Dr. John Lott discussion on Gun Rights, Gun Rights Policy Conference & The Supreme Court

Dr. John Lott discussion on Gun Rights, Gun Rights Policy Conference & The Supreme Court.  Background checks on private transfers, individual right for self-defense The Heller Decision. Trump vs Crooked Hillary

 

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held in a 5-4 decision that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to federal enclaves and protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. The decision did not address the question of whether the Second Amendment extends beyond federal enclaves to the states, which was addressed later by McDonald v. Chicago (2010). It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

 

On June 26, 2008, the Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Heller v. District of Columbia. The Supreme Court struck down provisions of the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 as unconstitutional, determined that handguns are "arms" for the purposes of the Second Amendment, found that the Regulations Act was an unconstitutional ban, and struck down the portion of the Regulations Act that requires all firearms including rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock". Prior to this decision the Firearms Control Regulation Act of 1975 also restricted residents from owning handguns except for those registered prior to 1975.

 

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nightmare for anybody on the other side and if you want proof of that

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look at the Katie Couric movie and see how much how much time they gave him

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four hours of interview they couldn't they look at it and said what do we do

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with this we can't make him look bad so Stephanie shoe tag or whatever name is

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mispronounced intentionally said just cut it up don't tell anybody even talk

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to him it'll never get out

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well it out the hot new york times bestselling author more guns less crime

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now in its third edition and his new book my favorite the war on guns mr.

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John Latin

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well thanks very much for having me back before I get started I want to go and

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come in a little bit about what Rick actor was saying you're here we have a

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situation where anybody who's read my work knows that there's basically two

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groups of people who benefit the most from owning guns the people are most

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likely victims of violent crime and unfortunately that's one identifiable

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group it's basically poor blacks who live in high-crime urban areas and the

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other group that benefits the most are people who are relatively weaker

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physically women and the elderly and so rick is basically doing the Saints work

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out there trying to make sure that the people who are the most vulnerable out

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there are able to go and defend themselves in one thing I've kind of run

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into he mentions the anti-gun politicians in these urban areas is how

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many times you run across Democrats who when you look at their policies they are

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actually disarming these particular groups of people you know after

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Washington DC's Heller decision they enacted new gun-control laws that the

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Washington Post found cost eight hundred twenty dollars to go through the process

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to go in licensed and registered a handgun in Washington DC

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who do you think they stopped from being able to go and owned guns by having

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those types of rules it in colorado in $MONTH 2013 when they were passing their

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background checks on private transfers I got a call from some state legislators

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and they asked me what amendment i would put up in my suggestion was to put up an

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amendment that would exempt people below the poverty level from having to pay the

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new state tax on transferring guns with the exception of two program Democrats

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every other democrat in the State House voted against that exemption

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I mean I could go on and I give a lot of examples in the war on guns on this but

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how many taxes can you think of where Democrats will fight tooth and nail

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against exempting people below the poverty level from having to

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you know what's the cost of that you again it's the very type of people that

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he's fighting for to be able to go and protect themselves on their own

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who are the ones who are most harmed by this you know the reason I wrote the war

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on guns this year is it's hot I mean we always tell ourselves that this

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elections the most important but it's hard to think of another election i

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would argue that as much as $MONEY at stake just in terms of what is involved

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in terms of the Supreme Court mean right now you basically have a 4 to 4 tie with

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the after Justice Scalia's death earlier this year in terms of justices who

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believe that there's an individual right for self-defense and those who don't

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whoever points Scalia's replacement is going to determine the outcome of that

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and there's cases that we've lost in places like California that look like

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they may be going to the Supreme Court or whoever points him is going to decide

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whether or not the Heller decision was overturned or not in the Heller decision

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couldn't have been a more basic or starting point that you could have had

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on this because all the Heller decision did was say that the government could

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not completely goin band Guns it had a complete ban on handguns but if even

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though you could technically own a rifle or shotgun for all practical purposes

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you could use it in self-defense because there was a five-year prison term just

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for pulling a bottle bullet in the chamber of a rifle or putting a shotgun

