you purchase 5000 times already. the five elements of self-defense are proportionately, avoidance and reasonableness. innocence and you can't have been the aggressor in the fight. makes sense, right? .. >> by the way, that's always been e minority position, and currently it's by far the minority

position finish. [inaudible] the fifth element is reasonableness. everything you do in acting in self-defense has to be that of a reasonable and prudent person, and you have to have actually yourself believed it was necessary to act in self-defense. the five elements, innocence, imminence, proportionality, reasonableness -- [inaudible] what is stand your ground doing? all stand your ground does is take away one of those elements, the avoidance element. you no longer need to seek an avenue of retreat before you can act in this self-defense. what's left in place? everything else. innocence, imminence, reasonableness and proportionality are all still in place. it's not some mysterious mechanism the nra pus in plait. -- put in place. stand your ground is exactly the same as the old-fashioned self-defense except for that one element of avoidance. so if you live in a stand your

ground jurisdiction and you act in self-defense, what do you still need to be able to prove? you were the innocent person, you were facing an imminent threat, you were using no more force necessary than to defend yourself, and everything you did is reasonable. the non-stand your ground states, even if you've done all that, if you can't prove a negative, the you can't prove there was no avenue of retreat, we reserve the option to put you in jail for the rest of your life. that's what it means. so, thank god you live in a stand your ground state here in north carolina. now, think about what the consequences would be of a repeal of stand your ground. imagine a young woman named mary. she's walking through a parking garage at night. she's accosted by a rapist. she's had, she's done nothing to invite this attack upon her. the attack's about to happen right now. in drawing her gun, she uses no

more force than she needs to to defend herself against a rapist twice her size and her perceptions were entirely reasonable. but thes are in a non-stand your ground state state is free to argue there was a stairwell over there, and mary could have run away. in a non-stand your ground state, she goes to jail for the rest of her life for having defended herself. in a stand your ground state, that question doesn't even come up. that's why stand your ground is important. >> okay. final comment. it's been rumored that a copy of my book, one copy has been duct taped under one chair in this room. but, but, don't reach yet. if you want to participate in this raffle, if the book's not there, you have to leave a $10. [laughter] [applause]

>> as i realized when i first heard andrew speak and when i heard his comments in raleigh at the campbell school of law, i realized he is rarely boring. now, our next speaker is the executive director of gun owners of america. larry pratt has been the leader of that organization for 30 years. it now comprises 300,000 members dedicated to preserving their second amendment freedom. larry has appeared on innumerable national radio and tv programs like nbc's "today" show, cbs's "good morning, america," cnn's "crossfire be," fox's ""hannity & colmes"," many others. my personal favorite was watching him dismember piers morgan. [laughter] [applause]

but i'm going to say something a little bit more personal at this point because larry was the guy -- and i don't know if he knows it -- who got me involved in the gun rights movement. he was the first guy i called when i decided in 1994 that something needed to be done. i was a nobody. i didn't know anything about how to go about any of this. but he took my call, and he nurtured that interest. and he helped grass roots north carolina become what it is today not only by that initial counsel, but by supporting our organization and training our activists in grassroots mobilization techniques. this guy is the true grassroots of the second amendment movement. i bring you larry pratt. [applause]

>> and a good evening to you. i am so glad that paul has invited me to be here with you. delighted to see how many of you there are. you know, the -- i don't think the establishment has gotten the message yet, but a message was sent from the seventh district of virginia last week that there's a new four-letter word in use. [laughter] [applause] they are still stunned that somebody like eric cantor cuddle go down. could go down. [applause] and we are so happy he did. [laughter] we took part in that campaign toward the end. we began to realize a little sooner than other seem but almost too late all the same that, hey, this guy might have it together. well, we thought we were going to go down with a worthy cause, but at least we needed to send a

little salute to mr. cantor. little did we realize this guy was going to go across the finish line. ask and he, hope -- and he, hopefully, has given new energy to other people similarly engaged either against a rino in a primary or some other form of socialist in the general election. the ruling class has really had trouble accepting new information. exhibit a, shotgun joe. the vice president who has -- [laughter] all this advice for the ladies as to which is the preferred gun for them, not one of those nasty ar-15s but a shotgun, of course, and within days at least one wag had a video together that showed one woman after another falling flat on her back, shotgun foul flying out of her hand, obviously not having been victimmed as to what to expect -- instructed as to what

to expect. and the last shot was a lady at a range, controlled fire with an ar-15. i know somebody that knows the vice president personally. he made that information available to him. this person is a second amendment expert, a firearms expert bar none, and it was like water on a duck's back. liberals live in a fact-free environment. [laughter] he, but they play for keeps because they've been trying to tar us and others who object to the rise or the continued bloating of big government and its dangers including their efforts to disarm the peasants, us. they have responded by language that could be quite fatal if it's not checked, because they are calling us from the very top of the regime in washington, they're calling people like us potential terrorists.

