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--:-- John Bickley: Recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York have brought heightened attention to the issue of gun rights, gun control, and the role the Second Amendment plays in the U.S. For this episode of Morning Wire, we talked to four thoughtful experts from across the political spectrum about what can realistically be done to reduce school shootings while still protecting the integrity of the Constitution.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some of our experts believe 2A leaves room for restrictions on guns, but others say the Constitution unambiguously precludes any infringement on the right to bear arms. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. Thanks for waking up with us. It's June 5th, and this is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- John Bickley: This most recent shooting in Uvalde, Texas really shook Americans, myself included. And like we've seen before, there is now renewed talk about gun control measures. President Biden seems to be endorsing an assault weapons ban, raising the age of gun ownership to 21, universal background checks and red flag laws. However, a lot of questions remain about how effective these measures are and whether they're constitutional.
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--:-- John Bickley: The first expert I spoke to is Jacob Charles. He is the executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University and is a proponent of some gun regulations. Here's an excerpt from our conversation.
--:-- Jacob Charles: Professor Charles, there have been a lot of people suggesting that red flag laws could have prevented both the Buffalo shooting and the Uvalde shooting. Do these laws have any merit and are they legal under our Constitution?
--:-- Jacob Charles: From a legal perspective, a couple of the laws that are being proposed seem to fit within the structure of what the courts have allowed under the Second Amendment and seem to, at least some of them, might reduce, if not the amount of these mass shootings we see in school shootings. in particular than maybe the severity of the fatalities that happen in them.
--:-- Jacob Charles: So a few of the ones that are being discussed and proposed, one would be extremist protection order laws or what are often called red flag laws. And these laws allow either law enforcement or sometimes family members to go into court and get an order that a person who has shown these behavioral indicators for risk is an imminent threat of harm to themselves or others and a court can issue an order to temporarily deprive them of their firearms for a set amount of time.
--:-- Jacob Charles: So universal background checks or expanding the background check system. I think the Texas shooting in particular showed that the shooter went to a federal licensee and purchased his weapon from a licensee. So he underwent the background check. So expanding the background check wouldn't have stopped that particular transaction.
--:-- Jacob Charles: Now, with red flag laws, would a red flag complaint about an individual appear on that individual's background check if they attempted to purchase a gun? Or is this a whole different process?
--:-- Jacob Charles: The red flag laws are very individualized. So it requires a petitioner, it requires someone to go into court and request that this particular person be prohibited from possessing firearms. And the factors that courts can look at are not only past criminal convictions, right? So Florida's law says you can look at if someone has threatened violence against somebody else. And so they can look at things that are not only criminal activity, but also including other kind of risks to immediate harm.
--:-- Jacob Charles: And then if someone has a red flag order issued against them, which says they can't possess or purchase guns, some states are automatically requiring that to be submitted into the background check system so that the person couldn't then just go to the gun store down the street and purchase a new gun, even though they're under a red flag order.
--:-- Jacob Charles: That's one of the things that I think is getting discussed in the implementation phases of what these red flags look like to make sure that they're getting put into the background system so that they then serve also as disqualifiers.
--:-- Jacob Charles: And do we have any evidence that red flag laws are actually effective? So there was a study about Connecticut's law, which was one of the earlier red flag laws that showed that for every 10 to 20 petitions that were issued, about one suicide was averted. And so that's one law that's showing some promise.
--:-- Jacob Charles: Other than that, gun violence itself is a multifaceted problem, right? The laws that are going to help with mass shootings might be different than the laws that are going to help with urban gun violence might be different than the laws that are going to help with gun suicides might be different than the laws that are going to help with intimate partner homicides by firearm
--:-- Jacob Charles: And so there a wide spectrum of gun violence and then a wide spectrum of gun laws that might help with each of those concerns
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--:-- John Bickley: Next I spoke to Adam Winkler law professor at UCLA and author of Gunfight the battle over the right to bear arms in America Adam has supported some gun control measures and believes that the Constitution explicitly allows for gun regulation. Now, Professor Winkler, there appears to be a lot of public support for policies that could reduce mass shootings. particularly shootings that occur in schools. What are some of the most promising policies being floated right now, in your opinion?
