1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,080
John, welcome to the show. Thank you for for joining us today.

2
00:00:03,960 --> 00:00:06,680
Oh, no, it's great to talk to you again. Thanks for having me on.

3
00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:15,580
Well, I felt that this is a much needed episode after meeting you in person a couple of weeks ago here in the Philadelphia area,

4
00:00:15,580 --> 00:00:22,060
because I think the discussion at dinner that we had and many others had was eye opening for me,

5
00:00:22,060 --> 00:00:39,060
at least in terms of the extent to which the government, the media and politicians generally are abusing data and statistics to paint a scary narrative around around gun control specifically.

6
00:00:39,060 --> 00:00:45,720
specifically. And one of the things that you said in response to the question that I asked you really

7
00:00:45,720 --> 00:00:51,940
shook me because it was, and I think we should explain the data behind it, but I asked you if

8
00:00:51,940 --> 00:00:58,760
gun registers serve any purpose other than bagging and tagging individual gun owners in the country

9
00:00:58,760 --> 00:01:05,620
to eventually track them down and take their guns. And your response was that you've come to believe

10
00:01:05,620 --> 00:01:08,560
that that is exactly why these registries exist.

11
00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:13,320
Yeah, look, I mean, everybody wants to be able to go and solve crimes.

12
00:01:14,220 --> 00:01:18,220
But, you know, we have a lot of data on this.

13
00:01:18,320 --> 00:01:23,260
We have parts of the United States that, you know, they're relatively small parts,

14
00:01:23,260 --> 00:01:29,680
but parts of the United States that have registration licensing of guns for many decades.

15
00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:34,800
Hawaii has had registration licensing of guns since 1960.

16
00:01:35,620 --> 00:01:52,740
Pennsylvania that you live in has had essentially registration for handguns since the 1930s, pretty much complete since then and earlier had it more sporadically.

17
00:01:53,420 --> 00:02:00,720
You've had places like Chicago and Washington, D.C. and New York, which has had registration licensing.

18
00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:08,740
Um, uh, Maryland and New York had very extensive, uh, even ballistic fingerprinting along with

19
00:02:08,740 --> 00:02:13,920
registration, uh, and licensing for 15 years before they finally ended it.

20
00:02:14,120 --> 00:02:20,660
And the one common thing that you see across all these that we have information on is that,

21
00:02:20,660 --> 00:02:28,840
you know, outside of watching TV shows like Law and Order or something like that, or CBS's FBI,

22
00:02:29,740 --> 00:02:34,860
registration, licensing just isn't used for solving crimes.

23
00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:43,460
In theory, if a criminal leaves a gun at a crime scene and it's registered to the criminal,

24
00:02:44,060 --> 00:02:47,160
you can go and trace it back to the criminal and solve the crime.

25
00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:51,240
The problem is that crime guns are virtually never left at the crime scene.

26
00:02:51,920 --> 00:02:54,940
In the few times that they are left at the crime scene,

27
00:02:54,940 --> 00:02:59,200
And it's because the criminal has either been killed or seriously wounded.

28
00:02:59,200 --> 00:03:00,900
So you've solved the crime anyway.

29
00:03:01,780 --> 00:03:06,600
And a couple of times beyond that, that they're left at the crime scene, they're not registered.

30
00:03:07,020 --> 00:03:12,100
And the once or twice that they are registered, they're not registered to the person who committed the crime.

31
00:03:13,060 --> 00:03:19,000
And so and the thing is, these systems take a lot of resources.

32
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:31,000
I testified in Hawaii a while ago about a law that was considering changing the registration licensing program there to make it even more restrictive.

33
00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:50,540
And before I went, because I always testify when I get asked by state legislators to do it, I told the legislators that were inviting me, I said, look, I'm told that the Honolulu police chief is going to be testifying on the other side.

34
00:03:51,380 --> 00:03:57,940
Ask him two questions in advance so that he has to be able to go and answer the questions beforehand.

35
00:03:57,940 --> 00:04:04,900
hand. One is, how many crimes since 1960 have they been able to solve as a result of licensing

36
00:04:04,900 --> 00:04:10,360
and registration? And the second question is, how much does it cost each year to go and run the

37
00:04:10,360 --> 00:04:18,840
program? He went back and looked at it, and he said he couldn't identify one single crime that

38
00:04:18,840 --> 00:04:23,980
they've been able to solve as a result of registration and licensing. And when he was asked

39
00:04:23,980 --> 00:04:29,920
how much it cost each year to go and run the program. He said he couldn't give a dollar amount,

40
00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:38,520
but he said he estimated that it took 50,000 hours of police time each year to go and run

41
00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:45,200
the registration and licensing program. Now, there are lots of things that work for policing.

42
00:04:45,900 --> 00:04:51,420
50,000 hours worth of police time, if you had spent it on things that we know work,

43
00:04:51,420 --> 00:04:56,500
could have been very beneficial in terms of catching criminals and making it risky for

44
00:04:56,500 --> 00:05:01,840
criminals to commit crimes and reducing crime. But essentially what you've done is you've taken

45
00:05:01,840 --> 00:05:10,160
50,000 hours of police time each year away from things that we know work, and instead putting in

46
00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:15,240
something that the Honolulu police chief himself acknowledged he couldn't point to one single crime

47
00:05:15,240 --> 00:05:20,820
that he'd been able to go and solve. And this isn't just the United States. I mean,

48
00:05:20,820 --> 00:05:28,160
There's been court testimony in Chicago, in Washington, D.C., where they've admitted the same thing.

49
00:05:29,420 --> 00:05:37,300
The program that they had in New York and Maryland, where they had registration and ballistic fingerprinting.

50
00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:50,340
After 15 years, both of those states, both states that strongly support gun control, ended the programs because they were spending huge amounts of money.

51
00:05:50,340 --> 00:06:03,940
I think in New York, they had spent like $45 million on the process, and they couldn't point to one single crime that they've been able to solve as a result of spending all that money.

52
00:06:04,620 --> 00:06:12,520
Now, gun control advocates said, well, 15 years just wasn't long enough to determine whether or not the program was really going to work or not.

53
00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:19,560
they needed more time. But look, even the strong gun control advocates in the New York state and

54
00:06:19,560 --> 00:06:26,920
Maryland state legislatures, you know, it just they were just throwing good money after bad.

55
00:06:27,240 --> 00:06:32,880
And they had better things to go and spend the money on. And so they even they ended the programs.

56
00:06:34,580 --> 00:06:40,040
This reminds me of something we deal with in the Bitcoin industry, which stems from the Bank

57
00:06:40,040 --> 00:06:48,500
Secrecy Act, all this KYC AML compliance. And this has been in the market for over 50 years

58
00:06:48,500 --> 00:06:54,920
now at this point. And if you look at the amount of money laundering crimes that have actually

59
00:06:54,920 --> 00:07:03,880
been stopped due to KYC AML compliance, it's I think something like 20 tenths of a percentage

60
00:07:03,880 --> 00:07:09,460
point in terms of the amount of money that they've actually been able to recoup or the amount of

61
00:07:09,460 --> 00:07:14,840
money that's flowed through the system, the system involved with criminal activity that

62
00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:20,960
that KYC, AML, bag and tag compliance regulations have actually been effective at stopping.

63
00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:29,040
So it seems whether it's guns or financial markets or banking specifically, the

64
00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:36,480
obsession with collecting as much personal identifying information on individuals to

65
00:07:36,480 --> 00:07:44,400
to track them is is brought throughout the government. And similarly with what your

66
00:07:44,400 --> 00:07:50,120
response was to my question about the registrations for gun owners with KYC AML, it's not really

67
00:07:50,120 --> 00:07:57,360
effective at finding criminals, but you bag and tag everybody in the banking system and you can

68
00:07:57,360 --> 00:08:02,440
prevent them from doing things if they get out of line. Maybe they have political opinions that the

69
00:08:02,440 --> 00:08:08,120
incumbent administration, any administration doesn't like that can freeze their bank accounts

70
00:08:08,120 --> 00:08:09,900
or harass them financially.

71
00:08:11,560 --> 00:08:16,740
It's just also additional costs that you're imposing on particular industries or whatever

72
00:08:16,740 --> 00:08:17,680
that you don't like.

73
00:08:18,620 --> 00:08:21,240
You know, as an economist, it's pretty simple.

74
00:08:21,320 --> 00:08:24,060
You make something more costly, people do less of it.

75
00:08:24,960 --> 00:08:31,940
And, you know, so it's just their way of essentially taxing and reducing the amount of activity

76
00:08:31,940 --> 00:08:35,040
for things that they may not like in some way.

77
00:08:37,140 --> 00:08:45,160
So, you know, in things like guns, you know, you have Connecticut, for example, a little

78
00:08:45,160 --> 00:08:52,020
bit over a decade ago after Sandy Hook passed rules that essentially required the registration

79
00:08:52,020 --> 00:08:52,680
of guns.

80
00:08:52,680 --> 00:09:00,960
And they promised people at the time that there never would be any move to go and confiscate

81
00:09:00,960 --> 00:09:07,020
the guns that were being registered. Well, I think it was like two years ago in Connecticut,

82
00:09:07,020 --> 00:09:14,060
the governor there said, well, he's been thinking about it more. And he wanted to go and push to

83
00:09:14,060 --> 00:09:20,140
confiscate the guns that they had registered, despite the initial promises that were there.

84
00:09:21,640 --> 00:09:27,400
Fortunately, it was killed in the state legislature, but it was pretty close.

85
00:09:28,300 --> 00:09:33,020
And, you know, that's basically what you see happening around the world.

86
00:09:33,020 --> 00:09:40,860
You see registration, licensing, and then at some point they use that in order to confiscate the guns.

87
00:09:41,100 --> 00:09:56,460
I mean, California and Chicago and D.C. have all used those types of rules that they've had then, you know, despite the initial promises there to go and confiscate the guns that people have.