returning veterans, pro-lifers. the american family association is a hate group. they have described half of the people in here, i don't know. but that's, that's what they're up to, and it's what the nazis did to the jews, it's what the soviets did to the ukrainian farmers, it's what has been done by tyrants throughout history. demonize, disarm, kill. and so the second amendment is needed very much today, as it always has been, of course, because it's that knowledge in the back of many politicians' minds that it is there and that they perhaps ought to recognize some limits. one of our members was talking to a very liberal congresswoman one time, and and that probably doesn't happen too often. [laughter] but anyway, he was, he admitted it. he said, and it was not a gun issue. whatever it was he was talking to her about, she knew that he was connected with a gun rights

organization. and out of the middle of nowhere she said, i bet you want to shoot me, don't you? [laughter] well, lady, that's what the second amendment is all about. that's what it is all about. so keep that in your mind as you write your tyrannical laws because it just might come into play one of these days. that's what it is there for. we've seen a lot of shortcomings in this leadership, but one of the reasons we're happy that eric cantor is kaput is that he was one of those very instrumental and a surprise, like an ambush on the floor of the house handful of rino republicans joined the democrats in voting for more money so that the state could turn more names of people into federal computers not to be able to get guns. really cool, eric cantor. thanks a million. actually, thanks ten million. [laughter]

then we have seen what the president meant by using his pen and his phone. that's what operation chokepoint was all -- is all about. they're putting the squeeze on gun stores through the federal deposit insurance corporation saying, well, these are dangerous businesses, therefore, they have to be charged higher interest rates -- not higher, i'm sorry, they have to be charged higher rates more their, fees for their handling credit cards or dropped altogether. now, happifully, the free market -- happily, the free market has come to the rescue, and a number of entities -- hopefully, gun opener -- owners of america will join them soon -- processing credit cards for merchants being hammered by the regime. i'd like to give you a little background on how the toomey toomey-manchin gun control, gun registration bill was killed.

we were probably about two weeks out from the vote, and we hadn't heard from the nra. and so we thought, you know, piers morgan has given us this piers morgan memorial e-mail list, and everybody came onto our server, crashing it three times to find out what we were all about. and a lot of them stayed to get our e-mail and things of that sort to help out this the lobbying. well, we thought maybe we better lobby our big brother because we really need him now, this thing could pass. it was a very touch-and-go enterprise that we were engaged in. so we put out the e-mail saying, look, if you're an nra member and only if you are, would you please call this guy at the nra and ask him to get the powers that be to publicly oppose the toomey-manchin bill. and a week later, i mean, kind of pinching ourselves still, that's what happened. well, the next thing was even more surprising. senator manchin went screaming

to the media, i've been betrayed. nra's done a 180. we almost had this bill in the bag. we had no idea what was going on. we came so chose. so piers morgan, wherever you are, if you're listening to an nsa monitor, we love you, piers! [laughter] [applause] one of the things that cantor did to get our ire and we're still not sure we're out of the woods with this weasel, is that he's been pushing amnesty. and if he does that, it's the end of the republican party, but much more important, it's the end of our republic. because i speak spanish, i'm in an hispanic church, and i know what i'm talking about. these are 85% democrats, and when you vote democrat, you vote for gun control. and cantor seems to think immigration is going to win their hearts and hinds. well, i've got news for you,

eric cantor, that's not going to happen. not in the near run. it's going to take a lot of work through churches and other entities where these folks are worked one-on-one. and the idea that you pass some bill to give them a vote they're going to say thanks but no thanks, it's t just that simple. so for us this bill was a grave with existential threat to the second amendment. because 10, 15 years after cantor's fantasy is materialized, we're toast. politically, we're finished. so that's why we were so happy to see cantor go down. we were sorry that boehner didn't go down, but he only got 60% against a 30-year-old vet with no money. and is maybe some other people -- and maybe some other people will now be encouraged they can go do some more rino hunting. i saw this marvelous photo -- i couldn't find it before i came up, but it depicts a, perhaps,

