situation, shutting the state down. >> do you like tudor dixon? >> yeah, i do, everything except the abortion issue. it seems like she's -- you got to be more liberal with that abortion situation. >> reporter: voters in a crucial battleground state up in the air as summer comes to a close. >> thanks for spending your sunday morning with us. fareed zakaria takes over right now. uvalde -- >> murdered 19 children and 2 teachers in uvalde, texas. >> we do this again and again. >> enough. >> 19 children this time. >> at least 20 shots inside the store. >> buffalo -- >> very heavily armed. >> how is this possible we ask god? >> killing 10 people and wounding 3 others in what police call a racially-motivated

attack. >> las vegas -- >> the deadliest mass shooting in u.s. history. >> get down! get down! >> orlando -- >> three tense horrifying hours. >> hands up! >> it was unimaginable. >> all units. newtown -- >> 27 people lost their lives. 20 of them young children. >> a mass shooting at a fourth of july parade. >> a shooting in highland park, illinois. >> why? why? >> those horrific events and so many others like them have come to define the united states. the most recent figures show that every day on average more than 100 people are killed with a gun in america.

in total, there were over 19,000 gun murders and 24,000 gun suicides in 2020. compared to other rich countries america's gun violence is on another planet. the united states has eight times as many gun homicides per 100,000 people as canada, 50 times as many as germany and 100 times as many as the uk. these countries all face the same challenges with mental health. they all have the violent video games. but other nations pale in comparison when it comes to gun violence. >> another shooting, another angry young man. we've seen too many tragedies like this. >> can americans learn something from other countries on this crucial issue?

this hour we'll travel the world to look for solutions. we'll visit a country that shares america's love for guns, yet gun violence rates there are a fraction of america levels. we'll visit another nation where liberals and conservatives reached an agreement on gun control and afterwards shootings plummeted. but first, let's start right here in the united states, with a former firearms executive who says the gun industry has radicalized america. ♪ ♪ conservative legal scholars often say we should try to understand the times in which the founders wrote the constitution to understand their original intent.

so let's consider what they must have been imagining when they wrote the second amendment and whether in their wildest dreams the founders could have imagined the ar-15 and similar assault rifles, the sorts of weapons used in uvalde, sandy hook, parkland and orlando. a shooter can fire 45 rounds a minute with an accuracy of 600 yards. the main military weapon in the 18th century was the musket, which took one round at a time, could be reloaded to shoot three rounds in a minute by an experienced shooter and was accurate to 55 yards according to "the washington post." how did america get to a place where there are tens of millions of those assault-type military style weapons in circulation. what can we do about them now that they're here? my next guest is the ideal person to tell us. rye yn bussy is a gun loving,

former fie arms executive and he's the author of -- "gun fight: my battle against the industry that radicalized america." >> when i look at something like an ar-15 i think about those muskets what was in the minds of founding fathers. this feels more like a tank. it feels like, as you say, a military assault offensive weapon that has so little in common that it really shouldn't be thought of as even part of the same family. >> yeah. it's difficult to envision that something that can do as much damage effectively as an ar-15 can can be in the same league as some defensive gun, even modern defensive guns. an ar-15 is purpose built to be an offensive killing machine and it's very, very good at it. it's not an accident that these mostly teenage kids pick that gun.

they pick that gun because they have been told, they have been marketed to. it is advertised that this thing is the most bad ass military gun they can buy. i don't know why we're shocked they use it. >> talk about columbine in 1999. you see that as a turning point. >> i do. columbine was the first visible mass school shooting in the united states. after that we know through reporters that the nra had debates are we going to be part of the solution or can we use this to double down, to say hell no, to maybe build our membership, use this to build political power, can we rally the troops? they opted for the second choice. >> tell me about your own experience, your personal experience. you were involved in the arms industry. you were involved with gun manufacturers. then you turned on them and

you've been campaigning against them. did they go after you? >> yeah. i've gotten a fair amount of trolling and fair amount of personal attacks. i still appreciate guns. i grew up with guns. many of my best memories are of guns with my dad and brother. my own kids, i own lots of guns. i believe all those freedoms have to be balanced with an immense responsibility. i think our balance is out of whack. this isn't an anti-gun campaign. i'm trying to restore responsibility that the industry knew it should adhere to and forgotten. >> given where we are today, there are 40 million ar-15s in the united states already. as you say millions being sold. where do you go from here? what's a realistic reform? >> several policies that would help, background checks for all purchases, been trying to do that since columbine.

