many are purchased without a background check. .t is too easy to get a gun it is illegal for them to do that. they think they can go through the process without a background check. issues around domestic violence. >> right. i know this is important to you. >> gabby was in washington last week with members of the u.s. senate. it looks like we will get our first hearing on the issue of domestic violence and guns. leahymet with senator about that. that is an important step forward. waszine size, the day gabby injured, the shooter brought 33 rounds of magazines in each magazine. the first magazine was emptied in 15 seconds.

the somebody really need 33 rounds of magazines? i don't think so. >> do have relationships with the nra in which you could bridge that a little bit? >> we have tried. i'm spoken with some of the leadership. the things that the nra does that is very important that they do a good job with regard to gun safety. the organization we feel has changed over the last several years. >> in which direction? >> into a direction that is to try to support the gun manufacturers as much as possible. , are you hopeful about the future on gun policy? , are you hopeful about

it? >> yes, hopeful. it has been a long, hard road. --the future >> hopeful. >> optimistic? >> optimistic. optimistic. >> it will be a long road, i think. haul, but- a long i'm optimistic. want years from folks who common sense legislation passed without a lot of hard work. >> i know you are both working on a book. what is the message you want to convey? >> enough is enough. >> enough is enough. >> that is exactly what gabby said. [applause] do we really want to live in a country where after the death of

20 kindergartners and first , the national response is nothing? >> nothing. >> we could do a lot better than nothing. incidents try to stop of mass shootings that occur at a pretty regular rate. we need to work on that aspect of it. at the same time, there are .bout 30-35 murders a daily toll of gun violence. not only the deaths, but the costs. there's a lot to be done there. this onbout we end enough is enough? >> enough is enough. >> thank you to you both.

[applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please stay in your seats for a moment. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> business owners and policymakers gathered to discuss the future of the legal cannabis industry good recreational marijuana has been legal for about 18 months with washington state to be the next to enter the industry. you can watch the discussion saturday at noon eastern on c-span. you can keep in touch with current events from the nation's capital using any phone, anytime we c-span radio. -- 202-626-8888. every day listen to a recap of the events. you can hear audio of the public affairs programming beginning

sunday at noon eastern. c-span radio on audio now. long our phone charges may apply. -- long-distance phone charges may apply. >> graduates from north carolina recently hosted its 20th annual dinner that focused on the issue of gun rights here at among the speakers were stand around law experts and gun owners of america executives. we have also heard from a young widow who held tennessee and ohio -- helped tennessee and ohio change their concealed weapons laws after her husband was murdered by a stalker in a nashville restaurant. this is an hour and a half. >> our first speaker tonight is someone i had conversed with and who was it instrumental in helping pass --

she worked in a nightclub in tennessee when a stock or rogan ker and killedstal her husband. at that point in time and like north carolina recently, she was prohibited from sharing her concealed handgun within an arrest on the served alcohol. i met her at the second amendment march a number of years ago and determined that this was the person that we needed to have in north carolina . she has become a national advocate for concealed handgun laws in general. [applause] >> thank you so much. me here toor having

speak with you about the importance of our second amendment. ,s a victim of a violent crime my name is nikki. i'm from nashville, tennessee. has-been,09, my benjamin, was shot six times right in front of myself. by a man who had been stalking me right in the middle of a restaurant. this restaurant served alcohol. it was a restaurant where my husband and i ran our mobile karaoke business. we had an agreement with the restaurant owner to run they karaoke every thursday night. i met a man that suddenly showed nowheree scene out of and at first he seemed halfway

normal. oughtut he was a -- we th he was a tourist. he started coming in more often for karaoke night. eventually i realized there's something not right with him. he had never threatened me. there is never straining order here and we all never straining orders is simply a piece of paper. i ended up having to block them from ice social network, which is how we would advertise our business. he was sending me inappropriate messages. look, i'mell him, happily married and what you're saying to me is inappropriate. he continued to come to my shows. he never threatened me. then he came to one of my shows at a restaurant where i have never seen him before. good 35taurant was a

minutes away from downtown nashville where he normally came to. i realized this is not just a dedicated karaoke customer. this is not someone with a simple crush on me. this man is stalking me. benmoment i saw him, i told i don't go comfortable with this man here. i will ask management to remove him. do whatever you need to do. i went to go get management. they confronted him and asked him to leave. 45 outeeded to pull a from under his jacket and shoot ben six times. he actually stood over ben and continue to fire into his body while he was on the floor. handgun permit holder at the time. law,se according to state

i normally carry a handgun, but had to leave it locked in my bugle. i follow the law. me did that was stalking not have a permit and was not following the law and murder is a ready legal. him.aw did nothing to stop people with evil intentions could care less about the law. it is those of us that are law-abiding that care about the law. obviously my life has been changed forever. losing engine into that type of violence. but it is violence. i get tired of hearing people talk about gun violence. let's talk about violence. gun, i whene the the murderer.

