hello and welcome to press tv spotlight, i'm marsia hashimi, thanks so much for being with us, well in a country which was founded on violence and one we're currently there are more guns than people, it should not be a surprise that once again the united states has witnessed political violence. former us president donald trump was shot in the ear during assassination attempt, this is the

country where almost 10% of the presidents have been assassinated and even more attempted assassinations, but why? well stay with us as we look at all of this and what it means on this spotlight. i'd like to welcome my guests to the program. out of rochester, new york, david k. johnson, investigative journalist, author and founder of dcr report.org out of tampa flor. neil mccape, conservative political commentator and national political reporter for redstate.com. thank you both for being with me. i like to start this off uh with david in rochester. um, let's look a statement made by us president joe biden regarding the assassination of tip, and he said that there's, there's not a place for this kind of violence in america. your thoughts about this. statement and and what exactly does it

mean when in the us, i mean there are at least 44,00 americans that are killed every year by guns, well i think the number killed is 24,000 not 44,000 and that's homicides, um, but homic kill killed by guns means homicides and suicides, so all together, but go ahead, yeah, but not all homicides are by gun and not all suicides are, but these are by gun, i'm sorry, sorry to interrupt you, i just want to be exact cuz it's really important as a journalist, when i was researching this... "it was considered homicides and suicides by gun, but but go ahead. okay, without a question, there is way too much gun violence in the world. there is modern uh mature economy in the world, no democracy in the world, anywhere near the level of the united states when it comes to gun violence, and it is the goal of uh donald trump and many of his supporters that there be no rules whatsoever about carrying guns uh." "the the second amendment of the

american constitution doesn't refer to guns, it refers to arms and i have written in the past that if you want to be an absolutist about the second amendment, we now have nuclear weapons that will fit in the backpack, and i want a personal nuclear weapon, because nobody will mess with me if i'm carrying one around. clearly we have a problem in the us with people having weapons like the one used in attempt to kill donald trump, that are intended to be mil'. military weapons used on the field of battle don't belong in the civilian arena, but in america you can walk into a restaurant, a movie theater, department store, and you will see people carrying not just guns on their hips, but assault rifles slung over their shoulder. yeah, that's pretty frightening. well, neil, i mean, let's talk about this in general, because would you say that the united states is just in general a very... violent society,

i mean, we remember even the violence that took place, let's say on january 6, 2021, do you think that americans in general uh seem to feel that by taking up guns, i mean it's more of an american tradition, david just talked about the second amendment and and the roots may lie there, but i mean your overall assessment, well i think uh humans are v people and in america people are free. to be humans and uh there are less controls that that we see in other countries and the founding fathers and for the last 250 plus years we've basically made the decision that we would rather have freedom than too much government control and i want to remind you that the american revolution started at lexington and conquered because king george and his troops were sent to get the guns from the farmers that they were storing in... and

lexington and so it's uh, it's it's really interwoven into the american story, into the of american dna that to have a free society, to have a free country that americans... have the freedom to be armed, not everybody wants to be armed, not everybody is armed, but for the people who want to protect themselves, their families, their farms, their livelihood, well that should be their right, and when the mob is marching down the street, looking to attack and looking to burn down buildings when there is a failure of the government to preserve tranquility, what other choice do americans have, and let's talk about that, let's talk buse, isn't that the responsibility? of any government actually makes sure that their society is secure, not the individual citizens, so what happens like we saw it in los angeles, what 2030s ago, when there were the la riots and police literally abandoned the korean

neighborhoods, there was zero protection as there was as there was mayhem and chaos in that neighborhood, the korean americans had to go to the rooftops to protect their neighborhoods. we saw it evaldi in texas, we saw it in the nightclub shootings and then we see another failure in butler pennsylvania, just because law enforcement fails doesn't mean you take away the rights of americans, because the americans want that right in case government fails, it's a circular argument does not help people make them safe, right, right, it's actually quite minoggling, can i say, well, david, um, when the... the united states was actually um founded on violence and currently there are more guns than there are people. are you surprised by this event by assassination attempt? no, i mean we don't know much about the young man, a republican who shot at donald trump, and i hope we find

out much more, but let me point out that we have always had gun controls in the united states, including british colonial area under the first american republic which only lasted seven years and the... institution in dodge city, kansas, now that is the iconic image town for the frontier old west, you were required at the city limits to holster your weapon and to go to the sheriff's office and to turn it in, you not allowed to go down the street, to go to a bar, to do anything armed with a gun, and the idea that individual americans are better off with all these guns, i think is disproven by the fact that other democratic or modern. country allows this and nobody else has the level of gun deaths that we do in america uh so i i reject totally your other guests argument that be honest okay david when you're driving through washington when you're driving through david

