Transcripts For CSPAN Capitol Hill Hearings 20130116

Federal assault weapons ban which was pretty notorious for loopholes and allowed manufacturers to use pretty much the same weapons, i think the government could have difficulty defending a law the highest court to consider the assault weapons ban was the u. S. Court of appeals for the d. C. Circuit and it recently upheld a ban in d. C. The Court Assumed the weapons were in common use but the ban imposed no real burden on the peoples ability to a firearm for selfdefense. Similarly, it applies to a restriction on highcapacity magazines, which we treat separately than an assault weapons ban. What a ban on the sale of high capacity magazines, capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition be unconstitutional . I think it is a similar analysis. Common use . , used for selfdefense . It upheld the restriction on the sale of highcapacity magazines as well. Yes, they are probably in common use. Yes, there are millions and millions of these highcapacity magazines out there however, the court says selfdefense typically does not require more than 10 rounds of ammunition. And there remains issues of fit, whether it substantially ferbers recent data suggest that the 1994 ban did have an impact, that the rate at which high capacity magazines where recovered from crime and guns appears to have dropped considerably in the wake of that law and then increase to amass the glee dramatically after the law was expired. In my book gunfight i tried to show there is a long history and tradition of gun control in america. It is not the modern 20th century invention that many in the gun Rights Community tell us. The right to keep and bear arms was not historically been thought to be insignificant limit on reasonable gun control law, short of disarmament. And the major impediment to the effect of guncontrol laws remain congress and not the Supreme Court. The court has made clear that many forms of gun control, including, most likely, the various proposals being considered in washington today, do not offend the Second Amendment. Thank you. [applause] thank you, professor winkler, very much. For our last presentation of the day we have dr. Barry more now from the gun violence summit as john hopkins university. Next, a look at Public Opinion on guncontrol laws. This is 35 minutes. It is an honor to say i am a faculty member at Johns Hopkins and this extraordinary community. Before i began, the title of my talk, of course, is Public Opinion on proposals to strengthen u. S. Gun laws. I want to acknowledge my wonderful collaborators. I think nobody in this room or maybe on the Johns Hopkins campus at this point is unfamiliar with my collaborators Daniel Webster and jan who have done a fabulous work in the context of this entire summit but also the work on the specific study that was done in a very short turnaround time frame, as you will see. Many of you might not know emma maginty an amendment emblematic of the students here. Fourth your doctor will do it in the ph. D. Program and i without her talent and involvement. Thank you. So, i think i may be the only speaker presenting research here who is not an expert on gun policy, gun violence. My expertise is a rather in Health Policy, and in particular, Mental Health and Substance Use policy which is not unrelated to some of the events we were talking about today, but i also spent a lot of time thinking about and conducting Public Opinion research and have interest in Research Methods. That is the context in which i became involved with the work of the summit. I think that the thing that caught my attention in the weeks following the sandy hook tragedy is as we saw Public Opinion data come out on this, the majority of the Polling Research that was done was asking questions about general attitude about the public. That is, does the public support stricter or less strict gun laws about perceptions about the nra. And relatively Little Information no information about americans attitudes and support for specific policy proposals. And i think in this really fast paced environment of policy deliberation over this issue, it is critical to understand how the public thinks about proposals to strengthen gun laws. We live in a democracy and we should care about what the public thinks and we should bring the best Research Methods available to bear on identifying how the level of support and the population overall but also to understand how support may vary across importance of groups across our society. This is what we did. We designed a survey Data Collection and demint to determine support for 33 policies among americans over all by gun ownership and stratified by Political Party identification. And we looked at gun ownership most was done as of the typical 1000 person poll. It is hard to get precise estimates using the approach for smaller subgroups within the Public Opinion poll. In our survey we substantially over sampled gun owners and non gun owners living in households with guns. We design the survey over christmas we apologize for family members that this occurred when it did and we will make up. The survey was designed between the 24th and a 27. We pilot tested it, program that. We got it in the field january 2. Justintime Public Health research. We pulled it from the field yesterday with a 69 Completion Rate for response rate. And what i am gone some present here is preliminary data based on 61 response rate. It is an interim data set of the results cannot change based on distribution of responses. I do not think the results will differ when we do the final analysis by more than a percentage point. The survey firm that did it is the wonderful gfk firm that does a ton of work across disciplines and a great difference is over a short time frame. I want to acknowledge them. They have a probability based very large web panel which is a great dancer in the current environment to some of the serious challenges related to conducting Telephone Survey research. Our results related to the share of gun owners in the u. S. Are extremely consistent with recent data reported elsewhere. Within a percentage point of the General Social survey. 