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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. After the Georgia and Colorado shooting rampages, can President Biden succeed at gun safety legislation where the Obama-Biden Administration failed? 10 people killed in the grocery store shooting in Boulder. Eight killed including six Asian-American women in the Atlanta spa shootings. The suspects in both cases, 21-year-old young men and the President wants to act.

Biden: I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour to take common sense steps. I’ll save the lives in the future and urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act.

Brian: President Biden yesterday. Gun safety is a decade's long fight and personal issue for Biden. In 1994, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he helped push through the first assault weapons ban. Here's Biden back then.

Biden: Today the Judiciary Committee convenes an oversight hearing to address the carnage wrought by deadly military style assault weapons on innocent citizens and the law enforcement officers who seek to protect us all.

Brian: Sounds pretty different, right? That ban expired in 2004 and was never renewed. After the Sandy Hook massacre, it was again Joe Biden, this time as vice president tasked to get more protections through Congress, background checks, a military style weapons ban again. Limits on magazines, meaning how many bullets fast firing weapon could shoot before reloading, but little came from that effort. Since then, depending on how you define mass shooting, there have been over 2,000 such events and little to no action from federal lawmakers.

Can the fact that Joe Biden is now president, and there was a Democratic House and Senate, though not with a filibuster proof majority may come out differently this time? With me now is Jennifer Mascia. Journalist with The Trace, a non-profit newsroom focusing on gun violence. Jennifer, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Jennifer Mascia: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian: Pulling back to start out, as someone who has covered guns in politics for a long time, what did you think when you heard the President speech yesterday? Was there anything that stuck out to you that felt different or new, because it's become such a somber but predictable tradition? The Democrats say one thing, the Republicans say another thing and nothing happens.

Jennifer: One thing that stuck out, I wasn't surprised. He was pretty staunch about this issue in the Obama Administration. I do believe that he feels passionately about this. Look, he called for an assault weapons ban. We are still at trying to get universal background checks. Calling for an assault weapons ban seems like a relatively tall order in this politically charged environment, but I wasn't surprised. However, it's one thing to call for an assault weapons ban. It's quite another to get it through such a divided Senate.

Brian: Can you remind us of the history of how an assault weapons ban that was in effect for a decade did get passed in 1994?

Jennifer: Well, it was included in the 1994 Crime bill. Then Senator Biden was extremely vocal. He said it's about guns. This is about guns. This is about curbing guns, assault weapons are extremely lethal. 10 people were shot in Boulder and 10 people died. The lethality, there tend to be a lot of casualties with these weapons. It was extremely difficult. He was pressured at every turn. Democrats were pressured to drop this, and somehow it stayed in. Technically, the research is in. Two years ago, Stanford did a big study that found that 10 years after the ban expired in 2004, the number of mass shootings more than tripled and the number of fatalities spiked fourfold. The evidence has come in that it did suppress some gun violence during that period.

Brian: Now, fast forward in nearly two decades, the assault weapons ban expires, then the Sandy Hook massacre happens, 20 children are murdered along with 7 adults. President Obama tasks Biden to get gun control through Congress. Why does he choose Biden?

Jennifer: Biden, he has great respect for the Senate as we've seen, as president he repeatedly said the Senate to be autonomous, he comes from that tradition. Look, he was 30, when he was first elected, he is very much a creature of the Senate, he has great respect for it's traditions. He is somebody who is a very cooling presence. He has the ear of many Republicans, even if they don't eventually vote his way, which we saw in 2013, and which is the odds of that happening, again, are very great. He is somebody who he just has that gift. He's a very good negotiator on a range of topics. We'll see if it bears out this time, it's going to be much more difficult this time around.

Brian: Fast forwarding from Sandy Hook, when, despite Sandy Hook, and how dramatic that was, and the emotional lives of all Americans really who saw first graders getting massacred, and it couldn't pass then. Fast forwarding to now, you say it's going to be tough. There are two bills that Biden referred to in a speech yesterday, both of which have already passed the house, he urged the Senate to take them up for a vote and pass them immediately. One of those refers to something called the Charleston Loophole. Can you explain the Charleston Loophole?

Jennifer: Yes, built into the 1993 Brady Bill was a clause that said if a gun background check takes longer than three days, a federally licensed dealer can go ahead with that sale, even if it's inconclusive. That's how the Charleston Church gunman got his Glock because the background check took longer than three days and the transfer was made. This bill that passed two weeks ago would extend that investigation period to 10 days, and it would also prioritize it at the FBI. It would eliminate the chance that somebody, especially a domestic terrorist, could use this loophole to get a gun, especially since his background check might come back denied. There are instances in which the FBI has to go to people who've been sold guns after three days, and said, "We need your gun back." That is something that rarely gets attention [crosstalk].

