Transcripts For CSPAN3 Andrew 20240705

And urban uprisings fiercely challenged it. Meanwhile, Gun Control Groups were diverted. Their abolitionist roots toward a conciliator or a fundraising, focused strategy that struggled to limit the stockpile of firearms. Gun country recast the story of guns in postwar america. One of cold war and racial anxieties. Unfettered capitalism am an exceptional violence continues to haunt us to this day. Andrew mckevitt is john de winters endowed professor of history at Louisiana Tech university. He is the author of consuming japan, a popular and the globalizing of 1980s america. Covert will be joined conversation with matthew dallek. Matthew dallek is a historian and professor at George Washington universitys graduate school of political management. He is author most recently of birchers how the John Birch Society radicalized the american right. Please join me in welcoming to politics and prose. Andrew mcdevitt and matthew dallek. Dreyfus. All right. Okay. Well, thank you to politics and prose for having us. Ill just start by saying that gun country is a is a great book and you know, you in the audience anyone hearing this it is absolutely worth buying and reading and understanding because it will change i think the way you think about change way i thought about the challenge guns in the United States and the problem of guns in the United States. So really honored to be here with with you, drew. And i just want to start by asking if you could talk a little bit about how you dedicate this book to your grandfather, who, as you say in the dedication, would hate every word of this book and and talk to us a little bit about how you got interested did in writing about guns and what drew you to the topic. Well, thank you, everyone, for coming. Matt, of course. Thank you for for being here. Thank you to politics and prose. Yes. The book is dedicated to my grandfathers name was carl fasi. He died about 20 a little over 20 years ago and he have been a he was a self described gun nut. This is a phrase that people who used in a sort of a term of endearment in the 1950s, in the 1960s, and even later for their own gun collecting habits. And he was one of those people. Theres a picture of me as a very child. I couldnt have been even a year old yet. I dont think i was walking. Im laying on a bed and my grandfather loved take photographs. Im laying on a bed and i on my lap a 44 magnum, smith and wesson handgun. This would have been circa 1980, 1981. Its also pictures of him in full confederate dress standing next to me as a two or three year old child, also holding a holding a rifle. And jersey in in new jersey, of all places. Thats right. Growing up in new jersey. And so he he to he symbolized the gun country that i wanted to write about. And i wanted to know more about him and and what led him to to collect guns, many of which we had to sell when he died many years ago. The other reason i got into this book is its story on my moving to louisiana in 2012. I was a book at the time about the between the United States and and i was interested especially in how japan manifested in local throughout the United States who i wrote about for instance how a honda factory came to ohio in the early 1980s. I wrote about sushi eaters. I wrote about anime fans, fans of japanese cartoons. And so the truth was i moved to louisiana and i knew nothing about new homes connection to japan. And so it started with something as simple as a Google Search for louisiana and japan. And i came across a case i knew nothing about. It was the 1992 killing of a Japanese Exchange student named yoshi hattori. He knocked on the wrong door looking for a Halloween Party and. The homeowner answered the door, armed with a gun and eventually pulled the trigger and shot and killed yoshi. And to me, this was a story, as it was to Many Americans at the time, but it was also one of some 30,000 gun deaths in the United States in 1992. What made it a truly exceptional story for me . Someone writing about Japan International relations was the reaction in japan, which was to condemn the united as backward. And barbara, what kind of society lets . Someone open the door armed with a handgun and confront an unarmed teenager. And so this led me on a hunt for thinking about this big question of the United States gun violence and gun culture and gun politics in a global context. And i thought at first maybe id write about the 1980s, in the 1990s. But the more i started asking this question about the united and guns in the world, the further it led me back all the way back to the end of the Second World War. And thats how i got this. Great. Well, im glad you wrote it. Obviously. Let me ask you, though, because you weave this really fashion argument into the book that i think just to try to summarize it, that a marketplace for guns has driven this postworld war two surge and have this very memorable phrase, gun capitalism and. And so what im wondering that a fair summary and you know and thinking about it before i read your book i thought, okay, you know, theres the culture around the war of the Second Amendment. Theres the frontier, your mentality, right . The sort of rugged individualism, the manliness. Right. The the machismo attached to firearms. But you say, you know, that really the primary driver i mean, there are others primary is is gun capitalism. Can you talk about that phrase . Talk about this market economy, the sort of broad picture of what youre arguing here . Sure. So so the question is, what makes the gun country. The gun country. Right. And we have answers for that. Weve had answers for it. One of those answers is its the revolutionary era and its the connection between the colonists, their firearms and winning independence. And then in 1791, we the Second Amendment, and then we lots of stories about how america is shaped by the gun in the 19th century, whether its the frontier experience, whether its the repression of slave populations through through militias, especially in the south. We have lots of stories. We have stories of people like samuel colt and oliver winchester. These great first generation of gun capitalists in