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for citi, it has been an anchor. part of that in terms of the work that many institutions have done has been supported by the community reinvestment act. as important as it is, sometimes it traps funds in geographies where it is needed, but we cannot go beyond that. institutions go where and do that sort of investing more it is greatest need, not where there is just a regulatory

incentive to do it. housing has been a cornerstone of our work and secretary donovan, we worked with him on building innovation. one of the things about community development has been that it has been very siloed. very often, it was directly with community organizations not necessarily in consultation or alignment with the mayors offices. we found ourselves evolving a lot of what we've done, moving from only housing, for example, to working with groups in california getting fresh fruit into many areas across the state. or charter school financing. it has been about moving beyond

our core, which began as housing. we looked at the opportunities to work with mayors offices and building programs that were scalable and that could reach across the geography of the city. that meant bringing on nonprofit community partners. they deliver so many services. doing it in alignment and partnership with citi has proven to us the way for greater scale. it has taken us beyond our own footprint. where the need is there, but strong organizations exist and they are in partnership with the mayors. mayors offices have become idea centers. where should we be putting our resources? some of those areas -- this

comes at a national level, but it is so much more important for us to drill down to the local level. there are teams we can work with. we are finding amongst our best talent coming out of citi administrations. it is something we can replicate and we should scale. one of the areas, and i think the secretary spoke to the idea of really blitzing specific areas of greatest needs with alignment and coordination. when i think of that, one of the areas we've been working a lot around, working with small business, getting financed to them. we work with the chicago teams on building the chicago micro finances.

how do you replicate the work that important groups are doing in san diego, san antonio, new york? how do we bring scale to that? it takes a leadership of the mayors office as well as the strength of those organizations for us to be able to do that. i know a number of your cities are doing that, too. inner-city groups that are creating new jobs, new businesses, very much often by young entrepreneurs. that movement around urban manufacturing, a new concept of manufacturing, has a great momentum and we are working, having begun that in new york and san francisco, to find a network of cities.

that linkage to the mayors office brings the opportunity to really be sure that we are going to reach greater scale. it brings you the opportunity to show private funding that corresponds to public money. that is reaching 22 cities. another thing was about linking procurement contracts with eligible small minority business. we needed to make sure they were getting certified for the right contracts and getting the support to meet the challenges. you have many fiduciary roles, not easier for smaller businesses. one of the areas we have been doing not in los angeles. it is with the university of southern california.

it is getting a number of the small businesses not just certified, that in a position to successfully bid or collaborate on bids. they are getting contracts. it is keeping some of that work in the city itself. the opportunity for small businesses in your own municipalities to have that access. another focus area that many of you talked about, the unemployment. the longer-term in the older communities, people in their 50s who are out of work. they are having a hard time getting back into the job market.

most of whom are strong candidates whose industry has shifted. those groups need something more or different. we are working with a group. the mayor of bridgeport was the advocate for this and convinced us that it mattered and it would work in bringing in some of those long-term residents. we see the numbers dropping, the headline numbers. we know this group has remained in between and as not seeing jobs growing for them. we looked at that and that is now in 10 cities. finding financial information. new york did that with financial empowerment.

universal child savings, kindergarten through college with the mayor of san francisco. something we did with the leadership of the city. as we looked at immigration, the commissioner of immigrant affairs in new york, how do we work through the schools? how do they get programs with the resources they need to do that? we tried to build out a program with the city of new york. this idea of a holistic approach is much greater by working with mayors. we hope we work many more with you. in the past, we have worked directly with strong organizations in your community. by aligning it with the broader programs you have, it we have had more place space. we certainly see that in the work of san antonio, los angeles been awarded.

look forward to working with more of you in geographies we have been in and where we have not been. examples of things we can replicate to leverage public- private partnerships. thank you. >> thank you very much, bob. [applause] we are here at the community development housing committee. we like to try to set as many substantive issues as we can in an hour. this is who we are. she will make a brief presentation and then we will open it up for questions. as i introduce kerry, many of you were in our committee meeting at our annual meeting in las vegas and you had a chance to hear from the women's union.