Brian: Let me play a couple of clips from Republican senators who spoke out against the President's push for new gun safety laws yesterday. The two clips that we're going to play include two arguments we hear all the time. I want you to explain as somebody who covers the gun politics debates, why they say these things and why they're even relevant to situations like what happened in Boulder or like what happened in Atlanta. Okay, here's Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Senator Ted Cruz: The Democrats who want to take away the guns from those potential victims would create more victims of crimes, not less.

Brian: Senator Cruz said, the Democrats who want to take away the guns from those potential victims. Now, I get the argument that people should be able to protect themselves by having their personal weapons, but the guns that the President wants to take away, are military style assault weapons like the AK-47 that the gunman in Colorado used. People are not walking around with personal AK-47. What's the relevance?

Jennifer: The argument has become that those are legitimately used for self-defense. The argument morphs from the modern sporting rifles, recreation, to they are the most common owned rifle in America, and Republicans have put this under an umbrella of self-defense. They are absolutely pitching that argument as well. Any tool that can help defend life or home, an AR-15 to them qualifies.

Brian: Are people carrying them around?

Jennifer: No, they're not concealable. AR-15s are not concealable. You can't put it in a holster.

Brian: That's what I thought. Basically, if they say the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, it wasn't going to be an AR-15, it wasn't going to be an AK-47 that somebody had in that grocery store?

Jennifer: Well, in the grocery store, yes. Ted Cruz is saying someone can come into my home, and that is the primary argument. He's saying you can't separate that out. If I'm the victim of a home invasion, I should have whatever at the ready. They're not willing to make that distinction.

Brian: Here's Republican senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Senator John Kennedy: We have a lot of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people. We ought to try to combat that too. I think what many folks on my side of the aisle are saying is that the answer is not to get rid of all sober drivers, the answer is to concentrate on the problem.

Brian: The answer is not to get rid of all sober drivers to combat drunk drivers. What I thought when I heard that was, if we're comparing drunk driving to mass shootings, we could think of background checks as sobriety checkpoints. I think his analogy was tortured, so maybe my response analogy is tortured. What's the issue with background checks?

Jennifer: The NRA and pro-gun Republicans used to be for expanded background checks to private sales and gun shows about 25 years ago. The truth is they have tended since then, to err on the side of more gun sales and more guns proliferating in American society is good. Let's be honest background checks, weed out people who probably shouldn't have guns, and they're not even that strict compared to what they're like in other countries. They just measure your criminal history at that moment.

They rarely in some states, but not all, they measure past mental health history, alcohol or substance abuse. Their lowest common denominator. They will weed out people who shouldn't have guns. The NRA and Republicans err towards the side of more guns in society.

Brian: Listeners, we can take some phone calls on the question of whether President Biden could succeed at gun safety legislation, where Biden as vice-president could not after Sandy Hook. My guest is Jennifer Macsia, journalist with The Trace a nonprofit newsroom focusing on gun violence. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Gary in the East Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Gary.

Gary: Hi, Brian, how are you?

Brian: Good, thanks for calling.

Gary: I just had a question about the focus on the long rifle the AR-15s and the AK-47s. I'm just looking at the statistics and the most recently available data is from 2019 and we had over 16,000 murders in this country but less than 400 of them were committed with any long rifle at all. It just seems like focusing on a weapon that accounts for less than point 0.2% of all the murders, is really distracting from the overall issue of gun violence. I just find it really hard to understand why so much effort goes into focusing on these weapons because granted, every shooting is a tragedy, but just because the weapon used with a long rifle doesn't really affect the overall numbers.

Brian: What debate do you think we should be having Gary?

Gary: Well, I think it's just a much more complicated issue. I read the New York Times and after the Colorado shooting, they're like, "This is the second mass shooting we've had in a week." It completely ignores a mass shooting that happened in Chicago were 15 people were shot by handguns, and 2 people died. It wasn't even considered a "mass shooting" for whatever reason, because I don't understand, maybe it doesn't fit a particular narrative. It is very disconcerting that the vast majority of the crimes are committed with handguns in cities and we don't seem to be talking about it to the point where the New York Times doesn't even acknowledge it happened.

Brian: Gary, thank you very much and it's such a vital question and, frankly, this comes up every time we talk about this issue as it should and we've done separate segments. Jennifer, I'm sure you have many articles in The Trace that explore this exact question. The large large majority of shootings in this country do not take place with assault rifles, they do take place with handguns and yet this is where the public debate lands. Why and is it right?

