowed to inspect a store more than one time

01:00:09.580 a year if that store gets inspected at all. Um, uh, stores off stores that engage in bad activity,

01:00:17.160 whether it be like poor accounting of inventory, other red flag issues. Often they're let off with

01:00:23.380 a warning multiple times when it becomes fairly clear that they're engaged in trafficking. Uh,

01:00:29.800 and obviously those weapons wind up in the communities where they, where guns are used in a,

01:00:35.380 in a way that sort of terrorizes, you know, sort of terrorizes people on a, on a daily basis. Um,

01:00:42.020 and I think, so anyway, this is all a way to say if, if I were to pick, and I think this is where I'll,

01:00:47.940 I'll say something that probably everybody will disagree with, but if I were, if I, if I was thinking

01:00:52.420 about it, uh, a useful tactic for accountability, um, then I think that it would make more sense to focus

01:01:00.000 on the sort of broad industry immunity that exists right now for the gun industry.

01:01:07.720 Okay. So now let's get, let's get to it because you've been pushing accountability and we haven't

01:01:12.760 really gotten into what does that mean, right? Because the gun, the gun manufacturers are not

01:01:19.000 allowed. They, they may not be held liable right now for the use of their firearm in a homicide,

01:01:25.400 right? We, we haven't done to them what we did to cigarette companies. Um, and though, I mean,

01:01:33.300 I, I don't think it's exactly the same thing, right? The gun manufacturers versus cigarette

01:01:37.220 manufacturers, but in any event, they are shielded from liability. And do you think that that shield

01:01:41.660 should be removed? I think, well, I mean, I guess I'm sure, or maybe, maybe the, maybe at least

01:01:50.640 amended. I mean, I think it's a problem that it's so, I mean, I know there are some lawsuits that

01:01:54.960 are proceeding right now and have gotten much farther than I think anyone imagined they would.

01:01:59.960 And I think it's, the law is frequently misunderstood as, as I think Steven has smartly

01:02:03.900 pointed out before publicly. It's not, the law does not allow, you know, uh, gun makers to,

01:02:11.840 to, to market products in like an overly sexy way that makes people want them. That doesn't,

01:02:17.240 that's not covered by industry immunity, but there is this question about whether or not if you're,

01:02:23.000 if you're a product and again, opioids are not a purpose, certainly not a perfect analog either,

01:02:27.060 but if your product is being, uh, somewhat chronically misused and leading to like a fair

01:02:33.520 amount of death every single year, what the question of like, what, for instance, like what,

01:02:41.180 you know, what, there are certain things I, I, you know, I don't know. I, I don't know.

01:02:45.440 I don't know the best way, but it seems, it seems, it seems like a problem that there's,

01:02:53.520 that there's no, that there's just, there's, there's no way to hold somebody accountable

01:02:58.740 for that or a company accountable for that that just sort of off the table. You know,

01:03:02.300 there's no, there's no avenue toward discovery, no way to know, for example, to what extent,

01:03:07.820 like, you know, companies are aware or what, what is it built into their model? To what extent,

01:03:12.420 like their, their firearms are going to end up being trafficked every year and wind up on,

01:03:17.220 you know, on the black market as opposed to the legal market. Uh, and is there, is there,

01:03:21.340 you know, what information, uh, are they internally keeping on, uh, distributors and how, uh, they're,

01:03:28.760 they're, we're talking about bad apple gun dealers.

01:03:31.460 But I mean, think about this. This is like, you know, they were.

01:03:34.140 That this is look, a gun manufacturer could be held liable if a person gets killed because

01:03:38.160 the gun malfunctioned and the person got killed because the gun wasn't made properly in the same

01:03:45.460 way as if my brakes and my car don't work and I, God forbid, get hurt. I can sue the car manufacturer,

01:03:51.760 but gun firearm injury is apparently the 13th leading cause of death in this country. And that,

01:04:00.560 that eclipses car crashes for the fourth year in a row, according to my data here. So,

01:04:06.440 so it's, it's more likely to kill you than, than a car crash is. Um, and yet five years ago,

