--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today, Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- German Lopez: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about mass shootings in the US. Herman Lopez, you cover guns in America for Vox, which is to say you cover mass shootings for Vox. It seems like there have been like a half dozen in the past two weekends or so. Is that accurate or is the number even greater than that?
--:-- German Lopez: The number is probably even greater than that. Certainly a few specific shootings have gotten attention.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we had the shooting in Gilroy, California. At least four people, including a gunman and a six-year-old boy, are dead after chaos broke out at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California.
--:-- German Lopez: There was also the El Paso one this past weekend. At least 20 people were killed and 26 injured Saturday morning at a Walmart packed with back-to-school shoppers in El Paso.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, two more of the victims wounded in the Walmart shooting Saturday in El Paso have died, bringing the death toll in that attack to 22.
--:-- German Lopez: And then there was also the Dayton one this past weekend. Nine people were killed and 27 injured before police officers shot the gunman to death just 30 seconds after the attack began.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in between all those and even a little before that, we had a pretty big shooting in Brooklyn. New York police say one person is dead and 11 others were injured in a shooting in Brooklyn Saturday night.
--:-- German Lopez: We had another shooting in Wisconsin. A deadly shooting spree in northwestern Wisconsin that left five people dead, including the suspected shooter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are a surprising amount of mass shootings that simply just don't get that much media attention, but tons of people injured. We're talking dozens of people whose lives have been forever changed because somebody decided to pick up a gun and shoot them.
--:-- German Lopez: What exactly is the metric, again, of a mass shooting in America?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the metric I rely on comes from the Gun Violence Archive, which essentially measures any mass shooting where four more people were shot but not necessarily killed, excluding the shooter.
--:-- German Lopez: By that count, we've had 250-plus mass shootings just this year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the reason we're talking about mass shootings right now as a country is because of this shooting in El Paso, Texas, it feels like.
--:-- German Lopez: So in El Paso, a gunman walked into a Walmart and started shooting randomly. He ultimately has killed, as of today, 22 people and injured at least 20 others.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Based on what we know, his motives were linked to white supremacist views.
--:-- German Lopez: So he had posted a manifesto online suggesting that people from Mexico were invading the country and that Latin people were invading the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He also referenced the New Zealand attack, which was also another white supremacist attack earlier this year.
--:-- German Lopez: But the simple story here is once again, somebody picked up a gun, walked into a public space and shot a bunch of people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You mentioned the shooter's manifesto. It's three pages of hatred against immigrants and people viewed as basically invaders to the United States.
--:-- German Lopez: It's a wildly anti-immigrant manifesto.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But obviously the ideas in this manifesto aren't very foreign if you listen to the president talk about immigration or watch Fox News.
--:-- [Sound of a phone ringing]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Joining me now with reaction is Dan Patrick, Texas lieutenant governor.
--:-- Dan Patrick: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Your state has been completely overrun by this illegal invasion. I think calling it anything but an invasion at this point is just not being honest with people.
--:-- Dan Patrick: Is this a major escalation of anti-Latino sentiment in this country?
--:-- German Lopez: Yes, we have seen more of these kinds of like hate crimes start to like bubble up, but this seems to be one of the deadliest ones at least.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the FBI has said explicitly that it is looking into this shooting in El Paso as an act of domestic terrorism.
--:-- Dan Patrick: Why is a shooting like this domestic terrorism and say what maybe happened in Gilroy or maybe what happened in Dayton, Ohio was not?
--:-- German Lopez: In El Paso, if the motivation was explicitly, I'm going to send a message, a broader message to society, then that's when it becomes domestic terrorism.
--:-- Dan Patrick: Essentially, it has to be ideologically or politically driven in some way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And to be clear here, violent white supremacy is terrorism? Is that how the United States government looks at it?
--:-- Dan Patrick: Yes. I mean, violent white supremacy is, in fact, the original terrorism in the U.S. from the federal government's perspective.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the 19th century, the first anti-terrorism laws were explicitly passed to target the KKK and other racist groups who targeted black people for violence, whether lynchings or something else.
--:-- Dan Patrick: And from the perspective of the FBI, too, most cases related to domestic terrorism are usually racism driven.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What does it mean to say we're going to look into this as an act of domestic terrorism? Does that mean there's more resources going towards it? Does that mean that they maybe stop future acts of domestic terrorism?
--:-- Dan Patrick: Because this is still someone who found it easy to get a gun and easy to go to a Walmart and open fire.
--:-- German Lopez: And there's a whole lot of people in this country who could do that right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does having more eyes on this one shooting help stop any future shootings?
--:-- Dan Patrick: So it could in the sense that if the FBI is super aware of just hate in general, just bigotry in general in America, It can watch like internet forums like 8chan and say like, hey, look, this person is posting this manifesto online.
--:-- German Lopez: Maybe that's a warning flag. Maybe we should pay more attention to that.