-- i blame the murderer. i blame the legislators who prevented me from doing what i needed to to protect my husband and i. it is my belief that gun free ores are killing zones criminal protection zones. people that want to do evil can harm or kill knowing that no one there can stop them. police all heard that are only minutes away. that is true. i do not blame the police. i have a huge amount of respect for law enforcement. even law enforcement know that they cannot be anywhere and everywhere at any time. those officers came on the scene within three minutes of the 911

call, i have been told. they were there in enough time to put up the crime scene tape and take pictures of my has-been -- my hsuusband. i think we all make decisions based on the options that we have. i -- if ier know if could've prevented that from half thing. that option was not available to me. the decisions i made were based on the options that i had. after time on the news the shootings occur. the only thing the media will not tell you, the majority if not all of the shootings occur in gun free zones. they are places where evil people know that no one can stop

them. they know it. that is why they go there. highernt to get that body bag zone. they existed. anyone believes this kind of violence can happen to them. i had my handgun carry permit and went through my training. i try to be prepared. i never looked at it at careless, but prepared. it happened to us. i do not want you to be paranoid. i want you and your family to be prepared here it you never know when evil is going to choose to pay you a visit. evil can strike anywhere no matter where you are. will you be preparing to stop that right? -- will you be prepared to stop

that threat? stop -- i worked really hard after ben's murder with senator doug jackson in tennessee. he was actually a democrat. him and the phone with told him everything that had happened. he invited me to the state capital. i told my story. the ended up restaurant a carry restaurant bill. as long as you are not drinking any alcohol. choose not to go to

those places. if you are not going to give me the ability to protect myself and you are not going to protect me either, i have a problem with that. i do not want to give them my money. there are cards that i carry around with me that tell them you are in a gun free zone and it is a false sense of security. yet the stop and ask yourself -- who is most likely to follow the silly rules, you know? someone that wants to harm people is not really care about that sign. it is a false sense of security. they have the restaurant carry law and i submitted my written testimony here.

despite what the media would have you believe -- and i know you all saw it on the news -- the cap saying it would -- they kept saying it would be the wild west. there would be blood running in the streets. they said the same thing in ohio . they said the same thing here. guess what? it never happened. but it is funny that the media does not want to go back and talk about how very wrong they were. less than 1% of permit holders ever do anything wrong with the gun. i can't think of any segment of society that is anymore law-abiding. these are not the people who do horrible things. these are the good people out there that want to be able to

stop those bad guys from taking innocent life. i do believe we all have the right to protect ourselves. it is our second amendment. it is pretty basic. we have the basic human rights of self-defense. tell you about our criminal justice system. it is not a justice system. it is just a system, [laughter] yeah. [indiscernible] [applause] it took about three years for my husband's murderer to finally stand trial. i will tell you a few things about the case. searched hisce

vehicle, they found two more guns and a baseball bat and a knife. more i thought about those items, i cannot help but think that somehow this man had probably planned on harming me. what i didn't tell you about the hid inside ant and brick wall and i went to get management and ask if they would remove him. me to stay where i was. don't let him see you. let management handle this. that was my option to hide. some survivors guilt in that. i was one who lived and ben di ed.

it is a very serious situation. it could happen to anyone. that judge --know number one, it was an insanity defense. the judge dropped it from first-degree to second-degree. that man is going to get out of prison. they gave him 23 years. he has served five. i am going to have to deal with this person who took the love of my life away from me . he is a dangerous person. that is what the criminal justice system has done.

911. rely on i'm not saying you shouldn't call 911, but you should be prepared to protect yourself first. then call 911. it might take a while before they get there. you cannot rely on our criminal justice system. you cannot rely on the criminal justice system at all. it will tell you to protect yourself and your family. and about who you are voting for. the first thing i think about is how they feel about my e-cig human rights in self-defense. that tells me everything else i need to know. my basic human rights in self-defense. that tells me everything else i need to know.

thank you so much. our next smeeker i actually met at a charlotte law school forum, both of us were panelists. i heard his presentation. it was so compelling that i said, i have to bring this guy back to north carolina for our presentation at our annual dinner. andrew is the foremost expert on u.s. self-defense law across all 50 states. his expertise has been used by "the wall street journal," chicago tribune, npr, numerous

other media organizations and by private state and federal agencies. he's a massachusetts lawyer. life member of the n.r.a. we all have that problem occasionally. [laughter] and adjunct professor on the law of self-defense in an academy in new hampshire. he lectures and speaks throughout the country in how to protect yourself in both an tack and legal machine afterwards. he's a master class idpa competitor, n.r.a. certified firearms instructor. holds numerous concealed handgun permits from what i can see here and his book, "the law of self-defense" was recently revealed in the n.r.a.'s first freedom magazine, which had to say, quote, since most gunners are so law abiding they have no personal experience with the criminal justice process, bronxia gives an overview of the crimes that may be charged in a

self-defense case, including what to expect from an investigative and judicial process in which none of the people who will have been put in control of your fate will understand what it was like at that desperate moment. andrew is the author of "the law of self-defense" and his topic tonight stand your ground, the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth. i bring you andrew bronka. >> hey, folks. before i start my -- well, informal comments, i want to say it's easy for all of us to fight for our second amendment rights to come to think we're only fighting feckless politicians, which, of course, we are. but hearing nikki talk it's important to remember what we're actually fighting is evil, all right. evil walking the earth among us who want to make us defenseless