01:04:13.840 it wasn't that way. You're more likely to die in a car crash. And, and, and yet we don't hold the car

01:04:18.320 industry responsible for drivers who take out the cars and don't drive them well and die or kill

01:04:25.360 somebody in the same way. We don't, we don't require the gun manufacturers to foresee improper use

01:04:32.000 of their product in a way that, you know, if you look at 434 million guns in America and consider the

01:04:37.860 fact that we've had 45,000 people killed by guns a year and 60% of those are suicides, you can't hold

01:04:44.260 somebody liable for a suicide. Um, it's like, you're getting down to numbers that are on a percentage

01:04:49.920 basis that are pretty small.

01:04:52.920 Well, that's true. I mean, I guess the problem with comparing it to the car industry is there's a

01:04:57.260 distinction between car accidents versus like a deliberate misuse as you know what I mean? I

01:05:01.680 mean, there are obviously some people use their car to kill people on purpose. Um, but most of the

01:05:07.160 time when people are dying in car accidents, it is because it is an accident. And I, again, this isn't

01:05:11.880 a, this isn't a, I don't want to suggest that this is sort of a perfect way, um, to, to put a dent

01:05:19.940 on like a, in a problem that play. I mean, I want to say, you know, we could say it plagues the

01:05:25.020 country. Really? It, it, it, it plagues areas of the country. Um, but I guess it's more like the

01:05:31.660 idea that it's completely off the table, uh, rather than considering each case on its merits

01:05:37.300 is sort of the problem from my perspective.

01:05:40.940 Well, uh, what I would question this just a little bit here, because I think if you were,

01:05:45.120 if there was proof that gun companies were intentionally selling guns to people that they

01:05:52.980 knew were going to commit crimes with them, uh, that they probably could be held viable,

01:05:58.500 even with the protection of lawful commerce and arms act, I haven't seen any evidence that that's

01:06:03.180 the case. Obviously there's the argument that you'd need to get to discovery and some of these

01:06:07.460 lawsuits in order to find the evidence of this. And fair enough, I suppose, but, but more,

01:06:13.020 more often what you're seeing with this controversy, and this goes back to the nineties as well,

01:06:18.620 the protection of lawful commerce and arms act was a response to a tactic used by gun control groups

01:06:25.160 in the nineties to enlist local, uh, cities to, uh, sue gun manufacturers over the criminal use

01:06:33.040 of their products by third parties. Generally years later, most guns that are recovered at crime

01:06:39.420 scenes, according to the ATF's trace data, aren't recovered until eight to 10 years after they've been

01:06:45.720 sold for the first time after, you know, the, the gun dealer sold it to a distributor who sold it to

01:06:51.820 a, uh, uh, or sorry, the gun maker sold it to a distributor, sold it to a retail customer. Um, you know,

01:06:58.560 so, so it's kind of hard to make that direct liability connection. It's not, it's not like, uh, you know,

01:07:05.300 Smith and Wesson directly to the man who ran out and committed a mass murder. I mean, it's, it's,

01:07:11.340 it's not that simple to trace the, and that matters. Proximate cause matters when it comes to

01:07:16.160 civil liability. And this was a specific problem with this industry. It's, you weren't seeing these

01:07:20.740 sorts of lawsuits against Ford for people who, like you alluded to earlier, go out and kill people

01:07:25.760 with their car, but cars by running them over intentionally. Um, you know, that you don't see

01:07:30.000 that sort of, uh, tactic used against them. And that's why the industry, the gun industry has this

01:07:34.800 particular law in place. Um, but while we're on the subject of liability, right. Make putting some

01:07:40.720 skin in the game for the gun manufacturers. Uh, there are now three States, California, New York,

01:07:45.580 and one other, uh, that are styling laws. They're drafting laws that look like the Texas anti-abortion

01:07:53.100 law. That's that was just challenged at the U S Supreme court where they, they understand if they

01:07:58.420 were to say no guns in California, it would be reversed immediately. But instead, because of the

01:08:04.380 second amendment, but instead there's, they're writing laws. Like if, um, if you understand