1910 black and white scene, a couple of european hunters standing near a dead rhino. and the caption on this is "somewhere in virginia." [laughter] one of the things that's got me encouraged is the opportunity that we've had to work with senator cruz and senator lee. probably it was around the beginning of august, there was a meeting in senator lee's office with a number of groups, number of people like yours truly that headed up groups that had already opposed obamacare, or as i prefer to call it, zero care. we were opposing it because it was going to shovel names of people that had never been adjudicated in a court of law with think due process onto a federal list, and then they'd lose their right to keep and bear arms. so we had been a long and vocal opponent of zero care. and we were there with other similarly situated conservative

groups. at the meeting also was senator cruz. the thing that i had almost never heard from another politician was, look, i don't know whether we're going to win or lose this fight, but we have got to fight. wow. that's what i had been waiting for a long time, to hear somebody say he's this it for the long haul -- he's in it for the long haul. he may lose some battles, but he's in it to win the war. and that was very encouraging because watching this guy is to watch somebody who's really smart and really handles himself well. i think we've got a leader that we've been looking for. the events that came about at the ranch there near bunkerville, nevada, probably is our greatest current example of

why we have a second amendment. federal government has been doing things with land that it has no constitutional authority to do for years and years. and finally somebody stood up to 'em and said i'm not going to be pushed around anymore. and to my pleasant surprise and amazement, a lot of other americans agreed. and they went out there at the drop of a hat to defend this man. i was called by stuart rhodes who heads up oatkeepers to attend a news conference that was going to be held in the ranch, at the ranch the saturday -- the monday after the feds ended up folding on saturday. so i was on my way, almost on my way to the airport, and i got a call from stuart who said, well, they've gone. and they fled because they couldn't quite believe that the american people would stand up to them. and one of the things that i learned that was kind of

frightening, when the cowboys and i think some cowgirls were riding towards the corral to set the cattle free, they had guns aimed at them. not at the ready, at them. and they were convinced that they were, some of them, were going to get shot. so at the last minute, the feckless sheriff's department finally came together with all of the publicity that was emanating via the internet, and we were able to watch this unfold realtime. and the deputy went up to one of the blm boys and said do you want to be known as the folks that gunned down unarmed men and women? and it, apparently, was a good question because the guy had no answer, and they did stand down. and so it really tells you the importance of a sheriff's department. the sheriff was late to the game, but finally when he realized i'd better look like a sheriff, he sent his deputy out there, and it worked. the supremacy of the sheriff is a doctrine that operates in almost every state of our country. [applause]

and the second amendment was then under the proper authority of an elected county sheriff. and i think that was the way the episode should have ended and the way it did end. and memo to washington, it can happen again. in fact, it was on the verge of happening again as you might have seen, although not in the pages of any of the major media, that on the red river, the boundary between oklahoma and texas, all private land -- always has been private land -- they were talking about grabbing some land because of this, that or the other -- [inaudible] some nonexistent vegetation. and the hill shah in both states -- militia in both states said we'll see you there, and they didn't even have to deploy. the feds got the message: this is not the time to be messing

around with the american people. we've had it. eric cantor knows it, and others are going to know it too. [applause] i would say in closing that if you had one question and one demand that you might make on your particularly members of the house or those running for such a position, are you going to work to get the spineless leadership of your party to defund x, y and z programs? let's start particularly with not raising the debt limit. let's start with defunding zero care, and then we can go on from there to other things that need to be equally dealt with as urgently. then i think the we inject that into these campaigns -- if we inject that into these campaigns, they will realize what happened to eric cantor was

not a fluke. eric cantor was the first burst of lava pent-up out of a volcano that has finally burst forth. so let's do it, folks. [applause] >> before paul comes up and introduces our final speaker, the volunteers in about three minutes are going to go out and collect the envelopes, so please make sure you've made your bid. no bid is too small. if all you have is $5, go ahead and throw it in the envelope. it all goes to our pbf fund. this is a crucial election, and there are political victory funds, all the funds go towards supporting candidates. and let me be clear that we don't write checks to candidates. what we do is reone ad -- we run ads. we will send out alerts which cost a lot of money. so we don't put the money in their pockets, but we do action items that support them.