88
00:09:57,400 --> 00:10:07,920
And after going through your book, Gun Control Myths, you wrote More Guns, Less Crime as well.

89
00:10:08,940 --> 00:10:22,100
I mean, it's become clear to me even before I read the book and started perusing crimeresearch.org, which is your website, the Crime Prevention Research Center.

90
00:10:22,100 --> 00:10:29,520
the media and the politicians play a big part in this in the sense that they will cling on to

91
00:10:29,520 --> 00:10:38,240
a myth and run with it and the unsuspecting public is for better for worse definitely for worse just

92
00:10:38,240 --> 00:10:44,260
conditioned to take what the media tells them to the boob tube and the politicians tell them from

93
00:10:44,260 --> 00:10:50,840
the pulpit and believe that it's true but i think a lot of your life's work has been dedicated to

94
00:10:50,840 --> 00:10:58,000
proving that a lot of what they say is not true. And so with that in mind, like, what do you believe

95
00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:07,440
are the biggest myths that are really driving a narrative that is not really seeped in fact or

96
00:11:07,440 --> 00:11:14,180
logic? Right. It's almost hard to know where to start with regard to kind of, I mean, there are

97
00:11:14,180 --> 00:11:19,640
different issues that are here, just the general media bias. I'll give you one example of something

98
00:11:19,640 --> 00:11:21,940
that just is a pet peeve of mine.

99
00:11:22,100 --> 00:11:29,420
And that is when you have these mass murders, these mass shootings that occur, the media

100
00:11:29,420 --> 00:11:37,700
will very frequently talk about the diary or manifestos for these killers.

101
00:11:38,240 --> 00:11:45,520
But they leave out and just absolutely refuse to talk about what I think is kind of a central

102
00:11:45,520 --> 00:11:46,660
part of that.

103
00:11:46,660 --> 00:11:50,780
And that is why these killers pick the targets that they do.

104
00:11:51,940 --> 00:11:57,160
You know, you have something like the Minneapolis school shooting that we recently had.

105
00:11:58,180 --> 00:12:05,240
You know, in that case, the individual went through great detail about why he picked the target.

106
00:12:06,560 --> 00:12:14,860
He talked about learning from other mass school shooters, as well as mass these mass murderers in general.

107
00:12:14,860 --> 00:12:22,480
and about how they had picked gun-free zones, places where they knew their victims wouldn't

108
00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:24,380
be able to go and protect themselves.

109
00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:25,920
I don't know.

110
00:12:26,080 --> 00:12:30,440
I think that's newsworthy to know why these guys pick the targets that they do.

111
00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:38,360
But yet you will look in vain for any media discussions about why the attacker picked

112
00:12:38,360 --> 00:12:39,780
the target that he did.

113
00:12:39,780 --> 00:12:46,060
not only did he want to go to a place where he knew none of his victims would have guns,

114
00:12:46,540 --> 00:12:51,640
it even affected the time of day of the attack because he didn't want to go in the morning when

115
00:12:51,640 --> 00:12:55,680
parents were dropping off kids at school or the afternoon when they're picking them up

116
00:12:55,680 --> 00:13:00,400
because he was concerned that one of the parents might have a permitted concealed handgun

117
00:13:00,400 --> 00:13:09,160
that were with him. The Nashville school shooter a few years ago, even in that case,

118
00:13:09,160 --> 00:13:17,260
the police chief there at a press conference the day of the attack had read the diary for the

119
00:13:17,260 --> 00:13:26,480
mass murderer there. And he talked about how she had picked the school because she had considered

120
00:13:26,480 --> 00:13:31,780
other targets, but had declined to go after them because there were people with guns that might be

121
00:13:31,780 --> 00:13:52,183
able to go and stop her You look at the Buffalo supermarket shooter Again he discussed in his manifesto why he picked the target that he did He wanted to go to a place where he knew his victims wouldn have permanent concealed hang guns And you know there like literally

122
00:13:52,183 --> 00:13:59,503
several dozen of these mass murderers where they've made explicit statements about why they

123
00:13:59,503 --> 00:14:05,842
picked the target. But you time after time after time, you will not see. And even though they'll

124
00:14:05,842 --> 00:14:15,403
talk about the manifesto. And even though somebody like the Minneapolis shooter will go and talk

125
00:14:15,403 --> 00:14:21,303
about other school shooters, they'll go and say, well, he talked a lot about other school shooters,

126
00:14:21,303 --> 00:14:29,822
but they ignore why he was talking about them. And there are many other cases where the discussion

127
00:14:29,822 --> 00:14:37,423
appears to be along similar lines, but it's more vague that nobody draws the connection with going

128
00:14:37,423 --> 00:14:45,763
all the way back to Columbine. In Columbine, the state legislature there at the time was considering

129
00:14:45,763 --> 00:14:52,862
final passage of a concealed carry law that would allow teachers and staff to carry permanent

130
00:14:52,862 --> 00:15:01,702
concealed handguns on school property. According to, well, even the New York Times had a front page

131
00:15:01,702 --> 00:15:08,783
story saying that Dylan Klebold and his dad were very upset about the law that was being considered.

132
00:15:09,822 --> 00:15:16,043
Doug Dean, who was the majority leader in the state house at the time, said that,

133
00:15:16,043 --> 00:15:29,523
And separately to me, that the that Dylan Klebold had written his state representatives asking them to vote against the bill, saying that he was strongly against it.

134
00:15:30,342 --> 00:15:45,003
And what people ignore is that the day of the Columbine attack was the same day that just a few hours later, the state legislature was scheduled for final passage of the concealed carry bill that was there.

135
00:15:45,003 --> 00:16:03,523
Is it just a coincidence that this guy who is so upset about the fact that teachers and staff might be able to go and carry guns on school property picked the day that there was final passage scheduled for allowing teachers and staff to be able to go and carry?

136
00:16:04,362 --> 00:16:12,223
You know, I can't draw as direct connection as I can in some of these other cases, but surely it's suggested.

137
00:16:13,143 --> 00:16:14,962
And so, I mean, it's just one thing.

138
00:16:15,023 --> 00:16:19,423
But look, there's a more basic issue here, and that is what the media covers.

139
00:16:19,423 --> 00:16:33,423
If the media constantly covers about bad things that happen with guns, but never talks about the benefits of people having guns, you know, it's not too surprising that you're going to have people that are going to be against gun ownership.

140
00:16:33,582 --> 00:16:38,163
They think that if you just get rid of the guns, you're going to make places safer.

141
00:16:38,163 --> 00:16:50,663
And, you know, I can give you tons of examples where the media simply doesn't cover defensive gun news stories.

142
00:16:51,202 --> 00:16:59,063
So you have something like the Pulse nightclub shooting, which at the time was the worst mass public shooting in the United States history.

143
00:16:59,063 --> 00:17:07,642
A week later, there was an attack at a nightclub in South Carolina.

144
00:17:08,402 --> 00:17:09,803
Three people had been shot.

145
00:17:10,383 --> 00:17:17,763
The attacker was shooting at a fourth person when a permanent concealed handgun holder shot and seriously wounded the attacker, ending the attack.

146
00:17:17,862 --> 00:17:23,182
He still had something like 125 rounds of ammunition on him when he was stopped.

147
00:17:23,182 --> 00:17:35,883
The Pulse nightclub attack in Florida was still getting massive national and international news coverage for weeks, not just one week after the attack that had occurred there.

148
00:17:37,263 --> 00:17:46,223
But you, the attack in South Carolina didn't get any news coverage outside of the local media market that was there.

149
00:17:46,223 --> 00:18:00,043
You know, one can only imagine if the permit holder hadn't been there and the guy had continued firing there, how much national and international news coverage it would have gotten.

150
00:18:00,043 --> 00:18:13,763
The difference between Florida and South Carolina, Florida is one of 10 states that banned people being able to go and carry permitted concealed handguns in establishments that got more than 50 percent of their revenue from selling alcohol.

151
00:18:14,483 --> 00:18:18,822
South Carolina was one of the 40 states that allowed people to go and carry.

152
00:18:20,143 --> 00:18:22,402
You look at the Parkland school shooting.

153
00:18:23,063 --> 00:18:24,082
Everybody knows about that.

154
00:18:24,123 --> 00:18:26,943
That was getting coverage for years after the attack.

155
00:18:27,662 --> 00:18:43,703
Shortly after that, same year, there was an attack at an elementary school not very far away in Titusville, Florida, where the school was having a celebration at the park right next to the school.

156
00:18:44,502 --> 00:18:46,862
There were hundreds of students there.

157
00:18:47,002 --> 00:18:47,783
There were parents.

158
00:18:47,922 --> 00:18:48,723
There were teachers.

159
00:18:49,322 --> 00:18:51,682
A man came up, started firing his gun.

160
00:18:52,383 --> 00:19:01,182
Fortunately, because it was in a park, not in a school, there was somebody there with a permanent concealed handgun.

161
00:19:01,383 --> 00:19:05,862
And he was able to shoot and seriously wound the attack or ending the attack.

162
00:19:06,723 --> 00:19:11,862
And, you know, again, it just got local news coverage.

163
00:19:11,862 --> 00:19:19,623
didn't get national news coverage. But one can only imagine if the permit holder hadn't been there.

164
00:19:20,223 --> 00:19:23,203
I mean, you're still getting massive news coverage for Parkland.

165
00:19:23,483 --> 00:19:29,422
This would have been a case that ended very differently. So, I mean, my guess is

166
00:19:29,422 --> 00:19:34,862
the whole debate that we have about gun control would be dramatically different

167
00:19:34,862 --> 00:19:42,402
if once in a while the media would say we've had yet another mass public shooting in a place where

168
00:19:42,402 --> 00:19:48,123
guns are banned. I mean, 92 percent of mass public shootings where four more people are killed

169
00:19:48,123 --> 00:19:55,523
take place in areas where guns are banned. Or news coverage once in a while that said we've had

170
00:19:55,523 --> 00:20:01,463
yet another mass murderer where he explicitly targeted a place where he knew his victims

171
00:20:01,463 --> 00:20:07,582
couldn't defend themselves, or if the media would sometimes give coverage to some of these dramatic,

172
00:20:07,842 --> 00:20:13,502
heroic cases where attacks, where police have said that if it wasn't for the presence of a

173
00:20:13,502 --> 00:20:20,643
permit holder, many people would have died. You know, it would be different. Yeah. And one last

174
00:20:20,643 --> 00:20:26,182
thing that's related is just this impression that's pushed out time after time after time

175
00:20:26,182 --> 00:20:33,023
that the United States is somehow unique in terms of mass public shootings. That's simply false.