01:08:11.240 that, uh, somebody's committed gun violence or, or is with manufacturing guns, there can be a

01:08:17.800 private civil suit against them. Um, because we're declaring that you have a private right to sue

01:08:26.300 in, in such cases. And that is working right now in Texas. And there's a question about whether it

01:08:32.040 could work against guns. It was a concern expressed by justice Kavanaugh from the bench when they heard

01:08:36.700 the Texas abortion case. It's been a concern expressed by gun advocates, uh, who say this

01:08:41.700 is slippery slope. By the way, my, uh, crack producers sent me the article that I think you

01:08:51.800 were referencing, Steven. This is, um, from Forbes and it's talking about, uh, this is Forbes article

01:08:57.280 from 2018 is talking about a 2013 study ordered by the centers for disease control. And they are

01:09:03.940 saying that essentially, um, if you take a look at the data released by the CDC, uh, their data imply

01:09:10.940 that defensive, defensive uses of guns by crime victims are far more common than offensive uses

01:09:17.220 by criminals. Um, and it goes on from there, but in any event, okay. So liability, the three states

01:09:23.340 right now, California, Illinois, and New York are considering proposals that would mirror in

01:09:28.460 approach the Texas abortion law crackdown where they create a civil liability, a right, uh, to sue

01:09:34.700 civilly, um, against people who in New York, for example, violate New York's gun laws. So gun laws that

01:09:43.740 might not be upheld anti gun laws that might not be upheld. If the state just wrote them and start,

01:09:48.980 tried to start enforcing them may now be written in as broad and offensive to the second amendment

01:09:55.640 way as possible and could potentially stand if they just make it not the state who's going to

01:10:01.320 enforce this, but it's just creating a private cause of action by private citizens who see gun owners,

01:10:07.440 um, having a gun or having concealed carry in a, in a way that doesn't comport with a law that,

01:10:14.140 uh, that they would like to write. So you tell me, Stephen, whether this is troubling to you

01:10:18.920 and whether you think it'll work. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly, I think the trend overall is

01:10:23.580 troubling. Uh, you know, it feels like perhaps if things keep going in this direction, we're all

01:10:29.220 going to be incentivized to sue each other over everything. Uh, fair point. But, uh, yeah, I mean,

01:10:36.720 I think it was clear once Texas went down this road road with this sort of novel approach to trying

01:10:42.020 to institute a, uh, uh, an abortion ban, whatever you think of the underlying issue, you know,

01:10:45.960 these people can, uh, agree or disagree with, with, uh, abortion and whether it's be legal,

01:10:51.000 just like with guns. But it was clear that this would be used, uh, probably immediately, uh, on

01:10:57.800 trying to enforce gun control laws that couldn't otherwise withstand judicial scrutiny. And now you're,

01:11:04.960 you're seeing sort of, uh, the first grasps at, at this, uh, with California's governor,

01:11:11.520 uh, Newsom and, uh, the attorney general in New York, Letitia James. And, uh, you know, I don't

01:11:17.320 think that their proposals make a lot of sense because right now what they've said is just,

01:11:21.940 we're going to do the same things we're already doing with past laws. Like California already has

01:11:26.160 an assault offense ban, uh, and, and bans on homemade firearms that aren't, uh, serialized. And so

01:11:31.820 using this tactic for that doesn't make sense.

01:11:34.860 Tish James, the AG of New York, that's what she said. She said, I'm writing a proposal that would

01:11:39.100 allow residents to sue for violations of New York's weapons ban. It's like, well, wait a

01:11:44.020 minute. It doesn't make sense. The ban that's already on the books, right. Has been upheld by

01:11:49.580 the courts as constitutional. So why do you need to create, like, you're not, you're not doing what

01:11:54.080 Texas, what Texas did there. Texas intentionally wrote a law that they knew would be unconstitutional

01:12:00.320 if enforced by the state. And they just transferred sort of the right of enforcement to private

01:12:05.240 citizens in civil lawsuits. And that's how they tried to do the end around, like, unless that's

01:12:09.980 what these States are doing, they're, they're not doing the same thing.