the middle of the 19th century who have stories to tell about america and the gun. And theyre telling those stories the 19th century and theyre shaping how americans come to see their between firearms and and the American People. And so it got me thinking about this question of. What makes the gun country . Is it the Second Amendment . Is it traditions. Is it something deep in the culture of the American People . And as i went back into the postwar history of the United States, something really struck me and that was the tremendous material expansion of guns after the Second World War. Theres no question that the United States has always been a gun country, if not the gun country for those various reasons we can point to in the 18th and the 19th century. But what happens after 1945 is that the number of guns in the United States explode dramatically. Theres about 45 million, as best we can tell, in 1945. And counting guns in the United States is always mystical art, because by law, were not allowed to count guns in the United States. So best we can tell, there were maybe 45 million guns in the United States in 1945. Fast forward 75, 80 years and there are ten times as many guns 400, 450 million. Again, as best we can tell, there are not ten times as many people. Its about two and a half times as many people. So why did the material reality of guns putting aside traditions and ideas and abstract notions of rights and so forth and freedoms why did the number of guns increase so dramatically in the United States . And to me, the answer was gun capitalism. It was the production or the importation, the the distribution and the marketing of firearms after the Second World War that makes america a new kind gun country. And that gun capital, too. That changes after the Second World War. If we think about people like colt and winchester are gun capitalists in the sense that theyre telling stories about the tradition of the United States and how guns are related to those traditions. The great gun capitalists after the Second World War, whose names we dont know, but whose names we really should know. They a different kind of story about in the United States. The one i write about a lot in the book. His name is samuel cummings. I think everybody every american should know who sam cummings is. Sam cummings owned a company, enter arms. He created and owned a Company Called interop arms into arms was by the end of the 1960s. The worlds sorry, the 1950s, and also the 1960s, the Worlds Largest private firearms dealer. It was based just a few miles down the road in alexandria, on the waterfront there you could walk around the waterfront today, around like prince street and and see beautiful town homes that i will never be able to afford. But that were 50, 60, 70 years ago. Huge warehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of firearms. And this was sam cummings doing and what sam cummings did to transform gun capitalism after the Second World War. And he the only one who did it. There were a number of others, but he did it better than anyone else is he found supply of firearms in europe and in asia millions of firearms left over from the Second World War. And he went over there. In some cases he would walk into a defense in a place like finland or west germany, and hed throw down a suitcase full cash and say, ill buy as many leftover guns as you will. Give me. And in some cases, he walked out with guns for less than a dollar each, and he had a whole network of logistics he set up in europe and the United States to clean those guns up. The term he used was to sport or rise them to get them ready to sell american hunters in american sportsmen. And he imported them to the United States, where he sold them in some cases for less than 10 each. And this is at a time where a good hunting rifle from company like winchester or remington might run you 120 or 150, 10 . He sort of laughed it off and said that these were throwaway guns, that you could, after you bagged your first year, you could leave it out there in the woods and then go buy a really expensive rifle. And so hes one who i think more than anyone else creates or transforms gun capitalism after the Second World War into a Market Driven by abundance and plenty acquisition by buy. That was sam cummings story about guns. The guns are out there and because we won the war, we deserve them. So im going to import them and im going to sell them to americans dirt cheap. And i think this where gun capitalism really takes a turn in American History and its a new that becomes about and accumulating. And thats how we get ten times as many guns as there were in 1945. And by the way, sam cummings in iran, this is all legal. I mean, nothing he did was shady in terms of the laws, international laws, u. S. Laws. Right. Could you talk a little. Yeah. So but that same cummings gets this reputation as a kind of merchant of death. Right. That hes dealing arms around the world. There are so many rumors about sam cummings and cummings liked to like that. These rumors were out there because it made him like an International Man of mystery at one point he moves his headquarters. Hes still the business based in alexandria. But then he also opens up warehouses in england and he moves his headquarters to monte. Right. Which just sounds like a Perfect Place for an International Man of mystery to work out of. And so theres always these rumors that involved with the cia in part because right out of college he goes to work for the cia. Hes in arms analyst for the cia during korean war, which essentially means hes looking photographs of north korean and chinese troops trying to identify what firearms using. And shortly after the war, he starts his business, because hes been to europe and hes seen all of the guns laying on battlefields. And so theres always these rumors hes involved in International Intrigue because he is selling at the same time that hes selling millions weapons to americans. Hes selling not just firearms, but major weapons systems. And fighter jets to latin dictators and countries around the world. And so he would always be accused or there would always be the suspicion there