176
00:20:34,102 --> 00:20:41,043
You know, it's understandable why the news media covers such a mass murder in the United States

177
00:20:41,043 --> 00:20:50,002
more than it covers it in, let's say, Europe or in other parts of the world like South America or

178
00:20:50,002 --> 00:20:55,263
Asia or whatever. I mean, this is the United States. People are more interested in what

179
00:20:55,263 --> 00:21:02,723
happens here. But we're nowhere near the top in terms of per capita rates of mass public shootings.

180
00:21:02,723 --> 00:21:09,322
We're not in the top 50 in terms of per capita rates of mass public shootings.

181
00:21:10,563 --> 00:21:16,082
Even if you were just to compare Western Europe, which doesn't have a particularly high rate of

182
00:21:16,082 --> 00:21:21,763
mass public shootings to the United States, there are countries in Western Europe that have higher

183
00:21:21,763 --> 00:21:26,963
per capita rates of mass public shootings. And in fact, if I were to go and ask you, I'd say,

184
00:21:27,102 --> 00:21:33,362
okay, since 2010, for example, just comparing Western Europe to the United States,

185
00:21:33,842 --> 00:21:37,502
could you tell me where the two worst mass public shootings have been?

186
00:21:39,023 --> 00:21:44,242
Most people think that they're in the United States that I talked to. In fact,

187
00:21:44,242 --> 00:21:53,783
You had the 2011 attack in Norway, where 67 people were murdered, ignoring the bombing deaths that were there.

188
00:21:54,242 --> 00:21:56,943
That's much higher than anything in the U.S.

189
00:21:57,502 --> 00:22:08,263
You have the Paris concert shooting in November 2015, where 130 people were shot to death.

190
00:22:08,263 --> 00:22:13,763
You know, there's nothing even close to that in the United States.

191
00:22:14,242 --> 00:22:16,943
And that's just Western Europe.

192
00:22:17,543 --> 00:22:19,662
You know, just look at school shootings.

193
00:22:21,043 --> 00:22:25,123
People refuse to put these numbers in per capita terms.

194
00:22:26,623 --> 00:22:32,543
You look at Germany, for example, compared to the United States.

195
00:22:33,502 --> 00:22:36,543
So these are attacks where four more people have been killed.

196
00:22:38,023 --> 00:22:43,982
The United States has had nine mass public school shootings in the United States.

197
00:22:43,982 --> 00:22:51,623
since 2000. Germany's had three. But Germany has like 83 million people in it. We have

198
00:22:51,623 --> 00:22:57,682
340 million people. So we have more than four times the number of people. So if you put it in

199
00:22:57,682 --> 00:23:04,883
per capita terms, that would be the equivalent of us having more than 12 mass public school shootings

200
00:23:04,883 --> 00:23:12,182
compared to the nine that we actually had. You look at Finland. Finland has had two mass public

201
00:23:12,182 --> 00:23:18,162
school shootings. But they have a population of five and a half million people. That's like one

202
00:23:18,162 --> 00:23:24,242
60th, the rate that we have. That'd be the equivalent of us having 120 versus having nine.

203
00:23:24,662 --> 00:23:29,822
Or Norway, which has had one mass public school shooting, also has a little bit over five million

204
00:23:29,822 --> 00:23:36,842
people. That'd be the equivalent of us having like 60 of them. And of course, there are other

205
00:23:36,842 --> 00:23:42,043
countries in Europe and Western Europe that have had these types of school shootings.

206
00:23:42,922 --> 00:23:49,322
But most people don't even, you know, they don't even realize these things have occurred.

207
00:23:49,502 --> 00:23:57,523
And no media outlet in the United States would go and compare the number of murders in Pennsylvania

208
00:23:57,523 --> 00:24:02,342
with the number of murders in Rhode Island or Wyoming.

209
00:24:02,342 --> 00:24:06,283
OK, everybody would adjust for it in per capita terms.

210
00:24:06,842 --> 00:24:12,123
But for some reason, when they're talking about these mass murders,

211
00:24:12,703 --> 00:24:16,322
they're making international comparisons to the extent that they do.

212
00:24:16,862 --> 00:24:22,063
They just refuse to go and make these comparisons.

213
00:24:24,322 --> 00:24:25,383
It's really astonishing.

214
00:24:25,523 --> 00:24:33,123
You said something earlier about they believe that if you just eliminate all guns and you disarm the society,

215
00:24:33,283 --> 00:24:34,043
crime will go down.

216
00:24:34,043 --> 00:24:37,403
But I think a lot of your life's work has proved the exact opposite.

217
00:24:37,563 --> 00:24:44,563
I mean, I've seen this up close and personal when I lived in Chicago for five years and in Cook County, guns are banned.

218
00:24:44,563 --> 00:24:58,383
And despite that, Chicago is one of the most violent cities in the United States and has some of the most gun deaths in many years with the murder capital of the country.

219
00:24:58,543 --> 00:25:03,822
And it still blows my mind that people don't understand that you can you can ban guns.

220
00:25:03,822 --> 00:25:09,263
You can disarm the society, but that doesn't stop bad people from doing bad things.

221
00:25:09,482 --> 00:25:11,342
They're bad people doing bad things.

222
00:25:11,623 --> 00:25:15,582
If they are doing bad things, they're disregarding the laws already.

223
00:25:15,903 --> 00:25:22,482
And I think the work you've done to highlight that disarmed societies aren't actually safer is extremely important.

224
00:25:22,842 --> 00:25:28,002
Well, look, I mean, we have tried it, not only in the United States, but around the world.

225
00:25:28,002 --> 00:25:35,482
Obviously, Chicago and Washington, D.C. tried banning all handguns for a while.

226
00:25:37,063 --> 00:25:41,703
And, you know, we had increases in murder rates that occurred after the ban.

227
00:25:43,922 --> 00:25:48,283
Chicago's handgun ban went into effect in November 1982.

228
00:25:49,203 --> 00:25:55,463
Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban went into effect in February 1977.

229
00:25:55,463 --> 00:26:24,783
In both of those cases, murder rates rose. They rose relative to other similarly sized cities dramatically. And, you know, but gun control advocates will tell you now, well, those were fair experiments, because unless you go and you ban guns every place, you know, people will go and get guns from the rest of Illinois or from Indiana or from Maryland or Virginia.

230
00:26:25,463 --> 00:26:27,963
But, you know, that doesn't explain why it went up.

231
00:26:28,002 --> 00:26:31,643
It may explain why it didn't go down the way they promised them to do.

232
00:26:31,963 --> 00:26:34,023
But there are other problems with it, too.

233
00:26:34,082 --> 00:26:39,742
And that is there are countries where they had the rule for the whole country that have

234
00:26:39,742 --> 00:26:41,982
seen increases in murder rates.

235
00:26:42,383 --> 00:26:48,482
There are island nations that have tried to do that, from Jamaica to the Solomon Islands

236
00:26:48,482 --> 00:26:52,403
to, you know, Republic of Ireland to the UK.

237
00:26:53,263 --> 00:27:02,002
And yet every single time that either all guns or all handguns have been banned, murder rates have gone up.

238
00:27:02,002 --> 00:27:13,322
You would think if on net guns are bad as they want to go and claim, it should be easy to point to lots of places where you've banned guns and murder rates have gone down.

239
00:27:13,322 --> 00:27:24,222
And yet now just out of randomness, you think once or twice when they ban guns, it would go down or at least stay the same.

240
00:27:24,563 --> 00:27:38,805
And yet you can even point to one place where it even stayed the same And I think there a simple reason for this and that is when you go and you pass laws you have to be careful that you not primarily disarming law citizens

241
00:27:38,805 --> 00:27:44,785
You may take a few guns away from criminals, but if you're primarily disarming the law-abiding

242
00:27:44,785 --> 00:27:51,745
citizens who obey the ban or other types of gun control regulations, you are making it

243
00:27:51,745 --> 00:27:54,585
easier for criminals to go and commit crimes.

244
00:27:55,005 --> 00:27:57,345
That's basically what you see happening.

245
00:27:58,905 --> 00:28:07,305
One of the big kind of statistical errors that people make is what we call cross-sectional comparisons.

246
00:28:07,905 --> 00:28:11,945
So people on one side of the debate will go and point to Chicago.

247
00:28:13,025 --> 00:28:16,425
People on the other side of the debate will go and point to the UK.

248
00:28:16,725 --> 00:28:24,765
And they'll say, well, look, the UK has very low homicide rates compared to the United States.

249
00:28:25,005 --> 00:28:27,145
And they have very strict gun control.

250
00:28:27,145 --> 00:28:34,025
So it must be that the strict gun control is causing the UK to have a low homicide rate.

251
00:28:34,185 --> 00:28:46,665
And that's simply false because the problem is, is that they had an even lower homicide rate compared to the United States before they had the strict gun control laws that they had.

252
00:28:46,665 --> 00:29:00,825
In the eight years after the UK banned handguns in January 1997, the murder rate or the homicide rate, I'm sorry, in the UK increased by 50 percent.

253
00:29:01,585 --> 00:29:12,085
It only fell back down after that, after they had a massive increase in the number of police officers, basically an 18 percent increase in a four year period of time.

254
00:29:12,085 --> 00:29:25,765
But, you know, the thing is, you can look at island nations that would kind of you think would be like the ideal experiment for them to go in and ban guns.

