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Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20131019

>> i see the challenges that the issue of gun violence presents us in this country and how hard it is to solve that issue particularly i know living in the beltway for five, six years, you do develop a beltway mentality and think it's always about fighting here, and you don't realize there are a lot of opportunities, should be a lot of opportunities to find common ground on many issues, including gun violence. so that's kind of the perspective i'm coming from too. identify talked to elected officials, gun owners, friends and others in the state and, hopefully, have a few ideas that might be interesting here today. i just want to acknowledge real quickly my old friend martin chavez, the former mayor of albuquerque, good to see you. as well ascare line brewer caroline brewer. and we have a couple representatives from moms demand action for common sense -- i can't remember the official title, but moms demand action to end violence in this country, so thank you. actually, when i started the semester with my students, i had shannon watts, who founded the moms group, come and speak to them. not so much to push my point of view or hers, but to talk about how people can try to push for change using social media and internet connecting. i also had a young man by the name of connor goddard who had worked for me at brady who told his personal story having been shot four times at virginia tech. and i'm glad to see dick heller here. we never dead get out for the beer i wanted to do, but hopefully we can make that up sometime soon, dick. i've been on panels and discussions with dick over the years. want to make a few points. point number one is that we still have a problem with gun violence in this country. some people argue that, they'll argue that there's less gun homicides today than there might have been in the early '90s, they might argue that violent crime has gone down. that's all true. but we still have a problem with gun violence in this country. and even if the numbers are decreasing, which i'm happy about, we still have a problem with gun violence in this country. the tragic shootings at newtown where 20 first graders were massacred was just ten months ago. the shooting at the navy yard was just a month ago. and we haven't done anything as a country to address these issues, and these are crucial issues for us to address. even when we -- and then i hear from so many people why do you focus on mass shootings so much of the time? mass shootings are very rare, there's very few people killed in the context of mass shootings, and that's true. but oftentimes that's the only time that the media and the public and our elected officials will focus on the issues, when there's a mass shooting. so i always said it's not that i'm saying anything different than i said last week or the month before or the year before, it's just only occasionally does the media focus on the issue, and that's when we see one of the tragedies like virginia tech, like tucson, like newtown occurring. but in this country we still have 32 people murdered every day with guns. and that's something that we shouldn't tolerate in this country. in addition to those 32 people that are murdered with guns every day, we have a number of suicides by guns and accidents with guns that brings the total of gun deaths on a tailly basis to -- daily basis to about 80 per day in this country. and the depths by guns are only the tip of the iceberg. the people that are injured with guns every day increases that number significantly. for every gun death, there's another three or four gun injuries in this country every day. a lot of times when we focus just on gun homicides, we ignore the fact that our emergency rooms and surgical care doctors have gotten a lot better at dealing with gunshot injuries. part of it's the experience from iraq and from afghanistan. but we have a lot better system in dealing with those gun injuries than we did in the '90s. and so a lot more people survive these gun injuries. but when i talk to the folks that work the emergency rooms, when i talk to the folks that are the doctors and the nurses, they oftentimes in a large city will talk about they're still seeing as much gun violence as they saw ten years ago, as they saw twenty years ago. then i look back at indiana, in the midwest. chicago's been having a horrible year in terms of gun injuries. my home city of fort wayne, i think the number of homicides is now on one of its highs for the last 20 years or so with gangs and guns and drugs in the community. so point number one, we have a problem with gun violence in this country, and as a nation we aren't doing anything to try to solve that, to try to fix it, to try to make it better. point number two, when we have tried to fix it, we've generally run into roadblocks. we all know that congress has a tough time doing anything. if they have a tough time passing the budget or raising the debt ceiling, how can we expect them to handle something like gun control, gun violence in the country? we came, as i mentioned after virginia tech, all sides worked together basically to help get a bill that got more records into the background check system. but since newtown we at least had a vote for the first time in the u.s. senate, but at that vote all the policy proposals from both sides, from all sides of the aisle basically were blocked. there weren't enough votes to get a universal background check bill that was a compromise bill supported by senator manchin from west virginia and senator toomey from were. that was my hope -- from west virginia. that was my hope, bringing together a conservative and a moderate democrat, joe manchin, who field been both a-rated by the nra, manchin had run for office showing him shooting and a book of health care regulations. obviously, people that have a lot of gun openers and gun enthusiasts in their states and among their constituency. so when senators toomey and manchin were able to come together, i had hoped that we could get something done. but that bill fell five or six votes short of getting the supermajority that we now require to get anything passed in the senate. on the other side, there was a bill to push, basically, national reciprocity for conceal/carry permits. this is a bill that had come up as a stand alone bill three or four years ago proposed by senator thune, the so-called thune amendment. when that came up a few years back, it fell short of the 60 vomits also. i think it got 58 votes that time. time it actually got less, i think it got 53 votes. so both sides pushing for their ideas on what to do with gun violence were blocked in the u.s. senate from getting anything done. and, of course, even if we had passed anything in the u.s. senate from the perspective of more background checks or restrictions on semiautomatic weapons or high capacity ammunition, who knows what would have happened in the house. it was very difficult -- if it's tough to get it through the senate, it's even tougher sometimes to get it through the house. and, obviously, speaker boehner has been operating on needing a majority of the majority in order to even bring something to the floor. those sorts of bills probably would not have made it to the floor without a lot of pressure from the public. so this is the situation we've got. and what i see is i see a lot of good grassroots action from people like moms who demand action, brailledty and other groups -- brady and other groups, and i see a lot of action on the other side, the nra, but there are others that are pushing the gun rights agenda. and again, both sides i know see that as the long-term solution, do enough grassroots organizing, you change the people that get elected. when the people change that get elected, then we're going to be able to get something done. but that takes a long time. and even if there's a backlash against the republicans for the way they handled the debt ceiling and keeping the government open, you're probably not going to get the sort of people into congress quickly that are going to change these things. we're still going of to have enough votes on the one side to block national conceal/carry, there's still going to be enough votes on the other side to block background checks, and we're all back to square one where 32 people keep getting killed every day with guns, and we as a country do nothing about it. i was very pleased that some states took action after newtown to strengthen some of their laws. there were other states that responded the other way after newtown, to, in effect, loosen their laws or make it easier to carry or have different restrictions. we saw states like colorado where what i consider to be good laws were passed, and then there was a recall election, and two of the people that pushed that got removed from office, but the law still stands. but we have this back and forth fight. and as i look back on it, we've been having this fight since at least 1993 and 1994 after the brady background check bill and the first so-called assault weapons ban was passed. so what do we do now? we've got a problem, and we've got a political system that can't seem to move these things. what can we do? this is where i think we need, all of us need, we need to find a way to find common ground between the nra and the gun rights side and people like brady and moms demand action and mayors against illegal guns, and those who are concerned about the gun violence in this country. there should be a lot of common ground here. when i look at other issues that face us as a country, guns really is one where particularly since the heller v. d.c. case we should be able to find common ground. before the heller case there was a serious argument about what the second amendment to the constitution meant, and you can argue the history, you can argue the language, and you can argue the intelligent, and you can argue what the miller case said in 1938, you could argue a lot of these things. there were tons of briefs. but once the supreme court rules in june of '08 that there was an individual right to have a gun for self-defense purposes at least in your home, that battle's done. in one of the points i made after that ruling, in fact, i was on a tv show, i was on chris matthews' hardball with wayne la pierre that night, and i said, con "freedom watch"lations, wayne -- congratulations, wayne, now let's figure out what we can do here. because the decision and justice scalia, you know, no screaming liberal, justice scalia made it very clear in section three of the opinion that this right, the second amendment right, like other rights is not unlimited. and he said that you could have restrictions on who gets a gun, on how the gun's sold, how the gun is stored, how the gun is caroled and even what kind -- caroled and even what kind of -- carried and even what kind of gun it is. you can argue where you can draw the line, but basically justice scalia outlined some areas where i think we can start to have a discussion and where we need to have a discussion. and where it's crucial for the future of our country and the health of our communities to have this discussion. so i wanted to suggest a few things today where i think we can possibly find common ground. first one is still on background checks. i mean, this is the one that people should agree on. we all agree that people that we are pretty sure are going to be -- that are dangerous now and are likely to be dangerous shouldn't easily be able to get a gun. and, you know, that's sort of the starting point. someone who's been a dangerous felon, someone who's dangerously mentally ill, someone who's a clear drug abuser, a number of the other categories. folks generally agree on that. and even wayne lapierre, and i know he was on one of the national talk shows after the navy yard shooting and said that he wanted to fix the background check system. he said we've got a broken background check system. he wants to fix that broken background check system, and no one's sitting down to talk with him. i'm saying we need to sit down with wayne lapierre and find out how we can find agreement with him to fix the broken background check system. if he's bluffing, at least let's find that out. if he's willing to work, let's get that work done. because the background check system is broken. but just because it's broken doesn't mean we walk away from it. i had one senator who wrote me and said he wasn't going to support the manchin/toomey bill because the background system was broken. my reaction was do something to fix it! the fixes can be complicated. we have to look at the definitions of who we consider a dangerous person, and maybe there can be better ways to define these people. we can look at how the records get into the system. even if you've got a great definition of dangerousness, if the states aren't getting the records into the background check system, it doesn't coanybody good. so we need to find better ways to do that. and we need to look at how many sales are allowed without doing the background checks. right now only federally-licensed dealers are required to do background checks, that leaves a large loophole that's often exploited at gun shows, but it can be exploited through private sales, and that's something that could be fixed too. the manchin-toomey amendment proposal tried to fix that. some folks felt that went too far. let's try to figure out where folks felt they went too far. if it's because you live in a rural community and the nearest place to do a background check is far away, maybe we can draw some other procedures up that deal with that in terms of timing or in terms of how you can do the background check, but let's fix the background check system. this is one we should all agree on. and the fact that lapierre said he wants to sit down and fix the background check system is something that those in the gun control movement and the gun violence prevention movement should take up right away. and that's one where the rest of us whether it's dick heller or paul helmke or martin chavez, you know, interested people who have been in politics and the gun issue for years can sit by and push them to get to the table. like any other compromise, there's a little give, there's a little take, but let's get something done that fixes this broken background check system that that makes it harder for dangerous people to get guns. that's point number one. point number two is i think we have some potential to do things on the weapons that we consider perhaps too dangerous to have easily, readily available to everybody. you know, this gets into the whole issue of a so-called assault weapon, semiautomatics, it gets into the issue of the high capacity magazines. again, we should be able to draw some lines. some people say, well, why do you want to ban a magazine clip, why do you want to hold it at ten bullets? my standard issue is 12 bullets or 15 bullets. i'm willing to get involved this those kind of discussions, where we draw the line on 10, 12, 15 or whatever number of bullets. right now the limit is unfinty. there is no -- infinity. you see people like the aurora shooters bringing in one of these drums that has over 100 bullets. you can make a strong argument that the reason the tucson shooter was stopped was the fact that the 32-round magazine that he had emptied, and in the time he was trying to get the other magazine in, he was tackled. somebody who's good can change it real quickly, but when they're shooting people and people are screaming and dying and there's blood on the ground, that's a lot harder to do. so the size of the clip, the size of the ammunition magazine does make a difference. and newtown, one of the arguments is that 11 of the children got away when the shooter there went to change the magazine clip. so there are advantages to having a restriction on a magazine clip. what the number is is not as crucial as the fact that we need to have some limits because right now there are no limits, and as the technology changes, we're seeing more and more guns that hold more and more bullets and cause more damage. a lot of folks say, oh, that's the stuff you're never going to get. you're never going to get another assault weapon ban. how do you define things? well, the one thing i point out to people is we've had restrictions on machine guns since 1934. we don't ban them. you know, it's not a machine gun ban, but we have heavy restrictions on machine guns and fully automatic weapons, and it's been on the books for some time. it was modified somewhat in the '80s, but these restrictions have worked for the most part. you don't see machine guns and fully automatics used in bank robberies today like we did in the '20s and '30s, you don't see them used in street crime partly because it becomes expensive and you have to do some registration and some licensing and some other things with fully automatics. so they're available, but they're not available, readily available to most people. this, to me, is another category of where do we draw the line, you know? let's figure out how technology has changed to make guns more deadly in terms, again, the ve loss the city by which the -- velocity by which the bullets are released and figure out a way to draw the line and maybe have the alternative be some sort of heavier standard of regulation like we do with fully automatics. i'm sure a lot of folks on the other side are going to oppose that immediately, but most of them support the machine gun restrictions. not all do, but a lot of -- most people generally, including the nra, have supported the machine gun restrictions in the past. if they supported the machine gun restrictions in the past, there should be some possibility to support some restrictions going forward. the last point i wanted to make deals with who carries the guns, where they carry the guns and how we figure out who should be allowed. and i think this the one where e might be some potential, maybe the most controversy from the gun violence prevention side. as i said, one of the big things we fought a few years back was the so-called thune amendment, that was one of the amendments that was proposed in april again. and i opposed that and others opposed it for a number of good reasons. we opposed it because some states have such low requirements for getting a conceal/carry permit that, basically, in virginia one of the people that got a shot at virginia tech, i know she was able to get a conceal/carry permit online without ever having touched a gun in her life, but she was able to do it online. some states like utah it's fair fairly easy. you fill out a form, you mail in a check, you get a license. other states have tougher requirements. so there's a whole variety. some states you have to renew the permit on a regular basis. some like indiana, once you get it, it's a lifetime permit. you've got an obligation to tell the state of indiana if you've gotten in