--:-- Dan Patrick: But one of the things that the FBI has said that makes this particularly difficult now is that there no like single white supremacist group in the US that like directly guiding these people into these attacks
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in the past for example with Islamist terrorism when you say okay so ISIS is directing people to do these attacks we can like trace a link between these people and ISIS.
--:-- Dan Patrick: And maybe by stopping ISIS's operations directly, we can stop Islamist terrorism in the US or abroad.
--:-- German Lopez: With this, it's just, there is no single white supremacist group you can point to guiding all of this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that makes it much more difficult.
--:-- Dan Patrick: There's just too many of these lone wolf incidents, and that might make it more difficult to actually stop these attacks if you're only pursuing this as like an anti-white supremacy angle.
--:-- German Lopez: So this shooter in El Paso posted this manifesto to 8chan, is that right?
--:-- Dan Patrick: Yes. And 8chan is this infamously toxic breeding ground slash forum for white supremacy, in some cases, violent white supremacy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's been a lot of talk since the shooting in El Paso about shutting 8chan down. Has that happened? Will that happen? Can that happen?
--:-- Dan Patrick: One step in that direction is one of the services that essentially protects 8chan from cyber attacks, to my understanding, Cloudflare, has said it will no longer do that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. So that's one step in this direction, and 8chan has been up and down today as a result of that.
--:-- Dan Patrick: Is there a chance that someone else will just provide these sort of secure services for 8chan?
--:-- German Lopez: And if so, does that make it sort of inevitable that sites like this continue to exist?
--:-- Dan Patrick: It's a good possibility. The internet is a big place. The world is a big place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While the nation was still reeling from this anti-Latino white supremacist attack in El Paso, there was another shooting this weekend in Dayton, Ohio.
--:-- German Lopez: What happened there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As far as we know, this man went to a rather popular place with like bars and restaurants in the area and just started, again, just shooting people at random.
--:-- German Lopez: Nine people, including the gunman's sister, were killed and 27 more were injured.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Unlike El Paso, we don't have a really good idea of what this person's motives were.
--:-- German Lopez: We are already seeing some stuff pop up about his background and he apparently had some misogynistic views, which is pretty typical in these kinds of shootings.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But otherwise, there doesn't seem to be a connection to El Paso.
--:-- German Lopez: Earlier this morning, the president spoke about these two shootings in El Paso and Dayton.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What did he have to say?
--:-- Dan Patrick: Essentially, he, for the most part, just stuck to his old talking points on gun issues.
--:-- German Lopez: So he pointed to mental illness. We must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but when necessary, involuntarily confinement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.
--:-- Dan Patrick: He actually at one point pointed out violent video games, which has become a Republican talking point in the past few days regarding these shootings.
--:-- German Lopez: We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence.
--:-- Dan Patrick: We must stop or substantially reduce this, and it has to begin immediately.
--:-- German Lopez: He did mention that he wants some stricter gun laws passed, so like red flag laws that would allow authorities, if there are like red flags, quote unquote, pop up, authorities can seize a person's guns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms and that if they do, those firearms can be taken through rapid due process.
--:-- Dan Patrick: But for the most part, he seemed to focus on anything but gun control.
--:-- German Lopez: His remarks in large part were focused on talking about like how we bring about cultural change because it's our culture that's making us uniquely violent in some way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cultural change is hard, but each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life. That's what we have to do.
--:-- Dan Patrick: But there wasn't that much concrete leadership in terms of like driving the debate on what kinds of stronger gun laws we should be passing.
--:-- German Lopez: I will make sure that we get universal background checks passed, the assault weapon ban, that we do something about magazines.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What we're doing hasn't worked because we haven't had a system in Washington capable of delivering what the American people have told us they want.
--:-- Dan Patrick: 80, 90 percent of Republicans want universal background checks, not to mention the common sense solutions like red flag laws that disarm domestic abusers and flag mental health risks and an end to assault weapons.
--:-- German Lopez: These kids are traumatized. I support all the gun reforms here. We need to start dealing with the trauma that our kids have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We need trauma-based care in every school. We need social and emotional learning in every school.
--:-- Dan Patrick: We need to start playing offense. If our kids are so traumatized that they're getting a gun and going into our schools, we're doing something wrong too.
--:-- German Lopez: Seven children will die today from gun violence, children and teenagers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they won't just die in mass shootings. They'll die on sidewalks. They'll die in playgrounds. They die in people backyards.
--:-- Dan Patrick: Gun violence is a national health emergency in this country and we need to treat it like that.
--:-- German Lopez: Herman, it sounds like the president doesn't have a whole lot of new concrete ideas to add to this mass shooting epidemic in the United States, but there are 20-some-odd people running for president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do they have anything more to offer?