33 of americans reported having a gun in their home or their garage, and a break down into two groups. 22 of americans personally identified as gun owners and 11 of americans identified as non gun owners living in a household with a gun. That means the balance, 67 , identified as nongun owners living in nongun households. As i run through these days that i will stratify by these groups. Just to give you a sense of the proportions. On this side i will give you a quick rundown of the major findings of the survey and then i will get into the data. We find the majority of american support most of the 33 gun policies, including a ban on the sale of assault weapons, large capacity magazines, a range of measures to prohibit essentially dangerous persons from having guns. A range of measures to strengthen background checks, a range of measures to improve oversight of dealers. Only five of the 33 policies were supported by less than the majority. For quite a few policies, but use of nongun owners living in households with guns were actually more aligned with other nongun owners than gun owners. For many of the policies, the difference between the gun and nongun owners were smaller than might be expected. For main road has not spent my career in this area there were smaller than i would have anticipated. Before i jump in the results, we have 33 policies. There is a ton of data. Hold on tight and listening carefully i will go through a lot of information. This is extraordinary information and i will talk very fast. Everything is described in terms of percent favor or support. These are assault weapons and ammunition policies. Over 65 in support of the sale of assault weapons. The banning of the sale of large capacity ammunition magazines that allowed guns to shoot more than 10 bullets in and more than 20 bullets. I want to point out that a near majority or majority support for these policies among gun owners. This slide actually illustrates a really interesting thing that we saw in the data more generally which is a big difference in percentage support among gun owners overall and gun owners who identified as an ira members, which you can see from of the data report very low level support for these policies. We also asked about possession of assault weapons, of large capacity magazines, and you can see somewhat lower level of support all those still over a majority in the American Population as a whole for both of these policies in the context. And we heard about this morning of a policy where the government is required to pay gun owners of the fair market value of their weapons. Here are the assault weapons and ammunition policies brokendown by republicans, independents, and democrats. You can see from my mind for the first three policies i talked about, sales policies, the assault weapons into of a magazine policies, over 50 of republicans, democrats, an independent supports the policies. Prohibited persons policies. You can see, and the first line the streets of this, very broad support among gun owners and nongun owners alike for these policies, which include creating a person convicted of two of war Crimes Involving alcohol or drugs from having a gun, convicted of violating Domestic Violence restraining order, a serious crime as a juvenile, being on a terrorist watch list. Even for the policy daniel talked about yesterday, which is preventing a person under 21 from having a handgun, over 50 support among go on among gun owners and others. Here are some policies related to misdemeanor convictions. You can see gun owners and non gun owners are alike in terms of what policies they like the least. These are particularly two types of misdemeanors related to a drunk and Disorderly Conduct being the basis of denying a gun or indecent exposure. Very low levels of support across the board. Here are the breakdowns by Political Party identification, and with the exception of the two misdemeanor policies have described, i levels of support among republicans, independents and democrats for all of the policies. Here are the policies related to background check, the first policy is the universal background check. Very high levels among non gunners and gun owners alike, even majority support among nra members who are gun owners of this policy, and high levels of support for these other specific policies relating to background checks. Very high support across Political Party identification as well for the universal background check policy and the other policies. Here are the policies affecting gun dealers. You can see these policies i am going to point out this result i support for all of these policies, majority support among gun owners in a near majority or majority support among nra members. I am not going to go through all of these policies because i am talking really quickly right now, but what is requiring a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for a person convicted of knowingly selling begun to the person who cannot legally have a gun. Here are the policies in terms of Political Party and dedication. Here are the policies affecting those with Mental Illness. The first three policies are background check related policies. We have heard a lot about these policies over the last two days. You can see high levels of support across the board for these policies, including among gun owners and nra members who are gun owners. The lowest levels of support for policy allowing people who have lost the right to have a gun due to Mental Illness to have the right restored if they are determined not to be dangerous. This type of restoration policy which many of us know about is not supported at high levels by any of these subgroups. Over a majority and i have level of support to increase Government Spending on Mental Health screening and treatment as a strategy to reduce gun violence. Majority support