against our enemies and families defenseless. remember, that's the true fight we're fighting. they are my only serious comments for the evening. i'm not a very serious guy. i guess paul mention td butly rip the band aid right off. i'm a lawyer. it's true. it's worse than that, i'm a massachusetts lawyer. a yankee! yankee in your midst. very interesting for me calls to come from massachusetts. i have been a member of the gun arted comet tive shooting as young teenager and been engaged in it all of my life. to come from a place like massachusetts where you basically, you don't mention guns like it's some kind of forbidden religious faith that's not allowed and to come to such a good-friendly environment, it's like entering kind of a gun abuse recovery program. i feel like i should stand up

sane, my name is andrew. i'm a gun abuser. i love guns. it's true. i love them. i loved them all of my life. for the fun, pleasure they bring me in target shooting and competitive shooting and i love what they can do for me in being able to protect myself and protect my family and, of course, what they mean in the more traditional perspective, of our ability to resist the threat of tyranny. the importance of having the guns in the first place is our possession prevents tyranny from taking root in the first place. we need not have to bear arms against or government, our our government fears us bearing arms against them, right? this is a deterrent effect we want and only this, the only exists if we presieve and protect that right to keep and bear arms. despite being a massachusetts attorney, i consider myself second amendment absolute-ous.

which mine all prior restrained gun laws are on their feet unconstitutional. any mandatory permitting requirements, any f.f.l. requirements class two, three, four requirements, any excise tax on firearms, anything, any prior restraint on the ability to own ownership small arms, its own constitutional on its face and should be recognized as such fpblet when the day comes, god willing, that the court as ply scrutiny to the thousands of gun laws we have to deal with today, they will fall light white before us. i guess i got serious again, didn't i? sorry about that. i have to say if you asked me 20 years ago, 20 years ago, 20 years ago i got my concealed carry permit, started carrying pistol the first time. in massachusetts of all places. if you would have told me that, 20 years later, i would be an opponent with folks like lot lott and larry pratt, beside me, waiting to speak, i would have

laughed. ridiculous notion. so fun to be here with them, giants of the gun rights movement. these are the people who wrote the books i read 20 years ago. that motivated me even in massachusetts to become an activist in the gun rights community. this average generation stands on the shoulders of giants who came before them and these guys are it. we have to applaud them. [applause] i think both of them including help establish and balance our major organization among the first to say they can lead but nothing happens without you guys, without all of you and even little people like me, massachusetts attorneys. but each of that only has one vote. they can motivate but they have to be able to motivate people who are willing to do the hard work that needs to be done to make the legislatures pass the laws they need to pass in order

for our gun rights to be protected. can i ask, who is the gentleman running for the appellate court? an i ask you to stand up, sir? i want to make point that may not be clear to many of you, we work hard to pass legislation favorable to gun owners but it's important to recognize legislative acts are just the desires of the legislature, where the rubber meets the road, where the effect of that legislation takes place is in he courts. we do not elect people in those positions to rule on those laws the way we need them to. so make sure you vote for them in these elections. [applause]

talk about stand your ground. i'm 45 minutes past my time. i will keep it as succinct as possible. there's a lot of misinformation about stand your ground. the phrase has become a boogie man of the gun control activist. what we are really seeing here, by the way, is opening of a new front against our gun rights. they effectively still need loss in the air term gun control movement. of course, we can never give up. we always have to fight. kind of like a cancer. the moment you take your eye off them, they come back. but they decided they're not gaining much ground there so they turn add way from pa -- turned away our ability to own, possess and carry gun but use guns in self-defense. now they're becoming less gun controlist in the near-term sense and more self-defense controlists. we try to limit the places we

could carry the gun that couldn't work. you can carry it so proper, but if you ever use it, we're going to destroy you economically. destroy you politically finance we're lucky, get you sent to ail the rest of your life. stand your ground makes it far more difficult to accomplish what we like to accomplish f. we ever use guns in self-defense. a lot of confusion stooned your ground. thepped to use the phrase to mean a lot of different things. if they only use it to mean what it actually means, they would get no support. let's face it, if these people didn't lie, they would have nothing to say at all. so they pick the phrase standard ground and lie about it. let's talk about what stand your ground is and what it is and why it's important or whatever the formal title is.

to understand and stand your ground, you have to understand what self-defense is in the first place, so what you're originally saying yes, i used force against another person, perhaps deadly force against another person. but i was legally justified in doing that under the doctrine of self-defense. how do you qualify for self-defense? you have to meet five elements of self-defense. does anybody here -- at any seminar this afternoon? put your fingers in your ears you heard this a thousand times already. but the five elements of self-defense are proportionality, avoidableness. innocence means you couldn't have been the aggressor in the fight. makes sense. person who starts the fight cannot claim self-defense. immense means the threat you're defending against has to be about have to happen right now. somebody says i'm going home to get my gun and shoot you. you can't shoot them then. when he comes back wa his gun, maybe can he shoot them. not right then. threat is in the future. proportionality means you can't

use more force than necessary to stop the threat against you. if you're only faced with nondeadly threat, use deadly force to defend yourself. if you're faced with deadly threat, can you use deadly threat to defend yourself. not complicated. deadly force means if you're in a jurisdiction when were you have a legal duty 0 to retreat, you have to take advantage of the safe avenue of retreat before you can act in self-defense. by wait, that's always the minority position and currently is by far the minority position in the u.s. fifth element is reasonable one. whatever you do, acting in self-defense, has to be that of reasonable and prudent person and you have to have actually yourself believe it was necessary tookt in self-defense. five elements -- innocence, eminence, proportionality, avoidance and reasonableness. not that complicated. what is stand your ground doing? all stand your ground does is take away one of those elements -- avoidance element. you no longer need to seek an avenue of retreat before you can