they talk about social mobility. we know -- and it does not matter what kind of city you are in, the biggest issue is this issue of mobility, social mobility. how do we ensure that we are giving all people an opportunity to move from poverty, middle- class and beyond, and how do we do it? there is a lot of new thinking around the country that is happening how much science behind what is happening. as we conduct our committee meetings, allow for some of the best ideas and thinking that should come into answering these questions. at the last meeting, we had a great presentation on how does movements are happening.

i want to allow kerry to speak a little bit on how the brookings institution report on some benchmarking they are doing around mobility and things we should look for from the city standpoint. she is the associate director of the center on children and families at brookings institution. in addition to leading the work with state and local governments on social mobility, her research interests include literacy and education on all levels. prior to her work, she holds a phd in american literature. she will speak on a strategic framework for improving intergenerational mobility. >> i know time is short so i will be brief. intergenerational mobility is simply talking about how we can delink the circumstances of a child's birth from their later

outcome. that is what our project is about, whether those circumstances at birth are about the parents income, zip code, we want to make that link less about [inaudible] -- let's destiny. about destiny. americans respond more to this idea of opportunity. the problem is well everyone supports the idea of opportunity like they do jobs or growth, we do not know how to measure opportunity. what we are trying to do is put together a way to do that. i am going to not even bother with some of the slides.

i am happy to talk to you and tell you more about this. your chances of reaching the middle class by middle-aged, which we measure is about 300% of the poverty line, they vary greatly aced on your background and gender. that is the end of the story. how do we get there? we have come up with benchmarks that incorporate both academics as well as behavior on social standards. we look at middle and grade school about reading and math skills we know are some of the strongest predictors of how you will do in high school. in high school, our benchmark is whether or not you graduate with decent grades without being

convicted of a crime and becoming 18 parent. -- a teen parent. right now the average nationwide is about 48% reaching that benchmark. obviously, that varies greatly from city to city. we know the reach these benchmarks are likely to do well. even though there is great variation in who is reaching for the benchmark by family income, the good news is that if you manage to reach all these benchmarks you have just a good chance of being middle class by middle age of people who are born to better off families. too few are doing that. we know that success builds upon success. school readiness. if you are ready for school, you're much more ready -- likely to be successful in middle childhood. you can see if you are ready for

school you have 76% chance of doing well in middle childhood. if you are off track when starting school, that chance is almost half months -- is almost half as much a 41%. why am i here talking to you about this? we think you can use these benchmarks in your cities in a couple of different ways. first of all, we think you can use it to set goals. where are you in terms of measuring opportunity in your city? where do you want to be. can you use this to institutionalize a framework in a way to hold people to account annually. third i think this framework is useful in evaluating programs. you want policies and programs they will help opportunity in this.

i would to reinforce the notion that multiple interventions at multiple life stages are going to be the way to move the needle. there will not be one silver bullet that solves this problem once and for all. we have done some simulations where we find that intervening intervening again and again for building programs in high quality preschool as well as a school reform program. over and over again is a cost of about $25,000 per student who ends up with about 30 -- $130,000 of benefits. that is a little bit of a taste of what we are talking on. i will talk to you in the future about this is how we can build in your city. >> thank you.

[applause] i'm going to open up for any questions. one thing to think of is we have multiple thing, how do we best make sure whatever resources are coming in are adjusting the needs of our city? >> art key question has been a government that is basically over 10 years ago said -- sent out a mandate that there would be pretty education for all children. -- pre-k education for all children in louisiana. we are not even at the 50% mark right now. then you have the local school systems that has their own jurisdiction.

they said of their that. -- set up their rules. how do we get out of the quagmire? >> i did not know if kerry wants to answer that. i can tell you my suggestion would be as we all know, people are looking to mayors and cities right now. certain state jurisdictions are representing that. within that committee we can begin as the look of these benchmarks to maybe model some of these in our own cities and go to state and federal jurisdictions and say here are the benchmarks we are at.