trouble during your lifetime, and they might take the permit away, but, you know, you've got a lifetime permit for your gun. not for your driver's license, but for your gun. so different states have different criteria. and one of the things we should look at because in order to get the nra and the gun rights groups to the table, we have to find something they've been pushing and are interested in that they haven't been able to get, and i think that deals with someover the reciprocity issues. i think one of the areas for potential, and i think it's an area that the gun violence prevention side should be willing to discuss is having some national recognition for conceal/carry if there are minimum standards met, either setting a national standard or a national minimum standard that states have to follow. i know a few years ago when i looked at it, texas actually has one of the higher levels, one of the highest levels of standards for getting a conceal/carry permit. you know, if we could find a state where it's worked and it's worked well and where legitimate gun owners who have, who feel they need this for protection meet the criteria, let's have those sort of cry criteria and t them elsewhere. i think that's something that should be put on the table. and i think if we do that, i i think we also, perhaps, get into some of the issues with background checks with weapons. i think one of the things that's implied with a conceal/carry permit is the idea of permitting, it's the idea of the license. and it's always been interesting to me, i know one of the books i read early on on looks was david hemingway's book about private guns, public health. excellent book. and his conclusion as to what might do the best thing long range for dealing with gun violence was he proposed a system of licensing and registration. and, again, the analogy we hear all the time is you get a driver's license, you register your car. the state's involved when you sell your car in getting a new registration. and, again, i'm not arguing that necessarily we go with the way we handle cars and truck driver's licenses fully -- driver's licenses fully, but the concept of licensing or permitting and registration is one we should look at. we register those machine guns. we license those conceal/carry permit holders. we do a background check before we allow people to buy. if we combine those concepts into a system that looks at the individual and then gives some sort of a license or permit, when we look at some of the weapons and look at some that need to be registered and others that don't, i think we can come up with a workable system, hopefully, that could perhaps advance the interests of folks on different sides of this issue and help us move forward. you know, i think about the dick heller v. d.c. case a lot, and the remedy in that case, the last line in justice scalia's decision was basically telling the district of district of colt they were ordered to give dick heller the license that he had applied for. you know, during the argument alan gura, the lawyer for mr. heller, basically conceded that, you know, he thought that was the appropriate remedy. so, you know, licenses shouldn't be considered something that's unconstitutional as part of the remedy in the leading case in the field on this topic. people always say, gee, if we did that, there would be a list someplace that the federal government could use to confiscate weapons. well, the heller case, again, made it clear that the government cannot legally, constitutionally confiscate weapons. you do have an individual right to these things. so, you know, one of the arguments i made after the heller case was that, you know, the whole issue of licensing and registration really is a moot point now because the courts now said you can't have confiscation of the weapons. so it's another thing that we should look at there. and then the other thing that's kind of become more clear to me as i've been back in indiana is that the most enthusiastic gun owners that i usually deal with and the most aggressive gun owners that i usually argue with are those that have gotten their conceal/carry permit or want to get their permit. well, duh. getting a permit. the government knows who they are. so if these are the most aggressive, most active, most articulate, most argumentative folks, there's a list there. not to mention the fact that people list and profile all sorts of other things. but i think the fact that the heller case ended up with a charge for d.c. to give the license to dick heller, i think the fact that conceal/carry permit holders know there are a list of permit holders, i think the fact that we've looked at registration for machine guns for years means there's some capability to take those concepts and combine them with some sort of national reciprocity that would take care of the argument i hear from the nra and others on the gun rights side that why should our rights be different in one state and not the other state? that's a big concession probably on the gun control side, and it's probably something i'd get arguments from with a lot of the people i deal with. but again, we've got a problem in this country. our political system is not in a position that it's dealing with the problem. it's probably not going to be in a position to deal with that politically for some time. the only way that we're going to be able to get something through congress in the foreseeable future is if the nra and others on the gun rights side are willing to join in the conversation, sit down at the table and try to work something out. and i think, again, if we focus on the background checks and who should be prohibited, when we focus on which weapons should be treated more like machine guns and when we focus on this idea of licensing, permitting and national reciprocity, my hope is that we can find common ground. i don't want to see another tragedy, i don't want to see another mass shooting, i don't want to see my home city of fort wayne or the cities in this country continue to see the death and the blood and the mayhem they have. guns isn't the only part of the issue. we have to deal with the mental health system, the breakup of the family, the economy, but any discussion that ignores guns is also closing its eyes. we have to deal with the issue of guns, and i hope we as a country are willing to do that. i salute president obama and vice president biden and some of the administration for dealing and talking about the issue after newtown, but we have to find a way to breakthrough the other side to let folks know there is room for common ground here and it's going to benefit the community as a whole. thank you for listening. >> thank you. [applause] now we'll entertain questions. please stand when you ask your question and identify the organization you're with. and if you're not with an organization, that's fine too. so let's begin. questions? matt? >> my name is -- [inaudible] with the mexican news agency. do you think that there is a window of opportunity from here to the end of the year after the president recommend just to the congress just to take care of -- [inaudible] >> i think now that i've reopened the government and raised the debt ceiling, i think we do have an opportunity. we're getting close to elections season, elections season goes on full time, it seems like. but really i don't think we're going to be seeing a lot of the full focus on the elections until next year. i think there's an opportunity in this fall now that we've got the qoft shutdown -- government shutdown behind us to deal with issues like gun violation, like immigration, some of the other things that have been talked about for some time. it's, again, something we need to do. so i'm hopeful. i might just mention it's, you know, and there are other parts to this issue that, you know, might have some common ground, too, that i failed to mention. one is the gun trafficking. it's, the guns going from our country to mexico is an embarrassment. and, you know, there are trafficking laws that can be written that i think all sides should be able to agree on that would make it harder to have these bulk sales that quickly go to the gappings, that go down to -- gangs, that go down to mexico. and, you know, that's something that deals with law enforcement, but it needs to deal with the law on the books and, hopefully, that's another one of the areas where we can find some common agreement. >> [inaudible] capitol hill and the npc wire. you had mentioned statistics about the number of depth and injuries -- death and injuries. do you have any idea fall within the parameter where some consider it as an underlying source such as mental illness and drug-ridden neighborhoods, and how would you answer that question also to people who say they're going to find it anyway? >> the -- a couple points. one is the mental health issue is clearly one of the crucial ones here, and i know after newtown and after so many shootings a lot of people say it's just these mentally ill, deranged, dangerous people and sometimes the descriptions get even wilder and wilder in terms of describing the type of person. and i heard a researcher and academic talk the other day about the issue of mental health many this, and he pelt that mental health -- he felt that mental health can be a contributing factor, but it was only 4% of gun violence that you could really attribute to someone who had mental health issues. and his conclusion was that the most dangerous combination was mental health combined with drug abuse or with alcohol abuse. and so those are things i think we can focus on and perhaps focus on better, that right now the only category of mental health that's prohibited is someone who a court has found or a court-like body has found to be a danger to themselves or others. but i think if we looked at this definition perhaps differently, if we looked at combining that with a drug abuse/alcohol abuse sorts of categories, we might be better able to come up with a predicter for who's dangerous for those reasons. obviously, a lot of gun sales ties to gangs, and a lot of that's the urban violence that we're seeing. whenever someone says, though, that they're going to get the guns anyway, you know, i keep thinking do they have gun manufacturing plants, you know, in south chicago or in the bad part of, you know, in the poor part of fort wayne? i don't think so. you might be able to grow marijuana in your home and you might be able to do some other things with methamphetamines, you know, on your property, but not many people produce guns. the guns come from someplace. this is the one thing where it starts out as a legal product, and it quickly moves into illegal use, and we need to figure out how it gets there. and one of the ways it gets there quickly are from folks who can buy a lot of guns in bulk without a background check. and the classic example i give is the fellow who went to a gun show in dayton, ohio, and bought 81 of the same make and model of a semiautomatic pistol. is anyone surprised that someone who buys 81 of the same make and model of a semiautomatic what he does with it? it's not more his collection, not for hunting, he's going to sell it out of the trunk of his car all through the midwest and northeast, which is what he did, and a police officer and some other people ended up getting killed from this. so the way you deal with that is to require the background check when he sells it -- i mean, when he buys it, require the background check when he sells it, look at a trafficking statute that looks at bulk purchases like that to make it harder for him to do that sort of thing. and, you know, some people also say with law that the bad guys are going to get it in anyway. what is the function of a law? one of the functions of a law is to prevent something bad from happening. and so when our current background check system stopped over two million illegal purchases from buying guns, that's good. a lot of people say, well, how come they haven't all been prosecuted and there's a low number of prosecutions, and that's an issue that needs to be dealt with, but at least they were stopped from getting the gun in the first place. but it also means once they have committed a crime, it gives the police officer another thing to charge them with. and giving them another thing to charge them with, a violation of the gun laws means they can have a stricter punishment. sometimes having a law is meant to prevent, sometimes it makes it easier to find a penalty for it. the other thing with the law is it helps set what we consider to be societal norms, and i think the societal norms should be, you know, while you have a right as defined in the heller case and mcdonald case, you also have a responsibility, the rights are not unlimited, and you immediate to point out to people that you, you know, we want a society where you don't make it easy for dangerous people to easily get dangerous weapons. >> sir? >> would you -- >> your name? >> roger dahl, carmel, california. >> stand up. >> i can do that. would you like to comment on the attempt by -- [inaudible] to proclaim the one-year anniversary of the shooting of 26 people as a gun saves lives day? >> i think it's disgusting. that's -- i don't want to say much else. i've debated alan gottlieb a number of times, and, you know, he comes from his own perspective and pushes his own issues. i think one of the things he likes to get is publicity for the points of view that he likes to argue, and i think he's looking for publicity. i think tying it to the anniversary of that tragedy is, you know, it's not -- it does disgust me. that's not the approach we should be taking on these issues. there are other ways to get those issues out there. and, again, i'd be willing to sit down with alan at the table and negotiate on these things. i don't consider the people on the other side, you know, evil, but i think that sort of a strategy, you know, is not appropriate. >> okay. you -- you and then you. and then -- all of you will get to ask questions. you can get one too. [laughter] >> hi. i'm christina willkie with the huffington post. the nra has shown it's more than willing, i think especially in recent years, to raise alarm and to raise money over hypothetical threats that aren't real, and i point to the u.n. treaty, an idea that the u.n. is going to come and confiscate your weapons. and so what -- i mean, the nra has its own interests, and its members want to hear perhaps a certain thing, and it needs to keep raising money. how do we get a conversation with a group like the nra back to reality, and how do we meet them at the table if their table's constantly shifting? >> yeah. it's not going to be easy, i admit it. and, you know, there are large organizations, they like to raise money. large organizations of any sort need to raise money to keep going, and they raise money based on fear. they raise money based on fear that, you know, you're going to get somebody to break into your home in the middle of the night and do all sorts of things, so you need your gun. they raise money on fear that if obama's reelected, he's going to come and take your gun away with. they raise money based on, you know, if you make this one change in the current law, it's a slippery slope that will lead to everything being taken away. i think folks need to wake up and realize, you know, playing on fear is not reality. and that's where i want to talk wayne lapierre at his word when he says he wants to talk about fixing the background check system and then call him on that. again, if he won't do that, he won't do it. but, you know, i think there's the possibility because, you know, he also needs to deal with the real world and realizes that if he says one thing and isn't willing to at least sit down and talk about it, he's gone back on it. i know after the, after the tucson shootings when the justice department started a review of gun laws, the nra's reaction was why should we meet with somebody like attorney general holder who wants to take our guns away? but after the newtown shootings when the president called for it, at least they went to those meetings. and i think if there's continuing pressure, and the pressure needs to come from their members, and it needs to come from the electeds that have supported them. and when they start hearing from their members and electeds, look, background checks is something that's getting 85-95% support, try to fine a way to work it out. sit down there and work it out. that's where the pressure's going to have to come from. the, i haven't followed all the details as closely as i should, but it's my understanding when illinois made some of their changes this last year, the nra did sit down at the table and tried to work things out on figuring out how they redid some of the things with their firearm owners' identification card and adopting conceal/carry in the state. so i think there have been times when they've been willing to sit down. again, after the virginia tech shooting we were able to work indirectly with them through their elected -- i mean, through the senators that supported their positions to get this instant check system amendments act passed. so i think there is some potential to work with them. it's not going to come just from somebody like me calling for it or suggesting it, it's going to come from, again, their members and others pushing them to it. but again, we've got those other issues in the government off the table. let's deal with this gun issue. it still is a problem, and it's not going to work unless we get the nra to do it. and if they see something like national reciprocity, i think that might be enough of a carrot to bring them to the table. >> okay, sir, you were next. who else has questions here? who else? [inaudible] >> [inaudible] i recall a statistic indicating that between 2005 and 2010 some million of guns were stolen in home break-ins and issues like that, and so i'm wondering how would, how -- do you see the country addressing that particular, i guess you might say loophole in welcomed -- background checks? >> that's a serious issue too. i mean, when folks are interviewed in prison and you never know how much you can believe from what they're saying and where they got the gun, but again, stolen guns is an area where sometimes people do get their gun. i point out all the time when i talk to friends of mine that are gun owners, i say, you know, i'm not anti-gun, i've got no problem with you becoming a gun owner as long as you recognize not only the rights, but the responsibilities and the risks that go with owning a gun. and, you know, some of the risks are that it is going -- you know, there are different studies that have shown different percentages of how often that gun is likely to be used against you or a family member, some of the studies say up to 21 times more against you than an intruder, and the risk that it's going to be used against you. part of it is somebody gets trunk, somebody gets