--:-- Adam Winkler: Well, I think there are some promising policies being floated. There's more talk now than we've seen in a long time on raising the gun age for purchasing a firearm. We know far too many of these mass shootings are young men who shouldn't necessarily have access to the most dangerous weapons.
--:-- Adam Winkler: Some states have talked about restricting certain kinds of weapons and high-capacity magazines. Almost every mass shooting involves a high-capacity magazine because it enables the shooter to shoot a lot of rounds without having to reload.
--:-- Adam Winkler: We're also seeing efforts by conservatives to push laws like hardening school security. And as we've seen in response to several other mass shootings in the past, moves towards greater security often follow a mass shooting.
--:-- Adam Winkler: Now, you've argued that both sides of this debate have an overly simplified conception of the Second Amendment. Let's start with the right. What do they get wrong?
--:-- Adam Winkler: Well, I think the right gets wrong about the Second Amendment is thinking that there is so little room for good and effective gun regulation. So many conservatives seem to believe that the Second Amendment prohibits gun control. When, in fact, the Second Amendment was from the time of the founding about balancing gun rights with public safety.
--:-- Adam Winkler: The amendment itself refers to a well-regulated militia. The framers really did believe that government would serve to organize and discipline the militia, not just allow anyone to have any gun anywhere they want.
--:-- Adam Winkler: Now, certainly there has been a lively debate around that phrase, well-regulated militia. But you've also argued that the left also misunderstands 2A as well. How so?
--:-- Adam Winkler: Similarly, on the left, we often see an effort to diminish gun rights or to ignore the long history and tradition of gun ownership. Or we see on the left a sort of fantastical view that we can eliminate mass shootings.
--:-- Adam Winkler: I can't tell you how often I'm asked, what can we do to eliminate mass shootings? Mass shootings in an armed society are like sexual assault or drunk driving. We can try to reduce those numbers, and we should. But we shouldn't make the determinant of success whether we absolutely and totally eliminate some form of human behavior from the human experience.
--:-- Adam Winkler: Looking at crime rates in other countries, what can we learn? Criminal activity doesn't vary that much between Western industrialized nations. What's different is that crime in America is much more deadly because of the widespread and easy access to firearms.
--:-- Adam Winkler: So there's lots of lessons we can learn from looking abroad. Sometimes gun rights supporters will point to countries like Switzerland and Israel that do have relatively high rates of gun ownership. However, those are countries in which there's much more restrictive laws on guns that make it harder for people to carry guns on the streets.
--:-- Adam Winkler: So one thing we can recognize is that it's true that criminals will still be able to get guns in America as long as we have so many of them that are easily accessible. That doesn't mean we can't have good and effective gun laws that are going to help reduce the incidence of gun violence and reduce suicide. and in the end, save people's lives.
--:-- Adam Winkler: In your view, what are the top policy suggestions that you think are both constitutional and could be effective? Universal background checks, raising the age to purchase firearms to 21. We can also do things outside of regulating guns, more money for community intervention programs like Operation Ceasefire, programs that have a proven track record of limiting gun violence and reducing gun violence in urban areas.
--:-- Adam Winkler: And we could do things like free up the ATF with better funding, better resources, and an elimination of some of the old NRA-endorsed rules that really prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the main federal law enforcement agency when it comes to guns, from doing its job.
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--:-- John Bickley: I also spoke to Ramesh Panuru. Ramesh is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a columnist for Bloomberg, and an editor at the National Review. So Ramesh, polling seems to indicate that there is support for some moderate gun regulations, but it seems like we've been hearing about the same regulations for decades now. What accounts for this stalemate?
