Who is a vietnam war veteran and retired New York Times correspondent and editor. Craig is the author of living with guns a liberals case for the Second Amendment. And sitting to his left is Daniel Webster who is the lead editor and contributor to a week called reducing gun violence in america informing policy with evidence and analysis. Daniel directs the Johns Hopkins center for gun policy and research. And farthest to my left is emily miller who is currently Senior Editor of the opinion pages at the Washington Times newspaper but will be starting this month as the chief investigate iive reporter at fox 5 news. Congratulations on your new job, sounds very exciting. [applause] emily is the author of the book, emily gets her gun, which is about the Current National political debate over gun control. She was awarded the clark [inaudible] award for investigative reporting from the institute on political journalism in 2012. A baltimore native, she is a cum laude graduate of georgetown universitys school of foreign service. So thats, thats a lot of credentials for a saturday morning. And i think the way i would like to handle this is im going to pose some very openended questions, spark in my usual, very literalminded way by the titles of these three books. And be ill ask each author to address the question for a couple of hadnts and then ask the other two authors to address think comments theyd like to make to those, and well just kind of go down the line like that be and then try to reserve some time for questions from the audience which, particularly on a topic like this, is usually a very fruitful exercise. So, craig, lets start with you, and why dont you give us the short version of the liberals case for the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment that does not create, did not create a new right to have and own and use guns. It recognized one that existed already and had existed since jamestown. And it was a right in common law. The colonists needed guns to hunt and to defend themselves against attack, and the purpose be of the Second Amendment was to reassure people after the few constitution was drafted after the new constitution was drafted and while it was being considered for ratification by the 13 states, it was designed to reassure people that the new federal government it created could not be, veer off into a tyrannical direction even if it established a standing army, because the states would have the right to keep up their militias. And how could you have a state militia if you didnt have people you could call on to serve in it who knew how to use guns and had them . It has never been, however, a bar, the Second Amendment. There was nothing in it that barred state, local regulation of the right to have guns in the interest of public safety. In fact, in 1792, the year after it was voted on, the federal government established in the militia act a requirement that the militias report the names and weapons held by the people whose names were listed to a federal authority. The requirement was observed only kind of sparsely and, of course, the militias gradually withered away and became transformed into what we know today as the national guard. But to make a long story short, yes, it is a right. Its not an absolute right, and it can be regulated. Regulations can differ state by state, city by city, but they are not barred, per se, by the First AmendmentSecond Amendment. An excellent historical foundation. Daniel, would you want to elaborate with some thoughts about what the Second Amendment means in this century . Well, first of all, im going to confess im not a Second Amendment scholar. In our book, which im an editor of, we do have a chapter looking at constitutional issues and the Second Amendment. The book that we put out, reducing gun violence in america, we brought together top scholars to look at what we thought were the post critical policy questions as well as the constitutional analysis and what the public views are as it relates to gun violence and policies to address the problem. I guess the theme i would say throughout this book is that theres evidence that there are certain people who are too dangerous to have guns. Thats, perhaps, obvious. Secondly, theres evidence that when such individuals are legally prohibited, there are several studies to show that that reduces violence. Third, that common sense measures to try to keep guns from dangerous people that are prescribed by law from having guns such as universal background check systems, handgun purchaser licensing systems, inadequate regulation and oversight of retail firearms sellers reduce the diversion of guns to criminals and prohibited people. And that although if you just, you know, turn on cnn, any, you know, news channel when guns are discussed, it seems as though theres an enormous Acquisition Division in our Country Division in our country can. But our polling data suggests that isnt really reality. That we found that when you when we ask polling questions of, i believe, 31 separate gun policies. In just about any policy that was framed around keeping guns from dangerous people, there was not only very high support for those policies, there was in most cases no statistical difference between support among gun owners and people who dont own guns, nor was there actually even differences along party lines. So i think we spend way, way too much time talking about the things we disagree about most when theres a lot that can be done that works, that is constitutional that would lead to fewer gun deaths in america. So i think thats my summary of whats in my book. All right. Emily, maybe you could take us back to the Second Amendment just for sure. A moment and tell us, craig spoke about a liberal, a selfdescribed liberals view of the Second Amendment. Emily, what does the Second Amendment mean to you as a gun owner, and why does it have so much punch and meaning to so many people in this country . Well, the Second Amendment, obviously, our Founding Fathers found the right to selfdefense to be such an important human right, and thats what i would just my friend craig and