angry, somebody shoots the brother-in-law when they think it's an intruder, all those sorts of things. but the ore part of -- the other part of the risk is it's going to get stole p. make shoe sure you know where for, and it's secured from the kids, the neighbors and it's secured, if possible, from the burglar. the things that burglars generally look for based on police officers i've talked to, they look for jewelry, small electronics and guns, you know? those are the three most popular things generally went people -- when people break into a house. if you're of the standard where i've got it in my bed stand, that's probably where the burglar's going to look for it. not the smartest places to keep the gun or at least to keep them open when you're not there. >> okay. sir? >> fred -- [inaudible] private citizen. i just want to know how much can we learn from other countries and the way that they've handled these situations, specifically countries like canada or australia with respect to things like their laws, their ownership, the number of deaths and injuries from guns? >> well, we haven't learned, i don't think, anything from other countries yet. it's -- i mean, we are unique in the level of gun violence in this country, and i'm not up on the latest statistics necessarily, but it's something like you could take the next 20 largest industrial used countries in the world, and our rate of gun violence is 25 times larger than them combined. it's just amazing. other countries have taken steps. the argument i hear is the other countries don't have the second amendment. but again, our second amendment pursuant to the heller and mcdonald decisions does allow some regulation on guns. and even with that sort of an opening from scalia and alito, we haven't been willing to do any regulation yet. but oh countries have figured out ways to do it. sometimes it's been, basically, buying back weapons that they consider too dangerous to be in civilian hands, sometimes it's just having restrictions on those weapons, sometimes it's encouraging a lot of gun ownership like in switzerland, but having tight regulations that are tied, in effect, to switzerland's militia, even regulating the number of bullets somebody has. again, i'm not saying any of those are the solution for this country. it's a bigger country, there are a lot more guns already out there, a history that's different than some, but i do think we can learn from other countries. there are ways you can protect yourself, there are ways that we can live with guns without making it as dangerous as we make it for ourselves. >> woman in the back there and then dick and then whoever else. >> caroline brewer, longtime gun violence and prevention supporter. i want the ask paul about some of the myths that are circulating among the public and among officials in washington that keep us from being able to make progress on gun violence prevention. i talked before that i think there are myths that keep some of our elected officials from doing things. one the myth that i usually here from republicans that says we can't do anything about gun violence, we can't even argue about background checks or restrictions because of the second amendment. and, you know, what i need to do is point out to them have you read the heller case? have you read section three of the heller case? you know, when it says these rights, like other rights, are not unlimited, and these list of presumptively legal restrictions are not, this is a list that's not exhaustive. i say, you know, again, you can go too far, but there are things you can to. so even this last april when the senate debated this again, half the time when the republicans were speaking they were saying second amendment, second amendment, second amendment when the proposal they were talking about really didn't infringe on the second amendment, at least as defined by justice scalia and the majority of the supreme court. so i think that's one of the myths, the second amendment does allow things. you know, first amendment sounds pretty absolute too, but then courts say you can't libel somebody, you can't slander somebody, you can't have pornography in public places. there are restrictions on first amendment law, there are restrictions on the other amendments, there are restrictions that are constitutional with regard to the second amendment too. it's not absolute, and that's what the court said. the other myth that i usually deal with is the one that the democrats usually say which is that, you know, gun control so politically radioactive, we don't want to talk about it. and i think that was one of the reasons, perhaps, the president and the vice president didn't talk about the issue much til after their election even though, you know, it was after newtown too. i keep arguing if they had done something after tucson, it might have laid the groundwork to do something after newtown, because it takes a while to build up public support for issues. but where'd this argument come from that this was politically radioactive? a lot of dems will say gingrich and republican congress in 1994, that was because of gun control. and then, of course, when we argue health care, they say they came in all the other issues that came up in '94. i was a republican in indiana, three seats flipped from d to r, none of them because of gun control. it might have been the issue in one race here or there, but very few races. then i hear, well, gore lost in 2000 because of gun control. and i point out that during that campaign, actually, george w. bush was more support supportivn control than gore was. he supported the assault weapon ban, supported trigger locks and, you know, it's part of what that tells me is the political calculation that he made and karl rove made were that these were things that were popular and particularly popular with independents, moderates and female voters particularly and with the suburban voter and that was part of his compassionate conservative approach. maybe he didn't do much about it when he was elected, but when he was campaigning, he realized that was crucial. and with the al gore election you can argue any number of things were the reason that al gore lost. i just had a friend of mine who used to be mayor of knoxville, tennessee, and he was -- i was talking to -- [inaudible] maybe during the presentation he was saying if al gore had made only one visit to tennessee during the campaign, he might have carried his home state. tennessee didn't vote against him because of gun control, they voted against him because he basically was treating them like he didn't know them anymore. he needed to get back and visit. so politically, you've got those things. so then i look what's happened lately, and when i follow closely the races in '06, '8, and even '10 and '12, i don't know of races where somebody running on a pro-gun control platform lost because of that issue. they might have lost because of other issues, but i don't recall of any that lost because of that issue. there were a lot that actually talked about the issue that won. and i think it was the one cycle where it was a big issue in boxer's, senator boxer's re-election campaign in california. she won again. it was an issue in governor quinn's campaign in illinois, and he won. and it was an issue in gary connolly's congressional race just outside of d.c. here in virginia, and he won. so, you know, here's a senate race, a governor's race and a congressional race on west coast, east coast and midwest where the person who was in a tight race won advocating gun control type things. so, again, i think it points out -- and the bottom one, to me, is if gun control was so controversial starting after the brady bill and the assault weapon ban, how did bill clinton get reelected so easily in 96? he's the one that put jim and sarah brady on platform. when i see polls that 95% of the american people support an expanded background check system including 85% of gun openers and 75% of nra members, i think we have an opportunity to get in this done. some people say gun control doesn't work, and my response is how do we know, we haven't tried it? because really in this country all we've really got are this background check system that a does need a lot of fixing; >> i'll make my questions brief, and we can discuss them at a later date, maybe in indiana somewhere. the one thing that really struck me was that the number of firearms owners that we have in this country, there are about 40 a day in every state of citizens that believe that they save their own life because they have a firearm. that comes to, basically, 40 times 50 is about 2,000 a day people believe they save their lives as compared to 32 people -- 32 homicides. so it's really, i think, more of a human nature issue than a gun issue, and i have a couple of more points of many. but the one thing that's important to me is that when anyone has their home invaded, who is the first responder there? it's not the police. it's the homeowner. it's the citizen who's just had their door or their window kicked in. and if police can have body armor and everything up to but not including machine guns, we as citizens as the first responder, that's what we should be having. we should have what we give our second responders. and number three, in australia once again it goes back to human nature to address your point. what i did is i looked at aic, australian institute of criminology -- i'll bet you've been there -- and what they found after their gun confiscation or turn-in or voluntary turn-in, whatever they called it, what surprised me was that the homicide level only went down 10%. in other words, ten years later the homicide level was 90% of what it was when everyone that wanted to was armed. but wait a minute, there's no guns. what is wrong with this picture? and that's what i think happens when you have a total gun ban or confiscation or whatever you want to call it. and then the shocking point is i kept looking at the charts. i found out the 10% homicide that went down from guns then went back up, additional homicides with knives and brutal weapons. and it was a real wake-up call for me. and last point i thought you were kind of unfair to utah. full disclez your, i'm a utah conceal/carry holder, and they require eight hours of safety training and the normal background check. so you sort of glossed over that, sir. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> just a couple responses. on numbers in terms of protective uses versus homicides, one of the things i learned as mayor is any sort of crime statistic or crime-related statistic is tough to keep just because people don't report rapes or people overestimate things, thefts go unreported, i mean, just the reporting criteria. so the one statistic that is generally the most solid and the most comparable jurisdiction to jurisdiction are homicides just because everything else is a little fuzzier. it's a lot easier to track the dead body than it is somebody who didn't report getting shot or raped or a burglary. so you can do different statistics. people sometimes believe a gun protects them when it was the noise in the become yard -- backyard, it was the animal rustling. i'm not saying that was every case, and there are good defensive uses of guns. again, i'm not anti-gun, and the supreme court in your case did indicate that the homeowner does have that right. but again, my point is the homeowner needs to realize the risks ask responsibilities that go with that, and too many don't do that. in terms of the guns today use, you know, most police, you know, they're generally coming in with a semiautomatic pistol thaw got, they're not usually coming in the with a s.w.a.t. team. most burglars actually don't want to do a home invasion with somebody there. the main thing they're looking for is an easy in and out. but, again, you've got to, you know, the court made it clear that an individual homeowner does have a right, and that's the law of the land. that's not being questioned. i think when we look at other countries, people are always going to be violet. people will always do bad things, people will kill each other. we have made it easier and easier year after year to do that, and even guns today are different than guns that were even around 20, 30 years ago. you talk to the police officers and what they're seeing, you know, the saturday night specials that my father saw when he was prosecuting attorney in the '60s were cheap throwaway guns that could kill, but they often times didn't even work. what you see now with the higher velocities and larger bullet size and the number of rounds they can hold is significantly different, and we need to look is that something really we want for the civilian public to defend yourself in your home. basically, you know, you don't need that sort of weapon. you might feel that you need a weapon, but you can do that with the gun that you're not allowed to have in d.c., with the shotgun that mr. mcdonald had before the case as well as the pistol he's added since that case, you know? i still think we can find be common ground on strengthening these issues, on making it harder for dangerous people to get the dangerous weapons and getting some common sense. we haven't done anything different, though, since basically the early '90s on this to try to help. >> ma'am? >> yeah. my name is carol dahl, i don't think i need to stand up. my husband and i are survivors of an in-person home invasion, and we are vehement gun control advocates. it wouldn't have helped us in that situation. but my question is, how do we as individual citizens get the nra and the gun lobby to sit down with you and the brady commission to talk about the issue of background checks? what can we coto promote that? >> i think the crucial thing is to keep the issue on the front pages as much as we can, you know? talk out about it in your communities, get your friends to talk about it. if you tell your story about the home invasion, if you've got friends that are gun owners, you know, talk to them about it. again, it's, again, a lot of the issues that we argue about in this country really, you know, people do go to the extremes for a lot of reasons, a lot of times it's hard to find middle ground. abortion's an issue. it's tough to argue on that. guns are here. there is a constitutional right to have a gun in the home for self-defense. there are a lot of things we can do on the middle ground here. but it's only going to happen if people keep talking about it, get their elected officials to think about i. the challenge has been most of our supporters were in the area that is the congress people and the senators are on that side too. it's getting back to the iowans and the midwestern states and the southern states and the mountain states where people haven't looked at it that way. and i think now's the time since we've had the heller case and the mcdonald case, since we've seen congress get blocked this april that we can get some progress on this type of an issue. >> other questions? >> when i was -- [inaudible] >> your name? >> my name is ann bader, and i'm a mom and a grandma. and when i was in college, the issue that i really worked very hard on was to get the 18-year-olds the right to vote. >> uh-huh. >> request okay. part of it was educating the public, and we did a lot of that, and we got public opinion to be behind us, and it got passed, okay? what i've seen in the united states right now is we didn't want a sequester. we want a budget. this fiasco of the last few weeks is abominable, okay? we had a vote several months ago on putting minimal things about gun control in. and it got voted against it. we had congressmen that had 85% of their district that were for this. and you sound like you're hopeful that we can do something about this? [laughter] i mean, i just don't see that this can happen. how do we do this? how can you be hopeful? >> okay. you discouraged me, i quit. [laughter] i guess it's part of, you know, you've got to have hope, you've got to keep trying. it's things take time, and, you know, i've been discouraged -- i mean, when i heard the news about newtown, i was just so depressed partly because with it shouldn't have happened. and, you know, again, you can't stop all evil. maybe something bad still would have happened, but it shouldn't have had to be this bad of a situation. and it's just you've got to keep pushing. i believe that the right does triumph, that people do come to their senses, that you can make a difference, and if i didn't believe that, i'm not sure i could get up in the morning and keep doing things. you've got to -- i'm teaching freshmen, you know? i'm hopeful just seeing younger people and, you know, we had a speaker, we had a fellow here in d.c. who's been in public office, and he was meeting with some of them and, basically, said, you know, this government shutdown and everything, you're probably so discouraged, you know, do any of you even consider going into politics? and a lot of them said, yes, they want to go into politics, yes, they want to go into goth, yes, they want to get involved in their communities because we've screwed it up so much, they want to get in there and fix it. [laughter] and i really think that is the attitude young people have today. so even if we can't make the difference in our generation or with the folks we've elected, at least let's hope that the younger folks coming up are going to push those things. i think demographics, actually, is one of the issues that the gun rights side might be facing which is i know when i was growing up, i never went hunting with my dad, but a lot of my friends did. there was a lot more area to hunt. now there's suburbs and subdivisions and malls there, you're seeing less and less of that happening. i think you're seeing so many other things that interest young people today, hunting and gun ownership isn't part of it. and, you know, so i think there's less of sort of automatic constituency for the nra than they used to have, and that might help give some political balance here too. just one last point. i meant to say this on another point, i read something recently how someone was upset that congress had encouraged some regulation about cars having a rearview camera so you could see, you know, when you're backing up you don't run over somebody, and there had been something like 230 deaths last year from rearview back-ups and they were so upset that a camera rule hadn't been adopted because there were 230 deaths. you know, that only takes us, you know, a week, basically, in this country to have 230 gun homicides. you know? we need to start talking about and figuring out how we solve it. and, again, if 230's enough to worry about it on cameras, rearview in cars, it's enough to worry about this. one other point and i just remember -- [laughter] i ran into some of my elected officials from indiana last month, and our two u.s. senators from indiana, actually. and i complimented the one for voting for the background check amendment, and i criticized the other one when i saw him for voting against the background check amendment particularly since he'd supported the brady bill and some of those efforts in the early '90s. and the comment from both of them was, well, the one who had voted supporting the welcomed check, he -- and i told him, i sent him a note thanking him, he said it must have been one out of the hundred or one out of a hundred or a thousand because he got so many more criticizing him. and so the similar comment from the other senator. and the point is for folks who want to have change, you know, the elected officials are the people who make the change. they need to hear from us. they need to hear from us with thanks and with criticisms. i think sometimes we forget to thank the ones that support us, and we don't need to give up on the ones that have voted the wrong way. we need to let them know that too. i'm hopeful, i think this can make common sense. i'm always willing to talk to people like dick heller, meet with people like wayne lapierre, and i think if we get folks together doing that, we can make a difference. as a mayor, you work with everybody, you learn to work with everybody to try to make things work in your community, that's what i want to see. so -- >> thank you very much. >> thank you. 