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shell and a shot cut and sew the supreme court said that for all practical

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purposes

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everybody all citizens were prevented from using any type of gun for

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self-defense in DC so if thats overturn the only thing that's going to really

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change that the government against going to have the power to go on band Guns

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presumably places like DC will change but you also have cases like californium

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for people who don't live in California one thing you need to realize is that

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since 2001 when they introduce some quote safety regulations on handguns so

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basically

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the argument is you should be able to drop a handgun from the top of a tall

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building onto concrete and still have it function properly there been over 1,200

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models of handguns that have been banned for sale in California only one new

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handgun model over the entire period time that's been allowed probably in a

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few years all handguns will be effectively banned for sale in

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California

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well if Hillary wins this election then what you're going to have is a situation

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where my guess is the supreme court at that time would say it's okay to

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effectively ban handguns through safety regulations if the if if Trump wins and

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. people that he's talked about appointed to the Supreme Court then my

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guess is that type of law will be struck down as not accomplishing its goal and

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also effectively banning citizens in California from owning an entire class

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of guns

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I mean it's already very restrictive what they're allowed to going on now

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there's lots of issues i could go into in the book or talk about in the time

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that we have the book goes through a range of different types of issues

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can I just ask well how many people have been at the last gun rights policy

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conference

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ok so about twenty percent maybe less

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I'm just trying to think what i should talk about here so you have talked

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before about background checks won't go through as much as I've done previously

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but they're couple basic issues because right now from Nevada and may we have

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new initiatives on background checks on private transfers we see obviously the

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push at the national level probably the one type of law that Hillary Clinton's

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been pushing has been background checks on private transfers surely after each

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of the mass public shootings that we've had President Obama's the one law that

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he's mentioned each time that we need to have now of course it would be nice if

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there was a reporter sometime

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would ask mr. president you say how important this law is after each of

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these mass public shootings can you point to one single mass public

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shootings that would have been stopped if this law in effect because he can't

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not only during his presidency but years before there would have been one that

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was stopped but there are a couple points to make your one is something I

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was just talking about that is these background checks aren't costless if you

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want to go and transfer gun in washington DC cost a hundred twenty-five

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dollars to do it in New York City there's one shop they'll do it 425

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others will do it for more you look across the country we're talking about

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non-trivial costs that are there and again

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who did they stop from buying guns but may not stop you or I from buy a gun but

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basically poor minorities who live in high-crime urban areas are the ones who

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will be stopped from ammonia done for protection but it's much worse than that

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i had mentioned you before that there's 2.4 when democrats will or gun control

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advocates will say they've been 2.4 million dangerous prohibited people have

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been stopped from buying guns how that's wrong that virtually all those something

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over ninety-nine percent of those are mistakes but I haven't told you about

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before is that who gets hit the most with those mistakes

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basically it's minorities again people tend to have names similar to others in

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their racial group Hispanics have named some growth Hispanics blacks have names

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similar the blacks forty percent of Vietnamese in the united states have the

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same last name

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and so what happens is is that when you have let's say a criminal that you're

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trying to stop and you have somebody who you're looking for just similar names

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and birthdays you're going to create a lot of what we call Faust false

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positives a lot of mistakes that are there thirty percent of black males in

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the united states are legally prohibited from owning guns because of past

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criminal history

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who are the most likely to have their names confused with other law-abiding

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blackmails now that's no reason

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by the government should be making these mistakes if a private company made

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mistakes like this at 100 the rate that the federal government does the company

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would be sued out of existence under federal law the reason why companies

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don't make these mistakes but the federal government does is the federal

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government simply doesn't use all the information that has available when you

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buy a gun and you fill out the 4473 there you put down your name

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put down your social security number put down your address put down your birthday

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when a private company does a background check they use all that information even

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though the government has that information all they use is roughly

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similar names so middle name could be completely different phonetic spelling

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for names is well they're really looking for I've never been able to get them

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pinned down exactly what they mean by phonetically similarly spellings and

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birthday they don't use the social security number and they don't use the

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address and so it's because it's so broad like that they make a lot of