here's how we're trying to get there. how can you help us get there versus how the state. we have an opportunity to fix the frame. >> you have three separate bodies. the city is not in charge of the school system. that treats all of the problems. -- that creates all of the problems. >> that is a good question. in some jurisdiction schools are different from the municipal side. i know all of us are in different pockets. we had to be creative about how we do that within our own jurisdictions. that is worthy of further discussion within our committee. he can do the same thing. it is the same scenario where the schools are separate from

municipalities. i think he views new sure hope it -- i think you can use your pulpit to think outside the box and figure out how we can use our position as mayors to really drive this innovation. even what we do not control in the city of allentown. the only one in pennsylvania is philadelphia. some has been put into the school district. yes. the destinies are linked together. if they are not in sync, it is obviously going to have a detrimental impact on both of our communities. i think we can drive the innovation just by the very presence. >> a lot the science is showing the question is what goes on before that child enters the door of the school. what is going on in the family's household? how is that family or that parent managing their children, their finances, their job scenario? a lot of the background is where

we have not been created with all the resources we are spending. while the education system may be separate, and it is, a city can really focus in on that aspect. i wanted to add that in addition to working with the school department. >> you may want to think how the business community's chimes in. the huge challenge with the pre- k is it is incredibly disruptive to families who are both working and to do not have the opportunity to return back to work very often until much longer on. i see with my colleagues often. they may fall out of the job market longer than they would have without pre-k. >> would actually do something

with our park programs. we know we have a lot of in different athletic programs. we tie educational advancement with a good grade point average. we give free tutoring. you have to provide for the kids who need academic help. you could educate. you can be involved in education and influence that. >> i will chime in and saying the idea that education is only in schools -- is not only in schools is important. research is showing that preschool, while really important, is almost too late in many cases. we need to be talking about parenting and the importance of parenting early on. it is really setting children up in a way that may be easier to access than preschool. >> what we did in allentown as

we had community schools. we partnered. we pushed some of the private sector to partner with individual schools that they adopted. they are actually funding support mechanisms within those specific urban schools to really push some innovation. as mayor, you can do a lot. you do not control the system but you can do a lot to influence it. >> that is not what is happening in baton rouge. you have a governor that refused after mandating that every child gets a preschool education that has never funded preschool. you are now left to depend upon headstart that has a preschool component and a regular component. they have a waiting list that is unbelievable. there is no bully pulpit here. the school board would tell you to go to hell if you try to intervene and what they deem is their business.

as far as the education, i'm going to go back with the point you made. what is happening in the homes? i will give you one example. a young lady of 14 years old comes home. her mom works. single mom. her boyfriend comes in that afternoon. her mom fixes the dinner. after dinner and she does some of homework, she goes to sleep. after the mom goes to sleep, this jackass goes into the room of a daughter and has sex with the daughter. she gets up the next morning to tell her mom this is what is happening, we have something wrong in our household. the mom virtually calls for a liar. it goes into a different system were in many cases these kids run away from home and also skipped school.

the last part is simply this. the stats have shown that if a child cannot read by the time he or she is four years old more than likely they're going to be a subject of the criminal justice system. i think everything needs to be put on the table. this is a very comprehensive peace that we have to look at. we can see the violence that is occurring among you. youth.-- even mothers pimping their daughters, sons. having sons go out and rob stores on their behalf. there is whole slew of things going out there that is not just this easy cookie answer. -- cookie-cutter answer. >> i appreciate your comments very much. again, what we have to get creative about is just that question. what is happening in that home and with that parent. what is happening with the child?

where and how are we setting the household up for success? the adults in the household as well as the children. that is what this report speaks to. there are some great programs and ideas out there that are happening now on a smallest hero. -- smaller scale. i want to make sure we have access to those. that is part of what i want to do in this committee. that is great. because he had been so ambitious, we have tried to put a lot of things in. we're going to have to wrap up. what i'm going to do is make sure that the various presentations in some way are circulating around to the committee members and contacts for those so you all have them and you can follow up independently. we also will be in communication with the on regard to the cdbg advocacy program.