and then the is there anybody else that is interested in a raffle ticket for john lott's foundation? if there is, just raise your hand, and i'll come by with -- there we go. vanna white showing off the guitar. [laughter] if anybody else -- anybody else raise your hand, and i'll come by for that. thank you. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> our next guest, dr. john r. lott jr., is an economist who held research and teaching positions at the university of chicago, yale university, stanford, ucla, wharton and rice and was the chief economist at the united states sentencing commission. his it's books have included -- his past books have included three decisions of, my favorite, "more guns, less crime," crime

and freedomnomics." he is a frequent contributor to foxnews.com, has appeared in such places as "the wall street journal," new york times, los angeles times, new york post, "usa today," chicago tribune. he has appeared in such television rams as abc and nbc national evening news broadcasts, fox news, the "newshour" with jim lehrer and today show. now, ann coulter called him one of america's most feared economiests. economists. and she said you can tell the conservatives liberals fear most because they start being automatically referred to as discredited. ask senator ted cruz. but no one is called discredited by liberals more often than the intest is mall economist john lott, author of the ground ground-breaking book, "more guns, less time."

the topic for this evening, and let me get this right, is making up facts about guns. now, before i introduce him, though, we have a photo up on the board. our history goes back further than you know be, john. that's me in about, oh, i don't know, 1995 or so. i actually printed out your first copy of your first research, "crime, deterrence: right to carry concealed handgun laws," and i took it to elon college, now elon university, and that is me approaching sarah brady. [laughter] she had done a lovely speech on how she wanted to reduce gun violence in america, so i approached her entourage. and the security closed around her. but before -- i said, wills brady, i i understand -- mrs. brady, i understand you want to reduce violence. i want to help you do that.

and she beamed, and the security guards parted, and i said, i think you need this, and and i slapped dr. lott's study into her hand. dr. lott, and his topic, again, is making up facts about guns. [applause] >> well, i greatly appreciate the chance to talk to you all again. and there's been a lot that's been going on here. and, you know, it's kind of fortunate paul earlier played a video when shannon watts was on cnn, and he kind of foreshadowed some of the discussion that i was going to be having. you know, just amazingly within a minute or two there you had several claims that were being

made there. 40% of guns were obtained without background checks or purchased without background checks. a claim you would have seen many times over the last year by president obama. it's finally, after a long time, you would go and have some of the media fact checks point out that here you have a survey, a tiny survey that was done over two decades ago that was done before we even had the paradety law in effect -- brady law in effect. and it wasn't just sales. most of it, 36%, were transfers within families, gifts or inheritance. and just the fact that somebody would go and just change the terminology from saying a parent gifting or for inheritance to a child a gun and somehow call that a gun sale, you know, to

scare people -- [inaudible] just gave you some idea how far people were willing to go in order to try to make up numbers or claims. in -- see what we've got here. and so, but it just kind of -- in the last couple weeks, the president has gone and made many other statements. you know, he did a seven-minute registration a couple weeks ago, like ten days ago, they must have had 15 completely false statements in that short period of time. and what i thought i'd try to do is go through some of those and talk a little wit about the supporting evidence -- little bit about the supporting evidence that he brings up in order to try the southern that. i have to say aye known obama for -- i've known obama for a

number of years, maybe about 18 years. we both taught at the university of chicago law school for a period of time. he's a true believer. i'm not going to go and use terms like nazi germany in the '30s or whatever that people may have referenced today, but is it dangerous for people to go and produce misinformation? does it create confusion in the debate and make it so that we might adopt laws that are incorrect? yeah, i think there are real dangers and real dangers for people's safety. just go through a few of these things here now. so, again, these are quotes that are less than about ten days old from president obama. one thing he mentioned, he said my biggest frustration has been that society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can just do unbelievable damage. we are the only developed nation on earth where this happens. and, you know, just the typical -- [inaudible]

you know, you want to ask the president is norway a developed nation? because in july 2011, ignoring bomb deaths that were there, you had a shooter who killed 69 people with a gun and wounded 110 other people. that's the record right now for a single person killer. how about germany? i mean, most people may not realize this, but the two of the three worst k-12 lick school shootings -- public school shootings in the world have occurred in germany. and they've both occurred in germany since the year 2001. one you had 18 people killed, and another one you had 15 people killed. i earlier had done work looking at mass public shootings in europe from 2000-2010, and what you find is that the per capita

rate of mass public shootings really isn't that much different than the united states. there are and you say, well, how can that possibly be? you know, i haven't heard of these things. but you go and you look at these attacks which are worse than columbine, and yet how many of you have known about these attacks in germany? it's interesting, when you have these horrible attacks occur, it may get an hour or two worth of media coverage in the united states, and then it disappears. europe gets much more coverage of american has shootings that the united states does of europe. you may not realize, you know, finland within the last four years has had several big attacks where ten people or so have been killed in a university or at a mall. but you wouldn't have known that just by trying to depend upon american media in order to try to understand that. the president then went on and referring to, apparently according to the white house after i called them up,