255
00:29:25,905 --> 00:29:36,205
And yet, even in those ideal conditions, you consistently every single time see murder and homicide rates go up.

256
00:29:36,205 --> 00:29:42,665
And, you know, to me, that's pretty strong, devastating evidence.

257
00:29:42,985 --> 00:29:49,805
You know, people will point to someplace like Japan also, and they'll say, look, Japan has strict gun control laws.

258
00:29:49,885 --> 00:29:57,225
They have about 400,000 people who are licensed to own guns in Japan, mainly for hunting purposes.

259
00:29:58,465 --> 00:30:02,145
But, you know, and they have a low homicide rate.

260
00:30:02,145 --> 00:30:08,445
But the thing is, Japan has had pretty much the same gun control laws for hundreds of years.

261
00:30:09,525 --> 00:30:17,325
You know, what you need to do is compare what happened to the murder rates before and after they changed their laws.

262
00:30:17,365 --> 00:30:20,165
And you just simply can't do that with Japan.

263
00:30:20,305 --> 00:30:26,425
But my guess is Japan, you know, a lot of island nations have very, very low homicide rates.

264
00:30:26,425 --> 00:30:36,765
One thing I should have mentioned about the UK, there's an excellent book by historian Joyce Lee Malcolm from Harvard University Press called Guns and Violence.

265
00:30:37,605 --> 00:30:44,785
And, you know, you have a city of London, the greater London area, had like 8 million people in it.

266
00:30:45,345 --> 00:30:53,865
In 1900, this is 20 years before they had any gun control legislation at all, guns very commonly owned.

267
00:30:53,865 --> 00:30:59,285
There were two gun murders in a city of 8 million people.

268
00:30:59,745 --> 00:31:02,305
There were five armed robberies.

269
00:31:02,845 --> 00:31:15,145
I can't even get my mind around having so few gun crimes in a place with that many people and no gun control regulations and guns very commonly owned.

270
00:31:15,145 --> 00:31:25,725
In fact, the 1920 gun control law that they had in the first gun control law that they had in the UK had nothing to do with crime.

271
00:31:26,005 --> 00:31:29,805
There was no concerns about the amount of crime that caused them to have it.

272
00:31:29,805 --> 00:31:49,065
What happened was you just had the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and you had a situation in the UK where you had a lot of unemployed soldiers who had come home after World War I.

273
00:31:49,285 --> 00:31:52,885
And they were concerned that they could have their own Bolshevik Revolution.

274
00:31:52,885 --> 00:32:03,385
And so they wanted to go and pass rules that would disarm basically lower and middle income people with fees and other things.

275
00:32:03,385 --> 00:32:23,785
And so that's the reason why they passed it. And after the different gun control laws, the big ones in 1920, 1956 and 1997, you saw, if anything, an increase in violent crime rates after those gun control laws were passed.

276
00:32:23,785 --> 00:32:34,905
seems like an armed society is truly polite society yeah it's crazy and when you think about

277
00:32:34,905 --> 00:32:45,025
wanting to reduce homicides and gun related uh homicides like obviously that is an admirable

278
00:32:45,025 --> 00:32:51,745
and ethical thing to strive for but there's so many so many other lower hanging fruit

279
00:32:51,745 --> 00:32:57,165
that need to be picked to that. And the fact that these low hanging fruit aren't being picked

280
00:32:57,165 --> 00:33:03,445
signals me that there's some ulterior motive here. And the one, the lowest hanging fruit

281
00:33:03,445 --> 00:33:08,585
that really sticks out to me, and I'm sure you've done research on it and have noticed it's become

282
00:33:08,585 --> 00:33:16,185
part of the narrative, at least on X over the last few months is repeat offenders and the

283
00:33:16,185 --> 00:33:20,405
amount of crime that they commit throughout their lives if they're allowed to.

284
00:33:20,405 --> 00:33:27,265
get out of jail with a slap on the wrist because there's some DA who thinks that

285
00:33:27,265 --> 00:33:30,185
locking up criminals is somehow discriminatory.

286
00:33:31,525 --> 00:33:37,185
But OK, so a couple of things before I get quite good into that, just mention, look,

287
00:33:37,665 --> 00:33:40,685
everybody wants to reduce crime, I hope.

288
00:33:41,265 --> 00:33:44,605
But you can it's not rocket science.

289
00:33:44,605 --> 00:33:47,465
You have to make it risky for criminals to go and commit crime.

290
00:33:47,465 --> 00:33:52,125
And you can do that with higher restraints, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences.

291
00:33:52,705 --> 00:33:56,485
But you can also do it by letting victims be able to go and defend themselves.

292
00:33:56,485 --> 00:34:00,145
It also makes it riskier for criminals to go and commit crime.

293
00:34:00,925 --> 00:34:11,045
Now, on this thing about the repeat offenders, you're right that a lot of it is motivated by what they call racial justice.

294
00:34:11,045 --> 00:34:25,385
And, you know, so you have this notion out there that people in jail should the percentage of different racial groups should be equal to their shares of the population.

295
00:34:25,385 --> 00:34:32,985
If 13 percent of the population is black, then 13 percent of the people in prison should be black.

296
00:34:32,985 --> 00:34:46,505
And you have people like Alvin Bragg, the district attorney for Manhattan and other places, the current governor, Josh Stein in North Carolina, when he was attorney general.

297
00:34:46,985 --> 00:34:53,665
He had overseen a commission that dealt with kind of DEI policies for them.

298
00:34:53,665 --> 00:34:58,605
And you see this in many Soros-type prosecutors from across the country.

299
00:34:59,165 --> 00:35:03,805
Here's the irony, and that is, who do you think the victims of these crimes are?

300
00:35:04,305 --> 00:35:11,465
People tend to commit crimes against people who are similar racially and social economically,

301
00:35:11,465 --> 00:35:13,765
similar to the ones who are committing the crimes.

302
00:35:14,425 --> 00:35:18,785
90% of blacks are murdered by other blacks.

303
00:35:19,445 --> 00:35:28,205
So if you want to go and be easy on the black criminals, what it means is you're being bad

304
00:35:28,205 --> 00:35:35,065
to the black victims that are there. So the question, you know, if you care about racial

305
00:35:35,065 --> 00:35:41,305
justice, do you care about being fair to the black criminals or do you care about being

306
00:35:41,305 --> 00:35:49,185
fair to the black victims? So when Trump did his federalization of law enforcement in D.C.,

307
00:35:49,185 --> 00:35:54,005
you had many such as Maryland's Democratic governor, Wes Moore,

308
00:35:54,005 --> 00:36:03,385
attacked Trump as his policies for federalizing the law enforcement there as being racist.

309
00:36:03,585 --> 00:36:08,205
Because he said, you know, the only reason why Trump's doing this is because it's a heavily

310
00:36:08,205 --> 00:36:09,205
black city.

311
00:36:09,345 --> 00:36:16,965
Well, you know, 96 percent, of course, the latest data we have is like from 2021.

312
00:36:17,545 --> 00:36:23,605
But up until that point, some like 96 percent of the murder victims were blacks.

313
00:36:24,005 --> 00:36:29,605
So, you know, you go for like 18 days without a murder that occurred there.

314
00:36:29,985 --> 00:36:31,865
Whose lives do you think you're saving?

315
00:36:32,305 --> 00:36:34,825
You're saving black lives that are there.

316
00:36:34,925 --> 00:36:36,045
Does that make it racist?

317
00:36:36,905 --> 00:36:49,025
And, you know, we had a huge drop in all sorts of violent crime and property crime when you had that federalization that was there.

318
00:36:49,025 --> 00:36:55,785
Look, in D.C., you had like 1,300 patrol officers.

319
00:36:56,805 --> 00:37:08,265
So that means you have no more than at most a third on duty at any point in time for a district of 721,000 people.

320
00:37:08,785 --> 00:37:14,945
You know, it's understandable why the D.C. police felt like they were being stretched too thin.

321
00:37:14,945 --> 00:37:31,945
So when Trump put in more FBI, ATF agents, DEA agents, as well as the National Guard, he effectively more than doubled the boots on the ground at any point in time.

322
00:37:31,945 --> 00:37:48,065
And there was a big increase in the number of arrests. But it's not just he basically covered all the bases there. He not only increased arrests, but the new U.S. attorney there who's in charge of prosecuting crimes in D.C.

323
00:37:48,065 --> 00:37:58,545
It's unique, the relationship that the U.S. attorney has with prosecuting crimes in D.C. because it's a federal enclave compared to the rest of the country.

324
00:37:59,185 --> 00:38:02,865
The U.S. attorney there is in charge of prosecuting crimes by adults.

325
00:38:04,685 --> 00:38:12,285
Judge Jean Perrault had a very different policy of going after criminals compared to during the Biden administration.

326
00:38:12,285 --> 00:38:20,585
The U.S. attorney that Biden put in there in 2022 refused to prosecute 67 percent of arrests.

327
00:38:21,445 --> 00:38:25,705
In 2023, he refused to prosecute 56 percent of arrests.

328
00:38:27,445 --> 00:38:32,105
So, you know, you're not prosecuting.

329
00:38:32,225 --> 00:38:33,245
You're not arresting them.

330
00:38:33,485 --> 00:38:34,805
You're not prosecuting them.

331
00:38:35,145 --> 00:38:38,605
You're not punishing them even when you do prosecute them very much.

332
00:38:38,605 --> 00:38:44,025
And you make it very difficult for people to be able to have guns for protection.

333
00:38:44,185 --> 00:38:51,865
One of the things that Trump also did, he put pressure on D.C. to speed up the process for concealed carry permits.

334
00:38:51,985 --> 00:38:59,245
It was taking six to eight months or more sometimes for people to go through the process to get a concealed carry permit in D.C.

335
00:38:59,805 --> 00:39:03,725
Trump was able to get that reduced to at most two weeks.