we'll be doing an event in the spring. we're going to need your help. making sure that congress and the senate hear our voice on that for the next budget. in particular, using the bully pulpit of the 40 year anniversary of cdbg. we'll be asking them out there. thank you very much for your participation this afternoon. i look forward to working with you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> coming up, a debate on u.s. gun policy. then a preview of the state of the union address. on "washington journal." examining the recent changes to ,ilitary retirement benefits

including cost-of-living adjustments under the bipartisan budget act. live starting at 9:30 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. subcommittees -- the next round of talks on iran's nuclear program. a former u.s. ambassador to the u.n. live coverage starting at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. i realize that tax reform and entitlement reform will not be easy. the politics will be hard for both sides. none of us will get 100% of what we want. the alternative will cost us , visiturt our economy hardship on millions of hard-

working americans. let's set party interest aside thatork to pass a budget exchanges reckless cuts with our future. let's do it without the brinkmanship that scares off investors. [applause] the greatest nation on earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one crisis to the next. [applause] we cannot do it. let's agree. let's agree, right here, right now, to keep the people's government open and pay our bills on time and always uphold the full faith and credit of the united states of america. president obama deliver this year's address. our preview program starts live tonight at 8:00 eastern with the president at 9:00 eastern.

followed by the response of the republican conference chair. and your reaction. the state of the union tonight, live. >> i would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all americans over the past year. investigations of the so-called watergate affair. provided to i have the special prosecutor, voluntarily, a great deal of material. i believe that i have provided all of the material he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent. i believe the time has come to and theat investigation

other investigations of this matter to an end. one year of watergate is enough. [applause] >> looking back at five decades of notable state of the union addresses. ,unday at 3:00 p.m. eastern part of american history tv this weekend on c-span 3. that is all leading up to president barack obama's 2014 state of union address. >> next, a debate about the current state of gun policy in the u.s.. lawyers examine recent shootings and argue for gun safety measures and gun owner's writes to rid this event is from stanford university in california. it is 90 minutes.

>> am i on? welcome everybody. nice to see you here tonight. i am the dean of continuing studies, and it is my pleasure to moderate this program, entitled "guns in america a year after sandy hook." it is now a little more than a year since december 14, 2012, which, as we know, adam lanza shot his way into sandy hook in newtown, connecticut. with several shotguns and handguns. he killed 26 children and took his own life. we know that on tuesday in roswell, new mexico. a 12-year-old boy injured his school with a shotgun in a gym -- entered his school with a shotgun in a gym bag and seriously injured a 15-year-old girl, and critically injured an

11-year-old boy, both of whom are recovering, successfully, we hope. in the year since sandy hook, 1500 gun bills have been introduced in the legislature of nearly every state. a little bit over 100 have actually been enacted into law. of those 100 nearly 70% got rights -- and only 39 of the laws that were passed actually increased gun control and safety. the united states still has the highest number of guns per capita. 88 per 100. for a total of about 270 million. and 2013 saw the same number of deaths by gunshot.

around 30,000. as in the previous years, around 30,000. here we are a year after sandy hook, still talking about the lobbying and organizing, and citizens respectful of each other's decisions to craft legislation and policy that will protect safety and our freedom. tonight, we will have this conversation in a debate format. i will act as moderator. speaking in favor of an increased gun safety and gun control legislation is john donohue, the edith m carl smith professor of law at stanford law school. speaking in favor of gun owners rights and the second amendment is don kilmer, an attorney in private practice in -- san jose. here is of the evening will go. they will each make an opening presentation of about 10 minutes. john will go first.

these will be followed by six prepared questions that will be debated, these were selected from those that were proposed and from which we selected six questions each -- each will be given four minutes to respond to questions and we will alternate. we will finish with 20 minutes of questioning from you in the audience. you probably all noticed that in your programs you have the index card, and you probably suspect what that is for. write the question and pass it to the aisle, and those cards will he picked up by our volunteers and graduate students and they will be circulating through the audience and brought up to branislav yakovic who will read through them and give me a select number that we should get through in 20 minutes. we will finish by 9:00. i hope you stay for each act of this presentation.