01:12:12.640 Yeah, exactly. But I think that the, the idea has been planted and you could use this to really

01:12:19.880 to outlaw gun ownership or gun dealing altogether. Yeah. If you wanted to, and frankly, the Supreme

01:12:27.120 Court, it hasn't completely validated this approach, but by letting this law hang around

01:12:33.240 in this way, you know, I, my guess is that the courts will figure this out eventually. It is,

01:12:38.540 it is a hard tactic to, to come to grips with. It's my understanding, not a legal expert, but from

01:12:43.500 what I've heard and what I've read, it is a hard tactic to deal with by the, based on the way it

01:12:48.620 works, but I'm sure my guess is they'll figure it out at some point. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm not

01:12:53.940 privy to the thinking of any of the attorney general, attorneys general or governors in any

01:12:59.160 of those States, but it also, there's at least part of me that thinks that that approach is also

01:13:06.260 just a way to highlight the problems with the Texas law. I mean, I don't know that, that what it's like,

01:13:12.120 I don't, you know, it was sort of, it was, it was clearly as much of a, I mean, I, I don't know

01:13:17.600 that it's necessarily, you know, a thought that this is going to have like a, this is going to be a

01:13:21.820 really useful approach to, you know, um, to, to bringing down gun violence so much as just like,

01:13:29.320 if you're going to do this and infringe on the rights of so many people in Texas and turn people

01:13:33.900 against each other and into basically informants, uh, and upset the social contract, well, then we

01:13:38.620 can do the same thing too, as you were pointing out to like another sacred right that you care

01:13:42.740 about. And, and, you know, it just, uh, it seems like it's just as plausible, but it's a way to,

01:13:47.820 let me ask you a question. We haven't, we haven't touched on straw purchases and I feel like we

01:13:52.380 should, cause this is another big thing you hear from, um, people who want gun reform that we have

01:13:57.100 to crack down on straw purchases. So, uh, let me give you that one, Mike, what is a straw purchase

01:14:01.980 and is there any way of cracking down on it? I mean, it's when you, you're not able to purchase

01:14:08.420 a firearm. So you have somebody else purchase one for you who is able to legally buy one.

01:14:14.240 And is that, is that often done by, by gun salesmen with a wink and a nod? Like they know,

01:14:19.760 they know it's not the person, but you know, here you go anyway, cause I want the money.

01:14:24.700 Well, I don't, you know, it would be, it would be intellectually dishonest to me to suggest that

01:14:30.540 that happens often only because I don't, I don't know if there's a way of empirically measuring that.

01:14:34.400 Um, it definitely, so, but I mean, certainly there are plenty, I mean, there, there, there are

01:14:38.880 certainly gun dealers who know, uh, and are, are, you know, engage in those kinds of trafficking

01:14:44.420 scheme and are aware that they're selling to people like, you know, essentially to launder

01:14:48.160 firearms to people who aren't supposed to have them. Um, yeah. I mean, I think.

01:14:53.140 If they don't know if the, if the gun manufacturer, if a gun seller doesn't know,

01:14:57.540 then how do we crack down on it? Cause it's already illegal for somebody to do that.

01:15:02.300 Well, well, so one way to potentially crack down on it, uh, just potentially. And I don't, I mean,

01:15:08.620 it is again, another accountability measure, which is like in most places, I don't, I think almost

01:15:14.880 every place, and this has been a big fight in Philadelphia, which is where, you know, Stephen's,

01:15:18.620 uh, backyard or old backyard, um, which is putting a requirement. I mean, I guess in this case,

01:15:25.760 it would be, it would not be a stolen weapon, but I, you know, if you're most places,

01:15:31.440 you're not required to report to the police, if your firearm has gone missing. Um, if you had a

01:15:38.220 measure in place that required you to do that, and you were a straw purchaser, and then the gun you

01:15:42.740 bought wound up in the hands of somebody else who committed a crime with it, uh, that could be one

01:15:48.120 potential way. I mean, it's again, it's a, it's a backend. It's not a front end. I don't know that

01:15:51.900 you can stop it on the front end, but if, you know, if, if, if a straw purchaser, um, uh, shows up in

01:15:59.680 like a trace, I mean, that's sort of, uh, you know, that I can't really think of another way.

