>> they did exactly the right thing last week. >> will they make in -- will mye friend makes clear that millions of british people want a relationship based on trade and if the rest of the european union do not agree, it will be no surprise if people vote to leave the eu? very thankful for my honorable friend's remarks. referendum, he will make his views very clear. he is right it should be the british people's choice. my job is to make sure we secure the very best renegotiation so that people who want to stay in a reformed european union, who believe it is in our interest to do so get the best possible choice. andhe center for strategic international studies will host a discussion on mexico's efforts

to boost oil and gas production. the mexican ambassador to the u.s. and a panel of energy executives will be among the speakers. eastern on0 p.m. c-span. later, the wilson center hosts a discussion on the israeli highland -- israeli-palestinian peace process. live beginning at 4:00 on c-span. touche you can keep in with current events from the nation's capital using any phone anytime with c-span radio on audio now. 202-626-8888. every weekday, listen to a retail -- recap of the day's events. you can hear audio of the five networks sunday affairs programs -- sunday public affairs programs. .all 202-626-8888

long-distance or phone charges might apply. >> next, new york city's new police commissioner bill bratton talks about the city's crime rate and some of the reasons it has declined over the years. that is followed by a conversation with former arizona congresswoman gabby giffords and her husband, mark kelly, talking about their nonprofit organization. this was part of the annual new york ideas festival hosted by "the atlantic" and aspen institute. it is 40 minutes. [applause] >> we now have a real wind-up today. we have bill bratton. and james bennet. gabby giffords and mark kelly. those of you who stayed all day, i feel like we ought to give you a prize or medal or sign you up for next year. i want to get out a shoutout to c-span. they've been with us on both stages all day. for those who want a second shot

of this, tune into c-span. for those of you watching the lobby, these next sessions should be great. the man keeping us safe in town, bill bratton, and our editor in chief and copresident of "the atlantic," james bennet. the floor is yours. [applause] >> thank you for being with us, commissioner. i thought i'd open with an off repeated statistic i should repeat again. in 1990, there were 2,245 homicides in the city of new york, which i think was the record mark. and last year, there were 333 homicides in the city of new york, though the population had grown by a million people in the meantime and there are however many millions more visitors to the city each year. i can remember what the social implications of that statistic were for neighborhoods in the early 1990's.

the transformation is nothing short of astonishing. you arrived to lead the transit police in 1990. while there are no doubt many factors that explain the decrease, the sorts of strategies and tactics you put in place from aggressively implementing the broken windows philosophy to pursuing data-driven methods of policing are widely credited with this transformation. so, you are the guy to ask, i think, about what is next. and i've heard you talk a lot in the last couple of years about predictive policing. i thought we might start there with what does that actually mean? >> predictive policing is the evolution we are now going through in policing. the period of time we are in is called the information-intelligence era.

we are gathering as much intelligence as quickly as possible, making intelligence out of it. in policing, that was the com-stat system that we put in place in 1994, -- 1994. that was the engine that drove the crime declines that allowed us to move from 2,245, the all-time high, to last year the all-time low. this year we have 18 fewer murders than we had the same time last year. the good news is that crime can continue to go down. the challenge to do that is to find ways to do it. predictive policing is going to be one of those tools. the ability to, with the huge amounts of information we can gather, with the algorithms that have been developed and are being continually improved upon, we have the ability within a geographic area to say with a presume certainty in a presumed timeframe that a crime will likely be committed there unless we prevent it, and we prevent it by putting a police officer

there. cops on the dots, same thing we did in the 1990's. >> it does sound a bit like "minority report." you are not identifying the criminals in advance, you are identifying the likelihood of a crime being committed. can you give a concrete example? >> in some respects, you are identifying a criminal. the algorithm takes into account who is living in that area, who has been arrested, who just got out of jail, the patterns and trends of crime that are being reported, matching up against to does that type of crime. the mine -- "minority report" movie is the tom cruise movie of the late 1990's that looked so futuristic. now everyone with their iphone or samsung phone can do what tom cruise was doing, that seemed so futuristic as recently as 10 years ago. this is not far-fetched. this is the reality of policing. as we go forward into the 21st century, it is going to become