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join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> next, a discussion and debate on the history of the second amendment, the right to keep and bear arms with michael waldman, president of the brennan center for justice and duke university school of law, and attorney alan gura. it's about one hour. >> thank you so much ladies and gentlemen. welcome to the national constitution center. it's such a pleasure to see you here. i am jeffrey rosen, the president of this wonderful institution, the national constitution center. as those of you been here before no is the only institution in america chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u.s. constitution on a nonpartisan basis. and that means that would bring together the best thinkers and scholars and commentators from all sides of the constitutional debate that transfixed the nation and let you that people make up your own mind. we're doing this on a range of media platforms, and want you to please checkout our superb podcast, our we the people podcasts which are getting up to 100,000 downloads and bringing together top liberal and conservative scholars to debate the issues of the week. i want you to come back over the next few weeks to the national constitution center and to follow programs online. we have an extraordinary a range of debates and programs. coming up on june 26, we have a new program and debate cosponsor with a friends in the intelligence square about the constitutionality of campaign finance reform. on june 20 a prominent lawyers will calm to discuss their new book about marriage equality. laurence tribe will be here to discuss his new book, and on june 16 we have a phenomenal program about the meaning of the fourth amendment in the digital age but it will feature the two lawyers who argued before the supreme court and you will hear from both of them for the court decides its case. ladies and gentlemen, it is hard to think of the constitutional issue more hotly contested, and important in american life than questions involving vestal communing and they can temper significance of the second amendment. i cannot imagine two people better qualified in america to give you the best arguments on all sides of this important debate so that you can make up your own mind. and that we talk for a bit, i'll ask you to write down any questions that you have had a great town hall team will collect them and be will to interact with our gas. i'm delighted to introduce alan gura, the founder and partner of his law firm. he argued the heller case before the supreme court, the leading supreme court case involving recognizing the second amendment as an individual right come and he successfully persuaded the court to recognize that interpretation of the second amendment. we are so fortunate to have him here today. he's been in by the "national law journal" among america's most influential lawyers. he's worked as a deputy attorney general for the state of california, and is now teaching at georgetown law school and we are thrilled to have them. thank you so much for joining. [applause] >> i was looking left and should have looked right. although the second and great unusual bedfellows. to my left is the author of a superb new book, the second a minute, a biography. michael waldman as the president of the brennan center for justice at nyu law school, a nonpartisan institute that focuses on improving the systems of democracy and the constitution. he directed speechwriter for president bill clinton, the author of my fellow americans, three other books. publishers weekly is called of this book the best narrative of its subject and i think without violating my duties to be a moderate, a neutral moderator, i can say this is a superb book, what michael has done so compellingly is to give a narratively accessible account of the history of the second amendment, what the various drafts of the men from the revolutionary state constitutions through the ratification process and the bill of rights, and he also gives us a sense of the genesis and meaning of the recent supreme court decisions recognizing the second amendment as an individual right, and the current effects and the surprising lessons the lower courts have interpreted these decisions to allow macon control regulations rather than strike again. but he has a particular view of the second amendment. our i think with this great many aspect of it and we're going to plunge right in. michael, you make a strong claim which is that the supreme court's holding that the second amendment is primarily an individual right that has to do with the right of individuals to defend themselves rather than a collective right which is designed to protect state arab militias are being taken over by standing armies. he said the supreme court is flatly wrong as a historical matter. justice scalia was a bad original list in his account of the original understanding of the second amendment is not persuasive. hell as please in detail why it is you believe that justice scalia was wrong. >> first of all thank you for having us, and for all you do here. at the national constitution center. i think there are many things that can be said to argue for or to undergird palletization. but i do think that when justice scalia said after writing it was vindication of his vision of rituals but the idea of the only legitimate way to let a constitutional provision is to ask what it meant at the time of the framing. i think that that is an error. and i took that challenge, went back and looked at what went on around the time of the drafting of the second amendment, and it was really striking. the founders coming as they did out of the revolutionary period at a time of huge drum on were deeply, deeply concerned about these militias, as they are in that amendment described well regulated militias. that ashley judd about them, believe there will works of liberty against the potentially tyrannical king or potentially tyrannical central government. they were worried in both those cases that there might be what would be called a standing army which is like her facial soldiers like the army that it just sailed away a few years before. it's important to understand and my real point is that there's a real limit to how much we can decide here and know what to do about the issue of gun safety and gun rights by just going back and looking at the founding era. those militias are not like anything we have now. they are not the same as the national guard. every adult man was from 16 to 60 eventually every adult white men was a member of the militia. they were required to own a gun. they were required to own a military weapon and bring it from home. i'm asked was this a right, an individual right or was it a militia? what was the second amendment about, individual right or the militia? i sort of see both and neither. it was an individual right to fulfill their civic duty to serve. and in a way our question would make no sense just like in some ways their answer makes no sense to us. now, it's important to note there were plenty of guns. people had guns for self protection. they believed they had a right to self protection under the english common law, but when you look at the text, you look at the notes that james madison took down the block at the constitutional convention. you look with some scattered exceptions of the record of the ratification convention. when you look at the debate in the floor of the house of representatives, a mark of the second amendment. what they were focused on was how to protect these states militias which were again made up of citizen soldiers bring their guns from. so very different world from what we know now. it is striking when you see what they were up to. >> michael has made a strong claim. i jumped the gun but beginning this conversation with a reading the text of the second amendment i'm going to read and ask alan, why do you believe he is wrong about the founding era history and what support your view that the founders don't give us a commitment as an individual right? a well regulated militia, being necessary to security of a free state, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. what did the framers meant speed with what you meant to do was secure the rights of people to keep and bear arms. the first clause deals with the necessity of having a militia if you want to have a free state, gives us the reason as to why they secured the rights to keep and bear arms. but even if the framers were entirely wrong, effectiveness of the militia, even if the only thing we need in order to have a free state is a strong standing army, nuclear weapons, effective diplomacy, what have you, we do have a state these days here in this country and we don't have the militia system of 1791. all the same, the framers opinion about militias and their reason for codifying the right to keep and bear arms doesn't change the substance of those who possessed. we know that the 1689 militia declaration of rights secured the right to arms. james madison referenced that in introduciintroduci ng the bill of rights and edited the bill of rights and introducing the segment on the floor of the congress. it was well understood by english courts well before the american revolution that people did, in fact, enjoy a right to have guns for the defense of themselves and their families. many state constitutions either just before the ratification bill of rights or just after memorializing the right to keep and bear arms and not be tied down to any militia duty. they would've been perfectly understood by the framers that the right didn't depend upon service and the militia. after all, it's done in the first minute and in the fourth amendment. people understood to have rights in the ninth amendment, the people are not states. the tenth amendment shows those are different concepts. so why is it that in referencing the rights of the people to keep in their arms do we have this discussion of the militia? as michael alluded to it, the fact of the matter is that militia service depended upon private individuals who kept their own arms been able to come to the militia duty with those arms and have some knowledge as to how they were used. the fear at the time that the framers had was that the future to radical government would abolish the people's ability to act out in militia by targeting the possession of arms and, therefore, possession of arms was secured with a purpose, partially the purpose of making sure that people could act as militia. but there's no way to read that clause and think that this must be limiting the operatives right that is shown here. >> i want to acknowledge your that there is a series of debate among liberal and conservative scholars about whether or not the founders intended to protect an individual right or not. adam winkler who was supposed to be with us today but it is not able to argues in his book that the framers did attempt the second amendment to be an individual right, although they would've accepted in control. i want to dig in on this, michael, because there are other scholars who agree that the heller court a minute was supposed an individual right. you know two states that seem to recognize an individual right, pennsylvania of all people in this revolution a charter said that the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state that there is no reference to militia. but the virginia amendment proposed by the virginia ratified convention that madison relied on heavily does also begin with a quote that doesn't refer to militia. it says that the people have a right to keep and bear arms, ma and then a well regulated militia and so forth. been the case as alan says there was this english common law right of the people didn't recognize the militia. so those individual strong as arguments for the individual rights interpretation of the second amendment. what is your response be? those are good questions. i again, to go back to what the sportscast with a, it helps to go to the videotape for starters. if you look at what the framers said in all the settings where they were officially and publicly are not so publicly discussing this, they were focused on the militia. and how to preserve the militia and how to make sure that this against tyranny would not be diminished or crushed. alan, i should start, i've not had the chance to acknowledge that he is but a very significant role as an advocate in this in a very significant constitutional campaign that changed the way we see the second amendment and change the way the court sees it. if nothing else, has a place in history for that, and then of this book of course. james madison had notes which reference the english bill of rights but the reference of what he said and the house of representatives did not refer to the english bill of rights. we don't know what he meant in those notes, but there's no basis for thinking he said it. but the fact is they had a sense of they had a right to protect their homes, to shoot vermin, certainly a lot of need for guns on the frontier but there were also gun laws. the city of boston said you could have a loaded gun in a home. there were laws governing the storage of gunpowder. so outside the context of this militia issued every guns and their gun rights and they are governed by common law. but what did the framers to think that they're putting in the constitution and why did they put in the constitution? all the evidence suggests, surprising so to me, because i came into this not knowing what i thought i would find, all the evidence leans very heavily on the idea that they were looking for a check on federal power. pennsylvania is an interesting sample. pennsylvania was the one state that did not have the militia. pennsylvania then as now was split between philadelphia with it's possible to delete of quakers and the rest of the state, the backwoods people, and they thought a lot about whether they were allowed to militia or not. and part of the and was that their state constitutions that you can have weapons if you want them for yourself or to protect the state, but it wasn't part of the militia. i noted in the book that barack obama was not the first urban politician to complain about rural pennsylvanians -- is remarkable how some of the same cultural divides go back that far. the framers were unaware of that provision, and they chose not to include it. what they chose to include in the second amendment was starting with talk about the well regulated militia. james madison's original proposal actually had a conscience as object a provision saying that if you had religious scruples about bearing arms, you didn't have to do your military service in person. if the 12 members of the house of representatives who spoke in the debate about the second amendment, all 12 discussed the militia and actually the conscientious objector provision whether they would weaken the militia. so it is striking when you look at whatever the general sentiment there was, whether that were putting in at the time. >> alan, although this debate is being well joined, michael makes the point that the preeminent concern of madison and the majority of states versus the second amendment was preserving militia against the skinny on. things change about reconstruction, and after the civil war as a scholar writes, the poster boy of arms more from the concord minute in the caroline friedman. they argue that some supporters of the 14th in it which incorporates the second amendment is against the state entities to ensure black citizens the right to protect themselves with guns. how important is that reconstruction history to your argument? >> the reconstruction history confirms the fact that the framers indeed sought the second amendment to secure rights. i grew with mark's view and what intended and what effect an accomplished with respect to rights of arms. this was a change in the view of the second and. with all due respect the bill of rights was first proposed and ratified was meant to be the anti-federalist, the people who are afraid that new federal government in washington which eventually would be founded was going to trample upon all of their basic rights. the federalist response was always that you don't need a bill of rights because the federal power lacks the structure government lacks the power to deprive people of their individual freedoms. but as the ratification of the constitution proceeded with some difficulty, and there was a great demand by people in the country for some reassurance, james madison and the federalists agreed to ratified in the bill of rights those things that were not controversial, things that people have demanded in the state conventions and things that would address some of the abuses of the crown in the revolution. so we saw that applied, security for the right of religious conscious of security for the right for speech. various criminal justice provisions about jury trials and things of that nature, and just that their non-commercial right to keep and bear arms. the one thing that madison was i going to do, the one thing the federalists would prevail, but that the constitution ratified, there are going to alter the balance of power between the federal government and the states. they were not going to unravel entirely this new government that it just been created. madison was explicit about that. and so when people did come forth for these concerns, and he's right, there were concerns by people. there were attempts to yield back some of the federalist control over the militia back to the states. those were all beaten back. there was a proposal in the senate that adds the