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mistakes and again i would argue that the mistakes that they make are

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basically races but there's no reason what they have to do that it's something

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that they could easily fix if they just had the federal government have to meet

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the same types of standards that the federal government forces private

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companies to make when they do background checks so there are lots of

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other issues i could get into on this another thing that President Obama

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constantly raises when he's talked about the mass public shootings is the claim

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that somehow these types of attacks are unique to the United States he says that

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these types of things just never happened in other countries sometimes we

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refer to it is never happening in in developed countries

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anyway you want to try to go into find that simply false when i try to go

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through in the book is list out each of the cases of mass public shootings using

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the FBI traditional definition of of mass public shootings in europe and the

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united states you may not realize this but in the European Union over the first

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seven years of the Obama press

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you can see they had 25 mass public shootings the United States over that

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same period time also had 25 mass public shootings you also have to do these

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things on a per capita rate if you look at casualties per capita in the European

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Union during the first seven years of the Obama administration you had a

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casualty rate that was fifty percent higher per capita than what we had here

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in the United States this is gonna be one country to look at you look at

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France for example just France last year had for mass public shootings the total

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casualties from those for mass public shootings was 532 if you look over the

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entire first seven years of the Obama presidency there were total casualties

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of 396 you had more casualties in one year in a country that had 150

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population that the United States has then you had I see people taking notes

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you don't it's all in the book

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okay put it the you see more you saw more casualties in one year in a country

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150 united states by hundred forty more than you had in the united states over

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seven years

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it's not even close but you know that one thing I could talk about a tiny bit

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Oh before I get to that well you look at the media coverage last fall i don't

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know if you remember this

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there was this huge media sensation Wall Street Journal had multiple stories on

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all the all the networks did about this study the claim that even though the

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United States had less than five percent of the world population we supposedly

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accounted for thirty-one percent of the mass public shootings around the world

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from 1966 through 2012 anybody remember seeing the headlines it was all over the

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place anyway when the story started coming out the end of last summer I got

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a couple calls from reporters like at the washington post and what have you

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and I said well i have a hard time believing that I've done some work on my

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own could I see what

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copy of the studies oh no the author said that only journalist could see this

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he wasn't going to share it with researchers until later and I tried to

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press on them at the time that was kind of a strange request to make it didn't

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really have any impact and you know I showed him my work and I tried to tell

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them look you can't put much weight in something if people are going to tell

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you the cases or how they put them together so anyway and I contacted the

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author the guy name's Adam Lang properties at the university of alabama

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and I'd ask them for a copy of the states and not he's not releasing it

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into the paper finally came out in january and i read it and i said i still

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don't know what's in it and so I contact him i said look I can't figure out what

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your cases are could you give me a list of these mass public shootings is not

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not gonna share with you and I said well can you at least tell me how you

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collected these cases because you have to realize trying to find cases of four

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more people killed let's say in Africa in the nineteen seventies with the late

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nineteen sixties i'm not even sure how to go about finding something like that

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and so he said no i said can you tell me what languages you looked at or at least

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some of the because the thing is for the United States it's easy to find these

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things because we have databases for new stores we have thinks if you're any

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lawyers in here you know nexus and westlaw that you can go and check these

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things on he said now the only thing you could tell me was quote it took a lot of

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time guys said well you know it'd be just nice if I could check these things

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because you don't even have the total number of cases by continent for me to

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be able to go and check this anyway I've gone back and looked at these now the

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thing is I've convinced myself even for large cases uh you know let's say 15 or

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more people killed i know i'm missing cases around the world because I can

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guarantee you

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South American countries that may have or Central America

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countries that may have murder rates 80 times are not you know 20 times higher

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than the United States rate or an Africa that maybe 20 times higher they simply

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don't get news coverage on even some large shootings that I've discovered and

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so but if you look at mass public shootings in which 15 or more people are

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killed

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what you find is that the United States is below the rest of the world in terms

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of mass public shootings Africa has casualty or a death rate from mass

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public shootings from 1970 through march of this year that's about four hundred

