this is "gps." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. today, the massacre on the las vegas strip. yet another stark reminder of america's extraordinary gun problem. the time to talk about it is now and that is what we are going to do for this entire show. what can we learn from other

countries? what does the second amendment actually say? what could the united states government do to keep its citizens safer? call this the stop the madness show. and now here's my take. >> he was a sick man a demented man. >> that was donald trump trying to explain the latest mass shooting in the united states. we hear this view expressed routinely after every new incident but it is a dodge, a distortion of the facts and a cop out as to the necessary response. there's no evidence that the las vegas shooter was insane. you'll notice by the way i prefer not to use his name and give him publicity. we won't show his photo either. he did not have a history of mental illness that we know of nor reported for behavior that would suggest any such condition.

he was clearly an evil man. but evil is not crazy. if we define the attempt to take an innocent human being's life as madness, then, of course, every murderer is mad. if not we should recognize it is a meaningless term that adds little to our understanding of the problem. actually the quick assumption of mental illness distorts the discussion. first it smears people who have mental disorders such people are not inherently highly prone to violence. they are more often than not victims of violence than perpetrators and to the extent that some are violent they are more likely to inflict harm on themselves. second, turning immediately to the sickness of the shooter, and calling for better mental health care is more often than not an attempt to divert attention from the main issue, guns. every conversation about gun deaths should begin by recognizing one blindingly clear fact about this problem -- the united states is on its own

planet. the gun death rate in the u.s. is ten times that of other advanced industrial countries. places like japan and south korea is close to zero gun related deaths in a year. the united states has around 30,000. this disparity is the central fact that needs to be studied, explained and addressed. when seen in this light it becomes obvious why focusing on mental health is a dodge. the rate of mental illness in the united states is not 40 times the rate in britain, but the rate of gun deaths is 40 times higher than in britain. now america does have about 15 times as many guns as britain per capita and far fewer restrictions on their ownership and use. and this is not simply a case of america being different from the rest of the world. data looked carefully at gun violence across america states finds a similarly tight correlation.

those that have the highest percentage of gun ownership have among the most gun related deaths and those with some of the lowest rates of gun ownership have the fewest deaths. how to tackle this issue is a more complex problem made particularly difficult by the fact that we refuse to study it. literally. one of the many government agencies that sponsors research on public health centers for disease control, has been virtually forbidden by law from doing any research on gun violence and public policy for two decades. a law championed by the nra essentially prohibits the cdc from sponsoring research that might advocate or promote gun control. in america, in 2017, we have a ban on scientific research that might lead to inconvenient conclusions. given the second amendment, the gun culture, the influence of

the gun lobby, there isn't any simple answer but there are many small fixes that might make a big difference. universal background checks, restrictions on military-style weaponry, of which banning bump stocks would be a tiny first step. a ban on selling to people with a history of domestic violence or substance abuse. but first we have to stop the dodges and the diversions. when you consider america's stubborn inaction in the face of this continuing and preventable epidemic of gun violence, i sometimes wonder, if it is all of us americans who are crazy. for more go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. ♪ let's dig deeper into america's gun problem and how the world sees it with three guests who have interesting inciteful columns about it.

thomas friedman the author of "thank you for being late." he is, of course, also a "new york times" op-ed columnist. his column this week envisioned how different it would have been if the las vegas shooter had been muslim. david frum is a senior editor at the atlantic his article for that publication was "mass shootings don't lead to inaction they lead to loosening gun restrictions". and leah libresco is a stat ta stigs who used to write for 538. i will tell you about her piece in just a moment. tom, let me ask you what you meant when you said that this event would have been dealt with very differently if the guy had been a muslim? >> well, let's begin by the fact, fareed, that had this been an attack by a muslim related to isis or al qaeda it would have been the second largest terrorist attack in america -- largest terrorist attack since 9/11. and we know how president trump reacts to those kind of events, how society we react. the president immediately tweets