act in self-defense. what's left in place? everything else. innocence, emnens, proportionality, reasonableness, all in place. stand your ground is not some parallel or bizarre way of claimingself defense. it's not a mysterious mechanism the n.r.a. put in place. state your groundself defense is exactly the same as old-fashioned self-defense except for that one element of avoidance. if you live in a stand your ground jurisdiction and act in self-defense, what do you need to prove? you were the innocent person. you were facing eminent threat. you used no more force than necessary to defend yourself and everything you did was reasonable. the nonstand your ground space, what they say is even if you have done all of that, if you can't prove a negative. if you can't prove no safe avenue of retreat, we deserve the objection to put you in jail the rest of your life. that's what living in a nonstand

your ground state means. thank god you live in a nonstand your ground state here in north arolina. think about the consequences, imagine a new england woman named mary. walking through an parking garage at night. she's accosted by a rapist of the she's done nothing to invite this attack upon her. the attack is about to happen right now. drawing her gun, she uses no more force than needs to, to defend herself against a person twice her size and her perception and conduct throughout were entirely reasonable. the prosecution in nonstandard face is a stair well 20-to-do and mary could have went away rather than defend herself against that rate. in a stand your ground state, that question doesn't even come up in trial. that's why stand your ground is

important. final comment. it's been rumored a copy of my book. a lone copy has been duct taped under one chair in this room. but -- don't reach yet. if you want to participate in this raffle. if the book is not there, you have to leave a $10 billion. good luck. thank you! [applause] >> as i realized when i first heard campbell speak and heard his comments in the rawley school of law, i realized hies rarely boring. ur next speaker is the executive director of gun owners of america. larry pratt has been the leader of that organization for 30 years.

larry has appeared on enumerable national and radio tv programs like nbc's "today" show, cbs' "good morning america," cnn's cross-fire, "larry king live" fox's "hannity & coal manies" and many others. my personal favorites was watching him dismember piers morgan. [applause] but i want to say something a little more personal at this point because larry was the guy -- i don't know if he know it's -- who got me involved in the gun rights movement. he was the first guy i called when i decided in 1994 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 tpwhay initial counsel but by supporting that organization especially during our early years and training our activists during grass roots motion techniques. this guy is the true grass roots of the second amendment movement. i bring you larry pratt. >> good evening to you. i'm so glad paul invited me to be here with you. i'm delighted to see how many of you there are. you know, i don't think the establishment has gotten messages yet but a message was sent from the seventh district of virginia last week that there's a new four-letter word in use -- -- brat, brat, brat!

they are still stunned that somebody like eric cantor can go down. and we're so happy he did. [laughter] we took part in that campaign towards the end. we began to realize a little sooner than other people but almost too late all the same, this guy might have it together. we thought we would go down with a worthy cause but at least we needed to send a little digital salute to mr. cantor. little did we realize, this guy would go across the finish line and he hopefully has given new energy to other people similarly engaged either against rhino in primary or some other form of socialist in the general election. the ruling classes really have trouble accepting new information. 6 i give you exhibit a, shotgun

joe. the vice president, who has all of this advice for the ladies, as to which is the preferred gun for them. none one of those nasty a.r.-15's but shotgun, of course. and within day at least one wag had a video together that showed one woman after another falling flat on her back, shotgun flying out of her hands. having been obstructed what to expect. last frame is lady at a range, control fire -- boom, boom, with an ar-15. i knew somebody who knows the vice president personally. he made that information available to him. this person is second amendment expert. sfirmes expert bar none. and it was like water on a duck's back. liberals live in a fact-free environment.

but they play for keeps. they have been trying to tar us and others who object to the rise or continued bloating of big government and its dangers including their efforts to they. the peasants, us they responded by language that could be fatal if not checked. they're calling us from the very top regime in washington, calling people like us potential terrorists, returning veterans, pro-lifers. american family association is a hate group. i may have described half the people in here, i don't know. , that's what they're up to what the nazis did to the jews, soviets did the ukrainian farmers, what americans have done to tie rapts without history, demonized, disarmed illed.

as it always has been, it's in the back of many politician's minds that it is there and they perhaps are recognizing limits. a congressman was talking to a liberal congressman sometime -- that probably doesn't happen too often but he was and admitted it, it's not a gun issue. whatever he was, he was talking to her about it. he knew she was connected with gun's right organization. out of the middle of nowhere she said, i bet want to shoot me, don't you. lady, that's what the second amendment is all about. that's what it is all about. keep that in your line as you rite your that vranes -- tyrannes laws because it might come into play, that's what it's there for. we have seen a lot of short comings in this leadership. one of the reasons we're happy

eric cantor is kaputsky, he's one of those very instrumental in a surprise -- like ambush on the floor of the house handful of rhino republicans joining democrats in avoiding more money to states could turn more names of people into the federal computers for more people not to be able to get guns. really cool, larry cantor, thanks a million. ctually thanks 10 million. we have seen what the president meant by using his pen and phone. operation choke point is all about. putting squeeze on gun stores through the federal deposit insurance corporation. saying these are dangerous businesses, there are, they have to be charged higher interest rates -- i'm sorry, higher rate for fees for their handling credit cards.