i agree on a lot, but i would disagree on the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms originated in the colonies so much as it originates from god giving us a human right to defend ourselves. And the Founding Fathers few that that right was important just like we have the human right to, for freedom of speech. And we have the human right to a jury by our peers. And the Second Amendment is our right to defend ourselves. And this, for me, was a very personal issue. I was dog sitting for friends and went to take the dog for a walk, and in the ten minutes or so that i was out of the house, a man came in and was robbing it. And so when i walked back in the house, he was in it robbing it. And then he left, he took my wallet. He didnt hurt me physically, and i followed him to try to get a picture for the police which was not a very smart idea on my unarmed. But in doing so, at the end of the driveway, at the end of this culdesac i found two pickup trucks and about 15 of his buddies standing on the street staring at me. And as i turned the corner and saw this, they started running one of them started running at me. And as i was going to sleep that night, i for the first time if by life, i thought what if they come back . Im in this house by myself. If they want to rape me, if they want to murder me and the police said these are definitely drug dealers or drug addicts that come into the city from virginia, they had virginia plate, and on the way out wanted to get some quick cash. And for the first time in my life, i thought if i just had a gun by my night table, i could defend be myself. And for me, thats when the whole concept behind the Second Amendment, the right to selfdefense, became real. And it is my right. And then i went to get a gun in d. C. Since it has been legal since the heller decision in 2008 by the Supreme Court, and it ended up taking me four months to legally register a gun. Im a lawabiding person, i have no criminal record, i have no intent in hurting anyone, i just want a gun to defend myself. And i saw all these rules all these laws that are put in place and all these regulations to stop lawabiding people like me from getting guns. Of course, the criminals in d. C. , as homicides are up this year, Violent Crime is up again in d. C. , the criminals are getting guns. Its the lawabiding people who are going through these registration processes. And the more i looked into it and more ive written about it and gotten to understand this issue a lot better, i think the most important issue to point out is that as daniel said, which i do agree with, there are dangerous people we dont want to have guns. I dont want those drug dealers to have guns who were in that house. I dont want felons to have guns, i dont want the dangerously mentally ill to have guns, drug dealers, i dont want illegal aliens, all these groups that are already prohibited, i dont want them to have guns, but no gun control law has ever reduced crime. No gun control law. Ask so the laws that are in place, the laws barring the dangerous people from getting guns are good on the penalty side so we can put them in jail, but bad guys who want to get guns will get guns. Theres nothing that they steal them. They dont do like i do which is go to police station, get fingerprinted, take a written test, take a fivehour class. They dont do that. And so i dont believe that theres any need to further infringe on this human right that we have to selfdefense which is the right to keep and bear arms because we already have laws in place. In fact, theyre working. So in the past 20 years, the firearm homicide rate is down 50 . Nonfatal shootings are down 70 . So the laws that we have in place, and they fall every year if you just look at the fbi statistics, every year murders by gun are going down, Violent Crime is going down. So the laws that are if place are good. I believe that the more people who are armed, the more it is a deterrent for further crime, and thats the way that we can stop the fact that there is gun homicides, the fact that there still is about 9,000 People Killed by homicide every year with guns, although a quarter of them are felony type. We do that by more people, good people having guns. Weve seen even just seen even Law Enforcements now coming, 90 of Law Enforcement support more people having carry rights because its a defense. You saw the Detroit Police chief come out and saying having more people with gun permits, carry permits is a deterrent to crime. Theyre starting to recognize that. And so i think that summarizes where i come from in this book and where i come from personally on this issue. Very good, okay. Daniel, you study, among other things, the regulation of the acquisition of firearms, the regulation of the possession of firearms. Emily made a rather blunt assertion that no gun control law has ever had any effect on crime. Maybe you could take that one concise assertion and tell us about the research youve done and the research other people have done to address that assertion. Sure. Thank you, paul. First of all, i just want to agree with, i think, one underlying premise of what emilys experience was which is its ridiculous that you have to go through something for four months to get a gun, okay . But you testified for those laws. I was in the room. In fact, you testified emily, emily, lets let daniel you got to, but i know. But when its factual. Okay. Thats actually what im trying to do is actually get to the facts. I will give you a free copy of my book where there will be several studies in there cited that shows that gun control laws have reduced violence. Why dont you give us an example or two. Of course, sure. Yeah. There are now three published studies, and im a coauthor on one, showing that laws that prohibit those who are under restraining orders for Domestic Violence are prohibited from having firearms. There are now three published articles showing that those have led to significant reductions in intimate partner homicides. Very strong studies, every single one of them. How many of those studies were not were funded emily by bloomberg . None of