when there is a terrorist incident in europe, doesn't wait for the facts and immediately politicizes them. we know he's trying to impose a ban on predominantly muslim countries to prevent people traveling here who he thinks would commit terrorist acts, trying to build a wall on the mexican border. i'm sure we would have had a nonpartisan commission to investigate how this act happened, who let these people through. we know what happens when there's an incident like this from our own history. and, of course, in this case, basically nothing is happening. there's some talk of, you know, limiting the application mechanism this guy used to more rapidly fire bullets but when the perpetrator is a foreign country, we immediately say, what was the country of origin and how do we attack this and how do we prevent it from happening again. when the country of origin is us we hear no evil, speak to evil and say no evil. >> and david frum, of course, the numbers are staggering,

something like under 100 people have been killed in terrorist attacks since 9/11 and we have spent trillions of dollars on it and meanwhile, something like 150,000 people have died of gun deaths since 9/11 and as you point out, gun laws keep getting loser after each of these events. why is that? >> public opinion believes guns make you safer. there are many illusions in this debate, one is the great and good american people want gun control thwarted by a few selfish interest groups. that's not true. the great and good american people believe and that belief has been rising over the past 20 years that guns make them safer. and it's just not considered politics to say the great and good american people are wrong, wrong about that, mistaken. guns are in the home make -- are dangerous. if you keep a gun in your house you're putting your children at risk. suicide, accident, homicide. we restrict ourselves to certain topics because we have such a powerful vested interest and as

a result we have reached a point where it is perfectly legal in 44 of the 50 states for a gunman to strap a weapon of war around his neck, walk to within a certain number of paces of a school, typically 1,000 paces and so long as he doesn't take the pace to the 999th pace, no one can say anything to him. want to have gun safety begin with the assumption that gun ownership is a privilege, not a right, and that gun owners can be checked for the responsibility that they say they have and so often lack. >> you know, david, david brooks of the "new york times" used your column as a starting off point and his argument is, that the reason we have this increase in support for guns is that people are confronting a kind of post-industrial world in which there's very little that gives them a sense of almost tribal emotional security and guns play that role. does that strike you as right? >> i think that's right. one of the rules, again, of this debate we have to act as if the

desire for gun ownership is rationale no matter how blatantly the fantasies are expressed racial fears and sexual anxieties. a lot is about reasserting a man's place in a world in which many american men feel displaced. how can you be a loser if you're able to kill so many people. >> tom friedman, you travel the world a lot. how do you think people are reacting around the world to something like this? >> well, fareed, i want to go back to your point about david brooks' article that this is in many ways a cultural phenomena and we're facing two of those. i think the response of the very same people to the threat of climate change is also really based on culture. it's based on a certain identity marker that, you know, real men don't believe in climate change. but basically if you step back and think about what we're saying, in the wake of the two most ferocious hurricanes in the atlantic, that we've ever

reported that have caused now about $200 billion in damage, and in the wake of a mass killing in las vegas, that has killed almost 60 people and wounded, you know, 400 or 500 others, we have a party, the republican party, that is saying the right response to both of those things for their kids and the future of the country is to do nothing. and that is a travesty. >> well, and, you know, as leah, you point out, i pointed out, there is essentially a ban on doing any kind of research on this issue. when we come back, so is gun control the answer? maybe not. leah libresco will tell us what she found when she studied the subject. non-insulin victoza® lowers a1c, and now reduces cardiovascular risk. victoza® lowers my a1c and blood sugar better than the leading branded pill. (avo) and for people with type 2 diabetes

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and we are back with tom friedman, david frum and leah libresco. you wrote an article that went viral in "the washington post" titled "i used to think gun control was the answer. my research told me otherwise." quickly summarize what you meant? >> when i started looking much more deeply at proposals on gun control what i found is some gun control proposals are incoherent. we saw both hillary clinton and kaine this week praise limiting silencers as a response to a las vegas shooting when silencers, you know, are badly named. they don't make guns silent, they make them slightly quieter but noisy. this is the thing i repeated hearing this praise, hearing assault weapons ban praised when assault weapons are just a gun that has too many features snapped on like lego bricks at point of sale, once you take it home you can add them back on yourself. so those kinds of policies are just often incoherent posed by someone who doesn't know anything about guns and they