when you're driving through trenton new jersey you don't want to be armed are you crazy i go to trenton new jersey fairly often and also i don't interrupt people try. to have some manners, trop me aggressive, i go to harlem, i go to many places and i'm somebody who is personally hunted down murderers and confronted them and gotten them arrested, so yes, i have no problem with that, i live five block outside of one of the cities that has one of the highest murder rates in america, but it turns out all the excuse me, it turns out almost all the crime occurs in three of... 40 zip cotes, it's highly concentrated, what you're spewing is just classic with me, neil, stay with me, i thought this would have a conversation, he just ranting and i'm never going to get over again, yeah, it's your turn now, go ahead, go ahead neil, first of all, i just want to address the quick point that the united

states was was created out of violence, i would say virtually every country was created by an act of violence, mean they just happen, it's a revolution if the rebel when it's a civil war if the government wins, it was also, it was also a genocide of the native americans, let's let's remember that, we're talking about, let's deal with the united states, let's deal with the united states in the context of other countries rather than comparing us with candyland, first of all, second of all, americans are not feeling safe, we do not feel protected by our government, we do not feel protected by law enforcement and "when government fails, americans want the right to protect themselves and that's the bottom line. the vast majority of american gun owners wish to god that they did not have to have a gun, but this is a this, this is decision forced upon them by the failure of the government to

create a tranquil society. what we saw in butler pennsylvania, was a failure of law enforcement, we saw waldi was a failure, what we..." thought these school shooting is a failure where law enforcement will literally wait for the victims to bleed out rather than to seek to seek the killer and take him down and so... he's supposed to do, honestly you, he can say he he's he doesn't feel, he feels david feels safe going through harlem, he feels safe going through trenton, he feels safe going through these neighborhoods in washington dc, god bless him because in washington dc, sodomor, the just supreme court justice of the united states was carjacked like a week ago, i mean so if you have supreme court justice who isn't safe in washington dc, then where are we? so so wouldn't you say then that the problem, there's something more fundamental here? with the problem that the people, the individual people have to protect themselves, i mean

it's not the old west, we're talking about 224, there systems that are in place throughout the world, that societies are safe, so what is it about the united states that it is not safe? well, maybe we should stop hugging the thugs and put them in jail and keep them in jail, maybe we need to expand the death penalty so that so that families of victims understand that what they went through is... valuable to society and so that criminals understand that they will be held accountable. criminals do not feel like they will be held accountable in this country. they go to jail where they are treated well and they are pampered, they get their masters degree, the the victims, the children of their victims can't go to college, but the murderers get their master's degree in college. it's an absurd system that we have in this country. david, um, mean, there's a long history of violence. politics in the us, if we look at the 60s and 70s where several people were assassinated from

president john f kennedy to martin luther king, malcol max, robert kennedy and others, and of course in the 80s we had president ronald reagan and attempted assassination that was shot, so political violence not foreign to this society, i want your assessment overall of this and and why is this the case in your perspective? well, a political alliance absolutely has. has been endemic to american society from the beginning, whether it was, as you pointed out, the taking of land from the indigenous peoples here, right up to the shooting yesterday of mr. trump and the unfortunate supporter of his who was killed. gun violence begets gun violence, more guns equals more killings. the simple fact is the us is an outlier in the world in terms of its gun. violence, the amount of guns it has, and i take it that your other guest, unlike me, has

not spent a great deal of his life with law enforcement and talking to people who are criminals, prisons, putting people in prison simply breeds more crime, it doesn't address the reasons that we have crime, now uh, i'm sure that your other guest won't agree with that whatsoever, but look at canada, australia, new zealand, england, france, italy. they don't have any level of crime like we do in america and we don't have any level of homicides by gun as in the united states. there is no reason for a civilian to carry assault rifle, a weapon specifically designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible in a military battlefield. okay, well - neil, um, republican congress and mike kelly from pennsylvania says the blame lies somewhere in the psychey of america. your thoughts on that statement, what do you think he meant by that? i uh, it it boggles my mind that he

would say something so stupid. it's uh, i can't read the congressman's mind, and doubt very much that he can read the mind of america. i think that the bottom line is that uh, if americans, americans feel threatened, they should have the right to arm themselves and if someone's it's if someone's going to tell me that i can't. protect my family, i can't protect myself, my business, the people i care about, then then i'm really offended, and the idea that you're just, i'm supposed to just take my chances because of some stupid ideal that somebody cooked up in academia or wherever it came from, it's absurd. in the real world, in the real world, most americans who own guns wish they didn't have to own a gun, but they do it out of necessity and they don't do, they do it out of love, love for them for them. selves, their family, their livelihood and their community, the people who walk around their

communities with cast, with with who are armed, they are like shepherds amongst us. okay, a best case scenario for a cop showing up a shooting is 10 or 15 minutes, okay? these by the time the cops show up, they're just putting yellow tape around the crime scene and taking statements, if someone is armed and at the scene, they can take down the threat in seconds. "and that that saves lives, and we there are no statistics for all the crimes and all the lives save because americans are armed, but i would guess it's probably million a year of these things that go on, and i, it's never happen." to me personally, but i know number of people who have saved their own lives and the lives of others just by brandishing a weapon and getting themselves out of very dangerous situation, but the i guess the alter your alternative for them would be put your weapon down, get shot, and in 15 minutes a police officer will show up and take crime pictures.