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: I think a lot of people who are passionate about new gun restrictions like a ban on assault weapons are frustrated and angered when they don get their way because they look at these polls where they seem to have public support. But what they don't see is they don't have intensity on their side. Whereas a lot of the people who think that a ban on assault weapons sounds good, it's a low priority for them. They don't actually think it's going to make a huge difference in reducing violence.
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: And so that support doesn't have the same impact on politicians. How much influence does the NRA have on legislative outcomes?
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: The NRA is not what it used to be, but the politics of this issue are the same as they used to be. What's mattered is the sentiment of voters, and in particular those voters who are most concerned about gun issues. And those have been the people who've been the bedrock supporters of the NRA. But if the NRA is not there, they're still going to be out there.
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: Now, given this deeply entrenched political stalemate, what are some policies that you think could be both effective and politically viable when it comes to preventing school shootings?
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: I do think that there is some promise for bipartisan support and maybe some actual results if states try experimenting with different kinds of red flag laws. Another is expanding our ability to engage in threat assessment and maybe requiring people to report when they think somebody poses a credible threat.
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: Because one thing we see over and over in these mass atrocities is that somebody always has an inkling. Sometimes there are people who have more than an inkling. They know that somebody is essentially a kind of ticking time bomb waiting to go off.
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: One idea that has attracted attention is raising that age. I do think it is a little odd that we have a federal minimum age of 21 for purchasing a handgun, but a rifle can be purchased at 18.
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: The constitutional question is going to be, well, can you actually have an age-based restriction on adults that infringes on a core amendment? So we don't say you have to wait until you're 21 in order to avail yourself of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion. Why should you have to do that in the case of your Second Amendment right to own guns?
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: It is, however, a restriction that is a little different from some of the other things that we've been talking about or that we tend to talk about, like assault weapons bans, in that it is a little bit more targeted because so many of these incidents do involve young men.
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: So why do you believe that the U.S. has more gun deaths than many other Western countries? People often say all these other countries have strict gun control and they don't have some of the same problems that we have in the United States. Why can't we do that here?
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: The thing is, none of those other countries had either the level of gun ownership that we have in our country or the level of gun violence that we have in our country when they adopted these restrictions. They were starting from a completely different place.
--:-- Ramesh Panuru: And you can't just copy and paste a solution from another country when you're having such an extraordinarily different set of starting circumstances.
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--:-- John Bickley: Lastly, I spoke to Amy Swearer. Amy is a legal fellow and senior legal policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Amy believes that the solution to mass shootings must not come at the expense of citizens' fundamental right to bear arms. So Amy, a lot of people want to regulate gun ownership, either by raising the age or by restricting what kind of weapon you can buy. Is that not a viable solution?
--:-- Amy Swearer: Well, when we're talking about the types of guns that people can and can't buy, there are two things to consider. The first are the constitutional limitations. Obviously, we have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms that is, frankly, unique compared to the rest of the world.
--:-- Amy Swearer: We have certain limitations on what is and is not protected. So the first question has to be, is there a constitutional right to these weapons? Are certain types of weapons protected? And I think there's a clear answer that says yes.
--:-- Amy Swearer: But I think even more so from a practical standpoint, this idea that what they call assault weapons, you know, these scary looking weapons are functionally different from non-assault weapons or that, you know, that there is something about them that made the shooting easier to carry out. That's simply not the case.
--:-- Amy Swearer: I mean, we're talking about a lot of cosmetic changes, things like pistol grips or collapsing stocks. Those are not the sorts of things that make it easier to shoot innocent people. It's the practical reality that the things that we're talking about banning with these weapons are not measures of lethality.
--:-- Amy Swearer: And I think constitutionally speaking, we couldn't ban those sorts of things because then we be banning a whole lot of hunting rifles as well So it just I think it a lot more complicated of a picture than a lot of people want to admit
--:-- Amy Swearer: Now if that the case why do so many of these mass shooters choose these specific guns to commit mass shootings?
--:-- Amy Swearer: So there have been, you know, in the last 10, 20 years, a good number of high-profile mass public shootings that have been carried out with a type of firearm that has what I'll call an AR-15 platform.