01:16:04.940 I mean, that's certainly the only. What, what I would suggest one that this is, this is an area

01:16:10.720 where you probably have broad agreement, prosecution of straw purchasers, people who are

01:16:15.140 intentionally lying, uh, to buy a gun for someone they know can't legally own one. I think a lot of

01:16:22.760 people across the spectrum on this particular point would agree that we want to see further

01:16:29.020 enforcement of this. Cause you, you don't often see, uh, crimes like that, or even a crime where

01:16:35.660 somebody who is prohibited, tries to buy a gun and fails the background check. Often these don't,

01:16:41.680 uh, they don't rank at the top of a federal prosecutor's priority lists. So they don't tend

01:16:47.720 to get there. They tend to be paperwork crimes. Right. And so they, they're not very sexy to prosecute,

01:16:52.280 but, uh, they are fairly important. I think most people would agree. And this sort of goes back to

01:16:57.720 your original question of like, how do we deal with, with gun crime? Uh, perhaps, you know,

01:17:02.720 mass shootings and your general everyday sort of gun crime are, are different, uh, problems that have

01:17:08.800 different solutions. But one thing that I think a lot of pro-gun advocates would say is stricter

01:17:14.560 enforcement of current gun laws, like straw purchasing, uh, infractions would be one way of

01:17:21.600 reducing crime, uh, going forward. And, and so this straw purchases, you know, if you, if you are more

01:17:29.180 often prosecuting people for committing them, especially in circumstances where it's, uh,

01:17:34.840 clear that they knew they were selling a gun or buying a gun for a criminal, uh, that that's

01:17:40.980 something that you could probably see quite a lot of agreement on.

01:17:44.320 Hmm. Okay. Let's, let me ask you the question of gun laws. If we tighten them up, um, you know,

01:17:51.360 New York city's got very tight gun laws. Most of the blue States have tighter gun laws than the red

01:17:56.360 States. Um, and yet we do see, you know, tons of murders and homicides in States like New York,

01:18:03.120 in New York city, in Chicago, which is in Illinois, um, and in California, which has, you know,

01:18:08.120 tight gun laws as well. And whenever that happens, whenever you see like record number of homicides in

01:18:12.920 Chicago, which we saw in 2021, people say, Oh, so much for the gun laws, right? Like the tighter

01:18:17.920 gun laws don't lead to a lower crime rate. So I don't know whether that's true. Uh, we did look up

01:18:26.400 a chart and this is from the Giffords center as in Gabby Giffords, and they are definitely not pro

01:18:31.240 gun. Um, you know, they want gun reform and they want it yesterday. And I understand that, especially

01:18:36.120 given what happened to her, but they went through and sort of ranked each state, all 50 States by the

01:18:41.920 strength of their gun laws. And so if you have a really, really tight restrictions, like California

01:18:47.240 does like their rank number one, in terms of the number of gun laws they have and how strong they

01:18:51.400 are. And then they said, how many deaths per 100,000 by guns in California is has only seven

01:18:58.840 deaths per 100,000. And then you've got, if you look up and down the list, the States that have

01:19:04.760 like an F from the Giffords center and rank at the bottom of the list in terms of gun law and gun

01:19:12.240 control, they do have higher gun deaths per 100,000. So this would seem Steven to put the lie

01:19:20.600 to the notion that these blue States that have very tight gun laws have higher death rates by guns.