referring to bloomberg's numbers that came out last week about school shootings, said and now once a week we have something like this happen. well, let's just take a minute about these claims that have come out recently by bloomberg where he said there have been 74 school shootings since newtown. you know, we've had this type of argument before. in february they produced the same type of numbers where they said at that time it had been 43. and the amazing thing to me is how uncritically the media covers these things. within, like, two weeks you had had well over 2,000 different news stories about it when it came out in february. basically, none of them critical, none of them going and asking an academic or critic to go and evaluate the type of claim that was there. it was just pretty much put out as received wisdom. and you've got very similar, positive coverage for a while with this 74. but in this time at least you had places like cnn or

politifact, amazingly enough, the daily caller doing fact checks, and they're pointing out something that i've been arguing for six months. if you look at these cases, it's including unrelated cases to school property. so you'll have an example of a 19-year-old who's gambling about a block off the school property, they get into a dispute over the money that's being gambled, and he gets shot to death. well, -- [inaudible] i've got a feeling we're going to have a problem with that. but, you know, the question is, is it a tragedy that somebody gets shot near an elementary school who's engaged in gambling? sure it is. nobody wants that to happen. or if you have a 43-year-old man who commits citizen at two a.m -- suicide at two a.m. in the morning at a school or near a school, yeah, that's a

tragedy. but these are not the type of shooting incidents that go ander the tie parents when you go and talk about these things. many of these events didn't even have, you know, those types of tragedies and injuries occurring. so i'll just show you one possibly better way of looking at this, and that is how -- what's happened to the number of deaths over time? you know, you take the 15 instances that cnn claims have occurred since newtown. still sounds like a lot. they don't go through, though, and carefully tell you did people die? was anybody shot in these instances? and if you look at this, you've actually seen over last couple decades a fairly significant drop in the rate of people dying from mass shootings on either k-12 or universities. in the five years -- because we start getting this data pretty solidly. there's a couple of organizations that started

collecting this back in 1992. if you look at the first five years, you're talking about an average of 26 deaths a year. obviously, any death is too many. if you look at the last five years, even with newtown the average per year is about 12. so it's fallen from 26 to 12. that's about a 55% drop. that's a greater drop than we've had over that same period of time in terms of the murder rates that have occurred there. be i don't think people want to go and phrase things like this in terms of kind of what's bottom line in terms of how many people get killed or injured in these attacks because it takes away a little bit from trying to exaggerate the fear factor there, i think. again, one death is too many, and i'm happy to talk about things that be be done in order to try to prevent those attacks that still do occur. but if we're going to have a sensible debate, we at least have to agree on what's happening to the numbers there. i'll give you another quote from

the president. we are going to put some common sense rules in lace that make a dent -- in place that make a dent, at least, in what's happening. until that is not just the majority of you because that's already the majority of you, even the majority of gun owners belief this. well, you know, i just showed you a misstatement by the president with regard to the background checks that were there. and, you know, it's not too surprising when if people hear those types of claims, that they may also make mistakes with regard to what they they the current laws or are or not. well, you look at this, and, in fact, you know, you can get some surveys that go and say do you support background checks on gun sales? and you'll find 80-90% of people go and do that. but the question is what is meant there. it's interesting, if you go and

ask people about specific legislation, flex, here's a pew poll -- for example, here's a pew poll that came out last april that asked people about the particular vote that was before the senate, asking them are you are happy to very angry about the fact that the senate bill was defeated, that didn't go forward? the if you look at republicans, about 51% were either very happy or relieved it was defeated. only 34% were disappointed it was defeated. among independents, more independents were happy that the bill was defeated than were disappointed. 48-43. only democrats -- 48-41. only democrats by a 67-22% margin were on net disappointed as a result of that. and you can see other polls that when they specifically ask them about the actual law that was up there, the other thing that's

interesting is if you go and ask people what do you think is going to happen with background checks, poll after poll shows that people don't can believe it's going to have an impact in terms of protecting people. i'll just give you two. in fact be, rasmussen is relatively -- people are relatively optimistic in this one saying it would have a benefit. they found even there, though, only 41% believe more background checks would reduce gun violence. from december a recent poll that included background checks in their list by 63-32% margin they don't believe that tighter background control -- they would not be be an effect in preventing criminals from obtaining guns. and, you know, the interesting thing is if you actually look at the background checks there, there's basically almost no criminals who are --