across the board. Here is the breakdown of these policies by you can see the background check are supported at high levels. The petition to regain gun rights has the lowest levels of support among all three. For a policy to increase Government Spending on Mental Health of treatment, a little bit more of a political gradient. Slightly less than a majority of republican support this policy. Although it is worth noting that any question this is why question wording is so critical that includes a freeze government funding for is going to tap into our views of citizens about what the role of government should be. That is a component of what we should think about it as well. The last three gun policies. Requiring a person to obtain a license from local Law Enforcement agency before buying a gun has high levels of support across the board, including majority support among the owners. Moderate support for policies to provide government funding smart gun technology. Although the same caveat in terms of using the concept of government funding. We learned from the talks yesterday there are ways beyond government funding per say to increase adoption of smart gun technology. Here is the policy requiring by law that a person locked up the guns in their homes when not in use to prevent handily by kids without adult supervision, and you can see a gradient of support and some difference in opinion as might be expected on this policy by gun ownership status. Hear of these three policies in terms of majority support by Political Party identification. Ok. So, what can we conclude from this research . First of all, we find high support among including among gun owners for a wide range of gun policies. The most feasible policies from a political perspective include 20 from this list of 33 with majority support regardless of gun ownership or Political Party identification. I think the bottom line from this study is policymakers have a large range of options to choose from which are supported by the american public. And i cannot emphasize this point enough in the context of the discussion we have been having over the last couple of days related to the fact that there are multiple levels of problems here and it speaks to the need for a more combined and comprehensive approach and this Research Suggests that kind of approach would be supported by the american public. Thank you very much for your time. [applause] i should say for detailed information, checkout look in two weeks the book in two weeks. This was an enormously quick effort. To produce what we hope our powerful polling results. Theyre also going through peer review very quickly. Daniel tells me we can invade 10 minutes of his concluding remarks with questions for this panel. Are there questions . Cspan is still streaming today. Maybe the microphones have gone away. Here comes one. This is a comment. Can you raise your voice at the end . And a question. It is prefaced by what a great piece of work. I did not mean you. The research. Only with tenure can you say things like that. You mentioned the importance of language. I have a stake and an interest in the question that dealt with government funding and i appreciate your the response may be influenced by the preface of firman funding. Government funding. Heres another thing that influence their response. When we did surveys a little after 2000, we did a series, four ways of random digit dial encompassing 12 adults representing the american 1200 representative but delta representative of the American Population and we asked about personalized guns. We asked about personalized guns and we asked about childproof guns. I used those synonymous leave. The state of new jersey use them as anonymously when it passed into law. We found a substantial difference, though, in the answers that we got, whether it was personalized. When we ask people, would you favor a law requiring all new guns to be personalized, there was an explanation of what that was. My recollection was it was in the mid1960s when we asked a mid 60s. When we asked the same question with regard to child proof guns. In the general population it was 88 . When we tease out the gun owners it was 81 . How we spin the question are phrase the question is going to be very important. Can you hear me . I want to make a quick comment on this. Those are wonderful, extremely important points and i will say yes somebody who has not spent my career in this area and i went to the Research Literature to find out what they prior polls the prior polls said. The last publication was from 1998. I was astonished the last Public Opinion Research Paper was from 1998. So long ago we need more of today, more research on Public Attitudes about this issue done using scare early Scholarly Research efforts. We did this in such a short time frame. We were not able to include the questions we would have and there are many questions in the original study that were not asking the steady and that should be replicated now, i think. Thank you. Good morning. But the commissioner, Baltimore City health department. Unclad in the end we find americans are reasonable people. I want to ask a question about a subgroup you have not talked about. The reasonable people who buy guns for the for protection. Protection in their home. Is there any evidence that this makes sense . Is someone invading their home with a weapon . Is there a weapon in the home, our people successfully addressing Home Invasion . What is the evidence around selfdefense in the home . I will very briefly respond. David might also want to contribute. Generally speaking, the data, whether youre talking about a case controlled household study design or in more ecological examination of places where there are more guns versus less guns generally show our relationship where there are more guns, there is more death including homicide. But selfdefense type of opportunities are pretty rare. David heminway has demonstrated pretty well why we should be skeptical at least of some surveys of selfdefense