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eighty percent higher than the United States you have South America that has a

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rate that's going to be about five hundred percent higher than the United

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States you have other places around the world even Europe is sixty-five percent

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higher than the rate in the United States about the only place around the

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world that has a lower rate is India and Pakistan and it's only about seven

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percent lower death rate from mass public shoot you know the thing is when

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you look at this type of thing I just give me one example only by luck i came

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across a police report for five years during the early nineteen nineties from

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from the Solomon Islands and now the solomon islands are are in a country

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that has 500,000 people and they basically band Guns a couple years

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before this report was done so in one reason why spend additional time looking

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at this is because the gun control advocates AC guns were banned in the

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Solomon Islands and no gun deaths occurred afterwards anyway I just

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happened to come across this police report and there were three big mass

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public shootings in the five years after guns were banned there in the country

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now you think you have to understand is that when you have three big mass public

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shootings in a country of 500,000 the per capita rate is like off-the-charts

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there is even assuming that they didn't have any other mass public shootings

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over the rest of time so what I try to do is I kind

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detective the Solomon Islands police department and I said look I have it for

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these five years could you help me out i said no i could help you out and and

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after a while it dawned on me that they had like no desire to help me up because

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they figured what's the worst the best that's going to happen

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we're going to have some guy who does research in the United States published

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a study that talks about all the mass public shootings in the Solomon Islands

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they want tourists to come there they don't you know they can't think of any

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positive benefits not like they have a Freedom of Information Act where I can

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go and i tried to check into this but there's no freedom of information act

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request there to go and get the data and the thing is there lots of parts of the

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world like this not only can't you find it's not like the rest of the world was

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on the internet 1966 or 1970 all right and it's not like they have databases

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for that so the numbers that i just gave you showing that the United States is

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well below the average and the rest of the world is an under estimate of the

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rest of the world and how bad they are because i know we're missing lots of

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cases even when you confine yourself to cases where there 15 or more now I can

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go and talk about this mass public shootings for hours i mentioned

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something else just this last week we had a lot of news coverage on the polls

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that show made the claim that gun ownership in the United States has been

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falling here here's the irony just done a few weeks earlier I wrote a piece for

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Fox News where there had been a survey come out by Q which is hardly known as

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being a conservative group showing that over the previous three years gun

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ownership in the united states that increased by seven percentage points

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when they came out there was like no news coverage on it at all no mainstream

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news coverage on their poll number but this other poll that showed that gun

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ownership had fallen to less than thirty percent and households got a lot of news

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coverage and the thing is you see this time after time I try talking

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people at fox and some other places i said look most the polls show no drop

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there's some that shown increase why don't you provide some context at least

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when you go in you do this one serving the rest of media wasn't worthwhile even

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contacting them about it you know gallop in 2012 had a survey that showed at that

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time record gun ownership you can go back and do new searches on it you will

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not find one national media outlet that gave any attacking find local mainstream

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media outlets that give it any attention

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why does the media do this why did they go and give attention to surveys that

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show drops and gun ownership but ignore ones where it's constant or its increase

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i think there's a simple reason for this they want to make gun owners feel

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isolated that they're somehow different make them feel that others are getting

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rid of their guns maybe they should think of doing it too or at least not

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consider going buying guns because they're somehow ostracise from the rest

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of society and you know it's unfortunate but this gives you an idea of how

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monolithic monolithic this is even in what you would regard as kind of more

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neutral mainstream media outlets and I think it has a real impact on people's

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perceptions

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now what how much time do I have left seven minutes

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well i mean i could go and talk about other things but I'm happy to go and

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take questions from people in the audience there now there's a microphone

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over there anybody wants to ask questions don't all rush

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the I don't know maybe I should just take that as people want me to keep

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talking okay going up there

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I got a question do you have any grasp on how much the existing background

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check system is costing us

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well there are lots of ways that cost people just in terms of time nobody has

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an estimate of that you know the thing is even the net annual reports that used

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to be released up through 2010 the Obama administration stop releasing them my ID

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my theories for why they stopped releasing them I my guess is a lot of