Jennifer: That's absolutely correct. Most of the shootings are happening with handguns, and they are disproportionately impacting communities of color. The bills right now in the house actually don't involve assault weapons, they just involve access to guns, background checks. That's not even on the table. The 400 fatalities that he mentioned from those lethal weapons, two things. One, the weapons are extremely lethal. If you're shot, you're very likely to die, more likely to die than if you're shot with a handgun. Two, those 400 murders are more than what most countries, our economic peers at least see in a year. Japan has like five shootings a year.

This is still a tremendous amount of gun violence and you can reduce it to percentages, but the point is that it's still a public safety problem. Anyway you look at it.

Brian: I was going to bring up some of the stats that I'm sure you at The Trace, have many of these stats, too, you just mentioned one. The Times has an op-ed, New York Times today, how to reduce shootings. Some of the stats in here, folks, if you don't know these, especially if you want to engage on this issue with people who disagree with you, and you're on the gun safety side. Guns per 100 people in the United States, 120 guns per 100 people. There are more guns than people in the United States.

The next biggest is Canada, with 34 guns per 100 people, then Switzerland with 27, then Sweden with 23. The gap between number one, which is us, and everybody else is so dramatic, the US with 120 guns per 100 people, Canada with 34 is the next biggest. Then gun murders per 100,000 people in the United States. Three and a half gun murders per 100,000 people. Then the next biggest is Canada, with 0.6. Three or four people per 100,000 dying from gun murders in the United States, 30 times more than the second place country, Canada at 0.6.

Jennifer, those statistics can't be ignored.

Jennifer: We have far and away more gun violence than any of our economics peers. You can reduce anything to, we're a country of 330 million people, a tiny fraction of a percentage die of cancer and car accidents. That's not the way to look at it. It's too much violence for one society, it's too much. Where you have more guns, you have more gun violence. That's just how it bears out.

Brian: Susan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan.

Susan: Good morning, Brian. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for everything you do. You were referencing the Nicholas Kristof article and I want to thank you for saying gun safety, and not gun control because the other people that love guns, love to say, "They're trying to take them away from us." Also I think you discussed, looking upon this issue as automobiles which Senator Kennedy mentioned in a different way. If we look upon it as safety, instead ofI don't know what other thing, but we've reduced automobile fatalities by using a safety component as opposed to just they're going to take our guns away.

Can I say one more thing regarding Canada. If you remember in that Michael Moore's film, Bowling for Columbine, he neglected to mention, he kept saying how we're so much more violent than Canada. Actually, handguns are banned in Canada, that's why there's even more as you guys were discussing about handguns. There's so much to this, but I just want to say thank you again, thank you.

Brian: Thank you very much. Ellen, in Garden City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ellen.

Ellen: Hi, Brian. I was just calling to tell my story, which isn't 100% personal. My son was a first grader at when Sandy Hook happened not in Sandy Hook, but he was a first grader. I remember that day running to his bus stop, I'm getting emotional, but how little he was. I thought, well, for sure this is what's going to happen. This is what had to happen for things to change in this country. Now my son is a freshman in high school, and nothing has changed, and I just don't think we're doing good enough. I had told your Justina earlier I think something drastic has to happen here.

One of the main turning points of the Civil Rights Movement was when Emmett Till's mother showed the world what it looked like for a child to be beaten to death and that's when things began to change. We need to show photos of what it looks like for a classroom, full of seven-year-olds, to be decapitated and their hands blown off, while they're trying to cover their eyes. That's what we need to say, for the world to have a different view on what this really is, which is we're not protecting our children, and we're not protecting our families.

Brian: Ellen, thank you very much. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to have a first grader at that particular moment of Sandy Hook and just see a child of that age in your own home and knowing what was going on over there. As a matter of strategy, Jennifer, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, since the mothers have to have to rally. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, that was really effective.

After Parkland, in Florida, of course, we had the breakout student movement against guns, and that hasn't gone anywhere. I don't know if the kinds of gruesome imagery that she's talking about would change the politics in Red America. Especially if they're making the argument even if it goes against all the statistics, they're making the argument that having more guns protects more people. So, I don't know. What is effective?

Jennifer: I did a story earlier in The Trace about a woman whose daughter was killed with AK-47 gunfire in Washington, DC and she held up photos from the autopsy lab. There are people who believe that look, since Sandy Hook, there actually was a movement that centered survivors of these mass shootings and victim's family members, and they have gotten a lot done on the state level.

I think one of the solutions might be, and I think the country is pretty much almost accepting of this, people have stopped looking to the federal government to solve this problem. A lot of Violence Intervention people I speak with on the ground are saying, "Yes, gun laws would be great, but you know what, we actually want funding for targeted evidence-based strategies that can reduce gun violence in cities." People aren't holding out for that anymore.