336
00:39:03,725 --> 00:39:25,665
You know, all those things matter in terms of making it riskier for criminals to go and commit crime. Now, is there more that needs to be done? Yeah. But at least it was a start. And you see similar benefits that are occurring in Memphis. So it's not getting the type of news attention that Trump's moving assets into D.C. got.

337
00:39:25,665 --> 00:39:31,445
I think in part because it's been working so well in terms of reducing crime.

338
00:39:31,605 --> 00:39:34,945
So it's not something that people want to talk about.

339
00:39:35,025 --> 00:39:48,225
One thing I saw a survey of Chicago residents where they asked them whether they would support Trump kind of federalizing law enforcement in Chicago like he had done in D.C.

340
00:39:49,185 --> 00:39:51,345
Hispanics strongly supported it.

341
00:39:52,085 --> 00:39:55,005
Blacks supported that policy by Trump.

342
00:39:55,005 --> 00:40:03,105
The people who opposed it were basically whites, apparently relatively well-to-do whites, who were liberals.

343
00:40:03,685 --> 00:40:18,465
So the people who were least affected by the crimes that were occurring were the ones who were the most strongly opposed to Trump trying to go and clean up the problem that was there.

344
00:40:18,465 --> 00:40:25,485
And this is what you see all the time with the defunding of the police and other things.

345
00:40:25,485 --> 00:40:36,125
It's basically minorities in the poor who want to have police because they're the ones who bear the brunt of the crimes that are there.

346
00:40:36,525 --> 00:40:48,845
And the people who, you know, support doing things like defunding or opposing Trump on these things are, you know, people who aren't affected.

347
00:40:48,845 --> 00:40:57,625
no i mean that really highlights starkly the effect the propaganda effect of white guilt and

348
00:40:57,625 --> 00:41:04,685
the whole dei narrative that has been pushed on on the public for the last two decades i would say

349
00:41:04,685 --> 00:41:25,008
very aggressively but it seems like tides are turning people are beginning to wake up to these facts but you mentioned that the D the sort of actions that Trump taken in D specifically have had good effects but there more that can be done in your mind

350
00:41:25,148 --> 00:41:31,648
What is the ideal policy to have towards crime to make sure you lower it and keep people safe?

351
00:41:31,648 --> 00:41:35,008
Well, you got to make it costly and risky for criminals to commit crime.

352
00:41:35,008 --> 00:41:45,048
And while the U.S. attorney there can go and handle adult crimes, juvenile crimes are not really being punished.

353
00:41:45,907 --> 00:42:01,707
You had a situation recently where a Doge employee or former Doge employee whose nickname was Big Balls had been in DuPont Circle, which is a nice area.

354
00:42:01,707 --> 00:42:04,308
It's not that far away from the White House.

355
00:42:05,828 --> 00:42:10,407
I've spent a fair amount of time over the years around that area.

356
00:42:11,028 --> 00:42:15,828
And he was trying to protect this woman that was there.

357
00:42:15,907 --> 00:42:19,268
He was savagely beaten by 10 juveniles.

358
00:42:19,268 --> 00:42:30,028
If you see in the pictures, he was very bloodied afterwards, had to go to the emergency room, had a concussion, had other problems that had occurred.

359
00:42:30,028 --> 00:42:51,268
When they arrested the individuals, the magistrate there decided not to hold them and release them. And then when they finally were convicted of the crime, she decided that they wouldn't serve any jail time.

360
00:42:51,268 --> 00:43:01,648
You know, and one of the guys, I think, immediately committed another felony within like a week after he was caught for.

361
00:43:03,088 --> 00:43:09,707
So, you know, if you don't make it risky for criminals to commit crime, you're going to have still have more crime.

362
00:43:09,707 --> 00:43:20,268
Now, there are some long term benefits from what Trump did, even though, you know, they've pulled back on the federalization of the law enforcement there.

363
00:43:20,268 --> 00:43:35,268
And that is they arrested a lot of people. So they were kind of taken off the streets. And as long as they're still off the streets, you know, you have a small group of criminals who commit a disproportionate amount of the violent crime that's there.

364
00:43:35,268 --> 00:43:54,788
And so there'll be some continued benefit from that. But, you know, it's it's you got to do other things. You got to keep it up. You got to change the laws there in D.C. You have to change the mind of of of the judges there.

365
00:43:55,648 --> 00:44:04,407
If it were me, I would make it so that the U.S. attorney could go and handle the cases involving juveniles, too.

366
00:44:05,968 --> 00:44:14,888
So because it doesn't seem like they really have, you know, kind of the backbone or whatever you want to call it for them to do that.

367
00:44:14,888 --> 00:44:16,828
But it's not rocket science.

368
00:44:16,828 --> 00:44:27,348
You know, you go back to the 1960s and Washington, D.C. had one of the premier law enforcement departments in the country.

369
00:44:29,328 --> 00:44:38,288
You know, there's been decades where the arrest rates have plummeted and it's not too – and they're not punishing them.

370
00:44:38,608 --> 00:44:44,707
And so it's not too surprising that crime is much higher now than it used to be.

371
00:44:44,707 --> 00:44:53,927
And there, of course, there are issues about corruption and manipulation with the crime data at D.C. as well as other things.

372
00:44:53,927 --> 00:45:06,948
You've had a number of police officers who, at the risk to their own careers, have come forward with sworn statements saying that they were ordered to reclassify crimes.

373
00:45:06,948 --> 00:45:21,328
You know, one homicide detective said that he was ordered to reclassify a murder as taking somebody to the hospital, which isn't even a crime.

374
00:45:21,828 --> 00:45:32,427
So it just, you know, and others that would say you'd have lieutenants or others that would come down and basically make them reclassify felonies as misdemeanors.

375
00:45:33,427 --> 00:45:39,768
And so, you know, it's – and unfortunately, it's not only D.C.

376
00:45:39,828 --> 00:45:42,427
You've seen that in many other places.

377
00:45:43,868 --> 00:45:47,328
Chicago has had a number of accusations about that.

378
00:45:47,328 --> 00:45:51,248
New York City, Manhattan, for example.

379
00:45:53,008 --> 00:45:59,328
Alvin Bragg refuses to prosecute firearms offenses by criminals.

380
00:45:59,328 --> 00:46:06,407
He'll prosecute a firearms offense by somebody who's otherwise a law-abiding citizen, but not criminals.

381
00:46:07,127 --> 00:46:19,427
And one thing that makes a difference between aggravated assault, which is a felony, and a misdemeanor, simple assault, is often whether a weapon was involved.

382
00:46:20,427 --> 00:46:46,868
And the problem is that while the prosecutor is refusing to include weapons so that it gets downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor, they put pressure on the police not to go and record that a weapon was used to begin with because the prosecutor's office doesn't want to take all the kind of heavy lifting for reclassifying these things.

383
00:46:46,868 --> 00:46:49,627
They don't want to take all the blame for reclassifying.

384
00:46:49,768 --> 00:46:53,848
So they put pressure on the police not to go and record it to begin with.

385
00:46:54,388 --> 00:46:56,668
And so that doesn't go into their police reports.

386
00:46:56,668 --> 00:47:09,688
And then that doesn't get into the FBI data that's there, which only records the felony aggravated assaults and doesn't record misdemeanor simple assaults in comparison.

387
00:47:09,868 --> 00:47:14,548
So you have lots of problems in just kind of comparing crime data across cities.

388
00:47:16,868 --> 00:47:19,508
Why is it?

389
00:47:19,608 --> 00:47:22,448
Do they truly want anarcho-tyranny?

390
00:47:22,848 --> 00:47:25,707
Is there a belief that there is discrimination

391
00:47:25,707 --> 00:47:30,227
and so they feel it's their ethical duty to be light,

392
00:47:31,148 --> 00:47:36,948
to issue light sentences or declassify felonies to misdemeanors?

393
00:47:36,948 --> 00:47:41,068
Is it a narrative play that they really want it to seem like

394
00:47:41,068 --> 00:47:44,707
left-leaning social policies are successful?

395
00:47:44,707 --> 00:48:02,427
Right. Well, I mean, again, just because you're concerned about the race of the criminal, that means you're not concerned about the race of the victims. And criminals tend to harm others that are similar to themselves.

396
00:48:02,427 --> 00:48:17,248
And it's not just the direct victims of crime. You have the indirect victims of crime. You have someplace like Washington, D.C., where I mentioned you have a number of Democrats that were claiming that Trump's policies were racist there.

397
00:48:17,248 --> 00:48:20,088
You know

398
00:48:20,088 --> 00:48:24,127
You have stores closed because of the crime

399
00:48:24,127 --> 00:48:26,268
Who's more likely to own a store

400
00:48:26,268 --> 00:48:29,927
Disproportionately compared to other places in D.C.

401
00:48:29,968 --> 00:48:30,748
It's blacks

402
00:48:30,748 --> 00:48:32,688
Who works in those stores?

403
00:48:33,288 --> 00:48:35,948
Who shops in the stores that are closing

404
00:48:35,948 --> 00:48:38,627
Or have to charge higher prices because of the crime?

405
00:48:39,468 --> 00:48:41,008
It's overwhelmingly blacks

406
00:48:41,008 --> 00:48:42,727
Who owns homes

407
00:48:42,727 --> 00:48:45,268
Whose property values are depressed

408
00:48:45,268 --> 00:48:46,948
Because of the higher crime rates

409
00:48:46,948 --> 00:49:10,748
Well, again, it's overwhelmingly blacks. So, you know, it's not just the direct victims are overwhelmingly similar to the criminals that they care about, but all these indirect costs that occur there, they're harming all sorts of law-abiding good people at the expense of going and trying to protect criminals based on their race.

410
00:49:10,748 --> 00:49:28,627
And the problem is much broader in the sense that – I can't remember where I was going to go on this, but it'll probably come to me in a minute.

411
00:49:28,627 --> 00:49:35,488
But the – oh, I remember now.