words for the common defense to the second a minute. that was voted down. there was a constitutional amendment proposed a specific would've had this militia power altering scheme. that was rejected as well. at the end of the day the constitution survived the bill of rights without having anything in its assignment of powers back and forth between the states and the federal government repealed, and so we didn't just see any change in congress' power over the militia. we also didn't see any repeal of the constitution so as to they which forbids states from keeping troops without the consent of congress. of course, if the second amendment has to be read as some sort of check on federal power by the state, then our standing is the civil war needs to change. but the civil war itself also proved to people that there was a major flaw in our form of government to up until that point we believed that the bill of rights was necessary perhaps to control the federal government, but no state would violate their rights. the government of the states was closest to the people and, therefore, some kind of rights violation of the state level, people could just take care of that democratically. in the wake of the civil war and some of the horrors we saw in the reconstruction, that proved to be at best naïve and oftentimes tragic. so there was a great demand to ratify something in the constitution which, of course, became the 14th amendment, that would bind the states to fall national civil rights standards. it was breast nothing those more urgently desired and spoken out repeatedly over and over and over again during the ratification debate over the 14th amendment than the idea that we absolutely had to secure the rights of americans, including the newly minted americans, the friedman had now become citizens. we needed to secure the rights to arms because they were the subject of all kinds of outrageous terrorists and clan vows and we all know the history there. so is absolutely a continuation of the understanding of the second amendment. it was simply applied now in a new form. >> it's important soar audience understands, before the 14th amendment was passed, the bill of rights only restricted the federal government. the 14th in them at now requires states as well as the federal government to respect most of the bill of rights include the second amendment, and alan is arguing along with some scholars that in light of that civil experience, the second amendment becomes more of an individual right and a desire to get americans to protect themselves from mobs who were attacking their rights and not getting protection from the federal government. michael, did reconstruction change things? even if you're not persuaded of individual rights at the time of the framing, did it become one after reconstruction? brought the, how have things evolve over time? >> the stronger argument than the revolutionary era. it's important to put in the context. so what happened after the past, after the ratified the second amendment? two months later george washington signed a law requiring that all adult white men by again. you may remember this was cited in the affordable care act litigation before the supreme court, the other time they could think of when government ordered people to buy something last night spent it was a mandate. >> and george washington signed a. under different provisions of the constitution, but still. and then what happened was nothing much happened. the malicious start to fade away because the country began to change. people stopped showing up. people didn't buy their guns. it got thomas jefferson very upset the he tried to get the registry going of who had what when. people wouldn't buy the guns. they didn't serve in the militia. malicious proved inadequate in the war of 1812. i was a james madison believed that the militias will be strong enough to defend the country until the british invaded and marched right passed the maryland militia and burn down his house. but then after that we didn't think the militias would be an effective military force quite so much anymore. the country grew west. we grew more violent the we grew more individualistic. there were a lot of guns. so you start have laws passed injuries states dealing with concealed carrying of guns and other things that do. the. so we started to have a debate over whether the right to bear arms involved an individual right. eventually got sort of growing during this time in a sense, the majority view among the court was that the constitutional protections were again not so much for the individuals as it was for the militia. but you had growing up over this century and a half of gun rights and a lot of gun ownership, and alongside them strong gun laws. they were not seen as in conflict. along comes the civil war and is exactly right. one of the things i hope to do in writing this book is i think there are surprises for liberals, the price for conservatives, surprises for people who see this is as gun rights, people are much more susceptible to that. -- acceptable to the. after the support that hundreds of thousands of former slaves who returned him to the south, he of them served in the union army. southern states pass laws taking away guns just an african-americans. this was, in fact, one of the reasons that i passed the 14th amendment. it's much more jumbled than suggested as to what the rationale was for including all this in the 14th amendment. some people seem concerned blacks have against the corba not watch. there was focus on militias explained the case that making sure the former slaves could get guns was one of the purposes. it was not by the way one of the purposes that was sold to the public when they put out for ratification. it's often the case when the military took over the south as reconstruction move along, there were strong gun laws in place at the same time as the 14th amendment. unfortunately, one of the things that did happen was that the supreme court ruled pretty quickly that the bill of rights did not actually apply to the states. both in the florida house case, it's one of the egregious parts of american history as you know is that those rights were withdrawn pretty quickly. so it didn't turn -- i'm going with the writing, the right is located in a part of the 40th minute, the privilege of the into clause that has not been enforced, barely at all. subsequently he argued that was the basis for gun rights in front of the supreme court of the screen court chose not to take that. but it wound up being part of this evolution where you had more of an individual sense of gun rights and gun laws hand in hand throughout american history which is really the way it was for about a century and a half. the supreme court four times before the heller case considered the second amendment, and four times did not find that it recognized an individual right to gun ownership outside the militia. most recently and most extensively in 1939 when it upheld the first federal gun law. it turns out that what people view, have a lot more to do with their views on central government and the view of government and individual rights that most of anything else. in the '30s there was no hesitation in upholding it. >> i think the historical debate is well joined and we've heard a good argument on both sides. now we're moving from the dispute about the original understand of the text both in the frame and during reconstruction to the supreme court interpretations of it and after gun control laws that were passed. michael has just said that immediately congress again to regulate the use of guns. president jefferson ordered return to move to guns, states began in the jacksonian era to pass the modern gun control laws focusing on easily concealed pistols or knives. signs in the wild west, no guns allowed to your our leader pistol at the door. and then he says that from the beginning courts generally upheld these laws by embracing a collective militia-based of you, and he says the few state courts to the contrary like kentucky which overturned a law that barred the carrying of concealed weapons and making daschle were outliers. alan, what's your response to this claim that states and the federal government passed gun control laws and over the course, course agenda upheld of those laws. >> this is what my problems with the bucket which is very well-written is that as many senses of omission to one of the things i do see too much discussion of the book is the first court case that squarely addressed what the second amendment might mean in the context of a gun law. that was of course the supreme court in 1846 it is called state versus nine struck down the georgia law that barred the carrying of handguns for self-defense. it's true the records that had upheld restrictions on the concealed carrying of handguns, but that's because the court had always said, the heller case goes through some of these decisions, you can go ahead and read them for yourselves, that the courts viewed concealed carry restrictions as new regulations upon the manner in which one carried guns. .. there is an objection made that we can withstand that in these people still have that respect did even for the confederate -- extended by the 14th amendment to the people generally including specifically those people who are most in need of relief during that time. so of course there are some people in america who make these wild claims about there being no ability to act whatsoever that has anything to do with firearms. i don't hold that view and i don't know many two attorneys who go back. there is room for some regulation, but that doesn't mean they've ever accepted death rate before. so the right is absolutely one that has always been understood. there has been from time to time the decision to pop up, but it didn't pop up in the supreme court. people claim that in 1838 confirmed. >> you said something very important that you believe the individual rights are consistent with the regulations. before doing that, what to give michael a chance to respond to the claims and of course the individualists. >> some court stood before the civil war followed what was the arkansas doctrine and i'm pretty sure it's in the footnotes of the book. generally speaking, the majority came to agree with believe the majority doctrine was called the arkansas that turn, which was right dealing with the militia. you know, it's kind of an unusual thing for somebody who has managed to make a major change in constitutional law. so much energy denying there was any change at all. they persuade the supreme court to do something. and it's noteworthy that those who want to point the history around 1900 about a century or more since then for the country changed a heckuva lot. we moved into cities. there's more density, more danger from guns and all kinds of other things in densely populated cities than populated cities then and now then there was in the rural country. in cities and states pass a variety of flaws. there is a very affect is campaign by those who believe in what they would call ben writes to change the way we see the second amendment. before that, the doctrine was different and it was giving voice by the former justice of the united states supreme court, warren burger, who i see no with a conservative appointed by richard nixon% in 1991 that the idea that the second amendment recognizes an unwilling individual right to gun ownership was a fraud on the public. i was warren burger said that. so i give credit to the massive change in doctrine since then and i think it is something of a classic campaign and we have to hear about it. >> you are just paid the highest compliment. i think ruth bader ginsburg was the thurgood marshall. now tell us how you decided to bring the heller case and what your strategy was and what it feels like to lead to thurgood marshall's amendment. >> well, appreciate the compliment. the sad reality is all i did was simply argue the law that's been understood for centuries by great people and research and extensively by countless others. it is not a surprise that the early part of the 20th century cords were not running around striking on gun laws. it was not until the 1920s dealing with the first amendment they are enacting congress was invalidated the fact of the matter is not into very deep into the 20th century was that even unders to piece by piece, sometimes hearing their. i took a long time to litigate those issues and throughout most of our history, the federal government does not regulate firearms to much of anything else and we just didn't really see a whole lot of the belmont was certainly until new laws came out in 1930. so of course as is true with much of the constitution, until a little bit later on in tour history. that is not to say this conflict there and they are doing my time. the reason the heller case came out, however, was in 2001 the u.s. court of appeals in the case called u.s. versus emerson had for the first time taken a serious look at the second amendment, studied the history and concluded in a very thing that the second amendment does include the ride and the various other courts have not examined the second amendment whatsoever really and have merely rubberstamped it without too much analysis. friends of mine, clerk neal and decent than were working not to justice. the libertarian public interest law firm in washington d.c. realized that given the large amount of scholarship on the second amendment, virtually all of it been on the individual right side meant that sooner or later there would need a supreme court case dealing with it. and wouldn't it be better if there were a supreme court case that was structured in a responsible manner and not one of these accidental cases that arise in the context of drug dealers and think rovers and other people who may not even the best position for this very important right. they started putting together a case with probably be at the cato institute. i've gave me a call one night and we sort of went through what they were thinking of doing and sign on board. but this was definitely not something that the ira invented. again, the book does a very good job pointing out the collective rights point of view. but it misses some sources. i was surprised to not see any reference in the book, for example, who in 1803 spelled out the second amendment as going back to the blackstone construction of the right of self-preservation. other variants will enter scholar writing in 1820 and the constitution to be an individual right. he ratified the second amendment and not mentioned in the book. his commentaries and also adopting individual models and even the american bar association, not exactly a right-wing pro-gun militia type organization. in 1965 awarded a prize to a fellow who wrote an essay that the individualist model of the second amendment good so we see this as a pedigree that goes well beyond modern day people who may have institutional interest. >> allen has said there's plenty of history. we could debate that generally. but the core of your objection is justice go you didn't only engage a mess. you mess. he's basically it does not repeat the framers original intent. this is emphatically opinion based on facts. it takes us on a claustrophobic and unpersuasive reading of the text that scrolls wikipedia through the historical background and generally can't take it out of context. tell us more. >> well, of the 64 pages of his majority opinion, to deal with the militias and the other 62 takeovers keep and bear in arms out of order and i would suggest out of context or you sometimes out of context as number tat consulted dictionaries to prove the turbo score and it looks as we just heard i would suggest i'd not heard the fact that somebody got a price for an essay in 1965, particularly as a powerful constitutional argument for the 200 years before, but i'll try that one on time. i think i just tiscali, the life on the history he leaves out, he says, for example, we looked at word arms in the word they are and lays out a series that to bear arms that is almost inevitably referring to god military militia service. he can articulate the doctrine. there is an individual right, but like all individual rights is limited. he actually lists some of the limitations. the core of the amendment as they described as protection of hearts and home of the commonly used weapon. the court leads to further consideration that the extent of that right or what those limits are. there are arguments for that approach untethered with the history and the only thing i can say i don't want to leave on the table is to check the footnotes because there's a lot of selective use of some of those stray and sources with some of them footnotes to the book. but again, we are here at the constitution center. the way the constitution has always been made is by the people arguing about the constitution and what happened with the nra, national rifle association on this issue is in 1977, previously the nra started after the civil war. it was started by former union officers by poor marksmanship and dealt with issues of training in marksmanship and military preparedness and of course eventually spoke for hunters or sportsmen. in 1977 and was called the revolt to cincinnati at the annual meeting of the group, there is kind of a rebellion among the members of the old leadership was pushed out in a much more ideological group was installed in every fashioned itself a constitutional crusade to change the way the supreme court in the country saw the second amendment. it backed a lot of scholarship is another very useful, some of it i've argued is not so good. worked hard to change public opinion. it worked to change the positions of the government, the justice department changed its position in the second amendment so as i said by the time over the past decade that it was time to go to court, in a sense the apple fell from the tree. it was not that surprising and it was not that controversial when the court ruled as it did in heller. a lot of the liberal scholars shrugged and said what do you expect that this court? a lot of conservative judges and scholars were upset because they said this is the kind of living constitutionalism that they felt they had been fighting. they compared it to roe v. wade, which to them was the highest of insults. so i think again what we sell is over three decades of the campaign to change what was seen as something very different when it began. >> so it is true as michael suggested, will couldn't criticize the heller decision for being historically unrooted. but i want to focus on the most significant question, which is the possibility of regulation. they have great questions and one of them is the supreme court put some limitation on gun ownership. assault weapons, rocket launchers. justice go you did say some regulations might be okay. do you agree with that statement and michael notes dozens of suits with a vast array of gunshots were nearly on