that sam cummings is doing something fishy on the black market, that hes selling guns to communist insurgents against the United States because theres profit be made there. But he was so about why he needed to do that, because there is so much money to be made selling guns legally to american is if you can sell millions of rifles to american ones perfectly legally, why would you risk selling 10,000 firearms to some in Central America . It didnt. Good business sense and so he was always very transparent about why he did what he because this is the best market in the world, the Largest Consumer market and the most open Consumer Market for firearms anywhere in the world. And thats what made him rich, even though. Hed occasionally pop up in the press at this kind of International Man of mystery with, cia connections and so forth. He made guns. He made money selling, cheap guns to to americans. Was the government ever concerned that maybe some of these guns that in iran, sam cummings and his type were selling would fall into the hands, lets say, of communists or, you know, of other you know, you think it would follow logically that, hey, weve got this massive amount of guns, its pouring in from all over. Theyre very cheap. What happens . Theres some i mean, there are all these fears about communism, of course, mccarthyism. So i guess why wasnt the government more concerned about that . Or maybe they were they just didnt want to deal with. Yeah, well, the government does become concerned. So the first time that the federal government really has any kind of conversation about gun control after the Second World War happens because of san cummings and other figures like sam cummings and this is in 1957 and 1958 and its not National Security that prompts the conversation. Its gun industry because gunmaker was like remington and winchester. They see whats happening. Theyre going to gun stores and theyre seeing 10 war surplus sitting next to their hundred and 50 cadillacs of guns. And theyre worried that theyre going to lose sales to people like sam cummings. So they go to their congressmen who are located the gun valley states of massachusetts sits and connecticut. One of them is a represent native from connecticut named Albert Albert murano. The other is a senator from massachusetts named john f kennedy. And in 58, they put forward a bill before congress that would ban sam cummings imports because its hurting the gun industry and the gun industrys is. You cant put us out of business because what happens if we go war against the soviets . You need us to make guns. So youve got to make sure we stay in business. And so Congress Debates this bill and ultimately shuts it down because course the state Department Steps and the state department, theyre making this consideration. Is it bad for these guns to be out there, the world perhaps falling into the hands of communist . And the state departments conclusion is it is better. And they say this explicitly to congress, it is better for all of these guns out there in the world to come here and be sold to americans than be floating out there where we control them. So congress is congress is hearing stories of, shipments of tens of thousands of guns leaving italy, leaving spain, leaving west germany, leaving scandinavia and going to places in north africa and and Central America, places where there are communist insurgencies and they want to know whos responsible, that sort of stuff. And sam cummings of brushes it off and says, im im im trying to im trying to buy up all these guns around the world. Im doing my best to bring them here. And the state department gives him its seal of approval because its better for the guns to be here its better for us to be as critics called it, the dumping ground for the worlds guns than it is for those guns to be out there. Better for guns to be in the hands of american citizens than a communist insurgency in north africa or asia or Something Like that. So so there is a federal government consideration of this question. They they give their stamp of in the late 1950s. Was there ever like a red dawn scenario in the 1950s where, you know, people at the state department were arguing, hey, would be great if every american has a gun in case were invaded. Right. They can find it off. Is that ever pop up like an invasion of the body snatchers . So there actually are a lot of conversations about this in the 1960s, because what happens in the 1960s and theres really this kicks off after november 1963. Were coming up on the 60th anniversary here of, the assassination of john f kennedy. Congress, more seriously, turns attention to these kinds of weapons because the gun that Lee Harvey Oswald uses allegedly. Yeah, the gun. His next book. Yeah, the gun Lee Harvey Oswald does in fact use on november 22nd, 1963 is a man liquor carcano or just a carcano . It is an italian rifle made during the war in 1940 in italy that is later imported to United States for the that imports it there. Its not sam sam cummings says. Like who . Thank god i wasnt the one who imported that one. Its by a Company Called crescent firearms, new york city. They pay a dollar 12 for the gun in italy, they buy tens of thousands of them and they import them into the United States. And so when very quickly, it becomes clear that this was the firearm used, congress is going to turn their attention to this flood of guns coming into the country. And the the sort of chief gun control law of the 1960s is a connecticut senator named thomas dodd. And dodd is the hes the chairman of the house sorry, the senate. Juvenile delinquency subcommittee. Its the same committee that tried to go after books in the 1950s. Theyre going to turn their attention to guns in the 1960s. And dodd turns his attention to. These cheap imports, and hes Holding Hearings every year, year, nonstop hearings, hundreds of witnesses coming in every year. Theres a new round of hearings. At one point, ted kennedy, in 1950s, 65 or 66 says, havent we done this enough already . Weve already heard from all of these people. Each them a half dozen times. Cant we just put a bill forward and vote it already . But many of the people who