--:-- German Lopez: They have some ideas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in general, when this comes up at Democratic debates, the Democrats are really focused on the same things we've essentially heard for the past 25 years on gun violence, which is universal background checks and assault weapons bans and maybe some like other restrictions on people who are showing like red flags.
--:-- German Lopez: Yeah. I should say there have been some of the people running for president. Some of like the mid-tier and lower-tier candidates have proposed more aggressive things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So like Cory Booker suggested a licensing scheme.
--:-- German Lopez: So just like with a car, you have to get a driver's license. You would have to get a license to buy and own a gun in the U.S.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we did an episode about this with you focusing on Massachusetts where they have a licensing program that actually helped reduce gun violence.
--:-- German Lopez: Right. Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Would any of these ideas, mandatory background checks, licensing system, assault rifle ban, have stopped the El Paso shooting, the Dayton, Ohio shooting, the Garlic Festival shooting in Gilroy?
--:-- German Lopez: I think the answer is unfortunately, probably not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The problem is that the U.S. has so many guns out there and they're so easy to get.
--:-- German Lopez: And even if your state specifically makes it difficult, you can just cross state lines and buy guns elsewhere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This happens a lot in New York. People go to Virginia. People go from Illinois to Indiana to buy guns.
--:-- German Lopez: And that means that at the end of the day, these people will probably find a weapon somewhere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That doesn't mean that these other measures are completely ineffective. They maybe would reduce the death toll in some of these situations.
--:-- German Lopez: But in general, if somebody wants to get a gun in the U.S., it would probably still be possible.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if these types of plans wouldn't stop these shootings that we saw over the past few weekends, what should Democrats be talking about?
--:-- German Lopez: Well, just as Democrats have been talking throughout this whole primary process about a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, they've been talking really ambitious ideas on all sorts of policy areas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They should essentially try to think a little bolder on guns.
--:-- German Lopez: Basically, Democrats need a Green New Deal but on guns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what would a Green New Deal for guns look like?
--:-- German Lopez: So I think one is just a much more rigorous licensing system, even above what Cory Booker is suggesting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Two is banning certain kinds of firearms that we haven't talked about banning, such as handguns or semi-automatic weapons.
--:-- German Lopez: Those are the majority of—handguns in particular are the majority of guns used in gun violence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then three, actually taking these guns away once they're banned, which is something we have not done previously with certain gun bans.
--:-- German Lopez: So I feel like that could be confusing because those sound like things that have been tried or have been proposed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's start with the licensing.
--:-- German Lopez: Sure. So right now the licensing plans generally, like the one Cory Booker suggested, it would enable, like in Massachusetts, most people who apply to get a gun actually do get a gun license in the end.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like something 90 plus percent of people who apply.
--:-- German Lopez: The question we would have to ask is if we want to put higher standards on getting a license.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in the UK, for example, and in Japan as well, just self-defense is not a good enough reason to get a firearm.
--:-- German Lopez: In the US, for constitutional legal reasons, according to the Supreme Court, they say that it is enough to get a firearm.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe we should reconsider that.
--:-- German Lopez: Maybe like politically, ethically, morally, that's just, that's not a good idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's led to all these guns in the US.
--:-- German Lopez: And that's the kind of thing I mean when I say a more rigorous licensing system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's like, yes, the licensing system is good. There's good research behind it, but maybe it should have even more hurdles involved.
--:-- German Lopez: Okay. And how about taking away handguns? That feels like antithetical to the American way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure. But I would just point out that actually in the 60s and when Americans were pulled on this, a majority said that with the exception of like cops and other people who like literally use handguns in their profession, they were okay with essentially a handgun ban based on Gallup's polling.
--:-- German Lopez: That changed over time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the point here is, even though assault weapons get a lot of attention, particularly due to these mass shootings, most gun violence is done with handguns.
--:-- German Lopez: We're talking about like everyday shootings. We're talking about suicides, which still make up a majority of gun deaths.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Those are usually done with just normal handguns and typically semi-automatic handguns.
--:-- German Lopez: And the third thing you said would be even more controversial, I feel, which is actually taking guns away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure. Yes. Like back in the 90s, we banned assault weapons for 10 years.
--:-- German Lopez: But when we did this ban, we did not actually take away people's assault weapons.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We didn't ask people to bring them in and give a market value like New Zealand and Australia have done with guns when they banned them.
--:-- German Lopez: It was just a ban on future sales.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. Exactly.
--:-- German Lopez: And that meant that there were just still a bunch of these assault weapons around.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as a result, the research on this has found that this assault weapons ban didn't seem to have much of an effect on overall levels of gun violence.
--:-- German Lopez: Might have made mass shootings a little less deadly. The evidence is kind of mixed on that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But otherwise, it didn't have a big effect.
--:-- German Lopez: And if you talk to researchers and experts, it's because, first of all, there were loopholes in the law which creates all sorts of problems.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But even beyond that it just the assault weapons that remained out there were still pretty accessible to people.