erode the credibility of politicians proposing more serious solutions. >> but i have to say, you know, i looked at your article and i was struck by the fact that this is a very complicated subject and there's so many variables that it's difficult to find a very tight correlation but there is one mammoth study of study, usually the scientific gold standard in the journal of epidemiology, which points out that there's overwhelming evidence that tighter gun control, fewer guns, has an impact. you can see it by the fact that the united states has ten times as many gun deaths as any other advanced country. you can see it within american states, the countries that have more -- the states that have more guns versus the states that have fewer. it felt like you were trying to find a controversial conclusion and then cherrypicked the evidence to support it. >> not at all. i really believe if there were a lot fewer guns tomorrow, magically in the u.s., we would see a lot fewer gun deaths because guns would not be

available to people at the moment of considering suicide, the moment of being angry, as easily when committing a crime, but the question is what policies could actually get us to that place. what i looked at was policies in britain and australia looking at the marginal change caused by gun bans and gun buybacks. in both of those countries you didn't kind of see that massive exciting shift i wanted to see. it didn't transform a country into a much lower gun prevalence country partly because when you do a buyback you're not sure which guns you're buying back. >> in many of these cases in britain, for example, the rates of violence are so low -- >> that's also true. >> almost impossible to tell what the -- >> in england the gun deaths kept rising after the buyback which doesn't mean it made it worse, whatever else was going on may have swamped whatever effect it has. you know, as a data person looking at the data i would root for a clearer result from gun buybacks but instead you see a rise in england after the

buyback -- >> from a tiny number to a slightly higher time. >> in australia a drop but at the same time a drop in nongun homicides and nongun suicides which makes it hart for me to say i'm confident this will make a difference. >> the question becomes how do you explain the extraordinary reality that united states has 40 times as many gun deaths as britain, 30 times as many as france, almost 75 times as many as japan? other than guns. do we have 75 times more crazy people than these countries? do we have 75 times more violent video games than these? the only thing we have more of is guns. >> i could think that's a major driving factor but the question is, when people say this worked in england, this will work in america, will it actually? tomorrow if we woke up and there had been a gun rapture and all the guns vanished i would expect there to be fewer deaths but of the actual policies being put forward, will they have the effect of making america suddenly a country that doesn't have this many guns and doesn't

have the attachment to them? >> david frum? >> leah is saying one thing that is true and one thing alarmingly false. the thing false is the suggestion there are other alternatives that would work better as she says in the article more narrowly tailored. the alternatives to gun control are more intrusive, coercive and expensive. for example, if we identify older men at risk of depression 23 million men in the united states over the age of 65. a lot of people we have to inspect. a lot of domestic disputes and young men at the risk of violence and the overwhelmingly predicative factor about those young men is race. our screening is going to be highly racially loaded. the reason this debate is so complicated is because the obvious and correct answer is so politically prohibited. the intellectual debate is simple, the political is complicated. my solution the thing that leah's article that is true is that the interventions that are

discussed in the united states, will not make any difference. the intervention we need is the beginning of a culture change. let me give you an example. it is legal in all but eight states legal for a mother to strap her child into a car seat roll up the windows and smoke a couple packs of cigarettes. mothers don't do that because they love their children, even though they may. let's start pounding into people's heads if you keep a gun in your house because you want to protect your children and think you a good parent you are a bad parent. putting them at risk. if you are accumulating all these weapons because you think you're a responsible gun owner the fact that you're doing it proves you're an irresponsible person. change the social view and then we'll be able to -- legal changes will become possible. >> tom friedman, last word. >> i happened to read factcheck.org about the australian laws basically, they had a mass murder there in 1996, they imposed very stringent ban on automatic weapons and other registration points and then did as massive gun buyback. between -- and it's not been a

dramatic dropoff but down 20% since 1996. that's not bean bag. a country that has the most probably stringent gun laws in the world is called japan. we have about 12,000 gun deaths a year. they have a couple years back where they had 2. 22 for them caused a national crisis. so it can be done. i do agree you have to find the right ways to do it. we may not be talking about them but it can be done. >> we're going to have to leave it at that and we will come back to this. thank you all for the fascinating conversation. next on "gps" the second amendment, what did the 27 words of that amendment mean when they were written in 1789? what do they mean today? constitutional law scholar from yale joins me when we come back. the kids after school, they are alone and they have nowhere to go and we tried to solve that problem by having this wonderful place where they can be children.