In state legislators since Sandy Hook, there's been a lot of laws that have passed, red flag laws, background check laws, and ballot initiatives. When gun reform is on the ballot, it tends to do very well with voters. It's piecemeal. It's not comprehensive, but it's some progress. All has not been lost on that front since 2013.

Brian: Jim Atavanono in Spring Lake New Jersey, who says he has a lot of gun-owning customers. Hi, Jim, you're on WNYC.

Jim: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me on. My bar is down in Southern Ocean County. We have a lot of gun owners, a lot of hunters. I get into this conversation regularly when unfortunate events like this happened in Colorado and down in Georgia happened. I try to press them on the constitutionality. They'll bang their fists on the bar and say, "It's my Second Amendment right, and I believe in the Constitution." I say, "Okay, well, if you believe in the Constitution, then you believe in the mechanism that's in place, we could have a constitutional convention."

"What if we had a constitutional convention, and part of that convention completely changed the Second Amendment? What does it eliminate it altogether? Since you believe so strongly in the constitution, would you then support that change to the Constitution?" Then their argument completely falls apart. When they're honest, especially if they got a few more beers in them, they'll say, "I just love my guns, and I don't want you taking them from me." Then I say, "Well, you were scared of that for eight years with Obama. He said the Gestapo was going to come and kick your door and take your guns. Do you still have them, do you have more?"

All of these boogeyman that are created, these defenses that they have, it really boils down to, at least the people that I'm listening to. I have a lot of customers who are committed to gun safety and they are seasoned hunters and are really committed to being responsible gun owners. Others will just say, "I love my guns. I like the way it makes me feel when I shoot that at the range or out in the woods." I think we need to pull up these arguments that they're making.

Brian: Thank you very much for that report from the front, the front being your bar. Jennifer, it's the slippery slope argument that we hear all the time, right. It's why after an incident like this, like in Colorado, typically, gun sales go up, because they fear that there's going to be a backlash. There's going to be a crackdown, the change in the law and so people buy more guns. It's a slippery slope argument like if they ban the kinds of weapons that are used in the mass shootings which should be the low hanging fruit, we could argue. Because at least the mass shootings should be more preventable than other kinds of shootings, then they're afraid that everything's going to go away, and so they go and buy more guns.

Jennifer: Right. The NRA has used that to drum up gun sales, the fear of confiscation. The federal government will tell you, and the ATF has actually said numerous reports, "We do not have the manpower to confiscate 330 million guns." They don't have the manpower to confiscate a fraction of that or the will.

It's really about preventing people who shouldn't have them. In terms of assault weapons and slippery slope, you see how hard it is to just expand background checks to private sales. That's a loophole that's 22% of gun transactions in America, it''s highly unlikely that even that will pass right now. Anything stronger than that. You see how hard this is. That slippery slope argument falls apart.

Brian: People in New York, and New Jersey, and Connecticut, most of our listeners won't realize some of the things that are going on around the rest of the country at the state level. You reported in The Trace earlier this month that before either the shootings, Atlanta or Boulder. Republican lawmakers in several states, including Alabama, Missouri, and South Carolina, introduced laws that would authorize local police to refuse to enforce any new federal gun restrictions, and in some cases, make it a crime to do so. They're talking about making it a crime for a police to enforce federal law as part of what's called the gun nullification movement. Can you just explain that for a minute? Then we're going to run out of time.

Jennifer: Yes, that's something that in recent years has swept gun rights in communities too. Community city councils are voting to nullify new gun laws that are passed by states or the federal government. This stuff would likely not face challenges in court. When push comes to shove, if a law enforcement officers on the street and sees somebody who should not have a gun, I put my trust in the fact that public safety hopefully would come first. A lot of these really are symbolic, and they're not going to stand up to scrutiny.

Brian: Have police themselves flipped on this. I heard somebody on one of the cable channels yesterday saying, once upon a time, obviously there arer many, many police officers. Different unions, different interest groups, but that law enforcement people as a group wear four-gun restrictions because they didn't want to be outgunned by the bad guys, but that the politics of that has changed. Is that your impression?

Jennifer: There's a rural-urban divide there. A lot of sheriffs in rural areas where the police response time is long, they're very pro-gun and they're also pro-gun because culturally out there is much more gun-friendly. In cities, we've seen the negative repercussions of widespread gun ownership. New York City is an example, to get a gun in New York City, you have to submit to like eight months of interviews with the NYPD. They require character references. City is where the gun violence really has been bad, law enforcement there tends to take a much stricter tone when it comes to gun laws.

Brian: Jennifer Mascia, journalist with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom focusing on gun violence. Thank you so much.

Jennifer: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, more to come.

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