412
00:49:35,868 --> 00:49:45,468
Look, at least the Democrats are consistent on this, and that is they don't want to make it costly and risky for criminals to commit crime.

413
00:49:45,588 --> 00:49:51,968
And so they don't want to have higher arrest rates.

414
00:49:52,148 --> 00:49:53,968
They don't want to have higher conviction rates.

415
00:49:54,088 --> 00:49:56,408
They don't want to have longer prison sentences.

416
00:49:56,408 --> 00:50:12,288
And they also don't want to let victims be able to go and defend themselves. So they support very strict gun control laws. And those primarily disarm law-abiding individuals that are there who are more likely to be victims.

417
00:50:12,927 --> 00:50:16,828
It would be great if the police could be there all the time, but the police can't.

418
00:50:16,828 --> 00:50:26,688
If my research convinces me of anything, the people who benefit the most from owning guns are the people who are the most likely victims of violent crime.

419
00:50:26,828 --> 00:50:31,528
And that overwhelmingly tends to be poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas.

420
00:50:31,788 --> 00:50:37,268
It also tends to be people who are relatively weaker physically, women and the elderly.

421
00:50:37,788 --> 00:50:41,288
You're almost always talking about a male criminal doing the attack.

422
00:50:41,288 --> 00:50:48,768
And when a man is attacking a woman, there's a much larger strength difference that exists there than a man attacking another man.

423
00:50:48,868 --> 00:50:53,727
So Democrats claim that they care about minorities.

424
00:50:53,727 --> 00:50:56,427
They claim that they care about women.

425
00:50:57,248 --> 00:51:02,828
And yet they make them much more vulnerable to these types of crimes.

426
00:51:02,828 --> 00:51:14,808
And, you know, this discrimination across gun control laws just consistently, these gun control laws primarily disarm minorities and the poor.

427
00:51:15,107 --> 00:51:22,368
I'll just give you one thing, example, that's, you know, I think is shocking.

428
00:51:22,548 --> 00:51:26,488
And that has to do with the errors in the NICS background check system.

429
00:51:26,488 --> 00:51:35,868
You know, you'll very frequently hear claims that there have been 4 million dangerous prohibited people that have been stopped from owning guns because of background checks.

430
00:51:36,088 --> 00:51:37,388
That's simply false.

431
00:51:37,888 --> 00:51:47,388
What they should say is that there have been 4 million initial denials, and something over 99% of those are mistakes, false positives.

432
00:51:49,248 --> 00:51:52,707
You know, just to give you a simple way to think about this.

433
00:51:52,707 --> 00:52:02,427
In any given year, you may have 125,000 denials, but you only have like 20 prosecutions and maybe 12 convictions.

434
00:52:03,148 --> 00:52:07,808
Well, these are like the easiest cases in the world to prosecute.

435
00:52:09,328 --> 00:52:15,127
Somebody signed the 4473 form saying that they haven't been a felon.

436
00:52:15,868 --> 00:52:20,408
You can't go and say, I forgot I was in prison for five years.

437
00:52:20,408 --> 00:52:25,368
OK, that's not a defense that they're going to be able to go and use in that situation.

438
00:52:26,408 --> 00:52:34,707
And, you know, they signed a form swearing that that is true, everything that's there.

439
00:52:35,348 --> 00:52:38,707
They provided an ID when they bought it.

440
00:52:38,707 --> 00:52:39,868
So they're identified.

441
00:52:40,207 --> 00:52:46,408
And in the vast majority of time, it's on film, them buying the gun.

442
00:52:46,408 --> 00:52:52,588
And so, you know, these are like the easiest cases in the world to prosecute.

443
00:52:53,107 --> 00:52:56,308
There's like no defense that can be put up against it.

444
00:52:56,448 --> 00:52:59,348
And yet you have you have almost no prosecutions.

445
00:52:59,468 --> 00:53:01,107
And why don't you have any prosecutions?

446
00:53:01,268 --> 00:53:05,508
Well, the reason why you don't have any prosecutions is because they're not real cases.

447
00:53:05,508 --> 00:53:17,048
When you fill out the 4473 to buy a gun, you put down your name, your address, your social security number, your birthday, your race, your eye color.

448
00:53:17,348 --> 00:53:20,448
You think the government's using all that information, and the answer is no.

449
00:53:20,528 --> 00:53:26,408
What they usually use is just roughly phonetically similar names and similar birthdays.

450
00:53:27,048 --> 00:53:33,508
And the problem is, is that people tend to have names similar to others in their racial groups.

451
00:53:33,508 --> 00:53:41,588
So about 18% of Hispanic males are felons. About 34% of black males are felons.

452
00:53:42,607 --> 00:53:51,727
6% of whites, about 1.5% of Asians. Hispanics have names similar to Hispanics. Blacks tend to have names similar to other blacks.

453
00:53:53,248 --> 00:53:55,828
And so where do you see the mistakes?

454
00:53:55,828 --> 00:54:11,388
You see the mistakes overwhelmingly involving black males and Hispanic males, law-abiding, good black and Hispanic males that simply happen to have names that are roughly phonetically similar to others.

455
00:54:11,588 --> 00:54:21,927
If private companies who do background checks on employees had an error rate that was 100th the error rate that the federal government has, they'd be sued out of existence.

456
00:54:21,927 --> 00:54:46,148
You try to fix this type of thing. And I've made offers many times to go and write an op-ed with people in the gun control movement to go and say, look, I even support these universal background checks that you want to have if we just fix a few of the things like these errors in the existing background check system.

457
00:54:46,148 --> 00:54:51,127
I don't even know how one can justify having these types of errors that are there.

458
00:54:52,248 --> 00:54:59,988
You know, if you were to go to a private company and say, I think you ought to look at roughly fanatically similar names when you're looking at, you know,

459
00:55:00,024 --> 00:55:04,664
criminal backgrounds for your employees and similar birthdays, they will look at you like

460
00:55:04,664 --> 00:55:10,224
you're from Mars because they'll know the huge discriminatory impact that that's going to have

461
00:55:10,224 --> 00:55:17,984
by doing something like that. But yet, you know, the federal government does that all the time.

462
00:55:17,984 --> 00:55:25,504
And I've come to believe that Democrats actually think that this is a feature rather than a bug

463
00:55:25,504 --> 00:55:34,724
in the system. Why would they like this feature? Because it just stops people from owning guns.

464
00:55:35,224 --> 00:55:41,384
You have 4 million people that have been denied. Now, you can go and appeal, okay? But the problem

465
00:55:41,384 --> 00:55:47,324
is that the vast majority of people who appeal are going to have to hire a lawyer. You're talking

466
00:55:47,324 --> 00:55:55,364
about $3,000 on up for a lawyer to go and help you on this. So somebody may want to have a gun,

467
00:55:55,504 --> 00:56:12,224
But is it really worth $3,000 to go through the process to go and get a mistake fixed that was a mistake caused by the government that was no fault of those individuals there and to spend the time to go through the process to go and get things fixed?

468
00:56:13,124 --> 00:56:22,444
The vast majority of people don't think it's worthwhile for their time to go and do that, particularly if you're a lower income or a middle income person.

469
00:56:23,064 --> 00:56:24,464
You know, and there are other things there.

470
00:56:24,504 --> 00:56:25,844
You look at these background checks.

471
00:56:26,124 --> 00:56:31,664
So I don't know, we have like 18 or so states that have these universal background checks,

472
00:56:31,704 --> 00:56:34,464
which are background checks on the private transfers of guns.

473
00:56:35,944 --> 00:56:42,924
So in Washington, D.C., it costs $125 to do a background check on a private transfer for gun.

474
00:56:42,924 --> 00:56:51,684
Now, in a lot of states, you don't see the cost of the background check because it's not like a sales tax that gets added onto it.

475
00:56:51,684 --> 00:56:54,764
It's part of the price of buying the gun when you go and you buy a gun.

476
00:56:56,104 --> 00:57:01,584
But there are, you do see it when you have these private transfer type laws.

477
00:57:01,824 --> 00:57:11,064
And the thing is, let's say you and I were in D.C., Marty, and I'm going to go and give you four guns.

478
00:57:11,244 --> 00:57:14,344
It's just John giving Marty four guns.

479
00:57:14,724 --> 00:57:18,384
You think it's one person giving one person all the guns.

480
00:57:18,484 --> 00:57:20,124
It should just be one background check, right?

481
00:57:20,124 --> 00:57:27,284
But instead, these laws are consistently written to require a separate background check on each gun.

482
00:57:27,864 --> 00:57:37,604
So rather than being $125, which is bad enough to begin with, it would cost $500 to go through the process to do the background check on the gun.

483
00:57:37,604 --> 00:58:01,284
Now, I want somebody to give me a benign explanation for why you would set it up like that, other than you just want to discourage people who are law-abiding, who are going through the process of doing the background check there on a private transfer as opposed to just giving the person a gun and not going through the government background check there.

484
00:58:01,284 --> 00:58:08,384
give me a benign explanation for why you would require a separate background check on each gun

485
00:58:08,384 --> 00:58:15,344
rather than just the one person who's receiving all the guns i've never heard a benign explanation

486
00:58:15,344 --> 00:58:22,484
for it no it doesn't make any sense i mean i think other than they just want to make it costly

487
00:58:22,484 --> 00:58:29,784
for people to be able to go and get guns well and the people are committing crimes who are not going

488
00:58:29,784 --> 00:58:33,164
goes through the background check. Not only is it easy. Well, that's the other thing.

489
00:58:34,264 --> 00:58:38,884
That's the other thing. If you believe these background checks reduce crime, and I'm very

490
00:58:38,884 --> 00:58:46,004
skeptical about it, but let's say you believe it reduces crime, then presumably you want to

491
00:58:46,004 --> 00:58:52,324
encourage people to go out of their way to go and do the background check. I mean, I could just go

492
00:58:52,324 --> 00:58:58,144
and give you the gun, but now we have to go and find a federally licensed dealer, give the gun to

493
00:58:58,144 --> 00:59:02,924
the licensed dealer, pay them, and then they'll transfer it to the other person once they've gone

494
00:59:02,924 --> 00:59:09,524
through the background check. But you don't tax things that you want to encourage people to do,

495
00:59:09,704 --> 00:59:14,124
right? And here we're taxing them to do it. So they're going to do less of it.