--:-- Amy Swearer: Now, some people have pointed to this. I think it's been overplayed to a certain extent. Any type of firearm in the hands of someone who is committed to committing these atrocities is going to be deadly and destructive.
--:-- Amy Swearer: But when we're looking at why the focus is on these types of firearms and why we might see some shooters choose to use these, I think it's also just because they are commonly owned. These are popular firearms. You would expect to see people who are buying firearms, whether for lawful or in this case, horrifically unlawful purposes, they're going to buy firearms that are out there and popular and commonly available.
--:-- Amy Swearer: Now, you have said that these crimes could be committed with any gun, and some gun control advocates actually agree with that. They point to the UK and Australia and places with very strict gun ownership laws, and those places just don't seem to have the same problem of mass shootings. So why would a policy of banning all guns not fix this issue?
--:-- Amy Swearer: The first major reality we have to contend with is we in the United States have a Second Amendment, a constitutional right to keep and bear arms that simply does not exist in places like Australia. You know, owning a firearm is not a right there. It is a privilege that the government grants you.
--:-- Amy Swearer: And the second reality is when you look at the effectiveness of these gun control methods in Australia, it doesn't really add up. Australia had a massive decline in the 1990s in gun crime. Well, so did the United States without effectively banning many types of semi-automatic firearms in the way that Australia did.
--:-- Amy Swearer: And in fact, guns per capita in the United States during that time increased significantly. They went up by about 50 percent when gun crime declined by 50 percent. You know, so there were much bigger factors in play there.
--:-- Amy Swearer: Right. But are you saying that in order to protect the Second Amendment, we have to learn to live with mass shootings? No, absolutely not. I don't think this is something that Americans should just say, oh, we should just live with it. But I think the solution lies in something other than attacking the Second Amendment.
--:-- Amy Swearer: So we have heard some experts say that the framers' original intention when they used that language, a well-regulated militia, is that the government would regulate gun ownership. How would you respond to that?
--:-- Amy Swearer: Well, I'd say the intent is right there in the language that the militia should be well-regulated. But when you look at the rest of the amendment, as the court did in Heller and McDonald, and when you look at the text itself, it says that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to the people and it shall not be infringed.
--:-- Amy Swearer: Now, some on the left have argued that 2A itself is an impediment to public safety and that maybe it's outdated or should be reconsidered. How would you respond to that?
--:-- Amy Swearer: Well, we need the Second Amendment because the same reality exists now as it did in the 1790s, as it did in the 1860s. The right to keep and bear arms is premised on this underlying natural right of self-defense, that you have a right to forcibly repel those who try to take away your life or liberty or property in an arbitrary manner, whether that's hirants, whether that's invading foreign armies, or whether that's criminals when the government can't or won't be there to protect you.
--:-- Amy Swearer: That same reality is true today. It's not as though we no longer have a natural and alienable right to self-defense. And it's not as though the right to keep and bear arms no longer protects against that. Of course it does. I mean, you see this again in a criminal context, in the numbers of defensive gun uses that occur in this country.
--:-- Amy Swearer: You see this in the reality of, you know, invading foreign armies. Look at Ukraine all of a sudden going, hey, maybe it's a good idea to have our citizens well armed to repel foreign invasions. And you see this, you know, again, that threat of tyranny that is still there, that is still in many respects repelled and rebutted by this well-armed populace that lies at the core of the right.
--:-- Amy Swearer: The right to self-defense has not gone away. The importance of having that right to self-defense and having the means to actually meaningfully defend yourself that hasn't gone away. It is still the same today as it was throughout history.
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--:-- John Bickley: This brings us to the end of our episode today. As always, thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We hope you enjoyed hearing a wide spectrum of opinions on this pressing issue, and we look forward to hearing listener feedback. As always, leaving a review and a comment helps our show climb the podcast rankings, and it helps get a fresh perspective out there. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