[inaudible] when the president goes and says that there's two million prohibited seem that have been stopped from buying guns because of background checks, the right terminology is that there have been two million initial denies. but there's a huge difference between using the term "initial denial" and prohibited people being prevented. i'll just give you one example. you may remember the late senator ted kennedy. five times he was on the no-fly list. five times when he went to the airport and tried to board a plane, there was somebody else who had a name similar to him and, therefore, he was stopped from flying, okay? now, i assume the president's not going to count that as five times we stopped a terrorist from flying. [laughter] but that's, essentially, the way the numbers are counted when they go and do the background check counts that they have here. if you look at the numbers for 2010, they've stopped reporting them this way under the obama

administration. but you could see there were 76,000 initial denials, only 44 of those were deemed worthy of prosecution, and they got 3 convictions -- 13 quiks. and if you look at those 13 convictions, my guess is none of you would think these are really seriously dangerous people there. people that made mistakes. it was interesting, just a couple of weeks ago, mark glaze who's just now stopped being the executive director for michael bloomberg's every town group had an interview with "the wall street journal." and one of the things that came out in there is that he basically admitted that even though nay immediately go and push for background checks or these other gun laws after these horrible tragedies, none of these would have stopped them. i mean, anybody who's involved knows that these people who have committed these crimes wouldn't have been stopped by these things like background checks.

i'll just read you what he says. quote: because people perceive a mismatch in the policy solutions that we have to offer and the way some of these mass shootings have happened, you know it is a messaging problem for us, i think. is it a messaging problem when a mass shooting happens and nothing that we have to offer, again, nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting? sure. it's a chang in this issue -- challenge in this issue. i'll just give you another example how these things get phrased. so if i just go and ask you are you in favor of background checks on gun sales, it gets a very high rate. people think that should be done. but just a little bit more information. the national shooting sports foundation hired somebody to do an alternative poll, and they just provided some background information. and so the cast majority of gun sold at gun shows are sold through licensed dealers who are required to conduct background checks before guns are sold.

do you believe that additional federal laws like universal background checks are necessary for gun sales? if you ask it that way, you get 53% no, 40% yes, 7% don't know. quite a bit different from kind of what you would hear constantly in terms of, you know, what we should be doing here. i don't know if i'm going to go through this, but it's just, you know, there's this -- the president has this bogeyman this terms of gun groups such as people here having all the money and, therefore, that's what's causing politicians to vote the way they do. they couldn't possibly believe the things that they say they believe. so if you are running for election right now, that's where you feel the heat, from the nra can and gun manufacturers. well, ad age went through advertisements on gun issues, pro and con, and found that gun control organizations in 201

actually spent about 7.4 times more on television opponents than -- on television advertising than their opponents did. just this year the nra typically spends about 20 million per election cycle. bloomberg's pledging to spend 50 million a year, and giffords' group is going to spend $20 million this year. so you get an idea, and those are just two of them. i could go on. literally, there's, like, 15 of these quotes in seven minute, but i'm just going to go through a couple more. and we have this. [laughter] >> so -- it's the internet trying to log on here. australia just said, well, that's it, we aren't seeing that again, basically imposed very strict, tough gun laws, and they

haven't had a mass shooting since. well, i could go and talk about the fact that they did have a buyback, but gun sales have gone back up again now. the gun ownership rate's at about a third, drop in gun ownership when they had the buyback, but gun ownership right now in australia is pretty much back to where it was. so put that aside because, obviously, that impacts how one's going to talk about this. but the thing is you just can't pick one data point. i could pick one state to go and look at. you want to go and try to look systematically. i could look at new zealand, for example. new zealand, neighboring australia, an isolated island nation again. if you look at new zealand's mass shooting rate prior to over the same period of time the that people talk about for australia, 1980-'96, they had .005 incidents per 100,000 people. that was actually higher than

australia's which was .0042. after that both countries have had zero mass shootings. well, australia may have changed its laws, but new zealand didn't. again, you just -- it's what we call cherry picking. it's kind of like i could go and flip a coin 20 times, get 10 heads and 10 tails. would i met somebody jutte go and say, well, i'm going to pick five from that example, okay? you don't do that. you don't just pick one number. there's a reason why these guys don't point to places like europe, for example, in these discussions. as i say, germany has much more stringent laws than australia has, and yet it's had some of the worst mass shootings in the world. but they wouldn't want to include that in their discussion. what i've tried to do with bill landis at the university of chicago, we looked at all the mass shootings in the united states over a couple of decades,