or drop all together. happily the free market has come to the rescue and a number of entities, hopefully guns in america will join them soon with a satellite company, process and check credit cards for merchants being hammered by the regime. i would like to give you background on how the -- how the gun bill, gun registration bill was killed. weble we were probably two weeks out from the vote and we had not heard from the n.r.a. weigh thought, piers morgan has given us this piers morgan e-mail memorial list and everybody came on to our server crashing it three times to find out what we were all about. and a lot of us stayed to get our e-mail and things of that sort to help out lobbying. 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 we were engaged in. we put out the e-mail saying look fks you're an n.r.a. member and only if you are, call this guy at this number at the n.r.a. and ask him to get the powers to be to publicly oppose the two mentioned bills. a week later -- i mean, kind of sat still, that's what happened. the next thing was even more surprising. senator mansion went screaming to the media, i have been betrayed. n.r.a. did a 180. we almost had this bill in the bag. we had no idea what was going ofpblet came so close. piers morgan f. you're listening to an n.r.a. monitor, we love you, piers! [applause] one of the things cantor did to

get ire and we're still not sure if we're out of the woods with this weasel is pushing amnesty. if he does that, it's the end of the republican party and much more important, end of the republic. i speak spanish, i'm in an hispanic church i know what i'm talking about. 80% democrats and when you vote democrat, you vote for gun control. cant seerms to think immigration will win hearts and minds. i got news for you greg cantor, that will not happen. it will take a lot of work through churches and other entities where these folks work one on one and idea you pass some bill to give them a vote, thanks but no thanks, it's just not simple. for us grave, exessential threat to the second amendment. 10, 15 years after it

materialized, we're toast. so that's why we were so happy to see cantor go down. sorry boehner didn't go down. but he only got 60% against a 30-year-old vet with no money. i saw this marvelous photo. i couldn't find it before i came up. it depects like 1910 perhaps scene, black and white photo, couple european hunters with lung guns standing near a dead rhino. and the caption on this is -- somewhere in virginia. one of the things got me encouraged is opportunity we had to work with senator krause and senator lee, probably it was around beginning of august,

there was a member with a number of people like yours truly who headed pup people who already opposed obama care or i prefer to call it zero care, we opposed it because it would shovel people who had never been adjudicated into a court of law with any due process and keep to bear be arms. we had been along and local opponent of zero care. we were there with conservative groups. at the meeting also was senator kruse. the thing i had almost never heard from another politician was look, 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 in it for the long haul. he may lose battles but he's in t to went the war.

i think we have a leader we have been looking for. simon bundy and events that came .bout at the ranch there near finally somebody stood up and said i'm not going to be pushed around anymore. ton my pleasant surprise and amazement, a lot of other americans agree. and they went out at a drop of a hat to defend this man. i was called by stuart rose, who

heads up road keepers, to attend. it would be held the monday after the feds ended up folding on saturday. i was on my way -- almost on my way to the airport and i got a call from stuart, well, they've gone. and they fled because they couldn't quite believe the american people would stand up to him. one of the things i learned that was kind of frightening when the cowboys and i think courgs were riding towards the coral to set free, they had guns aimed at them. not at the ready, at them. -- we were able to watch this unfold realtime. the deputy went up to the b.l.m.

boys and said do you want to be known as the folks that gunned down unarmed men and women? and apparently it was a good question. so it really tells you the importance of a sheriff's epartment. the supremacy of a scher ive is a doctrine that operates in almost every state of our country. and the second amendment was then under the proper authority of an elected county sheriff. and i think that was the way episodes should have ended and the way it did end. memo to washington, it can happen again. in fact, it was on the verge of happening again if you might have seen, although not in the pages of any of the major media,

that on the red river, boundary , all n oklahoma and texas private land, always has been private land, they were talking about grabbing land because of this, that or the other, law force or whatever smrks onexistent vegetation. militia in both states said we will see you there. they didn't have to deploy. feds got the message -- this is not the time to be messing around with the american people. we had it, eric cantor knows it. others will know it too. [applause] i would say in closing, if you had one question and one demand that you might make on your particularly members of the house or those running for such , 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 go on from other things who care to be equally dealt with as urgently. 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 coming out of a pept-up volcano that has finally burst forth. 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 around and collect envelopes. please make sure you made your bid. no bid too small. if you all you have is $5.

it all goes toward our p.d.f. fund which we're going to need this year in this election. this is a crucial election. and the political victory fund, , let me be unds clear, we don't write checks to candidates. we don't run ads. we send out alerts, that cost a lot of money. we don't put the money in pockets but we do action item that's support them. and then is think there anybody else that is interested in a raffle ticket for john lott's foundation for gat tar? if there is, raise your hand ndly come by -- there we go. raise your hand and i will come by for that. thank you.