before we begin i would like to recognize branislav. please stand up. he is the spirit and energy behind tonight's program. and without his assistance we would not be here. thank you very much. [applause] without further ado, i will begin with john donohue and his opening presentation. >> thank you very much. i have the pleasure to be here and i am glad i was the safety person and not the violence and death supporter. let me start by saying, conservative republicans used to think that there was no private right to guns. this is griswold -- appointed by president nixon and said the constitution was a barrier to

reasonable gun laws and exceeds the principles of at the -- advocacy. chief justice warren burger, an extremely conservative judge of his time, wrote -- just last month, a columnist, a longtime columnist stated what must be a core principle, that reasonable regulations are essential for all constitutional rights including the right to bear arms. this is an absolute essential truth and he was quickly fired for saying that.

the debate over gun policy in america is so dominated by extreme voices that even a second amendment fundamentalist who always keeps a gun by his side is ostracized by the gun community. we are locked in a struggle with powerful forces in this country, that will do anything to destroy the second amendment. says the former editor of guns and ammo. the time for rational points is gone, and this is largely reflected by the opposition -- there is no room for rational discourse on these subjects. let's hear more from the former guns and ammo editor, who describes the special nature -- you have to because it's with the manufacturer to make the appeal to the leadership. -- readership. that is just how it happened. he had charges dismissed a -- an arizona laster after two trials

ended with deadlocked juries against him. he fatally shot a neighbor during a drunken argument. we have a heckler manufacturing a series of weapons, that high- quality body on her -- body armor has ended machine guns and effective. -- in effect give. neffective.t if this was described as an assault rifle damaging tissue as it penetrates the body armor, causing more damage. in 2012, the editor of recoil magazine wrote that this weapon was designed for law enforcement and was unavailable to civilians and for good reason. he was pressured to step down and despite profuse apologies for having made that horrible misstatement, -- what enemy of the second amendment says, we believe in the tolerance -- no guns in

american schools, with the rare exception of law enforcement or security personnel. is that barack obama after newtown? that was actually way my pierre after the columbine shootings. if someone makes those statements now, they are described as constitutional terrorists. we think it is mandatory to have background checks for every sale at gun shows. is that president barack obama? that was an nra advertisement taken out after the columbine massacre. but the nra today stands against universal background checks. the one thing that the public supported in overwhelming numbers after the newtown shooting and regrettably -- we did not get that. if you say today with the nra

was saying in 1999, that this is a dangerous threat to the constitution -- the bad news is that there is no easy solution to the problem of gun violence. it is similar to the problem of illegal drugs, the social costs are high but there are people who value them highly. if you start with guns in -- 275 million guns in circulation it is very hard to come up with controls that will work effectively if you were starting from scratch. and even if you know what quirks, it is hard to get an gethat works, it is hard to it implemented. there are some good ones, i like to be optimistic. the gun merchants are not as bad as the debacle companies -- tobacco companies. in terms of life lost. most of the guns buffer protection never cause any harm or benefit, they will just sit there.

most accidental firing simply bounce off of the wall. if you are following last week in frankfort, kentucky, just before the state of the state address -- the governor was cleaning her gun and fired a bullet that ricocheted, thankfully not hitting any representatives in the room. she laughed about it, she thought, i was totally clear. i am a gun owner, it happens. here are the numbers. we lose 850 people through firearm act of that -- accidents, close to 20,000 from firearm suicide, close to 11,000 by homicide. 100,000 killed and half a million gun crimes of violence each year. in terms of the total number of deaths, if you aggregate them

from 1965, about 750,000 were homicides, accidents that were -- 650,000 were homicides and accidents, that were more than the combined deaths, more than all of the combined wars of the 20th century. it is not tobacco company numbers, but still, obviously too high. trying to deal with a lack of information is always a problem and of course the nra has used its influence to try to suppress information collected by the center for control so we don't know as much as we would like to know. and the nra is constantly putting out inaccurate information to give one the sense of several reports on gun ownership around the world. clearly to refute the assumption that the abundance of guns in the united states leads to homicides. when it comes to firearm homicides, the u.s. does not

even make the top 25. it sounds like guns really help. among affluent nations we are a total outlier with homicidal violence. there is little doubt that the massive level of guns and u.s. gun culture contribute to that violence. the regression shows that as a country becomes richer, the tendency for -- tendency is for homicide rates to fall and the one country that stands above the regression line is the united states with three times the rate of homicides that you would expect for a country of this wealth. we are trying to move the red dot down to reduce the numbers but we are likely to succeed if we acted differently from the competitor nations, and cut back on the restrictions from guns, and gun culture, by trying to mimic them.