01:19:29.020 It seems to be the opposite that the more loose your gun laws, the higher number of deaths by gun,

01:19:34.380 you're going to see in your state. Is that true? Right. Well, the first thing I would point out

01:19:38.280 there is you're talking about gun deaths, not gun murders, which is again, two thirds of those are

01:19:44.440 going to be suicides. And so the solution is again, another area where the solution for gun murder and

01:19:52.740 the solution for gun suicide are going to be very different most likely. And, and so, you know,

01:19:59.780 that's one thing to point out with these sorts of rankings that you see from the gun control groups,

01:20:03.720 every town did, did a similar one recently as well. And I would also point out that it doesn't

01:20:09.460 necessarily correlate, especially gun murders versus you know, the, the gun control rankings for

01:20:15.460 which kind of, which States they feel have the best gun laws. And oftentimes you'll, the argument

01:20:21.900 you'll get in response to, to this problem. Like for instance, Washington DC is far more has far more

01:20:29.240 gun violence than Virginia, even though Virginia has far fewer gun restrictions. Um, even with the

01:20:36.280 new restrictions that were passed recently here in the state. Um, and oftentimes the argument will be

01:20:42.160 that, well, uh, it's because, uh, Virginia fuels the violence in DC, which frankly is sort of specious

01:20:51.500 in my mind, because if that, if Virginia is the problem, uh, Virginia's gun laws, the problem,

01:20:56.720 why doesn't Virginia have the same gun violence issue that, that Maryland or DC has? Um, but, uh,

01:21:04.540 and then they'll often also argue that in States, uh, like for instance, um, um, Vermont that have

01:21:11.900 looser gun laws than, uh, most of the rest of, uh, new England, they also have low crime rates and

01:21:19.220 they'll argue that those low crime rates in Vermont are the result of the surrounding States

01:21:23.720 having, uh, stricter gun laws. So you, you kind of get this, uh, situation where they just are sort

01:21:30.680 of cherry picking the logic here, uh, in my opinion. And I personally, I'll let Mike, like

01:21:35.420 respond here in a second. I just personally, I think it's more complicated. There's a lot of things

01:21:39.940 that go into why a state has high violence rates or low violence rates. And it's not just whatever

01:21:45.440 their gun laws happen to be, because you'll get the same argument from, from some pro-gun people

01:21:49.620 as well, that, uh, you know, the States that have, uh, or areas that have more guns or lesser,

01:21:56.220 uh, uh, gun regulation have lower crime than, you know, rural areas are, have less crime than cities

01:22:02.800 do, even though most cities have stricter gun laws than rural areas. And it's more complicated than that

01:22:08.840 in real, in real life, I think. Go ahead, Mike. Yeah. Well, that's true. I mean, I think also,

01:22:14.360 you know, as you're pointing out, it's not comparing Virginia, for example, to DC is not

01:22:19.420 apples to apples. I mean, there are entirely different social factors that play in a city

01:22:23.380 like the district of Columbia, or even in New York. Having said that, even in New York,

01:22:26.760 with the exception of the last two years in which we had, um, you know, complete, like a once in a

01:22:31.460 once in a lifetime pandemic before that happened, gun crime in New York city was low, especially for a

01:22:40.620 city of 8 million people for many years. I mean, you know, post the high suicide, I mean,

01:22:46.820 high, high homicide rates of the eighties and early nineties, the city was like a, I would say

01:22:53.780 an exceptionally safe place to live until two years ago. It's still fairly safe. I mean, gun homicide

01:22:59.580 has risen, still substantially lower than the high rates of its worst periods, which is worth pointing

01:23:05.440 out. Um, I mean, it is also, we don't, we've never, we've never lived in a country where we

01:23:11.040 have any uniformity of law when it comes to guns anyway. So it's like, when we talk about Chicago,

01:23:16.640 I mean, you know, it's a city can enforce whatever ordinances it wants, but it's not like it lives on,

01:23:22.500 it's like a city's like got a wall around it. It's an island. It's next to Indiana. It's got

01:23:26.360 neighboring outstate areas that have different gun cultures than the city does. I mean, it's not,

01:23:31.540 there's no way to, you know, whatever, whatever law you impose, there's obviously the problem is

01:23:37.480 like, how do you choke off trafficking into areas that are prone to having high rates of gun violence

01:23:44.480 and ask them why those areas have high rates of gun violence? Usually they do, right? Because, uh,

01:23:49.980 of a number of social factors that I think we've sort of briefly touched on, whether it be like,

01:23:54.080 uh, lack of industry, uh, poverty, historical segregation, redlining,

01:24:01.100 all these things that have created problems within cities that have never really been addressed,