>> our next guest held teacher positions at the university of chicago, yale university, stan forward, ucla, wharton and rice and chief economist at the united states sentencing commission. his passbooks included three editions of my favorite more guns, less crime. crime and freedom-onimi crft s. lott is contributor and weekly columnist for fox news.com, opinion pieces by lott have appeared in such places as "the wall street journal," "the new york times," "l.a. times," "the new york times," "usa today," chicago tribune. he's appeared in such television programs as abc and nbc nationally evening news broadcast, fox news and newshour jw jim lehrer and the "today"

show. ann coulter called him one of america's most feared economists. and she said, can you tell the conservatives liberals fear most because they start being automatically referred to as discreditted. ask senator ted cruz. no one is called by liberals more often than the inestimateable economist john lott, author of the groundbreaking book, more guns, less crime. dr. lott's topic for the evening -- and let me get this right -- is making up facts about gungs. before i dipet us him though. we have a photo up on the board, our history goes back further than you know, john. that's me in about oh, don't now, 1995 or so.

and i took it to elon college, now elon university. that is me approaching sarah brady. so i approached her entourage and security closed around her. i said, mrs. brady, i understand want to reduce violence. i want to help you do that. and she beamed and the security guards parted. i said, i think you need this. and i slapped dr. lott's study into her hand. we bring you john lott and his topic again is "making up facts about guns." [applause] >> i greatly appreciate the

chance to talk to you all again. there's been a lot going on here. it's kind of fortunate paul earlier played a video when shannon watts was on 0 cnn. and it foreshadowed shft discussion i would be having, amazingly within a minute or two there, you had several claims that were being made there. 40% of guns were obtained with that background check. purchasing would with background checks. claims would you 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 here you have a survey, tiny survey that is done was two decades ago that

done before we had the brady law in effect. and it wasn't just sales. most of that was actually 36% were transfers within family gifts or inheritance. and just the fact somebody would go and just change the terminology from saying, inheritance ing or good child with a gun and somehow called it a gun sale, scare people that somehow unrelated people were obtaining guns, just gave you some idea how far people were willing to go in order to try to make up numbers or claims. and so it is just -- in the last couple of weeks, the president has gone and made many other

statements. en-minute presentation a couple weeks ago, like ten days ago. then must have had maybe about 15 false, completely false statements twhan short period of time. what i thought i would try to do is go through some of the those and talk a little bit about the supporting evidence that he brings up in order to try to support that. fors say i have known obama number of years. maybe 18 years or so. we both taught at the university chicago law school for appeared of time. and he's a true believer. i'm not going to use terms like nazi germany in the '30's but people may have referenced today. is it dangerous for people to go and produce misinformation. does it create corn fusion in the debate and make it so we might adopt laws that are incorrect? yeah, i think there are real dangers and real dangers for people's safety.

just you go through a few now. these are ten days old from president obama. one thing he mentioned -- my biggest frustration is society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the people who can just do unbelievable damage. we're the only developed nation on earth where this happens. just typical exaggeration in this case. want to ask the person, is norway a developed nation? ignoring bomb deaths that were there, you had a shooter that killed 69 with a gun and wounded 110 other people. that's the record right now for ingle person killer. most people may not realize this but two of the three worse k-12

public school shootings in the world occurred in germany. and they both have occurred in germany since the year 2001. one in fred, germany, 18 people in ed and the other one lyndon, germany, you had 15 people killed. earlier, we did done work looking at mass public shootings in 2000 to 2010 and what you find is the per capita rate of pass public shootings really sent that much different than the united states. you say how can k that possibly be. i haven't heard of these things. you look at the attacks which how rse than columbine many of you have known these tacks in germany. it's interesting when you have horrible attacks occur it may get hour or two worth of media coverage in the united states and then disappears. europe gets much more coverage

of the american mass shootings than the united states does of europe. you may not realize, finland within last four years has had several big attacks where ten people or so have been killed at a university or mall. you wouldn't have known that 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, refering to bloomberg's numbers that came out last week about school shootings said and now once a week, we have something like this happen. let's just take a minute about these claims that came out by bloomberg. where he says there have been 74 school shootings since newtown. we had this type of argument before in february, we produced the type of number where's at that time it had been 44. 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. none critical. none of them going and asking an academic or critic to go and evaluate the type of claim there. pretty much put out as received wisdom. you got pretty similar pods of coverage for while with 74 but this time at least had you places like cnn or political fact, amazingly enough, daily caller doing fact checks. pointing out something hi been arguing for six -- i had been arguing six months. it's included unrelated cases of school property. you have an example of a 19-year-old whose gambling about a block off the school property, get into a dispute over the money being gambled and shot to death. i don't know why this

keeps coming up. i have a feeling we're going to have a problem with that. the question is, is it a tragedy that somebody gets shot near an elementary school whose engaged in gambling? here it is. nobody want that's to happen. nor if you have a 43-year-old man who commits suicide at 2:00 a.m. in the morning near a school or at a school? yeah, that's a tragedy. but these are not the type of shooting incidents that go and terrify parents when you go and talk about these things. many of these event $not any tragedies or deaths or injuries occurring. ly 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 take 125 instances cnn claimed occurred since newtown.