it needs to happen. stronger red flag laws and we need them instituted across the country. that takes into account mental health. and the ownership and purchasing of the firearms. i think we have to do something about armed intimidation and open carry. i'm really frightened about the health of our democracy. when we allow people with loaded ar-15s to march into the michigan capital or another january 6th happens, that's not how a democracy functions. we need to rein in the dangerous open carry intimidation we see across the country. >> how would you draw with what kind of weapon like this and has no place in hunting for example? >> if we're going to have these guns -- americans have freedoms. we're debating them all the time. i don't know where the line is. i just know we're over it. this is what a democracy has to do. we have to figure out where the

reasonable line is. i know we can figure out ways to trim back the stuff. the age limits on purchasing ar-15s, come on. i mean, i was 18 once. we were all 18 once. our frontal lobes aren't even fully formed. let's do what's reasonable. that's a reasonable step. when people say only criminals -- this isn't going to work because criminals won't obey laws. buffalo shooter, uvalde shooter, they wanted until they were 18 to buy the gun. >> it does seem bizarre that at 18, you have to wait three more years to order a beer at a bar, but you can buy an ar-15. >> it sounds crazy. think how it sounds to the parents in uvalde. >> tragic, terrible, but important. thank you. next, we'll visit another country where there was a debate on guns, but in that country liberals and conservatives reached an agreement to keep

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john fiddler, his wife gay and walter can relate to the horrors of gun violence in america. >> he just walked up and stood in front of people and just shot them. shot them in the heads. i know what it's like waking up the next day, it's your birthday, you wake up alone. there's a card on the bedside table that's not been written in and no noise in the house. it's not going to change for quite a long time. >> the fiddlers and walter were forever changed by the worst mass shooting in australia's history. on april 28, 1996 over 30 people were shot dead at a crowded tourist destination. a historic prison in port arthur.

28-year-old martin bryant arrived at the site, ate lunch, walked into a cafe and pulled a semi-automatic rifle out of his bag. his first shots killed three of the fiddlers best friends, who were gunned down right in front of them. >> i froze. i couldn't move. i didn't know what to do. i thought this is the end. >> i said to john, i've been hit. with that he turned around and pushed me under the table. i saw a man behind me hasn't got a head. now the others are under the table told me to be quiet. john told me to shush and we pretended to be dead. >> the gunman moved on and the fiddlers escaped with their lives. outside the cafe walter's exwife nanette and their daughters had been having a picnic. nanette flagged down a car to escape.

in that car was the gunman himself. nanette pleaded for her family, but the killer shot her and the 3-year-old madeline, then chased down 6-year-old lalana and shot her near a tree she was trying to hide. >> the doctor said the girls are both -- they're all dead. i just remember this primal scream. i really wanted to be with them. i didn't want -- at that point in time i would have been much happier to be dead than alive. >> in all, 35 people were killed before bryant was captured by the police. >> the overwhelming feeling was this is terrible. we had to do something about it. >> prime minister john howard had been elected weeks before the massacre. other mass shootings in australia showed outrage, but the port arthur shooting shocked

the nation to its core. >> in politics you either use political capital for a good cause or watch it waste away. i felt i had to use the authority of my office to change things. >> a dramatic reduction in the number of automatic and semi-automatic weapons. >> howard proposed the toughest gun laws in australia's history, a ban on semi-automatic rifles and pump action shotguns, mandatory gun registration, requiring a reason for buying a gun and new rules for storing guns. if they passed, they would represent one of the most dramatic changes to a country's gun laws the world had ever seen. it wasn't going to be easy. howard was a conservative and many of his supporters were

