[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Just a brief program note before we continue. For those of you who heard our messaging in recent days pointing to today as a one-day pledge drive that was originally scheduled for today, nobody wants to do that now. We are postponing that fundraiser for now. We'll get back to it at some point, but obviously, that would be inappropriate and nobody wants to do it anyway so that one-day fundraiser scheduled for today has been postponed.

Now, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is in the news for doing something US senators rarely do and many even less. He cried on the Senate floor yesterday. He said a lot of things during that speech too that people are finding helpful, even if sad or infuriating to hear. With the luxury of being able to play extended excerpts on this show, not just newscast soundbites.

We're going to play a minute and 45 seconds of Senator Murphy, who of course is local to our area and who lived through the Newtown, Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in his state and has made this a core issue ever since. Senator Chris Murphy.

Senator Chris Murphy: Sandy Hook will never, ever be the same. This community in Texas will never, ever be the same. Why? Why are we here if not to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through, what Uvalde is going through? Our heart is breaking for these families. Every ounce of love and thoughts and prayers we can send, we are sending.

I'm here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely. I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support but there is a common denominator that we can find. There is a place where we can achieve agreement that may not guarantee that America never, ever again sees a mass shooting.

That may not overnight cut in half the number of murders that happen in America. It will not solve the problem of American violence by itself, but by doing something, we at least stop sending this quiet message of endorsement to these killers whose brains are breaking, who see the highest levels of government doing nothing, shooting after shooting.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut on the Senate floor yesterday gave us some stats at the beginning of the program. Here's another stat. All 12 of the deadliest mass shootings in US history have happened since 1999. Of those 12, half of them happened in just 2 states. Want to guess which ones? If you guess Texas and Florida, you're right. 6 of the 12 worst mass shootings in the US in terms of lives lost happened to just those two states, Florida and Texas.

We know and we are seeing again that when a mass shooting, like this, happens, politicians in Washington tend to run to their corners, and then nothing happens. After that tearful plea, getting down on his knees, begging, it was basically the rhetoric he was using from Senator Murphy on some conservative media outlets, they were just criticizing him for trying to politicize a tragedy or politicize a tragedy too soon.

Nothing seems to happen in Washington, even though he says there are common denominators, he said in that clip on some of the things. We'll talk about whether there are a little bit, but a lot does happen at the state level as it turns out. With us now is UCLA professor, Christopher Poliquin, who has an article on the conversation.com with a look at what happens politically at the state level after high profile gun events.

Some of this may surprise you what actually happens in different states. He did a study on this with some co-authors from Harvard. Professor Poliquin, thanks for some time today. I know it's very early where you are on the West Coast, so double thanks and welcome to WNYC.

Christopher Poliquin: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You looked at a 25-year period from 1990 to 2014, what questions were you looking to answer?

Christopher Poliquin: We were really puzzled by after all of these mass shootings, there's all this attention put on Congress, is Congress going to act? Are they going to change policy? Yet, one of the things about gun policy in the United States is a lot of the policy decisions are actually made at the state level. We were really curious despite all of this attention on Congress, whether policies would change at the state level in response to mass shootings.

We assembled this database as you say, covering 25 years, looking at state-level legislation, bills that are getting introduced. There were about 20,000 of them over that 25-year period, and looking at what kind of policies these state legislatures enact after mass shootings. What we find is that big increases in the number of bills related to guns that get introduced into state legislatures, but really interestingly, the primary effect in terms of the laws that actually get enacted seems to be Republican-controlled state legislatures loosening restrictions on firearms after mass shootings.

Brian Lehrer: That's the reveal, right? Much of the Republican response to the Uvalde, Texas shooting in the last day has been focused on hardening the schools as targets. We're actually going to do a separate segment on that later, including having an armed guard at every school and train teachers with guns if they want to arm themselves. At the state level, loosening gun restrictions in red states, some tightening of them in blue states, what's an example? What's the most common example if there is one of how Republican-controlled states react at the legislative level to big public gun events?