because it is easy to be prone to exaggeration. That is what the nature of those incidents were. I want to give you an opportunity. Let me just mention that he is a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and has done lots of work on permits and on the risks and benefits of gun ownership. I do not know if you have a microphone available. It looks like it is coming down here for you. So what daniel said is correct. The evidence indicates a gun is a large factor for a completed suicide and also for from a side. It is dangerous for women. There is not as much evidence about a man in the home. The evidence indicates that a gun is used to intimidate somebody in the home but then to protect yourself against an intruder. For most people it looks like the evidence is pretty strong that it is not a wise choice to have a gun in the home in terms of Public Health. I have a question for adam. Can you talk about the Second Amendment and this notion of having a gun to protect us against the totalitarian dictatorship that may take over and we require the gun owners to overthrow the government. This was a common view of some of the gun Rights Community. They were from the truth is the founders were revolutionary who fought to protect their guns to fight against government territory tyranny. Largely divorced from our current constitution and how it is understood. The Supreme Court did say the core right protected by the Second Amendment was the right of selfdefense, the right to live on shall firearm in your home. Indeed, when you think about civilian possession of firearms, and the world is vastly different than it was in 1791. The framers were afraid of a Standing Army. We have a Standing Army today. And i think that many people who support this sort of insurrectionist of view of the Second Amendment would disappoint the disappointed the Supreme Court in 2008 did not give voice to this more antigovernment view of the Second Amendment. The truth of the Second Amendment, it clearly envisions a wellregulated militia. Whether the Founding Fathers thought it was important to have civilian gun ownership as a deterrent for tear running, the second tyranny, the Second Amendment itself clearly envisioned government regulation of the mission. The Supreme Court said it when the framers referred to the militia, they referred to the body of citizens capable of coming out and ready to grab their guns at home and be ready to fight in an instant. But that melissa would be well regulated by the government. Indeed, the Founding Fathers had extensive militia laws that required people to show up at mandatory musters with their guns into where they and their guns would be inspected and registered on public rolls. With all the controversy over president obamas healthcare mandate that got so much attention june of last year, the Founding Fathers in 7092 passed a law requiring every free citizen, free mail between the ages of 1845 to outfit themselves with a rifle. The militarystyle firearms for military militarystyle mustard capable of serving in the militia. So, the Founding Fathers did not view the Second Amendment as a basis for insurrection. Rather, they viewed it as part of a wellregulated militia. Yes, maam. Melissa from Government Affairs here at hopkins. I am wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether in the publication you might be able to stratified or break out likely voters. Just thinking about polls that policy makers would be paying attention to. Likely voters and also by state or region of the country . Those are good questions. As we know, often in the context of election polling, survey Research Firms have proprietary algorithms, using a four, or six questions that allows them to break out likely voters. Our goal of motivation was something different. Where this purpose we care about the views of all americans, so, we wanted to report the rates of support among americans broadly speaking. So, we did not ask the likely voter battery to be able to subset the data. There are other, i think, in port and ways once we have time to further analyze the data beyond what will appear in the chapter that may be of interest in terms of subgroups, region of the country, is important, but also correlated with gun ownership. That has to be done with some care. Parents versus nonparents. We talked a little bit about how age matters in this issue. So, just being here on a University Context is important to understand how younger people versus older people think about issues related to gun violence to see whether there are generational affects here. And that gives us insight into where we are going as a country as younger people become older and have more than ability to influence the political process. But, yes, great point. Critical to understand these data in terms of various different types of subgroups that matter. Thank you. I know there are many more questions you want to take one more . All right. Where is the microphone . James, China Securities training. I would like to thank all the speakers for the wonderful information that has been brought forth. But i would like to say that i would have expected more talk the impact, the important impact of training on effectively reducing gun violence. For Law Enforcement personnel, four exmilitary personnel, the average citizen in our schools, businesses, training is the glue that holds together all the measures we have been discussing yesterday and today. Thank you. Daniel, would you like to respond . I would just have one brief comment. Sure, go ahead. Thank you. Professor winkler probably correctly said that a defense by a gun in a home is a rare event. That may be true. Nonetheless, it is a very important effect for those who have actually been affected by it. And that with the importance of training. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I just want to wrap up with some reflections on what really has been an amazing couple of days here. I will start with the thanks of two what a Fabulous Group of contributors we had for this event. [applause] jan and i saw out to really get the absolute best minds available to tackle what is obviously a very complex problem. If you just look at understanding gun violence by itself, that is a struggle. If you start to think about the policy challenges, and that is a whole other struggle and level of complexity. You have the legal issues. And then all of political things we have been talking about. I really feel like we were successful in bringing the right people together to address that, and i feel very good about that. I also feel confident that this will actually lead to Productive Solutions to address one of our most important Public Health problems. Prior to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, we had already had a terrible year with Mass Shootings. I knew for one was particularly frustrated following those events, the level of discourse that occurred, mostly in the media. Very formulaic kinds of things. And the messages that i felt were getting through were really quite inaccurate. The message was, there is great disagreement among americans about guncontrol. That and nobody really wants guncontrol. We cant do anything because of the Second Amendment. There are no gun laws that work. All of these things we have found it with the best evidence and the best people, to be false. We can go forward. We do have data. We do have very good ideas about how to address a very important problem. But i dont understand i dont underestimate the challenges on any dimension. Again, it is a very complex problem, particularly the political aspect to it. I think the contributions, particularly our last panel, give me and i suspect many here in level of optimism very optimism. That we are in a different place right now. Our country is at a different place. And i think we do have things that can work. I was very inspired by our panelists this morning, how in australia and brazil, scotland, of they responded and it was not easy. I particularly am so impressed with the effort in brazil, knowing the sort of obstacle that were in front of them there. Ill leave here with great optimism that we are in a different place now. We can make a meaningful change. I want everyone to know what comes next. You have heard that we will be coming out with a book published by Johns Hopkins University Press within less than two weeks, i believe. Every effort will be made to make that available to the relevant policy makers and, of course, the general public. One final thing i wanted to say. I have been thinking of the contributors, but i want to also thank the Johns Hopkins community here. It has been just tremendous to see the level of interest and really deeply felt commitment to address this problem by so many people who do not necessarily work on this. It is not their careers. There are other important things theyre working on in Public Health or other areas. I, for one, have felt the bill is supported by that. I think that is it. Lets go out and make some change. [applause] Johns Hopkins held a twoday summit on gun violence in the u. S. At the end of the conference officials the recommendations for changing the nations gun laws. We will hear from University President Ronald Daniel and the head of Hopkins Center policy research Daniel Webster. My name is tim parsons, director of Public Affairs here at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Before we get started i wanted to make a few brief announcements. This program is being broadcast on the web. Our speakers are going to make a few brief remarks and afterwards 50 minutes for questions. For the reporters who are here, we will have a microphone and we ask you state your question to the microphones of the audience at home can hear. We are just about to start. I would like to introduce you to president Ronald Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins university. Thank you, and welcome and thank you to all the reporters covering this extraordinary gun policy some of both here and on the internet. This has been a very important two days. The summit came together in the wake of the tragedy in newtown, connecticut, one month ago. Given the drastically high rates of gun violence in the united states, starkly illustrated by numerous Mass Shootings in movie theaters, shopping malls, houses of worship, and now at an elementary school, but also experienced on a daily basis in neighborhoods across our country, we knew at Johns Hopkins that we could not let this moment pass. We wanted to do all that we could to bring together national and global experts, advocates and leaders on gun violence and policy to present their Research Analysis and perspectives. Thanks to efforts, a professor Daniel Webster, a professor jan burnick and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins university Bloomberg School of Public Health, we were able to organize quickly and forcefully and International Conference on reducing gun violence in america. With the call for action at the federal level, this summit is our effort to galvanize collective expertise to advance the discussion of gun violence in america through Robust Research and evidence. We also understood that a critical component of the summit would be to create a said a researchbased policy recommendations that can informed, that can shape, that can support the policy debate. These will help lawmakers and opinion leaders and identify the policy changes that are most likely to reduce gun violence in the united states. And you will hear these important recommendations in a moment. Finally, as we have indicated a number of times throughout the summit, we will be publishing a book on the summit that will be available to the public in just two weeks. That book will be published by Johns Hopkins press and will capture the state of the art research that was discussed over the last two days at the summit. Before turning over the podium to daniel, i want to thank the scores of people, many of whom are in this