rural gun owners who were dead set against tighter laws. as he travelled the country to sell the plan, howard met plenty of resistance. >> those decisions are not going to be changed. >> wearing a bullet proof vest at one rally. >> it wasn't popular. there was a lot of critical outbursts in the media. was it the right course for australia? yes, it was. >> tim fisher was howard's deputy prime minister and an unlikely ally, a proud gun owner and veteran of the vietnam war, but he supported howard's efforts wholeheartedly. >> i'm totally opposed to automatics and semi-automatics being in the suburbs of australia or anywhere. >> thanks to howard's coalition all of australia's states and territories enacted the reforms within about two years of the

port arthur shooting. to get rid of all the newly banned guns, the government sponsored a gun buyback program paying everyone to turn in their guns so they could be destroyed. over 600,000 guns were eliminated, an estimated one fifth of australia's firearms. after the new measures were passed, some of howard's right wing allies were voted out of office, but overall the reforms were popular. >> in a short period of time we brought about a change that has demonstrated to save lives. >> according to one study, gun suicides fell 65% in the decade that followed. while the sample size for gun homicides was small, they still fell 59%.

what's more, since port arthur there has been only one public mass shooting in all of australia. an accounting by "the washington post" helps put this into perspective. by its count in the same period in the u.s., there have been more than 100 such deliberate kills of four or more victims in a public space unrelated to other crimes. that list of of course is topped by the vegas shooting where 58 perished. still, for the victims of port arthur, painful memories will never be too far away. >> one of the thing that affects me the most is if we wake up to the radio in the morning and there's been shootings overseas, particularly america. that really does make us take a step back. >> it's almost like what happens in those events is not that far from just normal life. it's the cancer eating away the

united states of america. it is possible to change the way things are. up next, after many shootings in america, fingers are pointed to the influence of violent video games. we'll visit a country where people are equally obsessed with such games, if not more so. is gun violence a big problem there? find out when we come back. wanl his car stat. little things like getting a real offer in two minutes really make roger happy. so does carvana's customer advocate caitlin picking up his car at promptly 10am. hi, are you roger? berglund. with the honda accord? yes i am. it's right over there. will i be getting? and he loves that caitlin pays him on the spot. yep, rog. it's the little things that drive you happy. we'll drive you happy at carvana.

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you've heard it before. after countless mass shootings, in a decades-long hunt for answers, one culprit keeps coming up haunting the popular imagination for years -- video games. >> these games teach a child to enjoy inflicting torture. >> you heard it after columbine. >> there's too much evidence that children are desensitized. you win based on how many people

you kill. >> you heard it from then president trump after parkland. >> i'm hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is shaping young people's thoughts. >> you heard it from west virginia governor jim justice after uvalde. >> we know these violent video games are getting in the minds of our children. why don't we do something about it? >> america is hardly the only country obsessed with video games. in our search for global lessons on guns, we wanted to find a country that could teach us about gaming and gun violence. we decided to visit japan because few nations on earth have more avid gamers than the land of the rising sun. the japanese play many of the same violent video games we do. in 2021 gaming revenue in japan was nearly $22 billion, behind

only china and the united states. there's another factor to consider when it comes to gun violence. 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 sword control law states no person shall possess a firearm before listing a few narrow exceptions for hunters and other categories. that is part of what made it so shocking when former prime minister shinzo abe was assassinated with a homemade gun. anyone who wants to own a gun legally faces a bureaucratic obstacle course. ask rick saka, a former u.s. marine living on mount fuji when we met him in 2013. he was only one of a handful of