-- or by trying to mimic them. our 2008 numbers would be substantially beyond what we showed here if we had not tried to compensate for these enormously high violence levels by locking up millions of individuals. controlling guns cannot control the entire gap, but it is like anything else. reasonable regulation can improve the situation. the claim is made that when states postal regulatory laws, crime goes down. there is no evidence for this. a 2004 report shows that there is no support for that view. it in fact cuts the other way. let me give you some quick numbers here. when these laws are passed, that allows citizens to carry concealed handguns, on average and in every category, crime rises.

this is not enough to make claims but it shows that the this does not support the general claim. the more sophisticated analysis tries to control other factors that play a role, across the various crime categories. you see a very consistent pattern that if anything the crime numbers are going up. they represent no evidence of crime drops. the national crime victimization survey has shown that the violent crime -- attack with a violent crime several thousand times for year, won eight of the violent crime episodes.

it is clear that guns are used at times for self-defense but the overwhelming amount of time, people do not have the opportunity to use the guns even if they lawfully possess one. but we do know that 232,000 times a year, guns are stolen from law-abiding citizens. and that means every time a gun is used in self-defense, five times guns use up -- wind up in the hands of the criminal element. that is probably a bad trade- off. we will say more in the next phase. [applause] >> first, a little bit of a disclaimer. if i was invited here to -- drafted to represent the national rifle association, i

would have to take conscientious objector status. i am not here to represent the nra and they do not edit my point of view, i often disagree with the national rifle association with gun policy. i was here as a substitute speaker for mr. don case. he is a mentor of mine, who you can find that article in the michigan law review. the fact is, if i can leave you with one impression tonight i hope that it will be that the second amendment, and the entire bill of rights are public policy. freedom and liberty and the ancillary responsibilities have been debated during the drafting and ratification of our amendment. that does not mean that there is not room for regulations of firearms.

the problem is, at least from professor donahue's perspective, we must overcome the constitutional barriers for fundamental rights. it may be easier when it comes to regulating guns to meet the government's burden, maybe even a compelling government interest. because we are talking about the instruments that are used to inflict deadly force in self- defense. but the fact is that regulation of -- proper regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is probably constitutionally appropriate. several of the justices of our supreme court, and professor adam winkler of ucla has noticed that all of our rights come with some risk. how much easier would criminal investigations be if testimony was adibre tuned into the euphemism, this is a polite term for torture. many crimes will be solved if the government did not have to obtain a war probable cause to search your homes or person or places of business.

how much easier with the prosecution of criminals be if the accused was not afforded the right to have an attorney present or represent him in the trial. our bill of rights and constitutional rights and fundamental rights to carry risk. the second amendment is no different. but the balancing test was done in 1791 and 1868 on the 14th amendment, incorporating the 17th amendment. the purpose of the second amendment is self-defense, in our anglo-american tradition of self-defense. the words of the second amendment itself, a well regulated militia needed for a free state, the right of people to keep and bear arms should not be infringed. this gives us the second purpose of the second amendment, the defense of the community and the defense of the state and the nation.

the third purpose of the second amendment is defense against tyranny arising in our own country. now, the first of these is self- defense, and the anglo-american common law, which we affirmed in heller versus district of columbia's decision. the defense of your community and the defense of your nation is set forth in the amendment but it is also codified in the united states law. how many of you are here between the ages of 17 and 45? if you are not a member of the national guard you are a member of the unorganized militia. and you have a duty to be compelled to show up to defend the nation in the event of an internal emergency. the ninth circuit in the 2003 case, although he was not chief justice at the time wrote very

eloquently the third purpose of the second amendment. that is, writing in the minority at the time, because in 2003 the second amendment had not been recognized by the supreme court as a fundamental right. he's speaking to the majority when he says -- the majority falls prey to the illusion that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns. they would be better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals or someone on the government payroll. the simple truth is that it fares best when government need not fear -- fear the wrath of ordinary people. disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating slaves and free blacks in the south. they searched black homes for weapons and confiscated those found, punishing their owners without judicial process. the north, by contrast -- blacks armed themselves against racial mob violence.