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on december 15th, 1791, the first ten amenmentses to the united states constitution were ratified called the bill of rights. the second of those amendments was comprised of these seemingly simple 27 words, a well

regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. they might be the most debated 27 words in the english language. listen to what former chief justice of the united states warren burger, a conservative nominated by richard nixon had to say in 1991 about the amendment. >> this has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud i repeat the word fraud on the american public by special interest groups that i have ever seen in my lifetime. >> i want to bring in one of america's finest constitutional scholars to discuss his words and more broadly what the second amendment means. akhil amarah is a law professor at yale university. what burger was talking about there was the fact that in his view, there had been a reinterpretation of the second amendment in the 1970s to claim that individuals have this

uninnailble unviable -- invaluable right to own firearms but you say actually the second amendment has gone through many interpretations so take us through a kind of very brief history of the second amendment. >> sure. it's not unique. that's true of the first amendment too. we have a vision at the founding and the vision emphasizes militias because america just fought a revolutionary war, local militias against an imperial center, lexington conquered bunker hill, tea party, anti-federalist, localist military collective. that's the first. >> and that's where it comes out in terms of the writing. >> the initial language. but then america's history is often defined by our wars, especially our constitutional wars, the next big constitutional war is the civil war, and in that war, the central government are the heros, the union army, and the constitution is amended and

amended with a different vision of arms bearing. so after the civil war, the national rifle association is actually founded, a group of ex-union army officers, and they believe that there should be an individual right to have a gun in your home for self-protection, so original vision, very military and collective, the second vision after the civil war, individualistic, where we get the very strong affirmation of a right to have a gun in your home for self-protection. >> bring us to the 1970s and what happens. >> in the 1960 and '70s the liberals say we want stronger protection of freedom of speech and of the press and religion and the rights of criminal defendants. this is the warren court revolution and the courts start to vigorously enforce these civil liberties and other groups come along like the nra and say wait a minute if you're going to enforce the first in a vigorous way and the fourth against unreasonable searches and

seizures in a more vigorous way and fifth and sixth amendment rights of criminal defendants what about the second? and so the nra starts to try to reinvigorate the second amendment and true to its own roots as an organization, tends to emphasize this individual right. there's pushback initially to people like warren burger, seems like a new idea. >> it does seem to me that burger's point is correct in one sense which is this is a very oddly phrased amendment. the first clause kind of makes no sense in the sense that what follows -- >> i hear you. >> doesn't follow logically. how does one think of it? what he seems to be saying is clearly the founders meant this was in the context of a militia otherwise why are those words there? >> he has a point about the

founding, but in the same way the founder says -- said in the first amendment, congress shall make no law bridging freedom of speech and the press, but, of course, we say the president can't interfere with free speech and neither can federal courts and neither can states or localities. we have a broader view and rightly so, because after the civil war there was a new amendment passed, called the 14th amendment, and it actually says, here's its language, no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the united states. what are those? basic rights. fundamental rights. where do we find them? the bill of rights but we have a different understanding of the bill of rights than the founders did. and we've also find them, one final thing f you look at state constitutions, almost all of them today and in the 1860s, almost all of them have today and in the 1860s did have strong affirmations of gun rights

without often mention of militias. >> so looking at this spade of gun violence and that the fact that the united states stands so far apart from the rest of the world, if people want to do something about it, what do you say as a constitutional scholar? what is the leeway for american law and regulation to do something about gun violence? >> i'm a democrat, i'm a liberal, i don't have a gun in my own home. they scare me a bit. that said, i think we liberals should concede what the supreme court has twice affirmed in recent years, that people do have a right to have a gun in their home for self-protection and once we concede that, then we can talk about reasonable regulations short of total confiscation and the other side won't say every thing you propose is the first step on a

slippery slope that will lead to total confiscation. >> akhil amar pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. >> next on "gps" i have a message to all who say gun control legislation will never happen in a country whose politics are dominated by conservatives. you're wrong. i'll show you a country where a conservative government did pass gun control legislation after a massacre and introduce you to a conservative former turned deputy prime minister instrumental in keeping his nation safer from guns. edic hels you get the most out of every one of them. only proprietary tempur material precisely conforms to your body, instead of pushing back. you get up to twice as much pressure relieving power, so you won't toss and turn. and tempur-pedic is the best at minimizing motion transfer from your partner. so you won't be disturbed during the night. you'll sleep deeply... and wake up, feeling powerful. only the best carry tempur-pedic.