come forward are making this very case. We need all of these guns in case the soviets invade. We in case we need to fight our red dawn resistance. When the soviets land. We need of these guns out in the population. The dodd talks, the us army about this sort of thing. Is there Contingency Planning for american citizens to take up arms against a soviet invasion . And the us army says absolutely not. That is ridiculous. We would never rely on whats called the us code, the unorganized militia, right . Everyone who owns a gun in the United States is ostensibly part of the unorganized militia. We would never plan around citizens rising if it ever came to that its over that weve lost game at that point so. So the conversation does come up in the 1960s but in the sort of round about way. Yeah. So i mean that really captures though the cold war are part of your argument as well, right . So there were National Security. I mean, theyre related, right . The economic free market, you know, gun economy. But also in the context of we need these guns as part of the cold war for all kinds of National Security. Maybe i could push you then to the mid to late sixties since you were talking about dodd and get you to talk about the effort to regulate like the liberal effort to really reform and regulate and oversee gun market. You know, what struck me in reading book is that during the Great Society day, of course, we passed country passed things like medicare, the civil rights act, the Voting Rights act, the war on poverty actually reduced poverty by Something Like 10 from 22 to 12 , i think. So these were controversial measures, but largely in many ways successful. And this gun control act of 1968 that dodd had spent a decade working toward, you argue, was really, i would say correct me if this is wrong an abject failure. And i would like to hear a little bit about why the liberal sort of effort to regulate guns was so and and then we can that might bring us more into the modern day. Yeah, sure. So so the gun control act of 1968, its the biggest of firearms Legislation Congress passes since 1930s. We have a couple of pieces in the 1930s that set up sort of the modern gun regime as we think about it. But the 1968 act is really important. It does a number of things. It it prohibits the mail order sale of firearms to consumers just like Lee Harvey Oswald, who bought his guns he used on november 22nd, 1963, through the mail. It also prohibits the importation of war surplus firearms as well as what were essentially handguns. Theres millions of cheap handguns coming into the United States in the mid 1960s. Sometimes these are called sort of derisively saturday night specials. Many of these guns made of cheap metal that was left over from Second World War. You had companies were these sort of fly by night operations, western europe popping up just to manufacture guns for the american market. And theyre incredibly cheap. And according to people like dodd, theyre incredibly dangerous. And so the gun control act tries to stem the tide of what seems to be like increasing gun crime, increasing ownership. And it is an abject failure, both from the right and the left. Its criticized the right because its gun control and it is a slippery slope towards tyranny, towards authoritarianism. This is the origins here in 68 of grassroot gun rights organizing. We get a number of of gun Rights Groups organizing organizing at the local level, which then start to gain a national profile, which will then eventually become the influence the national rifle. By the mid 1970s, pushing the organization itself further to the right, on the left, on the other, among the people who see the gun control act as necessary. It doesnt go far enough. This is also where we start to see the very first grassroots gun organizing. In the book. I write about a couple groups in chicago in early 1970s. One of them led by a remarkable woman lamed, laura fermi. She was the of enrico fermi. Enrico of the Manhattan Project fame. And after his death in 1954, she becomes an activist in so many respects and eventually the late 1960s, she comes around, she comes to to organize around gun control. And so her argument is that and i think this is an i think this a correct argument for the failures of liberal reform. Her argument is that by recognizing legitimacy of a gun market a consumer gun market as so many countries around the world do not do. And if they do recognize a legitimate consumer gun market, they regulate it. So as to be indistinguishable or look nothing like the american gun market. The fact that laws like the gun act recognize the legitimate side of the gun market means that they are unintentionally protecting the consumer gun market. They are building guard rails in which legitimate buying behavior can take place. And thats because theyre built around this this this trope of law abiding citizen. Now certainly, there are millions of people who abide by laws who own firearms. But the law abiding citizen is also a cultural creation. A political invention meant to attack gun control campaigns. But emphasizing that there are of people out there who can by the guardrails that that congress, state legislatures set up. And so this this boogeyman of the abiding citizen produce is laws that essentially legitimize the gun market. And one of the you know, one of the things that people like laura ferrer, me, criticize the 1970s is the atf. Right. The the gun Rights Groups criticized the atf as well because, again see them as you know, this is the slippery slope toward tyranny and totalitarianism. But for people like laura fermi. The more we set up organizations and institutions like the atf, the more we are building a federal bureaucracy that protects gun ownership, that defines the lines which legitimate gun ownership can take place. Her argument is that there be no legitimate civilian gun ownership. It is of, course, from our perspective today, a naive argument, but it was a powerful in the early 1970s and makes its slowly up through some people in Congress Though its never going to get much attention. This kind of abolitionist message that civilians dont need firearms and you