the first two years after heller and the constitutionality of come off in 200 cases become also were upheld in all but two. for those lawyer courts correct in what you think are consistent with the second? >> first of all, those may be misleading because a lot of the criminal cases where someone is charged with having a gun, the lawyer for is the second amendment claim and of course it's probably not too surprising. sometimes courts get it wrong and sometimes courts get it right. that is true of every right. i've always said the second amendment will disappoint those sites just as the fourth amendment supports both cited as a speech or the religion issue. the fact of the matter is every right has a certain conflict. some activities are simply outside the scope of that rate. and so, at a minimum activity that would not have been a nurse good to be within the people's right to to bear arms historically are those that might fall outside the scope would not be protect it at all another times history rents out and you actually have to see how the concept of a constitutional prize in the modern scenario than there is room for some destruction and we try to weigh the fundamental interests in having arms for traditional purposes against whatever the regulatory interest might be. in terms of what types of guns you can have a rather arms, these cases, frequently. here is a two holiday. it was not enough simply to declare to the second amendment the individual rights, it became what do we do about handguns? our hand guns protected by the second amendment? but not all speech is protected by the first amendment. terrorist threats or speech. so, the court then walked back at the similar case from the 1930s and have found the test, which is quite useful. if the arms are the kind that would be in common use for traditional lawful purposes, people can pick to have them for those lawful purposes. if they are not, then they would not be protected. so we don't have rocket propelled grenade. didn't say that are obviously going to be outside. there may be some closer questions. even to the extent that some guns might be appropriate for some content, but not others, those regulations might be appropriate or not as well. for example, there's nothing unusual about teaching a rifle to go hunting with or to a gun range. at the same rifle walking around central part, people might have questions about what's going on. so there are time, place matters for arms. so this is how the cases shakeout, the people litigate them and we learn on a case-by-case those doctor and what rights. >> michael, one question to ask is the second amendment protects constitutional right. more broadly, i want to ask why should liberals be all that upset about health? fairweather called the individual rights. he same practice most of them have been upheld. >> i don't think the sky is falling. i think that understood rightly, common sense individual gun rights and common sense gun laws and regulations go hand-in-hand and that is what sends the heller and mcdonald's cases and federal courts where judges have said yes, there is an individual right, but society has a right to protect itself and we will examine these laws to see if there is a reasonable purpose for them and if there's a strong governmental interest in upholding him with some exceptions, which may yet come back for more litigation of the supreme court. some of the gun rights supporters have decried this passion. they have likened it to massive resistance, which was the seven states refusal to follow brown versus board of education. i think that the think that these courts have gotten it right generally speaking when they say you can have reasonable gun rights and gun safety. the crux of those liberal scholars in their voices are quite important because they were at their respective and also because of the man bites dog to have liberal scholars as reported at the time in the newspapers in "the new york times" and elsewhere. they also have different games about what they talk about is the rate of rebellion. the second amendment and the 14th amendment and the privileges due to his cause to this of go in different directions. i don't know if they pass a unified school, but i will say they believe strongly that the assault weapons and propose before the congress' constitutional. that is in fact what is interesting. if you remember last year, the legislation that was moving through the congress was in background checks and extend them especially to gun shows. and now was supported by upwards of 90% of the public polls. that bipartisan bill, dimension to maybelle had a majority support in the senate bill. people ask me, well, does this mean the second amendment kilduff reasonable restriction? answer is no because it's pretty plain that would've been constitutional under the second amendment. second second amendment. it is more the filibuster rules of the united states senate that had to do with that in the second amendment. i think issues such as assault weapons and other things are an open question. but even there, the court upheld the legislation and mr.'s gave answers to the "washington post" and certainly he thought it was constitutional. as described last year. so i don't think that the sky is falling. >> what is constitutional? they ask our background shots and the band than assault weapons, can we restrict automatic weapons and for registration of unknown or send background checks. but her thoughts about the open carry laws of taxes than are you really saying that military style weapons can be kept for the mentally ill. >> but the time remaining. >> i will take some of the easier ones and then get to the other questions at this time. no, i do not believe they should act within a reference at all. that projects are going to be held by the federal court. at least the background checks are performed in a way that doesn't take in doesn't take and i'm due amount of time. those of the appellate. the background check can take years to complete. the computer systems are checked, where people have due process right and the false positives that come back to be upheld. i don't believe that we can prohibit firearms and common use for traditional, lawful purposes just because we label them assault weapons are they look scary. the fact of the matter is all of these assault weapons typically reach very plain-vanilla arms that are oftentimes much less powerful than guns do not look as menace, but that is almost if you is almost at the look at the functionality of the farms, really dealing oftentimes these types of laws. >> this is very badly misunderstood. the second amendment secures the right to bear arms and going back, justice ginsburg supplied the definition in the heller of what it means to bear arms. two years earlier, justice ginsburg offered her definition of what it means to bear arms in the second amendment. in this two-way or, dare or care you and your person or a pocket or clothing and armed for the purpose of offense or defense confrontation. justice gilleo said that is what we are going to say to bear arms means. that does not mean that you can bear arms in any fashion that you would like the state can regulate the manner in which the gun for kerry. historically, society thought and courts approved of the idea that people who had their guns were sneaky, up to no good, they want to perhaps take advantage where it is virtuous or normal to open they carry arms and so concealed to carry restrictions were upheld, always with the caveat that the right was not being totally destroyed and in those cases where was destroyed, those laws are struck down. we have a different understanding of society. virtually every state in the country is quite liberal in the carrying of weapons, but the open carrying of arms is provocative and so even places like texas, texas is obviously not an anti-contraception. the open carrying of guns is not allowed by their loss. again, it is a regulation that goes with the matter which guns are carried and so the ending open carry is that the concert to carry guns for self defense is going be allowed as well. again, it's the state's choice. i know adam winkler has written today, but he has an op-ed in "the l.a. times," a very provocative thing to the more liberal people, no one will do it and then we will be valid the constitution. it's an interesting guy, but he might've been on it. >> michael, what decisions are you most concerned about? criticized as opposed or his decision, striking down an illinois law, which prohibited the carrying of a loaded weapon outside of the home. you call this a masterpiece of passive aggression that was previously criticized ms in future that might be challenged in the court, including market ammunition. what is the future going to look like and what are you concerned about? >> the post their opinions is interesting because he is the first to first and continuing those criticism from the opinion, good rehash them if they can't do anything about that and then i suggested further than it had to go. the illinois legislature has not rewritten its law so that there's a much more liberalized law in terms of carrying guns in illinois and when you lock into place of business there, there is a decal in the window that tells you whether guns are prohibited or not. i don't know what kinds of laws are going to be at risk. my concern as i've said this is not so much with an expertise on gun control laws, but concerned about trying to make constitutional doctrine based on a kind of misreading of the rule of original as some in the american constitution. the original intent is obviously very important, but it is one of the factors by which we as a country of decided how to read the constitution and govern ourselves. the country has always evolved and so frequently have been the ways we read these provisions. my concern with the heller regime around down face to the degree that it says the something is traditionally lawful, it must be lawful now to me is very circular. what if it was brand-new? they had muskets and, they don't have muskets now. i want to make sure, i hope certainly that pushing the center court and applying this constitutional test does not choke off the innovation that can actually solve some of these issues. this year i saw a statistic last week that is really striking. this year there will be more people killed in the united states by guns, 33,000, then by cars. at one b-bravo that is a lot of people and a terrifying statistic. a lot of that is suicide and other things, but there's a lot of people. the really interesting thing is what about cars. cars used to kill many more people. what happened? they make cars safer. they didn't confiscate the cars. they didn't take away people's right to travel or drive. they changed the drinking age. they put in seat belts. they required airbags and change the designs in all these ways but over time up a lot of controversy, cars got made safer. there are all kinds of ways to make a safer, less likely to be used by the wrong people, less likely to be used by children, less likely to be in the wrong hands, less likely to be used by somebody who's not a law-abiding citizen. one of the examples is the kind of micro-stamping, which marks the boulevard that leads the guns that can be traced back to the owner. that is the kind of thing to look at the indicated. other things will get litigated and i wish the debate in the railroad is as reasonable as the debate we're having here. as you know in texas, the open carry the same right now is running around with military weapons going to fast food restaurants, videotaping themselves and the nra website to announce this and said it was weird and counterproductive. the nra just apologize for having said that and reprimanded the individual who posted it was weirdly it. so i think there's considerably more extremism and second amendment on the list of the outdated then we might hope. >> there has been a civil debate. i give you the last debate because michael had the first one. other disagree vigorously, you've agreed that reasonable regulations may be consistent with the second amendment, although perhaps not all the details and even complimented us at thurgood marshall of the second amendment. >> you should take your pick to relax. >> the victory lap is well deserved. as the future mostly from the courts or public opinion? to expect more significant litigation or the laws or is the real fighting congress and the state legislature? >> will be in the congress and other legislative bodies as well as the courts and allow us be both of those forms just as with all of our basic rights. the bill of rights will continue to innovate. but it absolutely is meant to limit the innovation and make sure even the politicians come up with new and creative ways to violate rights, certain principles have to be honored in the second amendment is one of those principles. so laws that impact the way in which this right has traditionally been a misunderstood will be struck down as well as that impact the way that speech rights have been understood and combining concurrent. it is absolute feature, not a bug of our government that we will limit the ability of the government to restrict our rights. it is a free country. i know many people think the second amendment is a bad idea. justice stevens wrote his first book where he proposed amending the constitution about rewriting the mma to make it look more like what he hoped and justice stevens to speak as much as he wants about that, raise all the money he can spend electing people who would agree with him on that point of view. but at the end of the day, he has to honor the fact that if you don't like it we can change it, but right now the second amendment we should be applying. >> i told you at the beginning that my goal is to bring the best nights of america on all sides of the constitutional state, the constitution center and let you do people make up your mind. it's an honor to hear the scholars. please join me in thanking michael waldman and alan

Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20140810

[applause] [inaudible conversations] >> next, on booktv, "after words" with theresa payton, this week cheryl chumley and her first book, "police state u.s.a.: how orwell's nightmare is becoming our reality" in may, the "washington times" reporter argues that governments desire to to monitor and control the public is greater now than ever before. traffic light cameras, drove monitoring and more amounts to a police state that must be rolled back. this program is about an hour. >> host: cheryl, and it's a pleasure to be here with you today and i've really enjoyed your book, step two. i am a data junkie by nature and i just love the opportunity to talk with people about how to protect their data. with so many modern-day privacy issues coming up in what i love about what you do with the book on it so was research, so thought of as though provoking. so i'm really excited to have a conversation about what do people need to know and if there actually anything we can do about it? he gave me a little help here in the book. you now, one of the things i thought was interesting with the nsa revelations. i wrote a little bit about that in my book, was how consumers didn't realize businesses collected a lot of data back then and sort of their cooperation, whether you call a cooperation or coercion i am not sure with the nsa. were there other chirping sources he thought i've just got to write this book? i've got to influence people. tommy about that. >> guest: first of all, it is a pleasure to speak with you and i'm glad to hear you enjoyed the book. to answer your question, it was other factors that drove me. i've been supporting for a good 15 minutes and i started out on a local level and cover in the level of government, you really get a hands on experience and policies and regulation impact and i remember years ago covering government in watching people who had hopes of building their dream home come into the local zoning offices and requests the right to build their homes and properties and a certain county i covered was almost like this environmentalist crowd zero battleground. it is so driven by environment to regulation of politics they didn't want to build anything. i recall vividly how this mak men would hope to build on the $500,000 parcel of property and the local zoning people tonight been repeatedly until the point they have no more appeals left. i remember them leaving, the woman in particular in tears because now what is she going to do with that property? i was always keyed into issues like that. i am an american and constitution is a big deal. i read it just for fun sometimes. so i was always kind of lasered and on issues like that. but covering the local government issues is what really kills me. that and having four children and i worry about the fate of america and the future of sleepiness. >> host: you bring up children and you're absolutely right right. it's almost as if perplexing choices and some choices we don't even know we're making, we've given up those freedoms. what i'd love that you've done in the book as you quoted the founding fathers before each chapter. when you read the quotes, it really does relate to the chapter. so it shows that the principles of the founding fathers, the constitution and what this country was founded on, even that technology may change, principles stay the same. >> guest: right. it's kind of like the bible if you are a christian nor a believer, the bible, the basic principles don't change. the constitution is not a living breathing document as al gore would intend it and a lot of our politicians nowadays regard it. they're certain core principles into name the biggest founding father gift given us with the notion that our rights come from god not government. if you think about that, it's a very powerful principle and one that i fear slipping away leading to the police state type u.s.a. we have now and my biggest concern is recapture it not because wants to recapture it, that you sent our nation back on the path the founding fathers intended. >> host: in the book, one of the things that is interesting as you talk about the places you may not even know you're being tracked. for example, manikins. my co-author and i talk about the same manikins in your book and one of the things people might not realize as you drive to the shopping mall and if their surveillance going on, your license plate they be photographed. then you lock into this apartment where your phone is talking to the wi-fi to the wife at a department store, now the store knows you are there in the next piece is that manikins are actually watching you in trying to decide female, male, gender. they may even decide ethnicity, all too stored in a database i guess to serve us better. but then you added new technology has come out and this is uninsured people as they are you kidding me? you added that. they will be adding listening