still sounds like a lot. they don't go through and carefully tell you people die, was anybody shot in these instances? and if you look at this, you actually have seen over the last couple decades a fairly significant drop in the rate of people dyeing from mass shootings on either k through 12 or universities. in the five years because we start getting this data pretty solidly, there's a couple organizations that start 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 much. if you look at the last five years, even with newtown, average per year is about 12. so it's fallen from 26 to 12. that about a 55% drop. greater drop than we had over that same period of time in terms of murder rates that occurred there. i don't think people want to go

and phrase things like this in terms of kind of what's the bottom line, in terms of how many people get killed or injured in these attacks. it takes away a little bit from trying to exaggerate the fear factor there i think. again, one death is too many. i'm happy to talk about thing that's can be done in order to try to prevent those attacks that still do occur. if we're going to have a sensible debate. we at least have to agree what's happening to the numbers here. i will give you another quote rom the president. we're putting some common sense rules in place to make a department to what's happening. until that is not just the majority of you because that's already the majority of you, even majority of gun owners believe this. i showed you a misstatement by the president with regard to the background checks that were there. it's not too surprising p hem

hear those types of claims they may also make mistakes with regard to what they think the current laws are or not. ou look at this and in fact, you know, you can get some surveys that go and say -- do you support background checks on gun seals? you will find 80% to 90% go and do that. the question is what is meant there? it's interesting if you go and ask people about specific legislation, for example, here's a pew poll that came out last april that asked people about the particular vote before the senate asking are you, are you very happy to very angry about the fact the senate bill was defeated? that didn't go forward. if i 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 the bill was defeated than were disappointed. 48% to 41%. only democrat at 62% to 22%, 67% to 22% margin were disappointed as a result of that. can you see other polls that when they specifically ask them about the actual law that was up there, the other thing that's interesting if you go and ask people what do you think will happen with background checks? poll after poll shows people don't believe it will have an impact in terms of protecting people. i will give you two. in fact, rasmussen is -- people are relatively optimistic saying it will have a benefit. they found even there though only 41% believe more background checks would reduce gun violence. from december, a recent pool

that included background checks 63% to 32% t by margin, they don't believe that tighter background controls, quote, would not be effective in obtaining criminals from gaining guns. the interesting thing is if you actually look at the background checks there, there's basically almost no criminals who are stopped from being able to go and obtain guns. when the president goes and says there are 2 million prohibited people stopped from buying guns because of background checks, the right terminology is there are 2 million initial denials. there's a huge difference between using the term initial denial and prohibited people being sprepted. i will give you one example. you may remember the late senator ted kennedy. five times he was on the no-fly list. five times when went to the

airport and tried to board a plane, there was somebody else would had name similar to him and therefore stopped from flying. ok, a sume the president's not going to count that as five times we stopped a terrorist from flying but that's essentially the way the numbers are counted when they go and do the background checks counts they have here. if you look at the numbers for 2010, they stopped reporting them this way under the obama administration. but you can see there were 76,000 initial denials. only 44 of those deemed worthy of prosecution and they got 13 convictions. if you look at those 13 convictions, my guess is none of you would think these are seriously dangerous people that are there. people who made mistakes and didn't realize they had some covered chance prevented them from doing it. what's interesting just a couple weeks ago, less and this a couple 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." one of the things that came out . there many people knows these people would not be stopped by background checks. let me read what he says, quote, the miss match and solution swrezz to offer and the ways some of mass shootings happened, we know it's a messaging for us, i think. it's a messaging problem where mass shooting happen and nothing we have to offer, nothing we have to offer would have stopped hat mass shooting.

if i just go and ask you, are you in favor of background checks on gun seals, it gets a very high rate. people think it should be done. just a little more information, national shootings sports foundation hired snob do an alternative poll and they just provided some background information. said a vast majority of guns sold at gun shows are sold through license dealers required by federal law to conduct background checks before guns or sold. do you believe additional federal laws like universal background checks are necessary for gun show seals. 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 what we should be doing here. i don't know if i'm going hrough this. the president has this boogieman in terms of gun groups and

people here, having all of the .oney they couldn't possibly believe the things they say they believe. if you're running for election now, that's where you feel the heat, from the n.r.a. and gun manufacturers. at age went through advertisements on gun issues, pro and con. and found gun control organizations in 2013 actually spent 7.4 times more on television opponents than television advertising than their opponents did. bloomberg spending pledging to spend $50 million a year and giffords group is going sfoned $20 million this year. you so you get an idea. those are just two of them.

and could go on literally there's like 15 of these quotes in just 7 mings. i will just go through a couple more. nd we have this. it's the internet trying to log on here. , well, just said that's it, very strict, you tough gun laws and they haven't had mass shooting since. coy go and talk about the fact they had a buy-back but gun seals have gone back up. gun ownership rate about a third drop in gun ownership when they had the buy-back but gun ownership right now in australia is pretty much back to where it was before the buy-back. so put that aside because obviously that impacts how one will talk about it. but the thing is, you just can't pick one data point. i can pick one state to go and look at, different states have

had different laws. i can look at new zealand for example. new zealand, neighboring australia, an isolated island nation again, if you look at new zealand, mass shooting rate prior to -- over the same period of time people talk about for australia, 1980 to '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, it's what we call cherry-picking. it's like i can go and flip a coin 20 times, get 10 heads and 10 tails. would i let somebody go and say i will pick five tails from that sample and say, it's obviously a bias point because all five are

heads. 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. germ has more stringent law -- germany has more stricken jept laws than australia and some of the worse mass shootings but they wouldn't want to include that in their discussions. what tried to do with bill landis, university of chicago, looked at all of the mass shootings over the united states over a couple decades and what we found was that we looked at 13 different types of gun laws. the only one that had any impact on the rate of these mass shootings was the passage of concealed carry laws. about 60% drop in the rate at choo these attacks occur -- rate at which these attacks occurred and 80% in which people were killed or injured from these attacks. the reason why you looked at all of the states, rather than just you justne, is because