01:24:05.600 systemic factors that have never been touched or addressed, uh, meaningfully that sort of,

01:24:12.400 you, I mean, it's, it is that combined with easy access to firearms that creates, uh, centers where

01:24:20.140 there are high rates of gun violence. Um, let me, let me, let me zoom out for a minute. Okay. Because

01:24:26.860 what I've concluded now after this show is, um, we're up Schitt's Creek without a paddle. As I say,

01:24:33.460 we already have, the country is swimming in guns. It's a gun culture. It just is. It has been since

01:24:41.640 its founding. And we mere mortals who find ourselves living in 2022, there's not much we can do about it.

01:24:48.780 They was this way for hundreds of years before we got here. And it remains this way now,

01:24:52.920 practically, realistically, we're not going to change that. And so I don't, I don't see the

01:24:59.840 solution to homicide rates or mass shootings as crackdowns on the guns. It's not to say we couldn't

01:25:07.660 change things at the edges. So understanding that that's the best we could hope for in terms of the

01:25:12.520 guns. And again, the mental health discussion is a whole other discussion, which we'll have to have

01:25:16.540 in another show, because that's an area in which I really do think we could, we could make a difference.

01:25:20.960 But, um, you know, when somebody's crazed and wants to murder another person or nevermind a mass

01:25:27.040 murder, it's really hard to stop them by taking away this weapon or that, you know, you can use a

01:25:32.580 car, you can use a knife. We've seen it in London. We've seen it in Waukesha. You're like, you want

01:25:37.200 to kill a lot of people. There are a lot of ways to do it. So anyway, if I said to you this, Stephen,

01:25:41.760 you get, you get to choose one, right? As like, do you have kids?

01:25:45.140 I don't right now. Okay. But I have plenty of loved ones.

01:25:49.820 Yeah, exactly. So you, you care about, you know, your, your, your family or whatever.

01:25:53.740 You can choose one reform that you think will make the greatest difference in cutting down on

01:25:58.400 the gun homicide rate, the, you know, the gun mass shooting rate. What would it be?

01:26:03.820 Uh, probably stricter enforcement of current laws, uh, combined with, uh, community violence

01:26:09.520 interruption programs. I think those, those two things could be, um, make a real difference. I

01:26:16.380 mean, and, and I understand the pessimism, but I would point out that, you know, as Mike alluded

01:26:20.920 to earlier, there, the murder rate used to be much higher in this country than it is now,

01:26:24.720 uh, even after this, but it's creepy recently. So there, there are ways to, well, to your point,

01:26:30.000 yeah, stricter enforcement of laws. And of course the country's going in the opposite way right now

01:26:33.440 with these soft on crime DAs who, I mean, we, these cops, we kicked off the show with these two

01:26:37.660 poor cops who got murdered, um, by this suspect, uh, Friday night. And what happened in, in New York

01:26:45.140 that used to get you the death penalty. Boom. You kill a cop, you're facing the chair, period.

01:26:50.080 End of report. No longer. The new DA Alvin Bragg, um, is not going to enforce a bunch of laws that

01:26:55.480 are already on the books. He's not allowed to do that. It's not the same as prosecutorial discretion.

01:26:59.340 He's, he's changing the law with the stroke of his pen. I'm not saying that this guy shot the cops

01:27:04.840 because he knew he wouldn't be getting the death penalty, but he won't be getting the death penalty

01:27:08.720 because this guy changed the laws. We're going softer on crime. I do think it has a factor

01:27:13.980 in the higher crime rates that we're seeing, but can you just speak to, before I give it to Mike for

01:27:18.240 his one thing, the, the, the, the, the violence intervention. So we haven't touched that. And I've

01:27:22.840 read some of your articles on it. Yeah. Violence interruption programs are actually one of those areas

01:27:28.180 where you probably would see a lot of agreement as well, uh, because they aren't focused on trying

01:27:34.080 to ban certain guns or restrict ownership by law abiding people or anything like that. And, and it

01:27:40.680 also isn't using necessarily law enforcement, uh, uh, tactics to try and stop shootings. Uh, instead it