them were funded by i emily, i want to, were not going to this is not sort of a cable tv back and forth. Were going to each go one at a time, and ill use my moderators privilege okay excuse me. These are all scientifically peerreviewed articles. You can say [inaudible] no, they are not. They are not funded by the bloomberg. I mean, you want to make this about Michael Bloomberg, or do you want to make this about facts . Facts. Were talking about facts. I can back up everything thats in my book and anything that ive published. Okay. Now, so thats one such example. I just published a study within the past month be showing that missouri had a licensing system for those who wanted to purchase handguns in that state. The you wanted to purchase a handgun, your first step was go to the local sheriffs office, they would do a thorough background check. It did not take four months this study was from 1996. Just point that out. What . Wasnt your missouri study 1996 . No, no. The study just came out a month ago. I know. But when did the laws changed . The law changed in 2007. Let me finish. Well, you [inaudible] all right. Folks, im actually going to Say Something very strongly here. Lets let each person talk. The point here is not to have a quick back and forth among the panelists, but to actually let the panelists express coherent thoughts and then have the next person respond in kind, okay . Thank you. Thank you. So just to finish what i was saying, we just published a study, missouri had a law requiring licensing for those purchasing handguns. It was not a long, elaborate system, but it did require you to apply directly at your local sheriffs office, and it was good for 30 days, and it was a way to insure that all handgun transactions there was a background check. It repealed that law in 2007. We just published a study that showed that it significantly led to increased rates of homicides. It only affected homicides with guns. It affected homicides throughout the state, and we ruled out just about every competing hypothesis that we could think of that might have explained such a sudden increase in homicides that also corresponded with a doubling of the diversion of guns to criminals. So theres just two examples. I could go on more, but we dont have enough time. But im happy to talk about any study that youd like. All right. Craig, could you address this from your perspective, your reading of all this and your familiarity with the debate about whether particular gun regulations do or do not have some potential to reduce crime . I think if you look at the overall Violent Crime statistics in this country, they have, Violent Crime has significantly gone down in recent decades even in places like compared to 25 years ago Like Washington and chicago which are relatively higher rates than, say, new york city. So the gun laws are part of the legal is legal system that has to be kept in mind when you try to figure out why have the rates gone down. There are lots of other reasons too. Gun control laws alone cant solve our gun violence problem, but good ones based on common sense, Common Ground if you find the Common Ground between the people who value their gun rights and the people who are more concerned about public safety, there is Common Ground that can be found well, weve actually heard Common Ground despite the tension on this panel this morning. I i mean, emily quite emphatically said that shes, opposes as i think the other three panelists do the idea that convicted felons should acquire guns. People who have been shown to be dangerously mentally ill and so forth, those rules can only be enforced if theres a law and then someone enforces the law. On the other hand, there certainly is a, an issue for proponents of stiffer gun control because, as we point out, Violent Crime in this country has gone down steadily after rising from the early 60s through the early 90s, it has then come down for the last 0 years, and its very, very hard to associate that in any cause and effect way with gun control laws. 30 years. And you can take a sample such as my hometown, new york, where the gun control laws have remained, essentially, the same. But for the last 30 years, you know, gun violence has decreased radically. So clearly, it wasnt any change in the gun control laws that had anything to do with that decrease in crime. Emily, lets come to you now and give you a chance to expand on something in your book. The subtitle, the main title of your book is emily gets her gun, and you gave a very eloquent and poignant description of what prompted you to obtain a firearm. The subtitle of your book is but obama wants to take yours, as in obama wants to take your gun. Maybe you could elaborate on that subtitle and tell us what you mean and what evidence there is to show that obama wants to take my gun or the gun owned by someone in the audience . Request well, in 1996 president obama said that in a questionnaire when he was first running for office if he wanted to ban all handguns, and he said, yes. And he expanded on that four years ago. Four years later when he was running for state office and said it might not be feasible, he would, in principle, still support banning all handguns. Then as recently as 2012 after the horrendous tragedy in newtown, president obama and Mike Bloomberg who funds the Bloomberg School which daniel works for came out within that same day those poor children were killed and said we should start banning rifles. So when they Start Talking about banning rifles, banning handguns, thats taking peoples guns away. Now, theyre not talking about taking the criminals guns away because its already illegal for the criminals to have guns. Its already illegal for the felons and the drug addicts and the bad guys to have guns. The reason that any of us get guns, the good guys, is to defend ourselves. Its not to hurt anyone. Were not homicidal maniacs, were the good guys. So we want to get guns to defend ourselves, and when obama, the president of the United States, and at the time but now hes being funded by new york city mayor Michael Bloomberg whos poured i notice you mention