yeah, can can i just say, i mean this is very interesting conversation for me as an american, uh, growing up in the united states and living. in iran now, a country where as i a woman, i can actually in this major city of tehran, i don't 10 million people, but i can actually go out and walk at two o'clock in the morning by myself and not expect to get shot, so so so it's it's really mind boggling why the united states with its uh sophistication, technology um being the uh the hegemon of the world, why it cannot keep its own people safe? i mean, i guess this is the man. question at hand, but but let me let me just go on, i mean um, i would in iran they don't let the criminal out of jail, i think that the the justice system in iran is swift and appropriate, and if somebody rapes and murders a child, i imagine they don't get three years with probation, yeah, that's for sure, iran, that's for sure, if someone rapes a murdered child, that definitely for sure

that is the case, well, david, i mean, um, let's talk about um, this whole situation, because i don't. sitting here, it it seems somewhat ironic that we have trump and also biden, both individuals, let me just say, who have allowed an order assassinations of of people, now there's such outrage um, because i mean, this is, i'm so sorry, but this is what we see from the united states, whether we're talking about under donald trump that he assassinated, of course we know lieutenant colonel um solimoni who was in another country who had fought the terrorists, the dish terrorists. and trump ordered the assassination in other country, even though he was invited by iraq and bragged about it. or we're talking about biden who is supporting right now, genocide in gaza, a palestinian babies who've been cut to pieces, so it's amazing the outrage. i mean, your take, david. well, the world is look a very complicated place, and unlike neil, unho just

said he was speaking for millions of americans, but the congressman doesn't know the mind of americans, i'm not. to try to do that uh, the fact is that the president of the united states, because the us is facto empire, uh, whoever it is, is going to end up using his position as commander and chief to order killings of people, and some of those are going to be really bad decisions as with the iranian military officer, where it provoked unnecessary responses, it is one thing to shoot a sniper, it's another... thing to pick out a political target as donald trump did, and part of the reason for that is donald, who i've known for 36 years, written three best selling books about him, and i was the first person to write that he might become president of the united states in 1988, 36 years ago. donald doesn't know anything. if you ask donald, what's the difference between a sunni and a shia, he

would have no idea, and i don't expect most americans to know that, but the president of the united states better know that very... well, so there are always contradictions in the world, i think the issue about violence in america that needs to be addressed is that we have over 390 million guns in this country, other country has a gun ownership rate anything like that, we allow any kind of gun, you have to show identification to buy certain kinds of medicine if you sold at the drug store, but not if you buy an assault rifle and the bullets that go in it, and that's the core. the problem here and combined with that we get things like neil making up history and not recognizing that we've always had gun controls in america as my example showed with dodge city, kansas. well, neil, it though, there has been calls for national unity, i have been monitoring social media after this assassination attempt, how likely is this to cause greater

division in the country, as there are many questions still surrounding the overall assass. nation: well because of our political system, especially as you get closer and closer to the election and then very much during the election when there's actual voting, the system is uh forces people into a binary choice, which is why there's always talk of third-party candidates, in fact abraham lincoln was a third party candidate, but in the end it's you know it's black or it's white you know, and that's it, and so there's going to be division because our system forces you to make decision, in effect there's no middle ground, you either pick the republican or you pick the democrat, but you to go back to your really, i think the point of this conversation is political violence in the... united states, i do want to point out that the leader of the republican party who got more than 70 million votes in 2020, there

was a there was an attempt to kill him, and yet no cities were burned, nobody was tearing down any statues, no police stations were torched, and so at least on the republican side, which you was often the smurched to sort of the party of so-called insurrection, there was no political violence. in response to this assassination attempt on president trump, i don't know if you could say the same if it happened to someone on the left. i suspect since uh it's been my experience as a reporter uh covering antipa democratic politics uh even in massachusetts, the carpenters union uh that political violence is is very much a part of left-wing politics. okay, david, any final comments, you have 30 seconds. well, i think we need to recognize that violence in america is a long endemic problem, that donald trump has repeatedly made public calls for violence. he's told people to beat up people in his audience and

he'd pay their legal bills, which he would never do, and donald trump is a man of violence, he's called for the executions of people who didn't even get trials like the central park five who are later exonerated, and you have to see him in that context. he's not a politician, he's a conartist to has declared he wants to be... dictator, something i said in 2015, wrote in 2016, would be his plan, he would never peacefully leave the white house, and that's what we saw with his failed coup three years ago. okay, all right, and on that note, i think both of you for being with me. david k, johnson, investigative journalist, founder of dc report.org, out of rochester, new york, neil mccape, conservative political commentator, national political reporter for redstate.com out of tample florida, and thank you viewers for being with us. on another spotlight, i'm time, goodbye, hashimi, hope to see you right here next

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