Christopher Poliquin: Really what you see, I think in terms of policy proposals from Republicans is ways to get more firearms in the hands of the so-called good guys. We saw it yesterday right after the shooting, Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton saying "We need to arm teachers." By the way, it's worth noting that after the Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas in 2018, Governor Greg Abbott actually did sign a bill into law that made it easier to arm teachers in Texas schools.

Now, a lot of schools haven't taken Texas up on that offer, but I think arming teachers, we've seen that happen in Florida after the Parkland shooting, in Texas, after the Santa Fe shooting. It's clearly something that Republicans are talking about again after this last shooting yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: Overall, you did find more legislative activity on guns after mass shootings even though they account for fewer deaths than individual shootings. Can you tell us more about that pattern and why you think it is?

Christopher Poliquin: Yes, that's right. If you were thinking from a rational policy-making standpoint, I don't know that mass shootings would be where you would put the bulk of your attention when it comes to gun violence because they represent such a small share, I think roughly maybe 1% of all gun deaths in the United States. If you were thinking about policies to reduce gun violence, you would want to look much more broadly than just at mass shootings.

In this study, we looked at how changes in the ordinary murder rate affect policy versus changes in policy that stem from mass shootings. These numbers are a little bit imprecise, but what we see is that you should think about it taking about maybe 125 ordinary gun murders to have the same effect that a mass shooting has on bill introductions in state legislatures. We think a lot of that has to do with the fact that mass shootings are just incredibly salient.

They get an enormous amount of media coverage relative to the more day-to-day gun violence that plagues the United States.

Brian Lehrer: Although, I guess maybe up to a point because gun violence of more of the individual kind is the big issue where I am in New York City right now and some of these individual murders of one person at a time like an 11-year-old girl in the Bronx the other day, like a 48-year-old guy just riding the subway into Manhattan from Brooklyn on Sunday, there was a random shooting of him. Apparently, a guy just walked onto the train and picked out somebody to shoot and then got off the train. This is the big issue now in New York City where the public is pretty galvanized around this issue in a way that I think is usually more reminiscent of something that goes on in the country for a period of time after mass shootings. Maybe there's something about this period that we're in that makes it a little different. I don't know.

Christopher Poliquin: It could be, and certainly from the pandemic studies have been looking at how the pandemic affected gun violence. One of the things we've seen is huge increases in gun sales beginning in spring of 2020. Then recently just enormous increases in gun violence, as you're saying, the ordinary day-to-day type of gun violence. Whether the increase in gun sales is causally related to the increase in gun violence. I don't think research has necessarily fully established that, but certainly, there has been a dramatic uptick in gun violence recently, so people are paying attention.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now listeners we're up to the politics. We spent the first part of the show just identifying and expressing sympathy with the people of Uvalde, Texas, with our first guest who is from down there. Now we have Chris Poliquin who has an article on theconversation.com. He's from UCLA and he's done the study on what happens politically at the state level since almost nothing ever happens in Washington after high-profile gun events.

He found more than 3,200 gun laws passed at the state level pertaining to guns in the 25 years that he studied from 1990 to 2014. That so many law changes for just 50 states, but they tend to loosen gun laws in Republican-controlled states, as well as tighten them in some Democratic-controlled states. Now, listeners, you can weigh in on the politics of this or anything else you want to say, and we'll go to Michael in Manhattan. Michael, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Michael: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Hi there.

Michael: Hi. I love your show and I listen to it practically every morning. I wanted to tell a story about how when I was 23 years old and dating a police officer who had taken me to the firing range and taught me how to use it properly and understanding how to load it, unload it, et cetera. How one day when I was at home alone, for some reason, I was curious and took his guns out from where he kept them.

I thought I had emptied the ammunition and I was pointing it at my head, and I guess even as an adult, it is an object of fascination. Then I said, but be on the safe side and never point it at anybody, and I fired the gun into the floor. I was never so terrified in my life.

Brian Lehrer: Still to this day.