as chief tawnee --you can read about that in scott versus sanford. a few hundred jewish soldiers help -- held off the warmaucht so 6000 jews would not be put into cattle cars. this has not been forgotten by history. the prospect of tyranny may not grab headlines like gun crimes do, and many did not see the third reich coming until it was too late. the second amendment is a doomsday provision, designed for exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights are upheld. and the government will not stand for reelection and silences those who protest. when you have a choice not to address crime -- don't forget to include the genocides that have

been committed by governments against unarmed people. i would also like to put to rest another myth that i don't think has been debunked enough. that the controversy of the meeting of the second amendment that confronts us -- this is not a left or right or concern of liberal dichotomy. -- conservative-liberal dichotomy. about a decade ago, they passed a countywide initiative, measure h. designed to ban the possession of handguns in the city and county of san francisco. this won at the polls. 123,000 people voted for it. 89,000 people voted against it. this was roughly 58%-48%. the ordinance was eventually shut down in the court. but the interesting fact is that

42% of the residence and -- of the city and county of san francisco voted no. you could not find that these are conservative right wing gun nuts. a little further back in history, 1982, a gun -- gun control advocates were successful in putting proposition 15 on the ballot, a statewide initiative to repose and moratorium on handguns in california. for the first time in california history, mayor tom bradley was the first african-american on a gubernatorial ticket. but that brought out a lot of unexpected voters. proposition 15 was defeated in a landslide victory, 63%. tom bradley lost by a very thin margin. what does this tell us e it tells us there is a large percentage of people who

probably characterize themselves as democrats or as liberals, who want to hang onto their firearms and do so for good reason. when you try to think about policy, remember that the second amendment is not an actor is him. -- is not an anachronism. the u.s. is not without its sin in regard to native americans and the legacy of african- american slavery in the country. by the grace of the debate -- the joke this debate will accentuate, we can go beyond today taking into account the wisdom of those who came before us who ratified these -- because at that time they made the judgment that they were just free to sue people. -- that they would best suit a free people. [applause]

>> it was our plan to allow don to go first. we are turning to the prepared -- please come in, those of you who have come in late. we would prepare six questions -- and i realize, he has just been speaking. let's let john go first. your question that you phrased in your opening remarks -- i will post this question to you. and then, don will have his chance to answer and we will have a very fancy time that everyone can see, very sportsmanlike. here is the question. the standard model justifications for the second amendment, which you mention in your opening remarks. here is the question. there are three standard models of justification for the second amendment. number one, self-defense for the individual. number two, defense of the home and state and number three, a check on tyranny.

which of these justifications do you not accept? >> thank you. i am very sympathetic with the idea that people want to use adequate needs -- adequate tools for self-defense and i do think that the supreme court has said that you do have the constitutional right to have a gun for self-defense, but i do think that this is not mean that you have the right to high- capacity magazines, and unlimited firepower. and so, you do have to be aware that the second commitment -- second amendment was ratified when firepower was trivial compared to what is available today. in every respect, the amendment

has to be thought of in terms of its modern dangers. that it imposes. again, i am sympathetic to the idea of citizens wanting to protect themselves, but a revolver seems to be more than enough to satisfy that basic need. when it comes down to the check on tyranny, you will hear the gun crowd frequently say, we have had tyrannical people like obama, around, and the idea that guns in the hands of the citizens would be an obstacle for the u.s. military if they decided to follow obama in turning on the american public i think this is truly a fanciful idea.

that the u.s. military would thd turn on the american public -- but if they were to do so, guns in the hands of citizens will not be a realistic check. recall that george washington thought that those who would take up arms against the federal government was treason -- he rapidly put down the whiskey rebellion. >> thank you, john. don, you can speak to the question or his answer. >> the right to self-defense is not just something that was ratified or neceil