know if they need firearms, a shotgun or a rifle for hunting, fine. But handguns are meant to stop or harm beings. Theyre not hunting weapons. And a civilized, Rational Society can and and should control them. And so i think that i think, laura, for me figured out the failures of liberal reform effort in that moment, that that it was always going fail if it recognizes the legitimacy of the market. And here we are today. You know, weve had a law in 2022. There was, of course 30 years earlier in the brady bill, the assault weapons ban, both of which from the gun rights perspective, are seen as a trampling. On our Second Amendment rights. But in reality, they protect that gun market and they protect owners and they protect the gun movement by creating the guidelines in which legitimate activity can take place. And i think ultimately thats thats been the the failure of liberal gun reform in the last 50 years. Yeah you had this phrase that i thought was very memorable, where you say that congress has legislated around the problem of plenty. Is that kind of what you does that kind of encapsulate the the argument that whatever reforms we have seen is still in abundance and its still a plentiful supply and that theyre kind of tinkering but maybe i could push back a little bit. I mean, could we see . Could we have seen . Lets keep it historically, could we have seen a regime a Regulatory Regime where i dont know, you had to go a license. You had to you know, im not an expert on gun reform, but you had to pass a test. You had to every year you know renew that license. You had to get an inspection. You had to lock up. I mean, you know, you can kind of go on the list and to make it so that, okay, theres still a market there, you can still buy a gun, but its going to be. Were going to ensure as the state that you were required to do x, y, z and a, b and c, thats what about that idea . Yeah. Yes, it was a historical possibility. And the moment was in 1968. So the gun control act is is passed in 1968. And theres this sort of weird thing that happens is congress is pushing the gun act through. Thomas dodd is trying push Something Like the gun control act through as early as 1963. But finally it it gets enough Political Support 1968. And the reasons for that are varied there is, of course, the assassinations of 1968. Bobby kennedy in june of 68, Martin Luther in april of 68. There are also the various urban uprisings the 1980s of 1967 and 1968. And newark in detroit in the aftermath of kings killing. But ultimately so what happens is congress is pushing this through in 1968 and only after Bobby Kennedy killing does johnson say maybe we should figure whats going on here. And so he announces the or he appoints a committee. Lyndon johnson loved he loved appointing commissions and so he appoints another commission after bobby killing, which comes to be the formal name is the national or president ial National President ial commission on the causes and prevention of violence. I probably got that wrong its. Better known as the Eisenhower Commission because its headed up by dwight brother Milton Eisenhower and it is tasked with investigating violence across American History and in the present and. The the Eisenhower Commission Appoints Task force and this task is going to carry out the very First Federal study ever of gun violence and gun ownership and gun culture in the United States. And they go through they do incredible research over the course of several months. One of the things that theyre really interested in knowing is how american gun culture and violence and ownership differs with the rest of the world. So they, in fact, secretary of state dean rusk, he writes to embassies all over the world and says, tell us everything you know about gun control laws and gun ownership in in your country and all of the telegrams in return. Its the first kind of catalog of of gun culture and gun and gun control around the world. And this commission uses to sort of start to put together their their conclusions and their recommendations. And they say the conclusion rather stark. Like many of these commissions came to in the 1960s, like the Kerner Commission is better known, which was about all of those urban uprisings. The conclusion is rather stark. It says, at this moment, we believe there are Something Like 90 million guns in the United States and there are probably Something Like 25 million handgun use and. Thats too many. If the number were 20 million or 18 million. Its still too many. Now is the time to do something. It. What we need is essentially a national. A National Confiscation program for handguns. Because handguns. The primary tool of violence when it comes to gun violence Something Like 75, 80 of gun deaths each year are consequence of handguns. And they say we that this would be the most incredible act of of property confiscation, the history of any liberal democracy. But we have to do it now because we dont want to be in a position where 25 years from now, were talking about 200 million guns. And then in another 25 years, 400 million guns. Now, is the to act and act dramatically things like the gun control act. Theyre not going to go far enough. Youve got to ban certain of guns outright and youve got to collect the ones that you dont want out there on the streets. So there was a moment where where somebody could have done something. But, you know, this was after five, six years of dodd battling for the gun act, which was hard enough to pass with with moderate and even in some conservative support. And there was no stomach it especially once Richard Nixon came into office, im going to open it to questions. I think and i have more if no one does. But please up. Please use the microphone which is over here. My left and your right. During the eight years of the obama presidency, it seemed as if there was some type of mass shooting every week or so, like clockwork. And one of the the famous one was, of course, sandy hook. And a lot of people thought that a lot of them were false flag events staged. The purpose of gun control. But the interesting thing is that there was a massive run on the sale of and bullets ammunition as a