Michael Bloomberg over and over again, i think your point has been established. But my point about bloomberg is not that it changed the dynamic of this debate because theres never been so much money poured into it. Mike bloomberg is spending, i think last year alone, 30 million to this Gun Policy Institute you run just in the last year. It has changed the debate because hes running ads for people in the house and senate purely on politics. So i dont think president obamas agenda, because its not supported i mean, the overwhelming majority of americans, in fact, its up 9 in the past eight months, do not support more gun control laws. 60 some percent do not support it. So the president s objective and, quite frankly, his successes in passing gun control laws in eight states in the last year is 100 due to all the money thatsing being put into politics by Mike Bloomberg. And he has said alone this year hes going to spend 25 million in the 2014 races. Hes outspending the nra ten, twentyfold to. So thats why this is an important factor because its not the will of the people. And if you look in any poll, you will never find a poll that shows the majority of people favor more restrictions on their Second Amendment rights. Thats a very interesting way to frame it. We going to go back and forth only when its my turn . No. I asked you to make a statement, you just made an extended statement, and now the other two members of the panel will make shorter statements responding to yours which all can be done in a very civil way. Daniel. Surement sure. Theres been a whole lot of money on this gun issue spent for a very long time, far more on the gun, progun lobby side than on the other side. Ill just make that point. I think its very misleading to ask a poll question do you think we should have more restrictions on, you know, fill in the blank on anything we dont like to be restricted, writing anything there again. Thats not really the question. The question is, what policies do people favor to make us saferment safer. Okay . And im not about banning guns. Im about, again, looking for what was just mentioned, what craig mentioned about theres a lot of Common Ground that theres certain people who shouldnt have guns, there are some basic, common sense ways to address that. We ought to do it. And you characterize the situation if a very simplistic way, emily, as if theres one category of individuals. We know theyre all evil, they will never obey any law. Theres another set of individuals who will never do anything wrong with a gun, and the world doesnt look that way, im sorry. Second and the final point ill make is this notion that its hopeless to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. Ill grant you, sure, there are some people where that probably is the case. Because of their makeup, because of the resources they might have, they will probably successfully be able to get a gun and do bad things with it. But again, the world is not so clean. Theres a lot of people with the sufficient barriers where a gun is not readily available to them means the difference between life and death. Its not going to solve all gun violence. Nothing will. Okay . And then as far as the big reductions that weve seen this new york city, no, there were no new gun laws passed, but did new york use and take advantage of their gun laws to reduce homicides substantially . Most definitely. Craig, thoughts. The nra, which im a member of, has me too, by the way. Has certainly outspent mayor bloomberg in and its been more effective than mayor bloombergs side has. And look what happened in the senate in washington a year ago, you know . All those gun control measures that various senators proposed not obama, but senators. He supported them, yes. They failed to win, to overcome the 60vote hurdle that they had faced with a filibuster. Some of them got a majority of senators in favor but not 60. But i think that the basic thrust of the most powerful of the measures that were proposed was wrong. It was to ban new sale as of the socalled Assault Rifles because an Assault Rifle had been used in newtown. If you look at the Mass Shootings that weve add in our country in recent years that weve had in our country in recent years, the Common Thread among them is not so much Assault Rifles as the Mental Illness that wasnt diagnosed and treated. And i think we have a dismal Mental Health treatment system in the United States. We basically dismantled it because of the excesses and abuses of mental hospitals back in the 60s. We didnt can replace it with anything we didnt replace it with anything. And that, improving diagnosis and treatment of Mental Illness, would do more to reduce Mass Shootings, i think, than any gun control measure would. The problem of Mass Shootings certainly is a very distinct one, and i think indisputably is linked to Mental Health issues and does not lend itself to being addressed by the kind of societywide issues about the sale of guns demonstrated, i think, in the most direct way in that almost all of these mass shooters are able to obtain the weapons that they use legally, and so further enforcement of those laws wouldnt stop those issues. Weve been talking for about 30 minutes now, and ill bet that there are some people in the audience who would like to ask questions. And so id like to move to that portion of the program and ask anyone who has a question, i guess theres a microphone set up there, to stand up and ask us a question. And the way well do this is well let each of the panelists con ceasely concisely address whatever question is raised. Audience . Here come a couple of people. Hi, is it yes. Okay. First of all, id like to the thank each of you for coming out today. This is a really valuable discussion. And i had a similar awakening, but it was a little bit [inaudible] anyway, my mother was shot in a robbery when i was 16 years old, so i was afraid of guns. And then what opened my eyes was when the Supreme Court said that the police are not duty bound to protect me in the ruling in the warren case. So that was actually and thin i discovered all the hurdles i had to go through