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a conservative government passed strict gun control laws and bought back over 600,000 guns already in circulation in this gun loving nation. and the decade that followed gun homicides fell 59%. and gun suicides plummeted 65% according to one study. here to tell us about it is tim fisher the deputy prime minister at the time who helped to get the measures passed. welcome. thank for joining us. >> greetings, fareed, and cnn. >> when people think about the rest of the world, they tend to think that countries outside of the united states have a very different culture and attitude towards guns, but australia is not so different. it's a settler society with a frontier culture and people have a long and proud history of gun ownership. was that hard to -- was it hard to introduce the kind of measures you did, given that

culture? >> it was hard, but john, the then prime minister, and myself as deputy prime minister, we just had to muscle up. we had to make a set of decisions and negotiate with the states and then take the arguments to the public square full on, and step by step, john and myself and many others won the arguments, notwithstanding some intervention by the nra into the australian scene, to try and up end our efforts down here. >> the part of the country you came from is actually particularly proud of its guns and the gun culture. were you -- what was the argument you made to people who guns? you're a farmer yourself and a gun owner yourself? >> yes, i am. vietnam veteran as well and i speak to you just a few kilometers from gun shops in

aubrey and we have a law-abiding gun culture in this country. i am not anti-gun. i do not hate guns. there's a proper role for guns for australian farmers to this day and continuing, but we have drained the suburbs and towns of australia, of semiautomatics most notably and automatics, and that is a good thing and stacks up when you see the outcome in terms of no mass gun shootings for 21 years since 1996. >> you think the fundamental thing that is lacking is courage among america's politicians? i've heard you say that before, correct? >> i realize the respect for democracy and the second amendment, as it is printed, and worded, including its mention of the word "militia" but there are

times, in one sense, always difficult to find the exact right time, since this particular period, this few days after this mass shooting in vegas, 10/1, vegas 10/1, first of october, over 50 people cut down, over 500 wounded, you just cannot do nothing in that circumstance, and i note in recent times you all have had several former presidents join together for the hurricane relief efforts around the usa, a good thing. the two bushes, clinton, carter, obama, working together. what a powerful thing it would be if five former presidents were to push for incremental steps to bring some common sense before another mass shootings across the usa.

>> do you -- are you hopeful, do you look at the united states and are you frustrated or do you think something could change? >> do nothing this time around and there will be widespread condemnation, anger, and in a sense a belief that the best days of the usa are gone and it's now approaching dysfunctionalty and democracy deficits of the worst kind. do only one thing, deal with bump stock and that's also inadequate when you think about it. why do you have to have unlimited sized magazines to go hunting, to go shooting, in a legal circumstance? of course the answer is, you do not. so while they -- the nra often maintain that the problem is not guns, the problem is the power of guns, the number of guns and

the availability of those guns in circumstance after circumstance and you fail to deal with that it's going to have implications for your tourism industry on down from the rest of the world, the rest of the global village. >> tim fisher, pleasure to have you on. thank you, sir. >> thank you, fareed. >> up next, lessons from another nation, a nation that has had a homicide by gun rate of nearly zero in recent years. what can the united states learn from that country?