result. So it seems if that was the agenda that completely backfired. So what do you think about that . Yeah. So ryan bucy is a former gun company who is now he wrote a memoir called gunfight. I think its called gunfight and he calls barack obama americas greatest gun because during eight years of obamas administration, i think gun sales, total gun sales, Something Like 100 million. You know, and thats about a quarter of our Current National stockpile. So you are you are absolutely correct that in wake of these events like sandy hook, which was not a false flag event and people have been sued and lost many millions of for saying that sort of thing in the wake of events like sandy hook gun sales have spiked so they spiked in 2008 when barack obama was elected because the fear was a democratic president coming in going to impose some sort of gun control, even though barack obama said himself he have any interest in that. He did say things during the Campaign Like the the cling to guns and religion thing, which did not help him. But there was never any intention. Gun control in the aftermath of sandy hook. That, in fact was a far bigger spike in december of 2012 than obamas election in in 2008. Interestingly, the gun sales kind of ebb and flow in this way in the in the there was a spike of gun sales 2016 in anticipation nation of a Hillary Clinton administration which might pursue new gun control. But of course we know what happened and what happens to the gun industry in 2017 is whats known as the trump slump. Gun sales cratered because there was no fear that quote unquote the government was coming for your guns. And then, of course, you know, as you as you point out, theres these moments of of insecurity. 2020 and 2021 are the two biggest years on record gun sales in the United States as a consequence of the pandemic, as a consequence of white fears of the black matter movement, as the consequence, a contentious political election, as the consequence of an effort to overthrow a constitution final republic in january of 2021, gun sales spiked and theyve started go down again in the last couple of years. But but undoubtedly the the election of perceived liberal reformer has caused gun gun sales to go up. Same thing happened with with bill clinton in the 1990s. What do think of at one point there is a Government Strategy to to buy lots of guns from the gun manufacturers as. Well as ammunition perhaps to so there be a shortage so that citizens wouldnt be able to buy them or they would be expensive do you think that was a good strategy . I think thats a real strategy. I think that might be some conspiracy theory. Thats thats never been documented. Ive never seen any evidence of of that sort thing happening. And i think i think gun manufacturers would be the first people to sort of raise the flag and say, hey, the government just bought several million guns for us. Theyre trying to take your guns away. You know, they would have. So i yeah, im not im not sure that thats a real thing. I wonder if we could have talked from the beginning gun safety instead of gun control, if that would have made a difference. And in 2007, with the supreme heller decision turning the Second Amendment on its head as an individual right to own guns, should we now should our strategy be to. Get rid of the Second Amendment to good questions . So on the first question, what weve seen in the last decade or so is, a shift in the language of. People who want to do something about guns. So its shifted from gun control to gun safety. So no no Major Organization today that advocates for these kinds of policies. It be giffords or moms demand or brady they use the language of gun control anymore they they talk about gun safety. And i think theres theres two aspects to that. One is that it was seen as sort of a strategic retreat that that we cant win with the language of control because americans dont like the language of control. They dont like to feel like are being controlled. And this word control, as i write about in the book, it has its own kind of intellectual history. In the 1960s, and its related to how american think about how societies develop modern in particular, theres a real we often think of of guns as kind of a masculine thing, but gun control is also seen as a masculine thing in the 1960s because it is man imposed and control on a chaotic environment. And so the language of of gun control is often seen in masculinist terms as well. And so we see this shift to gun safety. And, you know, the other aspect of that, i, is that it is a recognition of the material reality of guns. There are 400 million in the country right now, 450 million. We cant control them. We cant get rid of them. We can only keep ourselves safe from them. And i think thats what best policies can hope to do right now is how do we keep ourselves safe from a gigantic mistake . You know, maybe solution to that is, is the Second Amendment. Sure. Lets do it. You know, i mean, but you know how thats never going to pass congress. Thats never going to get through the states and forth. You know what . I would what would rather see is is a return to like the Second Amendment actually says right about. A wellregulated militia. I mean, thats the problem. The heller decision, 2008, even originalists think that scalias writing in 2008 was just a hatchet job when it comes to originalism. Because if you if you look at what historians have written about, the Second Amendment and i would much rather read what professional historians have written than what law scholars who have a very clear agenda have written what theyve written about the Second Amendment is that it had nothing to do with individual rights. The framers didnt think about individual gun rights in that particular way. That didnt mean they were opposed to individual gun rights. But the Second Amendment was really about the relationship states and the federal government, the people. When it comes to defense. And that defense either being external from external enemies or internal enemies like slave rebellions and things like that. And so i dont know, maybe a return to a wellregulated militia in which the government can come