room, who have made this summer possible and successful. It was a herculean effort and i am most grateful to the time and Energy People put into this. This was not a scheduled conference. This was not something that was planned months in advance, but rather something that was pulled together in short notice over the last three weeks because we felt the important to contribute to this very important debate. I want to take this opportunity to thank new york mayor michael bloomberg, Maryland Governor Michael Omalley and all presenters for their willingness to come together on short notice to take part in this important event. I am now pleased to introduce members of our faculty who organized the conference and presented research. I want to first introduced Daniel Webster and jan vernick, coeditors of the book will make this event possible, i also pleased that dr. Coleen berry from department of Health Policy management at the bluebird school, who also has a very Important Survey findings to share, will also be on the podium with me. I will turn it over to Daniel Webster. Thank you very much, and thank you for your extraordinary support and leadership through this process. My colleagues at the Johns Hopkins center for gun policy and research and at the Bloomberg School of Public Health are very grateful for your leadership and support. The last two days have been an amazing experience for me to bring together the best scholars, the best expertise, to grapple with and come forward with a set of recommendations that will be based on the best Available Research and experience. I am going to touch very briefly upon the expertise that we assembled. As president daniels alluded to, we searched far and wide and had individuals coming from Foreign Countries to contribute to this effort. We have criminologists, Public Health leaders, legal experts, a really vast span of experience and expertise, and really many decades of working on this problem of gun violence in solutions to it. Following Mass Shootings, we tend to go through a very similar process. And prior to the most recent tragedy in newtown, connecticut, we kept hearing similar sort of refrain of things i knew to be not the case. We would hear that nothing works. Gun policies dont work. We would hear theres no agreement, but theres too Much Division on Public Opinion. What we can address this because of the constitution. We brought together the scholarship to really reviewed all of those efforts and we think we have a set of recommendations that not only will be effective reducing gun violence in america, but will also be constitutional and have very wide support among the public, including most gun owners. We have distributed our press release. At has a very specific recommendations. I am not going to go through every single one of those. I am going to talk about the general areas we feel the reforms are necessary and would bring about important change to save lives. There was a very strong consensus that the most and portend thing we need to do is to fix our Current System for background checks. It is really indefensible we have a system that allows people to sell firearms with no background checks, no Record Keeping, and no accountability. We recommend this be changed so that every single fire on transaction, except when somebody is inheriting a fire arm or a father to son transaction, that that process through a federally licensed Firearms Dealer with a background check and Record Keeping process. We also and identified a set of recommendations to address what is a well established fact that a very small number of gun dealers contributed to a large problem of fuelling the illicit gun market. That is largely due to the fact that the set of current federal policies that really did not enable the the atf to hold fire arms sellers accountable for following the basic rules to keep guns from dangerous people. We also have a set of recommendations in an area that i think is not adequately discussed when we have different policy discussions about guns. That is taking a close look at who should be legally able to possess guns, or what we have found in evidence we have examined is that Current Conditions for permitting firearms purpose are really grossly inadequate and allow a number of individuals who can be quite dangerous to purchase guns. We have a number of recommendations. For example, prohibiting individuals will have been convicted of a violent misdemeanors from being able to purchase firearms and other categories of individuals such as individuals who committed a series of violent crime, processed through the juvenile court, to be prohibited from purchasing a fire arm for an extended period of time. We also have some recommendations, general recommendations with respect to Mental Health and guns. First and foremost is that federal restrictions on gun purchases for persons with serious Mental Illness should be focused on the dangerousness of the individual. And we think the current law is not focused adequately on danger and has a very broad category that does not really capture the individual that are really of greatest concern. We also made recommendations on the topic of assault weapons, to ban future sales of assault weapons, incorporating a more carefully crafted definition of an hour prior band to reduce risk that the law can be easily evaded, as the prior ban was. We also recommended banning the future sale and possession of large capacity ammunition magazines, those being ammunition magazines that hold greater than 10 rounds of ammunition. Finally, and very importantly, we have recommendations relevant to research. We believe the federal government should provide funds to the centers for disease control, National Institutes of health, National Institutes of justice, to understand both the causes and solutions to gun violence, commensurate with its dramatic impact on Public Health and safety. We also recommend the Surgeon General issued a regular report on the state of the problem of gun violence