and what we found was that we looked at 13 different types of gun laws, and the only one that had any impact was the pass passage of conceal and carry laws. there was about an 80% drop in the rate in which people were killed or injured from these attacks. but the reason why you looked at all the states rather than just picking one is because, you know, you just -- there's so many things that can and if i could go and just pick one state, i would hope nobody would believe this. so now i want to talk a little bit about an example, because i've written something about multiple studies that bloomberg's put out. i just want to go into detail on one of these was -- because the it's gotten massive attention. you probably don't even realize

the impact it's had. bloomberg put out a study basically saying that in '96 there had been an amendment to the federal budget that had restricted money going to the cdc saying it could not use government fund to lob by be for by for country gun be controls. research has died up, i mean, i can give you quotes, but i'll just give you some of the media things. basically, they are relying on this original study. headlines proclaim, quote: federal scientists can again research gun violence. this was after obama kind of unilaterally changed the rules. or gun research is allowed again. with the stark claims that, quote: act demists were forced to stop their research at the point of a gun or at least at the insistence of the national rifle association. in april of 2013, abc, 20/20 ran

a segment entitled cdc ban on gun research caused lasting damage. or in january this year abc noted, quote: in 1996 the nra successfully lobbied congress to pull millions of dollars out of government-funded firearms earning. that this is rawrlted in, essentially -- resulted in, essentially, a 17-year moratorium on major studies about gun injuries. well, you know, just to kind of say here, so, this was a study by bloomberg. and i'll just give you one quote from the bloomberg study. it says the so-called vicki amendment, quote, has driven many experts. has driven many experts to abandon the field and keep young researchers from taking it up. you'd think that means a decline

in the number of articles, right? that seems pretty clear. but the decline in federal research has undermined overall knowledge creation because scholars are highly dependent on federal grants to support their research. i'll just tell you only about 3% of firearms research and medical journals are funded by the federal government. but in think case, the bill itself, the way it actually read, quote: none of the funds made available for injured prevention, control. at the centers for disease control and prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control. that's all i'd say. okay, so how did bloomberg's people go and measure this? what they did was they looked at medical journal articles on firearms as a percentage of all medical journal research. and they'll point out that the percentage of articles on firearms fell fairly substantially from '96 to 2011

when they stopped doing it. they didn't include the numbers for the year prior to their study where it had gone up a little bit, and it's gone up hugely in 2013. but the problem is they were never saying that the percentage of articles were -- [inaudible] they were talking about people leaving, not doing research. that means a number of articles. what basically happened is the number of articles on firearms rebelling went up it's just that made call articles went up -- medical journal articles went up even more. that's, to me, a completely different type of claim. so, for example, if you just look at the number of articles, it's true it didn't keep on growing at the same rate, but it still has gone up a little bit after yard, and by about 2014, it's about double what it was in '36. in '96. and if you look at the total

number of pages, because they say how substantial are these articles that are there, you find an even bigger increase in the number of pages in medical journals because the average article on firearms became lodger. so there was more of them, and the average length became longer. so, you know, if len of articles is relate -- length of articles is related to how substantial they are, then that would seem to go against that claim. so neither the number of studies, nor the pages on -- [inaudible] the average length of studies has gone up. you know, why do we need government funding for research? i've done some of the largest studies that have been done on gun control, i think by far in terms of the most data. you look at a lot of these mel call journal studies they'll have with away call 50 obligations. we look at 50 states in one year. i don't know how they pick which ones, but they do.

when i've looked at all these things and try to compare be how crime rates change over time in places that change their laws relative to the ones that don't. well, my concern about government funding is twofold. one, i don't really see the need. it's not like we're building sigh clo terror out there. what it is, i would go frequently and have a graduate student, and i would say, look, if you will work on this with me, i could pay you, but i could save some money, and i could make you my co-author. so why don't with doe this. and a lot of the graduate students want to have the chance to have their name on an article that's going to be published. the problem with government rounding research is that politician just cannot keep politics out of who they give the money to. i'm not saying that when they go

and give this hundred they say and is you'll get this conclusion. what happens is they know the politics of different people who will i -- will apply. there's no reason why we should go and use federal tax dollars to go and subsidize one-size research versus another in this debate, and it's not clear to me why federal government should get involved at all in this discussion. now, paul's video had a little bit of a discussion here between cnn and shannon watts. since he played the video, i'm not going to go through the whole thing. but she was asked is there an example in school shootings or malls or of these public facilities where basically bad guy with a gun that be stopped in any other way left sides by a police officer. has the civilian used their country to develop them from