into your home and look at your gun and make sure its registered and sure youre keeping it, keeping maintaining it well. And that your training regularly, maybe. Lets go back to the original amendment. Maybe we have a better shot of doing that than, getting rid of the Second Amendment because yeah. As much as John John Paul stevens had had that in the New York Times a few years ago, repeal the Second Amendment. I just dont see it happening. I, i, i guess my question goes to the premise that. This was started and driven by the supply of cheap weapons. Um, im imagining in that inventory was rather quickly and. Business history has no shortage of products that were overwhelmed, mainly brought to market and werent successful. Im wondering and i havent read your book, what you have found that that makes america different from, say canada who were culture did not grow into what it became in this country why why is america uniquely driven with this problem. Yeah i would say after world war two, its the prosperity of the United States and the tremendous Consumer Market here. Right, is 140 Million People who as of 1945 are producing of all are responsible for half of all the worlds productivity. Right. And thats going to be a tremendous peace dividend, which is going to lead to a lot of expendable income, lot of leisure time and i dont know what the population of canada was in in 1945. What is it today . Maybe 40 million, Something Like that so maybe ten, 12, 15 million, Something Like that. So its just simply a matter of numbers. Canada has had and still today has more than the United States on gun ownership but nevertheless does have Something Like a gun culture built hunting, built around sportsmanship, increasingly built on more aggressive approach to gun rights like United States. But that the United States is the economic juggernaut. 1945 is, you know, its responsible for so much of the United States. Looks like after the Second World War and in respect, i think the gun Consumer Market is a creation in that moment as well. Thank you for the question kind of let me in here. I know my question and interest in guns automatic that. My husband had a real interest in a sports club locally but the minute he heard it announced over to Television One weekend i am guessing probably 20 years ago that congas had allowed for automatic rifles and that if you pay to the massive. The the the disasters they get the the press really is automatic goes back to our automatic it might have been 20 years ago that they announced it but he he said then he said and he didnt. Buy yes and london they are getting you know you get think come home with with pretty fancy rifles you know as part of a class they probably dont get very well very much a use and youre does your book address that kind of problem yes so yeah so i think the question is about the the so the what the the assault weapons ban. Right. Which which was first passed by congress in 1994 and there was a ten year sunset on that law. And so in 2004, the assault weapons ban expired and the George Bush Administration george w Bush Administration was not going to do anything, act on it. And you know you can trace our the growth of Mass Shootings in the United States arguably to that arguably to that moment. Thats right. Big stories the time. Yeah. And so what happens terms of the gun market after that is is the advertising of of socalled assault rifles. So theyre not automatic. Right . Right, right. Theyre not automatic fire. Right. An automatic fire as you pull the trigger and it fires until stop pulling the trigger. Those guns, you cant purchase analysis right. You can point anywhere. Right. But these are still rifles. The you know, the infamous ar 15 that were designed for military purposes and are often used in these Mass Shootings. In fact, just today, Washington Post had a truly sort of tragic article documenting the the ways an air 15 what an air 15 does to a human body and they published a lot of photographs. I would not reading this if, you know, youre sensitive to these sorts of things, but they publish a lot of photographs that were from the scenes of these Mass Shootings air fifteens were used and you know this is in thinking in terms of gun capitalism in the gun market this opens up the floodgates for these of weapons in part because banning it in 1994 made people it more. And what the Gun Companies also do in 1994 after the ban is they just they slightly all of their firearms and give different names to essentially allow the companies to continue selling the same kinds of weapons. And then in 2004 with the expiration it just opens the floodgates. And theres a lot of other reasons why those guns become popular in 2004. And yes, i do. I do write about that in the book. Thank you. Troubles. Adults young adults thats what im searching for and that go out and shoot them and then the newspaper gets there and we all know about it unfortunately thank you thank you i think Sporting Goods is actually some of its sales of weapons. Last week, the Supreme Court had an on gun possession by people in their protective orders and Coney Barrett took a shot at the plaintiffs lawyer and so now does every policeman to go around and check his colonial to see whats going on. I thought that was a real shot against the original this. How did you take that hearing and are they do you think theyre retreating from the bruin decision . Almost. All right. I think what what she was trying to do protect the bruin decision. So just for context here in, so the first landmark of gun of Supreme Court gun decisions in the last few decades was the 2008 heller case. And heller was was when the court said that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own a firearm, independent of service in a militia or anything like that. And that gets expanded to that. Thats decision about d. C. , about gun ownership in d. C. And that gets expanded to the states and to that decision in 2010 and 2022. We get the bruins decision brewing, essentially expand that idea that the individual can own a firearm to the public sphere, that the individual can carry a firearm anywhere in most reasonable places in public