foreigners in japan to legally own a gun. 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 -- initially -- do you want to help me? >> he took over 20 hours of lectures, a written test, a shooting range class and passed a criminal background check. a doctor gave him a full physical and psychological exam. he visited the police station more than five times where he was interviewed in an interrogation room. >> are you having problems with alcohol, drugs, relationships, family, work, money? >> the police questioned his family, co-workers and neighbors. to top 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. it's kind of unusual. photos that actually detail all the locks that we have to have in there and show it's done properly. >> it took him over a year to get approved. >> that's our firearms license. >> he must renew his licenses regularly. >> the intrusion that occurs with the process regularly would never be tolerated in the u.s. >> it's a process meant to discourage people from even trying to get a gun, and it works. japan has fewer guns per person than almost any other country. less than one firearm per 100 people according to one estimate. the country has astonishingly few gun deaths. in 2020 this nation of 125 million counted only 4 firearm-related deaths. that is right. 4.

the united states that year had more than 45,000 gun deaths. >> japan has so little gun violence that every time a shot is fired in japan it's national news. one of the guys pulled out a sword and slashed -- >> jake was a reporter for japan's largest newspaper for 12 years. >> this is where they made the arrest. >> he authored a memoir of his reporting days called "tokyo vice." he said there's a dark side to the rising sun, but seldom leads to shots fired. >> i have not met a cop who fired his gun in the line of duty. i know a lot of cops. since 1993, i've been working as a reporter in japan, mostly on the police beat. >> guns are so rare and tightly regulated here that even mobsters avoid using guns. known as the yakuza,

often recognized for their full body tattoos japanese organized crime doesn't lack for muscle. they have enormous reach in crime and politics, but many don't like conducting business with a gun. [ speaking in non-english ] >> translator: guns are like nuclear weapons. weapons that we have, but won't use. >> a former boss sat down with us to give us his take on the mob's attitude. he insisted on wearing a mask but showed us his tattoos and partially missing finger to prove his identity. >> translator: guns are kept and controlled by strict regulations within the yakuza organization. it's prohibited for members to take the gun out and use it.

>> that's because punishment for gun infractions are very high in japan he says. simply firing a gun can get you life in prison. if a foot soldier in the mob gets caught with a gun, his boss can also be held responsible. so these days they conduct business using less efficient methods. >> translator: there aren't specific orders on what weapons we should use. obviously there's knives and japanese swords instead of guns to kill. >> jake says japan's lesson for the u.s. is a simple one. >> if you make strict gun control laws and you assign cops to enforce those laws and you actually enforce them, the rate of gun deaths in the united states would plummet. but you have to do it. next, we'll visit a country with lots of guns, but a

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if there's one country with a love for guns that rivals america's, it's the nation best known for its alps, switzerland. welcome to switzerland's annual field shooting festival, that's said to be the largest shooting competition in the world. towns and villages across the country have tests of marksmanship. families bring the kids and after the competition, there's a gigantic party. one festival was especially boisterous.

the winners of each event were cheered wildly and the champion of the 300-meter competition known to all as the shooting king, was wheeled out triumphantly to the tune of cowbells. switzerland is by many measures a gun-lover's paradise. according to one estimate, the swiss rank in the top 20 in the world with 28 guns per 100 people. >> ready. fire! >> why is switzerland armed to the teeth? well, thanks to a tradition that dates back to the dawn of the nation. its citizen militia constitutes

its army. most able-bodied men serve at least 245 days in the militia. they're all trained to shoot and most of them keep their guns at home. militiamen can hone their skills at their local shooting clubs, gun societies that boast more than 100,000 members offering classes, competition and camaraderie. >> we do competitions together and we are young people and older peopler. >> this is pistol packing ursula, a gun shooter since she was young. on the day we met her at her club she hit the bull's eye 18 out of 20 times. not bad for someone in her 70s. >> i was surprised, yes. i never did it. >> even the youngsters are expert marksmen. dave herbert was all of 10 years

old when we met him in 2013. he started training two years before. his advice for the inexperienced -- [ speaking in non-english ] -- don't fidget while shooting. despite the swiss' enthusiasm for guns, gun homicide rates are much lower than in the united states. 20 times lower in 2019. supporters of gun rights in america have claimed that the swiss proved one of their main points, lots of guns does not necessarily mean lots of gun violence, but that is not the whole story in switzerland. >> their interest definitely is not that any crazy man with a criminal history should go out and be able to buy a gun at any spot. >> dr. martin killius is a professor of criminology.