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the numbers probably look worse than they used to in terms of the problems

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but you know to me

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the big question is the cost that it imposes in terms of the people who are

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obtaining guns and who and particularly prices out of being able to get it and

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there's no reason why we should essentially have this tax on people

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buying guns if you're going to have this cost

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I would go and argue if you believe you really believe that background checks

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reduce violent crime and I don't and I have a lot of data in the war on guns

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that response to claims on this what you should do is you should make people you

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should pay for the side of general revenue rather than just attacks on I'm

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the person who's buying the gun

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lot of like it intercede a quick question earlier awr hawkins heavy gave

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a listing a partial listing of all the mass casualty shootings over the last

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all about seven or eight years and compared to the number that had a

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background check it seems to me that the research might be worthwhile to find out

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what percentage of mass casualty shooters say since 2000 have undergone a

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background check because that statistic in terms of the percentage that had

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gotten a background check and

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committed mass casualty shooting that statistic might be a very effective

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hammer for us already did that

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I mean I've already it's all already is a jab by the right so all already in the

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book so they basically since 2000 there's not one of the mass public

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shootings that would have been stopped by having these background check laws on

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private transfers so we understand it for hours worth of data dumb was

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probably a little bit difficult for them course if you could take one piece of

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information that you would like to encourage to be forced to contain to

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have in her whatever it was that you put out what would you like to see in the

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movie

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what would you write of what you had told her to be in the movie

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well Oh about four hours a little bit misleading in the sense that they often

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it if you ever get interviewed and something like this you'll find that

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they often tend to ask the same questions over and over again in order

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to hopefully get you to say it a little bit differently in a way that they think

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they can use at that point I mean Katie Couric was not a friendly interviewer

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but what I tried it if anybody who's watched the movie knows that one of the

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big things that they were trying to push are these background checks on private

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transfers and so that's one of the things that came up many times in my

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point to them was the same . i make in the book and made to you and that is the

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current system is a mess

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you can't there's no dissipation you can have for a system where probably over

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ninety-nine percent of the these denials are mistakes where it's law-abiding

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citizens who are being stopped simply because they have a name

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roughly similar to somebody that you want to stop

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there's no justification for have been bringing this up to gun control

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advocates for 15 years they have like no desire to fix it it's basically

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convinced me that they view this

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as a benefit from the system most rather than a problem and and one thing I

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haven't mentioned before this mention is the problem has gotten worse under obama

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in multiple ways but at least one way that we know for sure and that is at

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least under past presidents they would go and have people to check to see

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whether mistakes that were made in most cases not know but at least after a year

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year-and-a-half you'd eventually get a letter in the mail that said whoops we

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made a mistake we thought you were somebody else

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hopefully you can take this letter and be able to go and buy a gun

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what's happened now is president obama has removed all the people that did any

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checking nobody's doing the checking anymore double checking now you can go

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and appeal but most people are going to find it a daunting task and are going to

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find it necessary to go and hire lawyers so not only you having a system that

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goes and over stops minorities blacks and Hispanics but then middle-income and

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poor people in that area who are falsely flag are finding that they don't have

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the thousands of dollars to go and be able to get through the process to go

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and fix it so what I was telling Katie Couric was pretty much what i just told

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you just now and that is I was talking about the mess the system was making how

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was discriminated against poor people the costs that were there and saying i

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also don't believe that it reduces crime that if you do the research to correctly

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and not the way Bloomberg does it or the way some of these public health people

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do in the book goes through it explains the mistakes and helps you understand

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what the problems are with the way they do it you know we have a costly mess

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that's discriminatory and hurting and if in this army the most vulnerable people

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in our society

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one more question what we've got

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hold on just one second we've got a question and answer session at five

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thirty ok so we're going to have to move with the doctors for responsible gun

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ownership but John thank you very much sure it will start with you at the

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question-and-answer on the next 15 30 okay okay we've got to keep moving on

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doctors for responsible gun owners you guys pop on a job thank you very much

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excellent he's the greatest radio interview in the world you ask him a

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question he just answers and then