committing this crime? and she shays this has never happened. and, of course, there was lafter here. i mean, i'm sure we could go through a long list of things. you hook at schools in pennsylvania, you have pearl, mississippi, universities like appalachian law school, you have malls like in salt lake city or you have portland oregon. you had churches like the universal life church. i can mention two shootings on streets in memphis, you know, in downtown areas in oklahoma city. other places, many of them public shootings have been stopped by suicides with gun gu. all briefly talked about the shooting in las vegas. the one thing that i would add about it is here you have this guy -- it's true he died, but he stops temporarily the male

keller there. the female had to go and get a cart, pretend to be one of the op tokers, go around behind him and shoot him in the back and kill him. the question is i 40 no idea how it works. let's say it's 30 seconds. you have people running out. you're giving them a 30-second head start then if that's all it took to be able to go and lee the area. everybody by all accounts which was a crowderred walmart. isn't it amazing with the caught at atwal disease at wal-mart. but i just want to go and point out something, and that is just in the last month we have within deliked with information about as we have in the past about what goes through these killers'

minds. and i'll just give you a couple of examples. elliott roger, the killer in santa barbara, have seem read this guy's manifesto? you go and read -- how many people have read the man manife. okay. and several plays in there, he exsplis lit i will pick picked. here he said another option was day in which many people pore in from all over the state, they have a spring break party. i think ld this would be the perfect day, but after watching youtube videos of private parties, i saw there were way too many cops walking around on such an event. it would be impossible to kill enough of my enemies before being dispatched by those damnable cops. he's centerly saying, and the guy feels like he's not given the proper attention.

he wants to kill as many people as possible. he worries that he'll be stopped because police officers have guns, and they'll be able to stop him. the new bankruptcy be wick killer this canada, this is from his facebook page. i don't know if anybody be has looked through this. this guy had a half dozen comments dealing with gun-free zones on his facebook age. this is just within 06 the top comics he had. so we had a civilian who's being attracted by a criminal. this is supposed to be all rainbows and unicorns from now on. and, of course, the criminal's basically thinking, what a moron. he has his gun in his back, knows that victim can't see. this guy picked a police where he knew civilians around there wbt able to go and defense themselves x. it's something he, obviously, was thinking about.

there was a case in tennessee just on earlier in june, so i'm just taking things, very recent cases. i could give you lots of others. just reading from the news report there in the local newspaper, so according to law enforcement officers the teens intended to become the most notorious mass mudders of all time. they allegedly wanted to be famous, and their road would be paved by the bodies of students and teachers. the boys even studied the 199 columbine shooting, correcting, quote, mistakes, end coat, may -- end quote, for the purposes of maximizing the number of student and faculty deaths in their planned volunteer high school as her. the plan included killing the school resource officer first. why did they do that? they knew that he could be the

one guy to stop them. and so you have a uniformed guard there. uniformed guards, god blood ble. but they have an incredibly difficult job. they're sitting targets there. it's hard to go and be constantly day after day, month after month, year after year on your shows in case something might go wrong. and what you end up happening, happen, and it's just not here, but in other cases, is that those will be the first guys taken out. these guys aren't stupid, and what do you do at that point when they're not able to go and stop this? well, i'm, i know i'm out of time here. so i believe so, right? okay. [laughter] i always talk longer. i apologize. you know you've got that when you asked me to do it. i apologize. [laughter] [applause] be so you can't claim ignorance

on that. and even then i've made a lot of cuts on what i would have liked to have said. i really appreciate the time here. you know, we've had nicki's talk and march eye's and andrew's here. you know, there's so much information that's here, and the question is how cowe go and get this out? because the media, you know, it's just amazing to me. we can't even get them to go and mention something as simple as gun-free zones. we have attack after attack. my guess is this debate would be dramatically different if even once in a while when they're going through their checklist of things, how did they obtain the gun, what type of gun was used, often things that are difficult to determineses and they make mistakes about. once in a wile the simplest thing to figure out is did a i task occur in a gun-free zone? it serves as a magnet for these

types of attacks, and we see the comics and other things here from these killings. you know, if that was mentioned, my guess is the political debate that we have right now would be dramatically different from the way it is. thank you very much. i appreciate your time. [applause] >> the senate is about to gavel in after a weeklong fourth of july break. senators will spend much of the day today on general speeches. at 5:30 eastern, they'll vote on an appeals court nomination, and then senators will vote on moving ahead with a bill that opens more federal land to hunting and fishing. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal god, the source and ground of all truth, give our senators the grace of reflection that will unite the scattered