in order for for purposes of selfdefense. And so that has forced a lot courts and legislatures to go back and rethink their gun control laws like the case was involved in new york, for instance, and people traveling through york from other states and where they could bring guns in, where they couldnt bring guns and has expanded the idea that guns are are perfectly acceptable and legal in public spaces. Now, this most recent case is the rahimi case, and the rahimi case is the the do does the government have a right to take the guns away from who has a restraining order against them and these laws have long existed. And rahims lawyers say that this is a violation of their clients Second Amendment rights. He is a terror able representative of gun rights. You are on the gun rights side. This is not a very good guy in many ways. I mean, he was he was first he had the restraining order because of violent violence, a girlfriend. And then there instances of him pulling a firearm in a drive thru at a fast food and other cases as well. Hes not the poster boy for gun. And for a long time, gun rights organizations had this very problem that. They had people who they believed there in their absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment. Their rights have been violated, but they didnt want to bring them to the Supreme Court. They didnt want people like rahimi to become the poster boy for gun rights. And so this was one reason why it took so long for the heller case to come in 2008. And so think what the conservative justices who i think are going to against rahimi are doing, theyre trying to protect bruen by saying that there is a limit here because this is a horrible and at least we can draw the line for now at horrible people in order to protect the legitimacy of the bruin decision, which is to that again, law abiding, quote unquote, law abiding citizens have the right to carry a firearm in public for for selfdefense. Can i ask you one by we have about three or 4 minutes left. One final question, which is what you in the book. So you talk you write a very movingly about fermi and sort of this idea of abolish right abolishing really the market but the kind of a. I. And nra, i would call them interesting, incrementalist, right. The the sort of reformers really do come off particularly well. They dont come off as very effective of they seem to get sidetracked trying to raise money and just really focused on the nra and trying to oppose it. And and i wonder if you can talk a little bit about that, because thats an important element, i think, to, you know, how got to where we are today. Yeah. And in some cases the failure, the liberal reforms youve talked about, right. So laura fermi is again this activist chicago and she has this essentially sort of abolitionist message about civilian firearms ownership and she makes a connection with a young man named mark baranski. Baranski is is mugged chicago when hes a graduate student at the university of chicago laura family lives around there because her husband was this prominent physicist at the university of chicago. And he gets interested in something about this. He says, we dont have National Lobby to counter the nra because, you know, i got mugged and theres everywhere on the streets of chicago here and nra is saying thats their right to have a gun to the south for selfdefense. Its these guns are ending up in crimes everywhere. So we need some kind of counter. The nra in washington and fermi says thats a great idea im going to support it. Im going to give you money do this. Im going to teach you everything i know about gun politics about gun policies, about gun violence. Im going to make connections for you, all of my wellconnected, to get you supported and and set up in d. C. Were going to they communicate all the time hes keeping her up to date. She becomes the first board member of this organization. This organization will eventually become Brady Campaign. And it is essentially created by laura fermi. And you wont find laura fermis name anywhere on Brady Campaign literature, which seems sort of like a minor injustice to me, but in part because laura fermi sort of quickly written out what becomes Brady Campaign story eventually that by the late 1970s theyre calling themselves Handgun Control Inc and before that they were the National Council for the control of handguns, the gun control organizations in the 1970s are just a messy alphabet soup, and theyre all fighting with each other over initial ads and logos and these sorts of things. And so the organization shifts quickly once it gets some leadership, it appoints a new leader named pete shields. Shields son was killed by the socalled zero among the socalled zebra murders in San Francisco in the early 1970s. And he wants to do something about gun control as well. Hes a dupont executive, which incidentally owns gun company. He takes time off to to organize for gun control and. He brings this sort of Business Executive mentality, the organization, and he kind pushes laura fermi out because shes saying we need to fight to control. We need to fight to get rid of handguns. And hes saying maybe we should just get rid certain kinds of handguns because that message is better triangulating between the various that might support us. And most importantly, we need money. The gun rights organizations have so much money. In the 1970s. And what becomes the Brady Campaign has no money except for laura fermis pocketbook and. So they are struggling just to get off the ground and they think we need to triangulate our message to essentially, on the one hand, move toward a more or more conciliatory toward gun owners, and on the other hand, we just want to be the counterweight to the thats how we want people to think about, not necessarily. We want to get rid of the handguns but we want to fight the nra and think that message is going to sell and i think a lot of ways we still kind of are gun control organizations still live that legacy. Well, please join me in thanking drew for this terrific talk and book. Thank you,good evening, everyon. Thank you so much for coming to this very special you are in for an incredible treat. My