in america and progress toward solutions. Those are the general recommendations. We have more specific ones that are in our press release. I also, as i alluded to before, the measures that we are recommending, we did dr. Barry led an investigation with beth budinski to look at current Public Opinion on the various policies because many of the polls were asked to general questions. We have specific information on that. And dr. Berry will be available to answer questions relevant to public support for many of the things we are recommending. So, we can now open it up for questions. And again, i will ask, please, to use a microphone and identify yourself. I am just going to make a couple of points related to what daniel just said about the Public Opinion survey research that we have done here at hopkins. Just over the last two weeks, as daniel mentioned, in the weeks following the tragedy at sandy hook we noticed that a much of the Public Opinion research that was done was focusing on general attitude among the public, and we were interested in looking at a broader range of specific policies and understanding of support among the general public, among americans and then among specific subgroups. In particular, differences by gun ownership and differences by Political Party identification. So, we conducted just over the last two weeks Public Opinion surveys, including 2400 respondents on 31 different Public Policies to try to understand support. In brief, we found that the majority of americans supported most of the 33 policies that we asked about including the ban on the sale of assault weapons, the ban on the sale of large capacity ammunition magazines, a range of measures related to prohibiting persons from having guns, a range of measures related to strengthening the background check system, a range of measures to improve oversight of gun dealers, support for many of these policies was regardless high regardless of Political Party identification. And for many of these policies, the differences between gun owners and nongun owners were smaller than might have been anticipated. We hope that these Research Findings will provide specific guidance to policymakers in the context of understanding american support for a range of specific policies that are available for addressing the problem of gun violence and of the take away message from this research is there is a broad set of policies that policymakers can choose from that are supported by the american public. Thank you. So now, and there are any questions that anyone has . The question is obviously at this point, what is next . You made the recommendations. Are you going to try to get this in the hands of policy makers . Does this go to congress or mr. Bedens committee right now . Thank you for your question. Our intention that we will follow through on is the book that we are writing will be developed delivered directly to members of congress and members of the administration, and we have already been in communication with many of those individuals. Can you expand upon your assault weapon proposed ban . All that just as they always say put more guns in the arms of criminals and do little to keep people safe . What is your theory behind it . Our theory behind the need for assault weapons ban is that these are weapons designed for military purposes. We believe that they pose a unique threat particularly with respect to Mass Shootings, and there is data to support that, that the casualty numbers tend to be larger with such weapons. We believe that citizens have plenty of options available to them to purchase other types of firearms for self protection or sporting use. Next question. In regard to assault weapons as well. Is part of the recommendation perhaps a buyback system, to try to make the federal government or something maybe by the guns from owners . Because it would be very hard to take guns away from people already own them. You are absolutely right. Our group discussed that very difficult question that you raised. We decided it would be more feasible to ban the future sale of such weapons. However, with respect to a large capacity magazines, that we would recommend to ban the purchase and possession of those. And yes, that would involve some type of buybacks system. Could you just talk a little bit more about the universal background check portion of it . Specifically the inheritance exception and how it would work . Sure. I think it is really quite simple, actually. There is a system currently set up under federal law. If you are going to purchase a firearm from a federally licensed Firearms Dealer you have to fill out a particular form to indicate you do not fall into one of the prohibiting categories. You have to submit to an pass a background check. We believe that the general idea behind that has almost universal support. The general notion that you should not be able to purchase a firearm before you have some validation, that you have not fallen into one of these prohibiting categories. So, if you are a private firearm owner who wants to sell a gun, you would do that through a licensed dealer who would presumably be able to charge a fee for that service. Does that answer that question . Other questions . Ok. Thank you. President obama will unveil a new set of gun control proposals this morning. Following the Newtown Connecticut School shootings. Live coverage begins at 11 45 a. M. Eastern here on cspan. Live from london, on cspan2, british Prime Minister David Cameron looks at questions takes questions from members of the house of commons. Noon eastern on cspan 3, transportation secretary ray lahood will speak at the Transportation Research boards annual meeting. Coming up in 45 minutes, we will talk about budget and debt issues with a democratic congressman sander levin from michigan, Ranking Member of the ways and means committee. Chairman of the house judiciary committee, representative bob good lad of virginia, Immigration Law and the debate Immigration Law and the debate over gun