Michael: Yes, I will not touch a gun and any man I date who owns one. I learned some. I was an adult. I just think if I could see that, what happens with children? They just shouldn't be around. I was thinking to myself when it comes to issues like abortion and gun control, the majority of the populace is on the side of sense, why can't we have referendums and let the general public decide, especially when these are such hot issues, rather than letting it be decided by politicians who are beholden to different groups. We have to figure out how to take back the power because politicians are in office because we've legalized bribery by certain groups, you know what I'm saying?

Brian Lehrer: I know what you're saying, and I think we all know what you're saying. Michael, thank you for saying it and saying it so eloquently.

Michael: Thank you for listening and taking this call.

Brian Lehrer: Professor Poliquin, you do mention in your article that public opinion polls reveal extensive support nationally for several gun control policies, including background checks for gun buyers and a ban on assault weapons. Maybe those were the basic things that Senator Murphy was referring to in that clip. As the common denominators, that people can all agree around.

You're not really a political science professor, even though you've been looking into this particular area in the ways that you have, but do you have any data to support what the caller was just saying at the end of her call there that we hear so often that it's the gun lobbies, it's the special interest. It's not even the constituents of these senators and maybe house members who won't do anything about guns because public opinion is actually not all that divided on some of these basic gun reform measures. Let's say just background checks and assault weapons bans, but it's something other than public opinion in our democracy that they're even responding to.

Christopher Poliquin: Certainly, the gun lobby, especially the National Rifle Association, is extremely well organized historically to push for looser gun legislation. On this point about public opinion, you're right to highlight universal background checks. It's one of the policies that Republicans and Democrats see quite eye to eye on. Polling from Pew suggests that restrictions around people with mental health issues getting guns are quite popular with both Democrats and Republicans.

After the Sandy Hook shooting, we saw the Manchin-Toomey bill come quite close, maybe as close as any policy has come after a mass shooting in Congress of passing. On this question about whether constituents do or don't want something like an assault weapons ban, I think it's interesting again, to look at the states because while certainly a lot of people say, well, I would support an assault weapons ban, I'd support maybe more rigorous permitting standards.

A lot of those people are actually already living in states that have those strict policies. New York, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Hawaii, all of these states have assault weapons bans already. One of the issues for a Republican Senator in Congress, when they're thinking about maybe voting on one of these assault weapons bans or another policy, is that doing so might put them out of step with the constituents in their home state. If you look at the states that are controlled by Republicans at the state level, none of them have assault weapons bans.

Presumably one of the reasons for that is that in those particular states, that policy would not be especially popular. Of course, if you're thinking like a Senator, you also have to realize that to get elected, you do not only have to win a general election, you have to win a primary. To the extent that Republicans try to cross the aisle and find common ground with Democrats, that might not only put them out of step with their general constituency in their home state, but it might certainly put them out of step with the Republican primary voting constituency in their home states.

Brian Lehrer: Keith in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Keith?

Keith: Hey, how are you, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: I'm all right under the circumstances. Go ahead.

Keith: Yes. Thank you for taking my call. I love your show. You took my call many years ago on a different topic, a much happier topic. I wanted to ask you if you have an update on whether Governor Abbott and actually Senator Cruz are still going to attend an NRA annual convention in Houston. I understand from the news that John Cornyn the other Senator from Texas is not going to attend due to "personal reasons."

I would ask if Governor Abbot was going to attend, what would he say to this organization after he had a quote which was talking about the killer "he shot and killed horrifically incomprehensibly 14 students and killed a teacher." I take issue with the word incomprehensibly. It's absolutely comprehensible when you arm people and let them buy guns on their 18th birthday. It's not incomprehensible at all, Governor Abbott. What is he going to say if, in fact, he's going to attend that NRA national convention?

Brian Lehrer: Let's see. I'm looking at a Houston Chronicle story. This is now from last night so I don't know if it's changed, but the headline here is Trump, Cruz, Abbott still set to speak in NRA meeting in Houston, that's as of then. Here's one from 42 minutes ago in The Washington Post, headline, "Trump to speak at NRA meeting in Texas days after school shooting." By way of context, it says, "The Memorial Day weekend event is the year’s largest for the gun lobby meeting after cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s set to take place over three days and "showcase over 14 acres of the latest guns and gear," according to the official website.