much more commonplace, the idea of using technology, using big data, using all of the new ways of collaborating with each other to effectively keep crime low and, most importantly, prevent it from occurring in the first place. >> so, what, in the future, can we as citizens expect our public spaces to feel like? there are now 6000 or 7000 cameras in the streets of new york. do you imagine more tightly surveilled public spaces, the use of drones and so forth? >> certainly, what we can expect with 7.5 million people in 1990 -- we now believe we have a one 5 million, probably more in there with the -- have 8.5 million, probably more in there with the tourists.

the public spaces will be more crowded. from the police perspective, one of the things we will attempt to do is to try to continually improve our ability to police those public spaces. my predecessor, commissioner kelly, post-9/11 implemented a program called domain awareness, initially around wall street, that eventually will be around the city. that is the camera system. currently 7000 cameras, private sector, police cameras, all interconnected, so that we have the ability to very closely monitor, particularly in manhattan, public space. we also have license plate scanning capabilities. in the future, it will be impossible to come into the city of new york and not had your license plate scanned in some fashion at some location where that number is being recorded. all of this is constitutionally-protected activity, if you will. it has been deemed by the supreme court to be lawful to do it.

being quite frank with you, it is one of the ways that we will keep you increasingly safe. that, in exchange for giving up some degree of privacy, we will be able to, one, prevent crime, which is more important than solving it after the fact. there is not one of you that wants to be the victim of crime. every morning at my 9:00 crime briefings and my 8:30 counterterrorism briefing, technology and the data is an essential part of just about every crime i look at in that briefing in the morning. >> you have pulled back from one of your predecessor's policies. you have disbanded the so-called demographics unit that was monitoring muslim communities closely, keeping files on people, listening in on conversations in restaurants, and so forth. do you think we lost our balance

a little bit in the struggle against terrorists threats in recent years? >> not really. the demographic unit, i think was most commonly used. at its peak, it numbered about 15 officers. when i arrived, the unit was down to, i think, about three officers, so it had effectively been disbanded prior to my arrival. the remaining three officers, out of 1000, by the way -- we have over 1000 police officers in the city of new york who spend all their time on counterterrorism activities, so the removal of the last three officers from a function that had basically over the last several years basically ceased to occur, it was not going to diminish in any significant way our capabilities. and there was also, i would

point out, its function was not just to effectively try to learn more about the muslim community. it was any community that the department did not have a sense of the idea of. we are an incredibly mixed society in new york city, 220-some population groups here. from a policing standpoint, the more you know about those various communities, the better off we will be as police, the better able to develop collaborations with them. so that, if there is an issue happening in their native country that we need to be aware of, that would generate concerns here, we do need to be aware of those communities, but i don't think we need to have this particular unit to do that. we can do it through census tracking and through many other methods. >> are some of the methods of the unit still part of the practice of the rest of the force? >> certainly, we have community service officers in each of our 77 precincts. their role is to intimately

understand what communities exist. their role is to go out proactively, introduce themselves, understand issues in those communities, ways that we can protect them better. that's what i'm talking about. i've got hundreds of community service officers that are doing a lot of the same work that this entity was doing. they're doing it in a much more trust building manner. >> if i could ask you a balanced question from the other direction, do you worry -- do you think that the public, as 9/11 recedes a bit, are becoming less concerned then we should be -- than we should be about terrorist threats?

is this -- i don't want to presume that anything keeps you up at night, but is that what does keep you up at night in this job? >> in this city, the concerns about terrorism, i don't believe, have diminished. every day in the newspapers -- on the 15th of this month, we will have the opening of the 9/11 memorial museum. in october, we will open the new world trade center. inasmuch as that's where 9/11 occurred here, it is constantly in our memory and constantly in our day-to-day lives. throughout the rest of america, there has been a significant drop off. i really had to fight in los angeles the seven years i was there, 2002 to 2009, to get resources to build up a counterterrorism capability. even though it has been the subject of several terrorist plots, it had not experienced two airport-related incidents. nothing on the scale of new york. even america's second-largest city, 9/11, the memory of it had faded quickly, but it certainly has not, i don't believe, fêted