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i'm not saying that america can ever be like japan nor should it be like japan, but i want you to see this system because it has produced close to zero gun deaths annually in recent years. >> japan has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. the basic premise of those laws, if you want to own a gun good luck. japan's firearm and swords control law states no person shall possess a firearm before listing a few narrow exceptions for hunters and other categories. for the brave few willing to apply for one, they face an intricately designed bureaucratic obstacle course. just ask rick saka, a former u.s. marine living on mount fuji when we met him in 2013. he told us he was one of only a handful of foreigners in japan

to legally own a gun. back at his house he showed us the binders full of paperwork he's had to deal with over the years. they were a bit overwhelming even to explain. >> what all do you have to do? >> it's such a -- initially, want to help me. >> he took over 20 hours of lectures, a written test, a shooting range class, and he passed a criminal background check, a doctor gave him a full physical and psychological exam, he also visited the police station more than five times, where he was interviewed in an interrogation room. >> having any problems with alcohol? are you having any problems with drugs? are you having any problems with relationships, family, work, money? >> the police also questioned sack ka's family, his co-workers, even his neighbors, and to stop it off, he had to give them a detailed map of his home. >> to produce a floor map of where your firearm will be

stored in your home is kind of unusual. and photos that actually detail all of the looks we have to have in there. >> it took him over a year to get approved. >> that's our actual firearms license. >> he must renew the licenses regularly. >> the intrusion that occurings regularly would never ever be tolerated in the u.s. >> it's a process meant to discourage people from trying to get a gun. and it works. japan has fewer guns and less than one firearm per 100 people according to one estimate. the gun murder rate is astoni astonishingly low. in 2015, this nation of 127 million counted only one gun

murder. that's right. one. the u.s. per capita gun homicide rate that year was nearly 4,000 times that of japan. guns are so rare and tightly regulated even mobsters avoid using guns. known as the yacuza and recognized for full body tattoos, japanese organized crime had enormous reach in business and politics and described as the largest private equity group in japan. many don't like conducting business with a gun. >> guns are like nuclear weapons. weapons that they have, but won't use. >> the former boss sat down to give us this take on the mob's attitude. he insisted on wearing a mask

and showed us tattoos and partially missing finger. another trademark to prove his identity. they are kept and controlled by strict regulations and it's prohibited to take the guns out and use it. >> punishments for gun infractions are very high in japan, he said. simply firing a gun can get you life in prison. and if a foot soldier in the mob gets caught with the gun, his boss can also be held responsible. these days they conduct business with less efficient methods. they only have knives or japanese swords to kill.

>> jake said japan's lesson for the u.s. is a simple one. >> if you make strict gun control laws and assign cops to enforce those laws and you actually enforce them, the rate of gun deaths in the united states would plummet. you have to do it. >> next on gps, how 3d printing makes america's gun problem worse. first it was printing plastic guns that might be missed by metal detectors and now untraceable guns made of metal. it's the next in the technological revolution, coming up.

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americans own more guns per capita than residents of any country. what percentage of americans own half of the civilian firearms in the country totalling about 130 million guns? is it 3%, 13%, 23%, or 43%? stay tuned and we will tell you the correct answer. this week's book of the week is remains of the day. he was awarded a nobel prize for literature and this is his finest works. the book is much better. it's beautifully written in a downton abby of like setting about duty, memory, politics and love. one of the best novels by a riffing author i have read. now for the last look. 3d printed plastic guns have been around for years, but did you know there are ways to mill and assemble metal guns at home

for under $2,000. you can buy ghost gunner milling machines that will allow you to mill the frame of an m-1911 hand gun or the lower receiver of an ar 15 rifle. these are the parts of the guns that have serial numbers so authorities can track them. the rest of the gun, the guts of it can be easily purchased online as wire pointed out. this company allows you to mill and assemble untraceable concealable guns without any prior experience from your kitchen. the company's founder told us "the gun world already knows what this means. the fact that we are able to do the 1911 means we are able to do any frame. i'm reminded of a quote attributed to albert einstein. it is appallingly obvious our technology exceeded our humanity. the answer to our gps challenge

is a, 3% of american adults own an estimated 130 million guns, roughly half of all civilian firearms in the united states according to a study to be published by the russell sage foundation that means they own an average of 17 guns apiece. the killer in las vegas had more than 40 guns. thanks for all of you for being part of my program. i will see you next week. hello and thank you for joining me this sunday. fredricka whitfield. a growing feud between the president of the united states and one of the most powerful republican senators, bob corker of tennessee. trump firing off several pointed tweets about his her formance in the senate writing he begged me to endorse him and i s.