496
00:59:14,644 --> 00:59:20,644
The other thing is, if you believe that these background checks reduce crime,

497
00:59:21,144 --> 00:59:26,124
it reduces crime for everybody, not just the law-abiding people who are going out of their

498
00:59:26,124 --> 00:59:34,524
way to go and obey the law that's there. So as an economist, I would say the people who benefit

499
00:59:34,524 --> 00:59:40,884
should be the ones who pay. If everybody benefits, then everybody should pay. Pay for it out of

500
00:59:40,884 --> 00:59:47,124
general revenue. I can't tell you the number of times. So for both of those reasons, that you want

501
00:59:47,124 --> 00:59:52,804
to encourage people to do the background checks, as well as having people who benefit be the ones

502
00:59:52,804 --> 00:59:57,384
who pay. I'd say pay for this out of general revenue if you really believe that these things

503
00:59:57,384 --> 01:00:07,204
are beneficial. But Democrats will fight you tooth and nail against doing that. And to me,

504
01:00:07,204 --> 01:00:14,004
I look at that and I say, you know, that just tells me they like the fact that there's a tax

505
01:00:14,004 --> 01:00:19,584
on people getting guns and that that's the benefit that they think that they're getting out of it.

506
01:00:19,584 --> 01:00:23,244
Yeah, I mean, the

507
01:00:24,744 --> 01:00:37,677
conspiratorial beast that lives in me things the whole push to make it harder to get guns and the push to disarm And I think we should definitely touch on the idea of

508
01:00:37,677 --> 01:00:44,117
But it's the poor people. It's the poor minorities. I mean, Democrats claim that they care about the

509
01:00:44,117 --> 01:00:50,577
poor, that they care about minorities, and yet they adopt these rules that make it so those are

510
01:00:50,577 --> 01:00:55,476
the very people, despite the fact that they're the ones who benefit the most from having guns,

511
01:00:55,836 --> 01:01:02,036
be able to go and get it. I'll give you another example. You look at the fees for getting a

512
01:01:02,036 --> 01:01:08,236
concealed carry permit. There's been a move over many decades to lower the cost of people getting

513
01:01:08,236 --> 01:01:16,396
permits in states that have these rules. Texas, about a decade ago, lowered the fee from $140

514
01:01:16,396 --> 01:01:18,697
for a five-year permit down to $40.

515
01:01:19,697 --> 01:01:23,077
All the Republicans voted for reducing the fee.

516
01:01:24,056 --> 01:01:27,736
All but one of the Democrats voted against reducing the fee.

517
01:01:28,956 --> 01:01:34,476
So, you know, the thing is, when you saw the reduction in the fees,

518
01:01:34,476 --> 01:01:39,657
there was a big increase in the percentage of the permit holders who were black.

519
01:01:39,657 --> 01:01:41,736
you know

520
01:01:41,736 --> 01:01:43,336
I

521
01:01:43,336 --> 01:01:47,157
yeah

522
01:01:47,157 --> 01:01:48,197
it's well

523
01:01:48,197 --> 01:01:51,376
my mind wanders to countries like Australia

524
01:01:51,376 --> 01:01:53,137
because I know many Australians

525
01:01:53,137 --> 01:01:53,976
and they warn

526
01:01:53,976 --> 01:01:57,796
of the gun confiscations

527
01:01:57,796 --> 01:01:58,637
because they say hey

528
01:01:58,637 --> 01:02:01,216
we had pretty good

529
01:02:01,216 --> 01:02:03,556
liberal gun rules here

530
01:02:03,556 --> 01:02:05,697
in Australia and then they took

531
01:02:05,697 --> 01:02:06,596
our guns and

532
01:02:06,596 --> 01:02:16,796
And since then, we've slowly but surely been moving toward a more Orwellian system where the government has a lot more control over our lives.

533
01:02:16,796 --> 01:02:31,836
And when we talk about all the data that you've highlighted over the last hour and it becomes very obvious to anybody with more than two brain cells that can look at statistical and data analysis and say that these things are ineffective.

534
01:02:31,836 --> 01:02:41,356
It's like, OK, you can be beat to dead with these statistics, but yet the left, the Democrats will consistently push to take guns away.

535
01:02:41,936 --> 01:02:49,077
And at some point, the broader public has to acknowledge with this data in mind that it's not really to save lives.

536
01:02:49,077 --> 01:02:53,096
It's to garner control, more control over people's lives.

537
01:02:53,096 --> 01:02:54,096
So that –

538
01:02:54,096 --> 01:03:04,496
Well, you know, Australia is an interesting example because just the amount of misinformation and I would argue statistical malpractice with regard to the data.

539
01:03:04,657 --> 01:03:18,476
So you'll very frequently hear claims that there's been like 50 percent drops in firearm homicides or firearm suicides after the gun confiscation that they had in 96 and 97.

540
01:03:18,476 --> 01:03:26,577
About 30 percent of the guns that were owned in the country, legally owned, were confiscated.

541
01:03:27,876 --> 01:03:38,796
And you would imagine if that worked, you should have seen an immediate sharp drop that had occurred.

542
01:03:39,316 --> 01:03:40,516
That's not what you see.

543
01:03:42,056 --> 01:03:46,577
Let's say you had a perfectly straight line that was falling over the whole period.

544
01:03:46,577 --> 01:03:53,736
you could take any point along that line, and the after average is going to be below the before

545
01:03:53,736 --> 01:03:58,216
average. And that's what all the comparisons are. They just compare the after average with the

546
01:03:58,216 --> 01:04:04,796
before average. What you find when you look at the Australian data is that for 15 years prior

547
01:04:04,796 --> 01:04:10,876
to the confiscation, firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates were falling.

548
01:04:10,876 --> 01:04:21,276
So if it had continued falling at exactly the same rate after the confiscation as it had beforehand, you'd look at it and say, it doesn't look like it had any impact.

549
01:04:21,736 --> 01:04:25,936
What you want to do is, does it fall at a faster rate or a slower rate?

550
01:04:26,276 --> 01:04:31,796
Is there some type of discontinuity that occurred in the line right at the point in time when it occurred?

551
01:04:32,657 --> 01:04:37,296
And so when you look at it, what you in fact define it, so it's falling for 15 years prior

552
01:04:37,296 --> 01:04:44,056
and firearm homicide rates actually stopped falling after that for about eight years.

553
01:04:44,236 --> 01:04:47,816
I look at that and I say, look, it was falling.

554
01:04:47,916 --> 01:04:49,497
It immediately stopped falling.

555
01:04:49,497 --> 01:04:54,036
If anything, it seems like it had a pernicious effect rather than a benefit that everybody

556
01:04:54,036 --> 01:04:54,416
claims.

557
01:04:54,536 --> 01:05:00,336
It's simply going looking at the before and after average when I have this big drop in

558
01:05:00,336 --> 01:05:07,436
the 15 years beforehand gives me an after average that's below the before average, even though it had

559
01:05:07,436 --> 01:05:16,356
a pernicious effect that was there. And the same thing basically true for firearm suicides.

560
01:05:16,816 --> 01:05:23,077
But there are other issues that are there. If you look at suicides, one thing that I would always

561
01:05:23,077 --> 01:05:28,176
argue is that you should look at total suicides rather than just firearm suicides. There are lots

562
01:05:28,176 --> 01:05:34,976
the substitutes. Before, when we were talking about either gun bans on all guns or all handgun

563
01:05:34,976 --> 01:05:42,296
bans, not only did you see murder and homicide rates go up after the ban, but what you also saw

564
01:05:42,296 --> 01:05:50,497
was no change in total suicides. Firearm suicides may go down, but total suicides just do not change

565
01:05:50,497 --> 01:06:06,269
after you have these bans And basically what happens is that people switch into other ways of going and committing suicide There are lots of substitutes that are quote equally successful for people who want to go and commit suicide with

566
01:06:06,849 --> 01:06:12,369
There's a lot of misinformation in terms of how people compare different methods of committing suicide.

567
01:06:12,969 --> 01:06:16,489
Some methods which are actually even less painful than using a gun.

568
01:06:19,029 --> 01:06:21,989
And so what you want to look at what's happening in total suicide.

569
01:06:21,989 --> 01:06:29,389
And total suicides actually went up in Australia after the confiscation there.

570
01:06:29,629 --> 01:06:36,009
And I'm not going to go and claim that it increased total suicides, but it sure as heck is evidence

571
01:06:36,009 --> 01:06:37,189
that it didn't decrease it.

572
01:06:38,509 --> 01:06:41,229
You know, and there are other issues that are happening there.

573
01:06:41,289 --> 01:06:47,509
One of the big things that also needs to be pointed is that while you had this 30% confiscation,

574
01:06:47,669 --> 01:06:51,969
people were able to go and buy guns again after the confiscation.

575
01:06:51,989 --> 01:06:59,589
And by 2010, the gun ownership rate in Australia was above what it was prior to the confiscation.

576
01:07:00,189 --> 01:07:11,489
So if the gun control advocates are correct, what you should have seen is an immediate sharp drop in these numbers that they're looking at with firearm homicides or suicides.

577
01:07:11,589 --> 01:07:19,169
And then a gradual increase over time until you get to the gun ownership rate being above what it was beforehand.

578
01:07:19,169 --> 01:07:23,589
You know, probably about a decade later, it would have been above what it was beforehand.

579
01:07:24,089 --> 01:07:25,309
That's not what you see.

580
01:07:25,469 --> 01:07:28,289
You don't see this immediate sharp drop in an increase.

581
01:07:28,529 --> 01:07:33,129
You see it stopped falling and basically flat afterwards.