he points out that many swiss gun laws are much stricter than those in the america. >> there are nowadays far more controls than there used to be in the past. >> everyone who buys a gun must pass a criminal background check. automatic guns are banned. gun purchases must be registered with the government. the swiss government have tightened these controls. nra he says would not be very happy. >> others would say it's a communist country, definitely. >> in the militia soldiers can take home their weapons, but not their ammunition. after a soldier has completed his service, he must re-apply for the right to keep his gun. the truth is many gun owners' attitudes in switzerland are very different from the nra. ursula, the pistol packer loves

to shoot, but she's not interested in looser gun laws like in america. >> i don't want people walking on the street with the guns. next up, america's gun problem is bad. how bad? we don't actually know. i'll talk to an expert about why that is its own grave problem. m♪ ♪day 1, i'm in love with your strut♪ ♪day 2, i'm in love with your strut♪ ♪day 3, i'm in love with your strut♪ ♪guess what, i'm in love with your strut♪ ♪i like your strut,♪ ♪do you wanna go struttin' struttin'♪ ♪you like my strut♪ ♪do you wanna go struttin' struttin'♪ ♪you like my strut♪ ♪then let's go struttin' right now♪ ♪

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ownership question, in most states you don't have to register your guns. it's tough to say exactly how many guns are in circulation or who owns them. the problem goes deeper than that, to an act of congress that had a chilling effect on federal agencies keeping them from doing gun research for 20 years. what happened and why does it matter? former john j. college president works for a philanthropy where he's executive vice president of criminal justice. in the mid 1990s tell us what you're doing. >> i was nominated and confirmed to be the director of the national institute of justice in the clinton administration. that is the research arm of the justice department. it was at a time just to put it in context when rates of violence were going through the roof. the country was really in panic and one of the tasks we had under the '94 crime act was to conduct research on gun violence from the justice department. at the same time the centers for

disease control which established a national institute for research on injury prevention was starting a research program on firearms as an injury question. so we were operating in tandem on one of the critical issues facing the country then and now, which is gun violence. a study was published coming out of cdc showing that the mere presence of a firearm in the home significantly increased the likelihood of suicide and other injuries. >> this is very important because what your research shows is having a gun around actually seems to have the effect of making somebody more likely to commit suicide. >> it's a risk, but this finding that having a gun in the home increased the risk of injury

just went to the core of one of the central tenants of nra, which is guns are okay at home. >> what does the nra do when the research starts coming out? >> the nra went to one of their republican congressmen from arkansas and introduced an amendment that carries his name saying that the funding to the cdc could not be used to promote gun control. that was interpreted not to limit advocacy, but to stop research. the way the nra made sure that message was clear was congress reduced the budget of cdc by $2.6 million, the amount of money being spent for firearms research, the exact same amount. from 1996 until 2017 that amendment was interpreted as

being a prohibition against research from the cdc. we refer to this as the two-decade evidence desert. we were thwarted as a country to understanding what would be effective in saving lives. >> in 2019 there is funding provided. what changes? >> intervening events. we have significant, you know, unfortunately sort of frequent mass shootings and gun violence and then there's a massacre at parkland at the high school in florida. the students of parkland, much to their credit, started rallying and organizing with an agenda. on their agenda was restore federal funding for research at cdc. this became a rallying cry and president trump, much to his credit, issued an interpretation by his secretary of hhs that that amendment did not preclude research.

that amendment did not preclude research. that was then codified into statute by congress and then congress started to appropriate funds. $25 million, which is nothing. half of it to nih, half to cdc. at least it was opening the spigot for research on gun violence that had been closed. >> but still one of the things you point out is staggering to me, the difference in how much we spend. so, you say, this is from your research, the u.s. spends about $7,000 on research per life lost to sepsis. about $1,000 per life lost on motor vehicles. and for lives lost to guns per person we spend $63 per life lost. >> shameful, isn't it? we have a lot of lost time to make up for. so, the current moment is a moment when at least we should be significantly increasing the federal investment in research on gun violence.