-- faded in this city. certainly for the new york police department, it will be part of our existence. terrorism will remain a fact of life. >> let me ask about another controversial press -- practice of stop-and-frisk, or stop, question, and frisk. you've made clear it is an essential part of policing. what is the reformed version of stop and frisk? >> we are modifying it. stop, question, and frisk is a constitutionally-protected activity. there are parameters within which police would have to operate. you have to police constitutionally, respectfully.

consistently. you can't police differently in a poor neighborhood than you do in a rich neighborhood. the issue of stop, question, and frisk is that a police officer has to have reasonable suspicion. reasonable suspicion is less than probable cause. it has to be something he or she can articulate as to a belief that a person or persons has, is, or is about to commit a crime. they have to articulate why they feel like that. it entitles them to stop a person, question a person, and if the officer fears for his or her safety or fears the person they are interacting with might be a risk to the safety of the public, that they might be carrying a weapon, the officer can then frisk that person. it is a basic tool of american policing. it is not something you can function effectively without. i felt that over the last several years in new york city

-- new york city, certainly the last several years, that the practice had grown too large for the extent of the problem it was addressing. 600,000, 700,000 stop and frisk's documented while crime was going down dramatically. that was my belief, the mayor's believe. it was different from the former mayor, bloomberg, and the former commissioner. over 2012 to 2013, the numbers of stop, question, and frisk had declined dramatically from a peak of about 600,000 to 700,000 down to several hundred thousand. crime continued to go down. this year, we do probably anywhere from 50 to 100 stops per day, down from a peak of several thousand per day. crime continues to go down. my belief is that we were doing too much of it.

the cops that were asked to it -- do it believed they were doing too much of it. the unions that represented them believed they were doing too much of it. similar to going to a doctor to treat you for cancer. he would do radiation, chemotherapy, surgery. you want it to be appropriate to the extent of your disease. after you are feeling better, you don't want him to give you more radiation, more chemo, or more surgery if the disease is being dealt with appropriately. i liken stop, question, and frisk -- the patient was getting better. crime was down dramatically. particularly in minority communities, more medicine was being applied and the patient was not feeling better about what the doctor thought was an improvement. in any event, the issue has now been defused. we are still practicing it and

we will continue to practice it. at the same time, crime is continuing to still go down. hopefully, relationships between the police and, particularly in the minority communities that experience still so much of the crime, those relationships will have the ability to be improved upon. >> are the actual tactics changing? the exchange between a police officer and the person on the street? i would imagine even if the volume comes down, minority communities will -- people within those communities will still find themselves disproportionally targeted. challenge that premise if i have it wrong, please. if that is the case, how do you avoid having the same friction? >> you are not targeting. you act in response to the activity you witness as a police officer. the unfortunate reality is that a number of the precincts around the city -- there is more criminal type activity. that is irrefutable. you have more shootings. you have more crime. we tend to have more police in those neighborhoods. you will have proactive policing, more stops.

but the challenge is to do them constitutionally, always. you cannot break the law to enforce it. you have to have reasonable suspicion that you can articulate. you want to do it to the best of your ability respectfully. you want to do it consistently. i don't stop you and treat you differently as a white person than if i was dealing with a black person up in harlem. there has to be a consistency to the way we do it. and in all instances, you have to be able to articulate what the reasonable suspicion was. effectively, we are constantly trying to improve our training, supervision. i think that is an area we are -- that will help reduce some of the tension that existed over the last several years in some of the more severely stressed communities because of their crime problem. >> our shot clock is down to about one minute. we've got gabby giffords and mark kelly coming out.