01:27:49.080 focuses on using community leaders and providing, uh, you know, community support to some, to the

01:27:55.740 small number of people who tend to be the ones most at risk to actually commit these sorts of

01:28:01.660 violent acts, because it's not like even in a large city, it's, it's not a lot of people generally who

01:28:07.380 are out there committing these shooters. It's a small group of people. And if you can, uh, intervene

01:28:12.720 with somebody that they respect, perhaps you can create a situation that off ramps that tension

01:28:19.180 and, uh, and, uh, reduces the potential for violence. And you have seen some studies that

01:28:24.960 indicate this, this approach has worked and you're actually seeing some funding being directed towards

01:28:31.240 this without much pushback from, uh, or any pushback really from gun rights advocates, uh, because it

01:28:38.040 doesn't interfere with someone's, uh, lawful person's ability to own firearms. Okay. Go ahead, Mike. One

01:28:44.840 thing. I think that's sensible, uh, setting aside societal factors and root causes, which I think

01:28:51.520 we were just touching on. If I had to pick one specific gun policy, um, I think, I think that I

01:28:58.560 would focus again on, uh, gun dealers, uh, specifically. And for, I mean, if we're, if we're

01:29:06.320 talking seriously about combating everyday gun violence, um, then I think that means better regulation

01:29:14.380 of, uh, of gun shops, uh, and not allowing, uh, dealers to openly flout restrictions, doing a

01:29:23.580 better job with inspections, uh, not letting, not letting dealers that are posing serious red flags

01:29:32.200 off with repeated warnings, um, requiring dealers to better secure their, their wares in such a way

01:29:40.740 that it's, it's more difficult to steal them in large numbers. Um, I think if, again, those are the

01:29:48.120 guns that, that end up going to the places that deal with gun violence on like a daily basis. So

01:29:53.640 if that's what we really care about, because mass shootings are horrible in the sense that they,

01:29:56.980 they live in our imagination, they upset the social contract, they, they cause like widespread fear,

01:30:02.000 but again, are ultimately still a very, uh, you know, a minuscule percentage of, of, of overall gun

01:30:08.800 death and shooting. Then I think that that makes the most sense. Obviously we dip, you know, the

01:30:13.760 guns are already out there, but that's a horse out of the barn situation. And I, you know, I don't,

01:30:18.640 I don't have a great answer for that. I like both of those. I like both of your suggestions. I will

01:30:21.980 say one of the thing on the part of the media and these mass shootings, there's a responsibility to

01:30:26.520 report that it happened. There is absolutely no responsibility to keep it on the news on loop day

01:30:31.760 after day after day. That is becoming part of the problem. It's one of the reasons why I don't say

01:30:35.960 the names of mass shooters and I haven't for more than a decade, read Gavin DeBecker's book,

01:30:40.560 the gift of fear. He's an expert in this area and he's been arguing for decades. Do not inadvertently

01:30:46.360 or advertently glorify any mass shooter. And I do think it helps. It sends a message to the next one.

01:30:52.260 You'll get nothing. No one's going to know your name. No one's going to give to anything about you.

01:30:57.100 Um, and I don't know. I just think the media can play a role in being more helpful and stopping

01:31:03.040 some of it. Not all of it, sadly. Guys, thank you so much. I learned a lot and I really enjoyed

01:31:07.720 our discussion. Thank you for having me. Me too. Yeah, I really appreciate it. See you later,

01:31:11.940 Stephen. See you, Mike. Uh, okay. So don't forget to tune into the show tomorrow because we're going

01:31:15.540 to have more on the latest breaking news. Justice Breyer retiring later this year. Uh, that and we'll

01:31:21.520 have Matt Walsh. Very excited to have Matt Walsh back on the show. In the meantime, download the show

01:31:26.320 as a podcast on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, or Stitcher. Leave me a comment on the Apple comments,

01:31:30.080 if you would download at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. You can subscribe. We appreciate it.

01:31:36.460 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 26, 2022

Guns in America： A Megyn Kelly Show Debate, with Stephen Gutowski and Mike Spies ｜ Ep. 248

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