>> a lot of what you're trying to get is facts, evidence, research, data. >> right. >> one thing we're noticing in america these days is that doesn't seem to matter. we're sort of living in a post-truth polarized environment where people for almost reasons of tribal belonging believe or don't believe. it feels more like it's about faith than evidence. do you think evidence and research could change this? >> this is climbing a very steep hill. i think we recognize that. when it's hard for people to believe in climate change or in the efficacy of vaccines, where there's that type of science backing up a policy, it will be hard and harder for people to look at evidence as a way to break through on gun safety policies. but, what we're seeing that's encouraging is a lot of innovation, particularly at the state level, in trying different policies. so we can now pretty effectively compare state a to state b and

say, state a adopted these five policies and there are far fewer deaths because of that. but we're making up for a quarter century of not enough research. >> so are you at the end of the day somewhat optimistic these days? >> i live and hope. >> jeremy, thank you. >> thank you. up next, my own thoughts on america's gun violence problem coming up. bout this #7 pick, from a former #7 pick. juicy rotisserie-style chicken. you should've been #1. this isn't about the sandwich, is it chuck? it's not. the new subway series. what's your pick?

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it is like groundhog day from hell. another mass shooting in america. another flurry of activity that will lead to virtually no serious action. highland park and uvalde have not changed much. the compromise bill that made it through congress is so modest in its scope that it will almost certainly make little difference in a country awash with hundreds

of millions of guns. it's like hoping that an umbrella will protect you from a tsunami. and the failure of this gesture at gun control will then be brandished by its opponents to triumphantly claim that gun control doesn't work. compare all this to our reaction to terrorism. after 9/11, in which about 3,000 americans died, we put in place onerous new laws about travel. you already couldn't walk onto a plane with a gun, of course. now you can't take a normal size bottle of shampoo. we added the huge department of homeland security and we invaded two countries. meanwhile, from september 2001 through 2020, about 660,000 americans were killed by guns. we hear a flurry of reasons for america's gun violence problem. some contradicting the others.

what they have in common is a remarkable lack of evidence or fact. so we've tried in this program to bring facts to bear on to a debate that's usually high on emotion and conviction, but low on evidence. people say america is different because it already has many guns. true, but so do switzerland and australia. the latter has a gun culture similar to america's. yet as we saw after its own massacre, australia changed its gun laws. the result, homicides and suicides preliminary eted in the decade that followed. every time there's a serious gun massacre in the u.s., alas these are fairly common, the media focusing on the twisted psychology of the shooter and asks why we don't pay more attention to detecting and treating mental illness. the question we should not really be focused on is not the specific cause of a single shoot, but why there are so many thousands of them in america. there are other reasons often

given for gun violence. pop culture, violent video games, japan with fascination with violent video games has a stunningly low rate of gun deaths. and all that finally leaves the issue of the american constitution. the argument that the second amendment makes any kind of serious gun control impossible. the wording of that amendment suggests the right to bear arms exists only in the context of being part of a government militia. for most of american history, the second amendment did not stand in the way of sensible gun regulation and the supreme court upheld such regulations. the new york law regulating guns of the current court struck down had stood in place for 111 years. but let's put aside the legal debate. just how i think about this basically. one of the most important tasks for a government is to keep its citizens, especially its children, safe on the streets and in their schools.

every other developed country in the world is able to fulfill this basic mandate. america is not, and the greatest tragedy is we know how to do it. tune into our regular show every sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. eastern and thank you for watching this "gps" special. hello. thank you for joining me. i'm sara sidner in for fredericka whitfield. we begin with dangerous heat gripping the west coast. more than 14 million people are under heat alerts as searing temperatures in the triple digits stretch from southern california all the way to idaho. several heat records already broken this holiday weekend. the most intense hea