-- there are so many thing that's can change. if i can go and pick one state, i hope nobody would believe hat. now i talm about an example, i have wring some things about multiple studies policeman put out. i want to go into detail. it's gotten massive news. you probably don't realize the influence it's had. back in january 2013, 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 c.b.c. saying they could not use government funds to lobby for gun control. a lot of claims, bloom groups claimed theanded federally funded research, research dried up. i can give you quotes but some of the media things. basically they are relying on

this original study. headlines from the "the washington post" proclaimed, quote, federal sign tests can again research gun violence. this is after obama kind of out laterally changed the rules. or gun research is allowed again. with the star claims, quote, am demmics 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 2013, abc, "20/20" ran entitled c.d.c. on ban research caused lasting damage 1986 lobby ted in congress to pull millions of delaffers oust firearm research and that results essentially in a 17-year moratorium on major studies about gun injuries. well, just to kind of say here,

this was a study by bloomberg. ly give you one quote from the bloomberg study. it says, quote, the amendment that so-called dickey amendment, ote, has driven many experts -- has driven many experts to abandon the field and keep young researchers from taking it up. you think that is declining in materials. that seems clear. but decline has undermined yomb all knowledge creation because scholars are highly againant on federal grants to support their research. i will tell you only about 3% of firearms research and medical journals are funded by the federal government. in any case, the bail itself, the way it's read, quote, none of the funds made available for injured sprention patrol at the centers for disease control and

prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control. that's all it said. how did bloomberg's people measure this? what they did was they looked at medical journal articles on firearms as a percentage of all medical journal research. they will point out the percentage of articles on firearms fell fairly substantially from '96 to 2011, when they stopped doing it. they didn't include the numbers from the year prior to their study. gone up a little and it's gone up hugely in 2013. but the problem is they were never saying that the percentage of articles were falling. they were talking about leaving, not doing research. that means number of articles. what basically happened is the number of articles on firearms research went up, it's just medical journal articles on everything else went up even more.

that's a different type of claim. for example, if you just looked articles, so of growing quite quickly. it didn't keep on growing at the same rate but it's still has gone up a little and by 2013 it's about double what it was in 1996. and if you look at the total they say pages because 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 of themo there was more and the average length became longer. so, you know, length of articles is related to how substantial they are, then that would seem go against that claim. so neither the number of studies nor the pages on research have

fallen. the average for the length of studies has gone up. why do we need government funding for research? i've done some of the largest ondies that have been done gun control, i think, by far, in terms of the most data. theseok at a lot of medical journal studies, they have what we call 50 in onetions, 50 states year. i don't know how you pick one year to look at but they do. when i look at things, people who have looked at my books know that i look at all the counties in the united states or all the byies in the united states year for as many years as that data's available and try to rates changerime over time in places that change to ones thatlative don't. well, my concern about government funding is two-fold. one, i don't really see the need. it's not like we're building cyclotron out there. go bellis, i would

frequently and have a graduate say, look, if you i couldthis with me, pay you or make you my co-author. a lot of graduate students want their name on something want tod because they get an academic job later on. the problem with government funding research is that politicians cannot keep politics out of who they give the money to. when they gog that and give this money they say, and you'll get this conclusion. the happens is they know politics of different people who apply and the people who agree with them politically are the ones who get the funding and the ones who don't, don't get the funding. there's no reason why we should go and use federal tax dollars and subsidize one side's research vs. another in this not clear to me why the federal government should get involved at all in this discussion.

now, the video had a little bit a discussion between cnn and shannon watts. since he played the video i'm going to go through the whole thing but she was asked is there an example in school or publicor malls facilities where basically bad guy with a gun has been stopped any other way besides -- besides by the police officer, to a civilian used their gun stop them from committing this crime. and she says, this has never happened. and of course, there's laughter here. i'm sure without any problem we go through a long list of things. you look at schools like enborrow, pennsylvania. you have pearl, mississippi. likeave universities appalachian law school. you have malls like in salt lake city, and portland, oregon, that have been stopped. you have churches like the life church.

i could mention to you shootings instreets in memphis, downtown areas in oklahoma city. them,places, many of public shootings have been stopped by citizens with guns, paul briefly talked about the shooting in las vegas. would adding that i about it is that here you have this guy, it's true, he died, but he stopped temporarily the male killer there. the female had to go and get a cart, pretend to be one of the shoppers, go around behind him the backshoot him in and kill him. the question is how long that took. i have no idea. to think of the idea, to get the cart, move behind him.y to be let's say it's 30 seconds. out.ave people running people -- you're giving them a 30-second head start, then, if all it took, to be

able to go and leave the area. all accounts it was a crowded wal-mart. isn't it amazing that with a crowded wal-mart he, this permit holder was the only person in were ablert that they to go and kill? so, anyway, but i just want to point out something and that is, just in the last month been deluged with information about, as we have in the past, about what goes through these killers' minds. i'll give you a couple of examples. rodg, the killer in santa barbara. have you read this guy's manifesto? you go and read it and several in there, i'm just going to read you one, he explicitly alks about why he picked particular place to go and attack. anotherere he says, option, dell