features to these manikins. talk about the risk and concern and the moment for you when you saw this was going on at the local department stores in europe and america. >> a moment really is when it crosses the line from stores posting notices and camas displayed in prominent places so shoppers are aware they are being recorded to the point you have no idea of a shocker that your movements and conversations are recorded and for what you don't know. so some of the technology they have in place right now kamensky pointed out they have moved from cameras in the eye to recording devices planted in the heads of dominican and the reason for that is because the stores want to know shoppers discussions to hear what they say about the products they displayed in their stores in that way they can gauge what are the best sellers, what things need to be moved off the shelf to make room for something else. but more shoppers don't know when you lock in a store that say this dummy is recording you. you don't know that i'm not a little bit creepy. it's interesting, but when it's happening in the last comment a little bit alarming. >> it is. and i don't remember walking into the store and having a disclosure statement saved by the way, you may not only be photographed, but i kind of want to know what your looking. and second of all, we're going to snooping on your personal, private conversations. so that was one thing people need to be really aware of. what is interesting, too if sometimes company and sort of have this worst for data, this insatiable appetite that helps another customer better, customer loyalty. it's supposed to be for good or maybe to save us money. bottom-line revenue. but i think we know that all technology is applicable. rescind the best and the brightest imac data and the wrong hands could be potentially dangerous if the private sector has the data, them on for a snack may want to request access to the data as well. whether it's recorded conversations or photographs. >> host: that is the big fear. first and foremost when you're a shopper, when you go when come you should come you should at the very least be given a heads-up of what information is being collected on you. most people know about zip codes and so forth, the camas hidden our new type allergy on your iphone. if your repeat shopper, a big spender, it alerts the store clerks that this big spender is here. let's swarm hand on her and get her to buy more. if things like that the shoppers may appreciate the convenience, but not knowing. you're not given the choice of whether to participate or not. the other side of the equation is you have to think when stores are collecting data, there is a database somewhere being kept. it's not just data floating around. there's actually a database for the information is sitting. if law enforcement or government surveillance, intel and so forth ever cites the justification to tap into that data can be have to be aware you don't have any control over the data been handed over. >> guest: exactly. like to think we are innocent until proven guilty. especially of reminding our business. let's stay on that topic of facial recognition because you mentioned in the book you talk a little bit about how the law enforcement at using spatial recognition. how a lot of states, not just a few, but a lot of states have a little added those nice where you're doing your license renewal they are asking you in some cases not to smile and the reason being is your photograph now has a dual purpose. it's not just about your drivers license anymore. the state data centers and maybe people know them and data is being collected for counterterrorism reasons. the intel at the data centers isn't generating what people expected them to. it's also used for law enforcement. when you are at the dnc and you're not smiling into the camera because they thought you not to khamenei to be aware that this is yet another form of data collection and you should be concerned for these curious whether this is going to end up. >> host: we need to think about where we need to be. you need to get your license. it converts your state governors they don't like the state dmv practice. you don't have a choice. but you do have a choice to take pictures that are put out on the internet on social media and that's one of the import things consumers need to realize that you can take a little bit of your privacy back. maybe dmv has to go through the state process and make sure your voice is heard. but where you post photos of yourself, let us as a company named you on the scotus is just important as well. that is something you often times can control. >> host: let's go into the bank because we've talked about how various technology now whereas consumers, we don't remember being have been a disclosure saying here is how i'm going to use your data, thank you very much. we don't know the listing are photographing is going on. what i liked about what you talked about what the big sis for the struggle they have in the modern age. i remember when i first started thinking, i could not believe that we couldn't call up our customers. i was on the technology side with a platform for marketing. they said the first thing we have to do this for a month or somebody else did at the terminus were not allowed to market our customers unless they provide disclosure statements. so the banks have always had this duty of care for if i collect data, i have to disclose what i'm going to do with it and i also have to protect it. i think a lot of people don't realize how much the banks are supposed to cough up your data and it's not necessarily the disclosure statement. if you make a deposit over $10,000, the anti-money laundering, the bank has to report you no matter how innocent and how great a customer you are, they must report the truth action. they also have to report when you're signing up for credit. they ask a lot of questions then maybe they would normally ask because i know you because they have to actually prove to different bureaus within the government they truly did their customer due diligence on you. tell me about some of your finance for your doing research and some of the things the banks have been told that has to collect about you would literally turn around and handed over to other departments and agencies. the >> guest: you rightly describe this going on and they're kind of been put in a crunch. on one hand, the federal government is bearing down on banks and same for counterterrorism reasons and so forth you must collect information on your customers. you must know them. on the other hand, the federal government isn't giving them a checklist of questions to ask anything still not the proper questions of the day and ends up to be illegal, the banks could actually be fined for that. so they are kind of in a tight spot right now. i remember back when i first started thinking that banks use to dry u.n. by giving you a free poster for sign-up and you get something free. all that friendly neighborhood taking. now if you want to know more than just the name, social security number, date of birth and so forth. they want to know sometimes where you work him over you do business, we business you work at ss and if the business you work at this business in an overseas location and may climb into that. they're trying to do their due diligence. what is happening is the average american is feeling they are suspected of a crime when all they do is open a bank account. >> guest: as you go through the laundry list, you must think are trying to marry me or open up an account so i can deposit my money because it's kind of the third degree are putting me through here. i understand children. your mom. i am a mom. you talk about the sin of the yet i talked about it in my book around how parents really need to understand better the care of others of what may be going on in the name of security for great tracking for your kids. so i figure this to the school, looking at things like wheeler record all of their grades online. we just saw a young man who spreads, some of them paid them to change their grades and while he was in that they changed around and he got caught and got busted, but we can see the dangers with that. someone might say that it's really just sort of high school hygiene. he shouldn't have done that. i pay the price. no harm, no foul. but then there's the other piece about the data collected about our children and one of the things you write about in the book is the solutions being used at the schools now at seven padded as this is a great way to make sure your child gets on the right bus and for us to notify you they got off the bus. i'm reading that, thinking what happened to the volunteers standing there saying good morning, susie. good morning, johna. you talk about when you're researching this as a reporter, what were some of the privacy concerns that you thought like gosh, people don't really know about this and maybe to know. over some of the things that you thought i have to cover this in the book, and. >> guest: the biggest issue for me was not telling of the parents. the issue refers to as the bus that implemented an iris scanning probe room. parents did not know about it. so when a child with her at the bus, they would look into the iris scanning machine until the light turned blue. what was supposed to have been is the data sought information they had on the parents president in their home address nsn finale your child is on the bus, on their way home. unfortunately, that ended at the outraged about what the school day because the person is supposed to send a notification home to let them know your child is going to be iris scan. all of these kids are scan on the bus. these are the kids. it was like first, second, third graders. they don't know when his parents found out about it and they were outraged and rightly so in the school stopped doing that program. but what struck me with the fact that this could go on, that anything would be technology that is necessary and second on, type knowledge he were parents don't need to give input to be given the opportunity to say georg may be for this implemented. also what shocked me was finding stuff like this is going on with fair regularity. it's not so much few and far in between cases as they are emerging technology becoming a lot more abundant. >> host: do you feel sometimes the hard part is the argument is this is in the name of security or convenience. there was also something else mentioned whether it's paying for school lunches are again getting kids on the bypass versus the wrong bus. i provide getting on and off buses. i don't know about you. without scanning my iris are sending my dna to anybody. i see the danger that people say that the vast security are busy. maybe people think that's great. my schools implementing the latest and greatest technology to protect my children and they are just not really thinking about all technology is palpable in this company who i don't know. it not my school. it's been also is, if somebody steals my parents eyes and come a day can't get a new iris scan. now they can go masquerading whether it's for health care, tried to get into buildings once my children get older. somebody else in a hot the code in the technology to literally take out an iris scanner. i think that is also part of the danger, too. people are thinking about the privacy aspect on the front end of to a full disclosure. but on the backend, someone steals this data and it's your biometric data about you. how you going to recover? >> guest: is worse than somebody stealing your credit card information. what are you going to do quite you touched on a really good point when he brought up is for the security. another great argument is the children. you can always make a worst-case argument to justify about any action on part of the government. with technology and iris scanning, biometrics, things like that, oftentimes it is the worst-case scenario being cited as justification for the participating in this technology. as a parent, that something needs to be aware that your local school could be looking at this technology as a way of securing your child. postcode you never think of a parent you have to say dear children, i want you to respect authority unless they give up the biometric data. >> host: speaking of the whole thing with disclosures and eyes and kids, we think about kid and talking to them about the different aspects of life and the birds and the bees. not somebody mentions the birds and bees, they might actually be talking about drones. there is also the view that flies around and the fact that a lot of times when we hear the word drone, people think those are official military views or law enforcement protection devices that they don't realize they are literally as small and blending into nature has to be your bird at this rate in some of the challenges with anybody can have a drone. you write about any luck it official who literally looked out her window and came face-to-face with the drone. talk a little bit about her experience with that and maybe does a good wake-up call for a lot of us. >> guest: it is funny because issues like drugs and privacy with republicans and democrats oftentimes that have the same concerns in this particular instance it was senator dianne feinstein. she was in her home i think it was and she looked out the window and there was a drone outside her window and she took that experience and want her congressional colleagues to go slow on drone technology. the first drone technology goes though, i think that horse is basically out of the barn and i think at this point there's not really a lot of people can do to slow it as far as the aeros. the congress has asked the fcc to come up with policies for commercial use of drugs by 2015 and they've indicated they want to use drones to make product delivery. i think what is going to have to miss people are going to look at that, drums coming in, delivering amazon products is kind of the cool thing. they are going to use that and they are going to be coming in now, kind of a cool idea. but then when one person steps in and wants to use the same drones to conduct surveillance, and that three people are going to be a little bit more alarmed. >> host: you talk about cases where we've actually arrested citizens using drugs. unmentioned some of the challenges in the book that i did. always interesting when i was doing the research, there is this industry are popping up of anti-drone hoodies and anti-drone classes. you mentioned just a simple as technology. wearing a hoodie when a drone is targeted on you for some type of conflict isn't going to do it. talk about the conflicts that we had. again in the name of security. there is a gentleman who kidnapped the boy off of a bus in the use drone type ologies to safely rescued the boy. as a parent, my heart goes out to left. then i say that sounds like and then you talk about another case where cows started eating another farmers feed grain cannot stuff is expensive and cows eat a lot and his family ended up in a standoff with the police. trump got involved and basically the police were able to get the cows and arrest the family. talk a little bit about these two very different scenarios good one, you are rescuing a life. when you are barring a drone to get involved in this situation and what are some of the slippery slope dangerous point here for a permit privacy perspective? >> guest: it is a slippery slope. that's a good way to phrase it. on one hand, using drones for overseas conflicts, that brings with it a host of questions about the moral aspects. the drones on american soil is something that we used them for criminal reasons, as you point out, a boy could not on a bus and hot underground in a bunker for several days. people can relax on that engenders and good, let's get this guy. they're also drones used to root out a pulley shooter, christopher dorner i believe is his name analysis last year. sound american citizens saw the justification for that. but when you use drones for environmental reasons as the epa's indicated that he might want to do to scour the fields to make sure that people's farmlands and crops and so forth might be where they would like to draw the line. when you use drones for surveillance type technology and major syndromes in the sky and collect data through a camera. >> host: you are saying over my house it over my yard they can get a drone without a warrant? >> guest: police don't have the rate not to use drones for surveillance technology for the most part. they want to use a drone to conduct a surveillance operation. they can is one of custom border patrols and they can ask permission for custom and border patrols to conduct the surveillance operation. in the years to calm as drones become more commonplace in america has become more excepting, if police departments use drones, one of the questions to ask for both properties, may be looking for a certain suspect, but recording data all the same as sweeping up all types of data that is not pertinent perhaps. so you could be standing nearby. you could be walking down the street and your images are being captured on the video and that is certainly something that most americans may not take out when they get the arms of using drones to fight criminals. on the other hand, you have to think where is my data going? salon person will have that data. >> host: you bring up something really interesting. didn't we just get on google's case when google street view was taking pictures and they picked up all of our home wi-fi network and device ideas connecting to it. everyone said that's not right. you should be doing now. i don't care what it is you're trying to do and what greater good that belongs to, that you've crossed the line. we said that to a private sector company. i think we would say the same thing to law enforcement. or a scene where they said some counties have used drum technologies with google street view to see if people put pools and without asking for permit. you say to your point, where do we draw that line? that brings up an interesting point. a lot of times when i look at the presidential election, whether elected or elected officials in washington for elected officials at home, oftentimes we talk about it at the national or local economy. we talk about national security. we may talk about local issues of the local election. do you think the third thing on the list might be to be around how are you going to protect a citizen's right to privacy? >> guest: i definitely think that should be a question candidates should be asked and prepared to answer. you know, this is a moving target. since my book came out, there is a lot more instances that had they occurred at the time of my research, i would've included them in my book. the advance of data in the emerging technology of some name that is really hard to put that genie back in the bottle once it is out there. you need to plan ahead. you need