--:-- German Lopez: That's why it's important to take this other step.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not enough to just ban firearms. If the U.S. has more guns than people, then at some point you have to actually drain some of those guns out of the system.
--:-- German Lopez: A background check, a rigorous licensing system, even bans might do this over time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if the idea is to immediately reduce gun violence in the U.S., then maybe that's something we should start seriously talking about is actually making sure that there are fewer guns next year in the U.S.
--:-- German Lopez: And this has worked in places like Australia, who did like a massive gun callback after a mass shooting?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. In the 90s, Australia had this pretty big mass shooting.
--:-- German Lopez: And pretty quickly, the conservative government there said, OK, no more. This is ridiculous.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've had a few mass shootings besides the one that really drew attention at the time.
--:-- German Lopez: And they banned a bunch of certain kinds of firearms, particularly like semi-automatic rifles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the government said, okay, you have to bring your guns in.
--:-- German Lopez: We'll buy them back at a certain percent of market value.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then they'll just be destroyed.
--:-- German Lopez: In the end, the Australian government sees hundreds of thousands of guns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And essentially, the research suggests that this worked, that this reduced the number of gun deaths, particularly in the places where more guns were bought back.
--:-- German Lopez: But now you're really talking about something that a lot of Americans would disapprove of.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're talking about something that politicians can run a campaign against.
--:-- German Lopez: And they especially want to take away your guns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know that. They want to take away your guns. You better get out there and vote. You better get out there and vote.
--:-- German Lopez: What is public opinion like on a gun buyback program or actually banning guns like handguns, which people will say, I need for self-defense. I need to protect my family.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's no doubt about this. It's an extremely unpopular idea in general in the U.S.
--:-- German Lopez: Most people, depending on the polls—
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even Democrats at the debates are saying, I'm a gun owner, I'm a son of a gun owner, I'm a daughter of a gun owner, my child is a gun, whatever.
--:-- German Lopez: Kamala Harris says—
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I am a gun owner, and I own a gun for probably the reason that a lot of people do, for personal safety.
--:-- German Lopez: They always phrase—
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is always how the debate is phrased, like, we still respect the Second Amendment, we still want you to be able to buy a gun if you're responsible.
--:-- German Lopez: Responsible gun owners are fine.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- German Lopez: So on and so forth.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But yeah, I think what is important to note here is that I don't actually think this is going to happen tomorrow.
--:-- German Lopez: I don't think this is that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, it's definitely not happening tomorrow.
--:-- German Lopez: It's probably not happening in 2020, even if after 2020, if Democrats take back the White House and Congress, it's not going to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the thing we saw in the past few decades is important to remember here because we were at a point in the 60s where very strict gun regulations like today's standards seem reasonable to most Americans.
--:-- German Lopez: So that changed over time because the National Rifle Association, the NRA, became a really political organization.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It went through a lot of changes in the 70s, and it really started lobbying.
--:-- German Lopez: Politicians, the public started doing these massive campaigns, got in law journals saying that the Second Amendment defends an individual right to bear arms, and so on and so forth, and really shifted public opinion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you see that, it makes you think, could the same thing in the reverse happen?
--:-- German Lopez: I think the answer is probably yes, but it would involve a bunch of ifs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if gun control advocates got louder and bolder in their proposals, if maybe Democratic politicians got louder and bolder in their proposals, and also if the public was just receptive to this.
--:-- German Lopez: Like if we see enough of these mass shootings, will Americans become more supportive of these tougher measures?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's a long-term project, but I think it's possible.
--:-- German Lopez: But what's it going to take, Herman?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, there was Sandy Hook, Never Again. There was the March for Our Lives. There was all the enthusiasm around the Parkland kids. They toured the country. It felt like there was a moment there.
--:-- German Lopez: And here we are again. What does it take to get lasting effort on this issue? It seems like it ebbs and it flows.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's just time.
--:-- German Lopez: I mean, it's not the most fun, exciting answer, but we've seen over the past few years that gun violence has crept up, particularly mass shootings has crept up in like Democrats' interests, like in the most important problem they see.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Healthcare is usually the top thing. Maybe climate change is up there as well. But gun violence is starting to creep up.
--:-- German Lopez: It was actually one of the things that they wanted to ask of the Democratic debate based on some polling.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's just the kind of thing you want to see if you want to see change in this area.
--:-- German Lopez: It's just this issue remaining on people's radar for a while.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's going to take time because everything in the U.S., when it comes to policy change, just takes time.
--:-- German Lopez: Herman Lopez writes for Vox.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's where you can find his piece that fleshes out some of the ideas he discussed on the show today.
--:-- German Lopez: It's titled Democrats have been discussing the same ideas on guns for 25 years. It's time to change that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram from Today, Explained.