582
01:07:33,809 --> 01:07:37,709
And so, you know, it's on so many different levels.

583
01:07:38,129 --> 01:07:44,769
It's just that, you know, the New York Times and other things just keep repeating these

584
01:07:44,769 --> 01:07:49,949
false claims there about what impact it had on crime rates.

585
01:07:50,089 --> 01:07:56,669
And my guess is a lot of people in Australia, you know, believe it just because, you know,

586
01:07:56,669 --> 01:07:58,489
you talk about the impact of the media.

587
01:07:58,489 --> 01:08:05,169
The media is just constantly repeating the same things over and over again, just looking

588
01:08:05,169 --> 01:08:11,269
at just the simple before and after averages, which in this case, as in many others, is

589
01:08:11,269 --> 01:08:12,969
just very misleading.

590
01:08:14,769 --> 01:08:26,729
Well, another thing that's misleading to is I mentioned earlier, but this fascination with assault weapons, AR-15s specifically.

591
01:08:26,729 --> 01:08:36,509
And one thing I think that you've done really well throughout your career, I was actually watching a C-SPAN interview you did four years ago.

592
01:08:36,509 --> 01:08:46,689
And you were highlighting that assault weapons ban and the fascination with AR-15 is completely nonsensical because it is essentially a Glock that just looks different.

593
01:08:48,329 --> 01:08:55,629
Right. Well, I mean, most of the guns sold in the United States are semi-automatic guns, but 85 percent of the guns sold in the United States are semi-automatic.

594
01:08:56,449 --> 01:09:00,129
That's one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out, it reloads itself.

595
01:09:02,209 --> 01:09:05,729
There's a benefit for civilians having semi-automatic guns.

596
01:09:05,729 --> 01:09:15,249
I mean, if you have to fire more than one shot in self-defense, you may not have the time to manually reload your gun.

597
01:09:15,389 --> 01:09:16,709
I mean, so we have three types of guns.

598
01:09:16,889 --> 01:09:19,529
One is manually reloading.

599
01:09:19,629 --> 01:09:23,809
After you fire a shot, you have to yourself physically chamber another bullet.

600
01:09:24,309 --> 01:09:28,509
Another was semi-automatic, which after you fire, it reloads itself.

601
01:09:28,509 --> 01:09:37,369
And then the third is fully automatic or machine gun, which as long as you have the trigger depressed, bullets will get fired that are there.

602
01:09:38,889 --> 01:09:47,429
And you just don't see crimes being committed with automatic weapons in the United States.

603
01:09:47,589 --> 01:09:51,229
The assault weapons ban just dealt with semi-automatic guns.

604
01:09:51,229 --> 01:09:53,809
And the thing is, you have something like an AR-15.

605
01:09:54,629 --> 01:10:04,689
It has a .223 caliber bullet, so that's a little bit less than a quarter of an inch in diameter that you have there.

606
01:10:05,729 --> 01:10:10,189
Essentially, it's the equivalent of a small caliber hunting rifle.

607
01:10:10,189 --> 01:10:14,929
So you ban basically the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

608
01:10:15,069 --> 01:10:20,449
You had Senator Feinstein's staff go through gun catalogs.

609
01:10:20,449 --> 01:10:29,309
And basically based on how the guns looked, they would include them by listing their names, whether or not the gun was banned or not.

610
01:10:29,949 --> 01:10:36,729
And so the manufacturer could make some slight cosmetic change and rename the gun and be able to resell it.

611
01:10:36,949 --> 01:10:47,549
Or you had other guns that were functionally identical, firing the same bullets with the same rapidity, doing the same damage that were never banned to begin with.

612
01:10:47,549 --> 01:10:55,929
Why anybody would think that the assault weapons ban would have any impact on crime rates is not immediately obvious to me.

613
01:10:57,869 --> 01:11:05,729
And in fact, the vast majority of academic research that's been done on this finds that it had no impact.

614
01:11:05,729 --> 01:11:49,021
The one thing that Biden and Democrats would constantly refer to is there this one study by this guy named Louis Clarivas who was at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst at the time who has his own definition of mass public shootings And he claimed that the number of attacks fell during the assault weapons ban and then went up afterwards But here the problem And that is even if you take his definition of assault weapons okay and his definition of what constitutes a mass public shooting what you should have seen if it was the law that was driving the changes

615
01:11:49,021 --> 01:11:58,082
is that the percentage of mass public shootings involving these so-called assault weapons was driving the drop.

616
01:11:58,282 --> 01:12:03,841
The percentage of attacks involving assault weapons should have fallen during the assault weapons ban

617
01:12:03,841 --> 01:12:11,142
and that the percentage of attacks involving assault weapons after its sunset should have increased.

618
01:12:11,381 --> 01:12:12,742
You see the opposite.

619
01:12:12,742 --> 01:12:21,801
Even using his data, when the assault weapons ban went into effect, the percentage of attacks involving assault weapons increased.

620
01:12:22,522 --> 01:12:30,282
So it can't be the fact that people weren't using assault weapons then was driving the drop then that was occurring.

621
01:12:30,522 --> 01:12:35,721
And when it sunset, the percent of attacks involving the so-called assault weapons fell.

622
01:12:35,721 --> 01:12:45,022
So, you know, I don't know how much more simply you can make the point there about what's driving the change.

623
01:12:45,101 --> 01:12:48,122
There are lots of reasons why these numbers go up and down over time.

624
01:12:48,202 --> 01:12:57,221
But if it's the assault weapons ban that was driving it, then the percentage should have fallen during the ban and then increased when the ban ended.

625
01:12:57,342 --> 01:12:58,122
You got the opposite.

626
01:12:58,122 --> 01:13:07,582
what can we do excuse me to make this more obvious like what what do you in your mind

627
01:13:07,582 --> 01:13:14,761
what needs to happen really shows like yours i guess uh you know i i kind of feel overwhelmed

628
01:13:14,761 --> 01:13:22,381
with my center uh my center uh you know we have like five people that work for us uh we have a

629
01:13:22,381 --> 01:13:28,761
budget about $400,000 a year. The federal government gives out $100 million a year for

630
01:13:28,761 --> 01:13:36,461
public health research on guns. We did a survey a while ago of academic researchers

631
01:13:36,461 --> 01:13:46,742
who had published peer-reviewed academic research on guns. And criminologists and economists were

632
01:13:46,742 --> 01:13:54,242
very skeptical about gun control. The policies that they thought would be most likely to reduce

633
01:13:54,242 --> 01:14:00,342
murders and mass public shootings were things like getting rid of gun-free zones that we talked

634
01:14:00,342 --> 01:14:06,801
about earlier. But the public health people are most sympathetic to gun control, and they're the

635
01:14:06,801 --> 01:14:12,162
ones who get the federal money. Michael Bloomberg spends a couple hundred million dollars a year

636
01:14:12,162 --> 01:14:19,842
on financing this. You have places like the Arnold Foundation, which has put in $50 million a year

637
01:14:19,842 --> 01:14:26,322
to places like RAND. You have other ones like Soros that puts in about $20 million a year.

638
01:14:26,322 --> 01:14:34,961
And then you have places like different states from California, which puts in $10 million a year

639
01:14:34,961 --> 01:14:44,022
to public health, Hawaii, New Mexico, you know, across the country to Massachusetts that put in,

640
01:14:44,061 --> 01:14:49,941
you know, more millions of dollars into this stuff. So I don't know how they spend so much money

641
01:14:49,941 --> 01:15:00,181
on this type of thing. But and you have these kind of biases in it. You know, I wish we could

642
01:15:00,181 --> 01:15:07,322
go and hire another researcher to go and do this type of stuff. Maybe another research assistant

643
01:15:07,322 --> 01:15:14,402
to go and help us put data together quickly on these types of issues. But, you know, we do what

644
01:15:14,402 --> 01:15:23,941
we can on these things. You know, so, but it's being on shows like yours, you know, to try to

645
01:15:23,941 --> 01:15:29,002
educate people on it. And nobody needs to take my word for any of this stuff. If they go to our

646
01:15:29,002 --> 01:15:36,542
website at crimeresearch.org and they click on any of the links that we have there for the studies

647
01:15:36,542 --> 01:15:48,861
and research that we do, what you'll find is that I have another interview I'm supposed to be doing

648
01:15:48,861 --> 01:15:56,582
right now. So I apologize. Well, I mean, we're ending on a good note. Go to crimeresearch.org.

649
01:15:56,582 --> 01:16:01,322
help John out. You guys accept Bitcoin for donations.

650
01:16:01,322 --> 01:16:09,322
Yeah. And I know I know Bitcoiners are passionate about at least some are passionate about issues like this.

651
01:16:09,342 --> 01:16:15,842
So if you want to help John and his team at Cripe Prevention Research, make sure.

652
01:16:16,802 --> 01:16:22,721
You go you go donate, because I think the data that you're getting out there, the research that you're doing is very important.

653
01:16:22,721 --> 01:16:35,322
And I think the gun control debate that has been sort of put in front of people in the United States is woefully misguided and not backed by good data and research.

654
01:16:35,322 --> 01:16:37,422
And what you're providing is that good data and research.

655
01:16:37,522 --> 01:16:39,242
So, John, thank you for that.

656
01:16:39,401 --> 01:16:43,901
Make sure you guys go pick up the book, More Guns, Less Crime and Gun Control Myths.

657
01:16:43,981 --> 01:16:46,261
We'll link to this, these in the show notes.

658
01:16:46,502 --> 01:16:48,282
And thank you for your work, John.

659
01:16:48,342 --> 01:16:49,181
Thank you for joining us.

660
01:16:49,681 --> 01:16:50,221
Thank you.

661
01:16:50,282 --> 01:16:51,361
I appreciate you being there.

662
01:16:51,822 --> 01:16:52,622
Appreciate it.

663
01:16:52,721 --> 01:16:53,721
All right. Thank you very much.

664
01:16:54,261 --> 01:16:54,681
Thank you.