to have in place policies and regulations guiding how some of the technologies should be used and it should always start with getting the public aware of how that technology is going to be used. police departments should not drones in their closets that they can take out whenever they walk whenever there is a crime being committed. they should have actual policies and guidelines and what policies do they have to pursue it in order to launch the drones in the air and what happens to that data after it is collected and there should your site and how police use that data after and what they do with it if it is going to be destroyed there should be a watchdog to make sure it is destroyed. some of these candidates have in their mind how are they going to see data going forward? >> guest: it is interesting to your mentioning laws. if you think about it, facebook, twitter, insta grahams, manikins at the mall, all the things you and i are talking about, most of those technologies are in the last 10 years. the last time our country's past significant privacy security legislation is over 12 years ago. but all of this you talked about weren't really in the consumer high and in the public eye being used on a massive scale and now they are. what do you think are the implications for loss? obviously it takes us a long time and we should be careful when we create new laws. we should be careful and deliberate when we do that. do you almost wonder what the law be outdated by the time we pass it? and so, how do we think about laws in this new digital age so that the laws can be dynamic and fluid and give us enough guidance of people don't step out of bounds and we have the right balance on individual rights and privacy. >> guest: right, that is going to be a hard challenge to solve because when you talk about data selection, surveillance type technologies, we raise the red flag of privacy and civil rights and those things really had done the same path. the biggest concern people should be aware of and the one where citizens should put their focus in developing some real regulations and principles to go using law enforcement because law enforcement have at their disposal technology where they can write a vehicle down this weekend. two other vehicles and peered beneath peoples clothing. all of that can be done without a warrant. police have at their disposal technology emerging right now that helps them predict fine and not only predict them for the police to get a red flag for a heads up, but predict that the police can respond to those areas before a crime even occurs. that is straight out of big brother george orwell type writings and so forth. so i think when people think of data, they need to think first and foremost what is the data used for, can i be given a heads up without compromising the security of the nation. and it now, people need to be told how that data is going to be used. specifically and most alarmingly with local police. >> host: i mean, you definitely had unfit really great areas right for law-enforcement and it's tough because they've got loved ones say and i need you to work this case. he got elected officials sometimes say this can never happen again. something as horrible as the boston marathon happening and people say how did you missed the clues and don't ever let anything like this happen again. you see the surveillance completely different. i think we all agree we don't like tragedies like that. but you mention in the book that sometimes it is those events, it is those tragic events wherein not moment people want action and sometimes they don't realize when they ask for quick action that they may be actually trading off a little bit of their privacy. talk a little bit about what you discovered when you're looking at a research is interesting how you found the timing of when things have been allowed to occur in people said of course that is okay because timing was following the tragedy. >> guest: specifically the boston marathon. i include that in my book because history can make up their own minds whether juan forstmann was justified impossibly locking down the city and some of the actions they did to root out the terrorists and that egregious act. what i wanted to make clear is that if enough fears generated among people, then it opens the doors to all types of civil rights infraction. the boston marathon bombing, what you saw as the city lot down. he saw mom forced me going into peoples homes without warrants, pulling people out of gunpoint. videos on youtube. different stories told in the weeks and months to follow. copy both solaris and policies were found i was all in the name of security and routing terror suspects. you can make up your own mind whether it was justified. you have to realize have to realize if enough fears generated, things really can happen in america. remember specifically one story about an alderwoman and the phone rang and she answered and she was told by the voice on the other end to answer the door. when she opened the door, she looked out and there were scores of police officers holding weapons at her, both on her doorstep in the street. what happened and we didn't learn about this until a week later somebody had called and said that terror suspect was in her home and so the police responded. they grabbed her and they put her in detention, ultimately in a psychiatric unit for behavioral profiling and so forth. she finally got out. it is something people need to be aware. when there is spirit generated, oftentimes your security is the first thing you reach for in your civil rights you could care less about. >> host: in that particular case, too, there is some outsourcing were big data could be helpful sort of looking at surveillance, bettina misinformation. they forget there's a reason why you have the media. the media will be indicted tourists. they may not know that the pace that independent people, posting things to the internet do. however, during all of that, there was a young man who was wrongly used and literally it took him being wrongly used. he may have that haunt him. i always feel like digital is forever unless there's something important on your hard drive and then you can't get it back. but you know, in that particular case, big data in the wrong way, drawing the wrong conclusion can be very dangerous beauty mentioned privacy issues and there's obvious that that issue for the elderly woman and then a young man who is unjustly accused by the public through crowd sourcing is produced dairy. >> host: bright and it's something americans need to be aware of. these things can happen. what happens somebody else, what happens in your neighborhood close to home and happens to you and all of a sudden you get it and all of a sudden you're fighting for privacy and civil rights. >> host: you have done so much research on this boat here and i'm sure when you saw the headline about the right to be forgotten and basically the focus on google, but i don't think it's going to end there. were you surprised to say that you really came down unsorted tiebreak to be forgotten and they are going to be enforcing it. were you surprised to see that happen? do you think they will sort of wait and watch and see what happens? >> guest: no, i wasn't surprised at the e.u.'s actions. i don't think america will follow suit. i don't think that we are going to have any policies put in place the clampdown on intel or intelligence agencies together security information. i think there may be some lip service paid to politically correct, you know, to basically calm the american public to say we are not going to look at information on new about a warrant for we are not going to do another repeat where we are sifting through innocent americans information. but i don't think america is going to clampdown. >> host: so your prediction is don't hold your breath waiting for the right to be forgotten. >> guest: exactly. when it comes to looking not big data and the data collection going on, you do mention in the book and you just mentioned it here, the fact that while you are looking for the bad guy, that a lot of innocent bystanders naturally get pulled in, whether it's pictures of the location, surveillance video of the location, whether it is true that age, photos of every single person who gets a license at the dmv, all of that going into a database, you have done nothing wrong. what are some of your concerns after doing this research and may be looking ahead but the fact that all of us minding our own business better information, whether it's our photo, whether it's there like some facebook, whether searches on google or whether it's a picture of the dmv, all of that data has to be aggregated and used. what are some of your privacy concerns as you look ahead to the future? guest at the biggest thing is the average americans into immediate suspect by all levels and that is something that our society has innocent until proven guilty. it's kind of a creepy feeling that they're not doing anything wrong. you know, at the same time the government should be regarded as a possible suspect. my real problem with this question is on one hand we are collecting all kinds of data across all levels of government in business, dirk, government sectors but at the same time, we are not really doing anything common sense with respect to the security of america and to do those counterterrorism initiatives that would be so send old. for instance, the same time we are collecting data on innocent americans, without our borders remain porous. if i were a terrorist right now, the ideal place for me to be would be coming up through our southern border because it's tourists right now and that is something our government should crack down on. a lot of the common sense type security measures that the government should raise could be overlooked in a lot of the ones that seem to put innocent americans in the target i pounced upon. >> host: you bring up a really great point. you know, if you had the opportunity to build out a privacy law and there were three simple things in it. not a 1200 page law, the sort of maybe three, four simple things do not privacy law, what would your recommendation be that we look for an outlaw? >> guest: my recommendation to the first and foremost if it is a counterterrorism measure, it has to state clearly what the goal of the terrorist of measure is because way too many times they collect in the name of counterterrorism and it ends up being used for criminal aspect. second off, giving americans the right to know first and foremost and data collection if at all possible if it's not something that's going to but the security of our nation at risk, then americans need to be aware of it. that is something easy. your iphone, that is something easy. some of these data collections are really feed to give privacy notice to americans, but they're not being done. any type of data collection and schools parent should not only be notified, but they should also be given the right to opt-in or opt-out and they should be given a voice in the decision-making process. so those are a couple things i would say. >> host: i love the idea that if you're under 18 and you're asking for my permission to administer aspirin to fight child has a headache. i would think you'd need my permission to take the iris scanned, whatever biometric you're asking for. in my opinion, unless you're an official source in going to tell you know. thank you very much. when it comes to the research you are doing, what is one of the cases you came across that you thought this absolutely cannot be true. this cannot be happening. he got this really is happening. this case is really happening. but was the craziest tc would cover? >> guest: there were a lot of stories that could fit into that, but the one that jumped in my mind right now shows the utmost elitism of government when it comes to doing things in the name of security and let people know. there is a city council decision in scottsdale, arizona. they wanted to build a new building for their law-enforcement. what they did was they didn't have a public hearing on it. they just voted to spend $1.3 million of taxpayer dollars to construct this building. the thing was they didn't want to tell citizens for the building was going to be though. when i called and i some what was going on, is this true because i saw other stories about first, the justification was isuzu on first building. we don't want to give a heads up to where undercover officers may walk in and out of so people can come see them. but it was ridiculous because square footage of the building dictated common sense showed where the building was going to be on the flip side if you look at washington d.c., people, go all the time and you can see who walks in and out of them. i just thought that was an egregious example of how a local government board could spend taxpayer dollars on a building citing security reasons and not even bother to tell the taxpayers for the buildings they are paying for is going to be constructed. >> host: were there any repercussions for thought? >> guest: when they dug down, they dug down. and the next election you may see a few changes. i agree with you. but i'm not quite sure where they would put this building. maybe underground. that was really quite an interesting case. >> host: you know, one of the things you talk about those you mention we are on this dangerous course, this collision course i'm slowly but surely we justified for this reason or that reason this is why it is the case of collected data. you say it's collectible. have you seen many situations, for example, i know there is a certain source in the u.s. that the u.s. that when the customers found out they have a spooky, creepy mendicants looking at them, they would've really flipped out if they heard about the voice once. they complained to the department store corporate headquarters then they removed those manikins. so there's an example where you can change the course if you let your voice be heard inside of the subtle, logical manner. we talk about the wish list for privacy law. what are some other things you've seen work while to reverse this course and continue the wake-up call going in for us to have the opportunity to grab her privacy back. >> guest: there have been protests around the nation when local people learn that their police department were seeking drove to purchase and use for criminal reasons. and so, those are successful. i would say if people want to put a stop to some of the data collection that goes on were some of the militarization of police that goes on, you need to keep at your local community level because capitol hill politicians are not listening any longer. your letters and phone calls are getting dismissed and pushed it the side. at the local level, your local county government and city council control the purse strings on your police department. if you don't want your police department to have drones on and you should go to your local board meetings and petition your local politicians to not pay for this type of technology. you can use that. they simply go to the board meetings every couple weeks am not the local level your voice will be heard. i had a few stories for that was done in police gave up the notions of buying drones or more militarist equipment. >> host: what advice would you have for corporations? we talked early on with this around sort of the revelation of nsa. but the whole data source -- the nsa didn't put manikins in stores they didn't create microsoft. so they are basically partnering with the private sector and we know the private sector, they need to make money. that is why they produced product and at the same time we want them to know us so they can serve us better. we want her privacy protect it. you talk about in your book your privacy is important to us. you protect your privacy is of a bus support to us. what would your advice be to companies as far as the consumers and how they treat customer data, especially going back to the principle is that you collect that we know of technology is trackable, you know the bad guys want to. we don't even need to talk about how it might be used by other companies or government organizations. the would your advice be to companies based upon your research on the next step they need to take to regain customer confidence, customer trust and start rebuilding a transparency conversation around privacy? >> guest: well, slogans are good. i think most americans would prefer full disclosure and honesty. when you saw around christmas time target shoppers, all their credit card and debit card information being swept up in doland and hacks, it was slow going to get the information on exactly how many have been hacked. i believe the corporation was alerted to the hacking a couple weeks before they let it out into the regular public. so when you find things like that, you lose trust in the store and it seems to me the stores that would give the most disclosure to the data they collect being used, those would be the stores people with hand to flock to because they feel comfortable. they feel as if that store corp. is putting their privacy first before the company dollar bottom line. >> host: that is a tough one if you're dealing with companies online. there is one when you are in the store. but then there's the other would you do with them online and a lot of times you get the privacy policy and that spot on your little screen and you can't go any further until you click okay. same thing with social media services geared i find more often than not, most evil thing i know i showed that i am us feel guilty, like telling the dentist they don't floss twice a day. i know i should read the privacy policy, but i don't is when a lot of people will say. a lot of times it really is all important in your conversation around how come me to be more transparent about this coming tuesday the privacy policy is a really great place to start? but to avoid making it sound like a legal contract and instead be transparent. >> guest: simple language. i don't read half of those myself. it is so long it seems like. it seems like it is supersized the legal interests of the company. really if you are a shopper, the only way you are going to dodge the data collection and just kind of skate around all of this emerging technology is if you pay in cash. if you're really concerned about it, you can kind of keep to a minimum your data transactions and so forth. you can take your money out of the bank and cash but you need. so when you stop paying cash, a site that if you're really concerned about it you can take a few steps on your own with or without the company. hope >> host: you are right. there is simple steps you can take or otherwise other effect is. we talked about the whole thing about don't let your cell phone talk to y five. are there things you uncovered in your research or other simple steps. some mashed -- ..

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