to make a purchase as well. And i got involved last year. And so what id like to talk about are the assault weapons ban and the magazine size limitations because i really tonight think they do anything. Specifically, if you look at what happened in the shooting just this week, he had to do a mag rebode load. So reload. So how did that actually help . And in most of these Mass Shootings, they have to do a mag reload. So i dont think theres any substantial evidence that those help. All right, so thank you very much. Maybe framing that as a question well put it this way would a ban on militarystyle semiautomatic rifles that can be equipped with large capacity magazines have a significant effect on crime . And why dont we just go down the line and each introduce that answer that as a question. Your thoughts. It would not have a significant effect on crime. Assault rifles dont figure importantly in violent street crime, you know, street shootings, assaults. It arguably could have more of an effect on Mass Shootings, but as i said, i think other measures would have more of an effect than a ban on Assault Rifles for extended magazines. Daniel. Yeah. I agree with craig that in terms of thinking about assault weapon ban or restrictions on magazine capacity in terms of a broader approach to reduce Violent Crime and gun violence, youre probably not going to see that. Because, again, they principally are relevant more in a mass shooting context. You can look at a variety of Mass Shootings and in some cases like the recent one that you pointed out there was a ability to reload. You can also look at mass shooting context in which when a person was reloading is when people escaped or the person was incapacitated. One that comes to mind is the one in tucson when Jared Loughner was tackled when he was going to reload. But he already had a large capacity magazine and was able to kill and injury a very large number of people. There is a direct correlation between the ammunition capacity that the shooters have and how many people will get shot in these incidents. So i think ammunition capacity is relevant in Mass Shootings, not in whether they occur or not, but how many people are shot. Thats my own view. Okay. Maybe well leave it there, give emily a chance to can chime in. Im so sorry about your mother. Thats horrible, im so sorry about that. No, i dont look, of the 9,000 or so gun murders, about 300 are rifles of any sort. Dianne feinstein, who is the one who backed the assault weapons ban last year, puts the number of people who are killed by assault weapons, and to clarify for people who arent familiar with them, what we in the media or others call assault weapon is not an automatic gun, its a rifle that has certain physical ergonomic type characteristics whether its a collapsing stock or a pistol grip. So its just the style. Its not the caliber, its not the speed. Thats the only thing that defines politically assault weapon versus rifle. But again, you know, even dianne feinstein, and this is her bill, said its about 30 some people a year. I dont know where she gets those numbers, because Law Enforcement doesnt characterize styles. Whether it affects crime, you just ask the cops. And the police, one, did a survey last year, 15,000 current and retired Law Enforcement, and 96 said assault weapons ban will not affect crime. 92 said changing the magazine capacity will not affect crime. So lets look at the guys who are on the street, who are dealing with crime and ask them how to handle it. All right. Next question. I agree with what emily said about the bad guys who have guns have stolen them or presumably bought them from somebody else who stole them, but wouldnt those guns have come from households of people who acquired them legally and they were stolen from somebody who got it legally . So wouldnt reducing the amount of legallyowned guns also reduce the amount of illegal guns on the street . All right. Theres an interesting question. Lets just boil it down to that last sentence with a question mark at the end. Wouldnt reducing the overall supply of guns which just as an aside is generally estimated today at 300 million firearms in private hands in the United States thats not including the police, not including the military in civilian hands, would reducing that overall supply, 300 million, would that reduce the number of guns on the black market which are being used in crime . I think clearly, yes. But are we ever going to reduce the number of, you know, significantly below where it is now . Not all stolen or illegal guns, not all illegal guns are stolen. A lot of them are acquired illegally in the first place through the black market. Right. Yeah. Just to puck up on what craig pick up on what craig just said, i think its not in line with the facts that the overwhelming majority of guns on the illicit market are stolen. Prisoner surveys when you ask them how they got their gun, 10 said they stole it, there are others who got it on the black market. We dont know exactly, again, the path that those guns took. But we know also that some firearms are purchased illegally in straw purchases from legitimate retail outlets, so theres a variety of paths that guns take from the factory into the hands of the criminal. Precisely. And i published several studies that show that proper regulations on gun sales prevent that diversion into that illicit market where criminals get guns. But to the very specific point of more gun ownership meaning more guns get funneled to the illicit market, there is a positive correlation that you can see in a number of studies that back up your general point, but i agree with craig that thats probably not how were going to make a big impact on crime, you know . Were generally going to reduce gun ownership. Thats not politically possible, its not the sort of the way to go. I would love it if there were more efforts to focus on securing firearms within homes to reduce death. I think theres a lot to be gained from proper and safe storage of firearms. Emily, your thoughts. Yeah. Well, i generally i dont like to talk about hypotheticals. Violent crime is such a