Cruz, Abbott, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas, North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, all Republicans. Senator John Cornyn this article in The Washington Post confirms was scheduled to speak but pulled out before the shooting, this says before the shooting, for personal reasons. That's one in The Washington Post 42 minutes ago, so I guess they're all still going to speak, Keith, in answer to your most irate question.

Keith: What do you think Governor Abbott is going to say, or these other folks from the state of Texas, for this organization? Almost the gun barrel is still hot from the mass shooting.

Brian Lehrer: I guess we'll find out. Keith, thank you very much. Professor Poliquin, do you have any indication of that? From your study of how politicians reacted to mass shootings over a 25-year period, would you predict anything in particular in terms of what all those politicians will say when they speak to the NRA's largest convention of the year this weekend in Texas?

Christopher Poliquin: I think you're going to hear them say that more guns would make us safer. I don't think that they say that cynically, I think that this really does reflect, to some extent, some deep philosophical differences between the two political parties, where Republicans especially-- Some of these politicians that Keith is mentioning, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, I think they really do, to some extent, believe that having more guns in circulation would reduce this kind of violence.

There's not a ton of evidence for that, but I think that that's an honestly-held belief that they have, and I would expect them to echo those beliefs in the coming weeks.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM, HD, and AM, New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are a New York and New Jersey public radio and live-streaming at wnyc.org. A few more minutes with Professor Christopher Poliquin from UCLA who has studied political reactions to mass shootings since 1990, or for a period beginning in 1990. Lynn in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lynn, thank you for calling in.

Lynn: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I don't know what federal government mandate there is for all the states to have to issue driver's licenses, but the Second Amendment calls for a well-regulated militia, I'm not going to get into the term militia, but the regulations for driving cars, which are just meant to get people from one place to another, exist, and there really are none for guns, many, anyway. You've got to take a test to get a license to drive the car, you've got to study for it, you've got to get car insurance, and you have to have your car registered by the state.

The states establish their own rules for issuing driver's licenses, but you have to have one. It boggles my mind, nobody complains about that, but a gun, whose only purpose is either to maim or murder other people, well, maybe hunting possibly, but there are no regulations for them. I don't really understand it. I don't know what can be done. Just a second thing, as I'm listening to other people speak--

I'm a recently retired public school teacher, and the idea of arming public school teachers is insane. First of all, teachers would have to have those guns locked and the ammunition someplace else in the classroom, so the kids wouldn't get them. By the time anybody managed to find the key to unlock the gun and then load it, it would be useless. It's just stupid, it's stupid thinking. Teachers are not sharpshooters, period. Anyway, I'm curious about the regulations and the licensing issue.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk about that. I'm curious for you and on the thing, you just said as a retired school teacher, if you think there are best practices. This is actually going to be our next segment in a little while, if there are best practices for while there is such a saturation of guns in our country to, in the meantime, defend the school even while people are working to change the laws and change the prevalence.

We're going to hear a clip later from the Republican attorney general of Texas, who was complaining on TV last night that there was no armed guard at the school. He thinks there should be armed guards at every school, if not also armed teachers like you were saying. I'm just curious if you as a teacher-- Because, certainly, this is not new, Columbine was 1999, and there were school shootings before Columbine in those several years just before that. Most have had a thought about security, so do you have any thoughts about best practices?

Lynn: Yes. I teach in Brooklyn, and we had very, very-- First of all, the city mandated that all external doors to the school have to be locked. The main entrance is open so that people could in and out. There is a security guard there. The guards were never armed. There is an intercom system or a phone system with codes so that if somebody managed to get in past the security guard, the principal, or somebody would make an innocuous announcement that was a clue for all the teachers to go and lock their classroom doors.

We have shelterings, lockdowns if there's a stranger, an intruder in the building. We practiced these. It was done in such a way that the kids were never made to get scared, but we practiced this over and over again. The doors are heavy, if they were locked, nobody could get in. We had to hide the kids. You got to do precautionary things. I think more guns in the school is just mayhem and madness. You've got people shooting, and who knows who's shooting who at some point. It's just not the way to go.

Brian Lehrer: Lynn, thank you so much for your call. I appreciate it. Professor Poliquin, she made enough good points that we could discuss them for the next hour without bringing on any guests or any other callers, and, of course, we don't have time for that, but let's touch on a couple of things that she did bring up. One, on the arming of teachers, which is a Republican talking point, and that was going to be the main point or one of the main points of the gun legislation that the Trump administration was trying to get through Congress. That was, again, to, I guess, provide federal funding to back up training for individual teachers who wanted to get armed and do that. Has that push resulted in anything? That was after Parkland, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, that shooting in Florida. Big push on the right to arm more teachers. Do you know if that has gone anywhere?

Christopher Poliquin: There are schools in Florida, there are schools in Texas that do arm teachers. I think teachers' groups have been somewhat resistant to this for a lot of the reasons that Lynn is saying. How are you going to have the teachers always have the guns on them, are they going to be locked? FBI research on active shooter incidents shows that most of these incidents are over within two to five minutes already because law enforcement is already trained to respond.

How exactly introducing armed teachers into the situation is going to help isn't super obvious. Given the nascency of some of these policies in Texas and Florida to arm teachers, I would say that we don't have a ton of good research or evidence either way on this yet.

Brian Lehrer: On her other main point at the beginning of her call about how the Second Amendment refers to a well-regulated militia, we know the Supreme Court a few years ago in the Heller decision really affirmed that it's an individual right to own arms, it's not just if you're training to be in a militia at a time when there's no standing army, which was, I think, the original constitutional context.

Okay, the Supreme Court says there is an individual right, not just a militia context, but what about the words well-regulated? I know you're not a constitutional law professor, but Lynn makes the great point, and it came up in an earlier segment, too, that you don't need training to own a firearm legally like you do to own a car or drive a car legally when the point of a car is not to kill, the point of a gun is to kill even if you're just training yourself to use it in self-defense for worthy virtuous purposes. My question for you is, as you've looked at all these state and state laws, how many state laws require any training before somebody can be licensed to own a gun?

Christopher Poliquin: I don't have the exact numbers for you on training, but to this point about well-regulated that Lynn was raising, a lot of states do have quite extensive gun regulations. This is a really big divide between blue and red states, where in states like Massachusetts for example, it's going to take about 30 days for you to get a permit to carry a handgun. In a lot of states, you can't go out and buy an assault weapon.

Here in California, you need a background check just to buy ammunition. There actually are a lot of states that extensively regulate firearms. A lot of us are already living in states that have these policies that a lot of us would like to see enacted nationally. Of course, the flip side of this is that there's a lot of states that make it extremely easy to carry weapons. One of the trends in recent years has been Republican states making it possible to carry a concealed firearm without any permit at all.

There's now maybe about a dozen states that have that policy and we've also seen a lot of states enact stand your ground laws and research shows that those are not effective at reducing gun violence and in fact just the opposite. I think when it comes to well-regulated, you really have to make this distinction between states because the policies vary widely.

Brian Lehrer: We're waiting for a Supreme Court decision any day which might push Texas's concealed carry law that is making it relatively easy for people with legal guns to carry them in public, to impose Texas's standard on New York, which does not allow public carrying of guns as readily. That might be the next right that somebody has, which is to carry a gun on your person based on the law of the state you live in or got it licensed in or bought it in rather than under the law of the state that you're in at the time.

We're waiting any day now to see what the Supreme court says about that. We will leave this part of the conversation here. We will leave it here with Chris Poliquin who teaches Strategy at UCLA but has done this deep dive study on gun laws at the state level from 1990 on. Thank you for joining us.

Christopher Poliquin: Thank you for having me.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.