i would love to hear your thoughts on what meaningful gun control might look like in a country where there are 350 million guns said to be in circulation. that seems to be as big or bigger an obstacle to gun -- than the 2nd amendment to gun control. i wonder what you think. >> i think that gun control -- the term, it's over. we lost control. [applause] 350 million guns -- largely because of the lack of political leadership. all credit to mark and gabby for their leadership on the issue. what we're dealing with is gun reform, we are trying to find new ways to deal with the issue of gun violence. one of the ways we certainly can do that is through policing. those who would use guns, being aggressive in finding them, arresting them, working with the courts.

where it results in grievous injury, put them away. the idea that control exists in a way -- to do it lawfully, respectfully, and in dealing with crime, particularly gun crime, the idea is that the better focused we are on those two are committing the violence, which fortunately is still a relatively small number in our society, the metal -- the better able we are able -- to identify us, the better for all of us. the good news is we are getting better at that all the time, as reflected by, in this city -- at least in the insanity that exists in america. in this city, we are still leading the country on our gun reduction incidence of violence. >> thank you very much, commissioner. [applause] >> thanks again to commissioner bill bratton. thanks for all you do. and for my boss, james bennet, pretty good job.

you know, i think that the way the james bennet and bill bratton just let their conversation, talking about the 350 million guns in the united states, is the perfect pivot point into an important discussion. for nearly 15 years, gabby giffords has been in public service. she was the youngest woman ever elected to the arizona state senate. she represented her community legislature from 2000 to 2005 and was in the united states congress from 2006 to 2012. she was consistently ranked as one of the nation's most centrist members of congress. in 2007, gabby married mark aviator who flew 39 combat missions in operation desert storm. as an astronaut, he flew his first of four missions above -- aboard space shuttle endeavor, the same shall he -- same shuttle he commanded on his final flight in 2011.

he is one of only two individuals who have visited the international space station on four different occasions. after congresswoman giffords was wounded by a would-be assassin in 2011, she and mark became known for their story of hope and resilience. we are grateful to congresswoman giffords and mark kelly for joining us for a conversation with hanna rosin. i have one other thing to add. this is the fun element to it. i'm a fan of bono. i've interviewed him a few times. i've gone to bono's concerts. the thing that enlightened -- mark has deflated me. how many of you went to a bono concert? remember when he was speaking to gabby from space, and we all thought it was live? nonetheless, it was taped, but it was a magical moment. it was astounding. hanna, the floor is yours. [applause] >> thank you.

and that's before we started. [laughter] so, i'm going to start out with a few simple questions to get us going, get to know gabby a little bit better. are you a morning person or a night owl? >> a night owl. >> cats or dogs? >> dogs. >> houston or tucson? >> tucson is my home. >> but houston is ok, too. >> pretty good. >> you don't want to put down anybody, especially texas. coffee or tea? >> sugar. sugars -- >> coffee or tea?

>> tea. >> tea with what? >> sugars. two sugars. >> that's a lot of sugar. so, from the very beginning, you and gabby have made the stages of her recovery public -- videos in the hospital, speaking like this. why did you do it that way? >> you know, it is interesting. when gabby first got to the hospital after she was injured, a friend of mine said, i want to help, i want to do something for you, what can i do? i didn't really have anything to -- anything for him. he said, are you going to record all of this, her therapy? i said, i never really thought about it. why don't you just go grab a camera. it was something we never really thought about, it just happened. her therapists would set up the camera and turn it on. it wasn't until later, when we

-- gabby did her first interview with diane sawyer and abc, did they ask was there anything out there. we actually had a lot of stuff. it was kind of happenstance. >> a lot of people would have said no, i think, i don't want anyone to see me like this. >> gabby had to give permission for anything that was put out there about her. as we travel around the country, we still find this, that her recovery and what she went through has been very inspirational for a lot of other people that have had their own medical issues and injuries. and so, it seemed like the right thing to do, that would motivate others in their own therapy. >> didn't you visit the boston bomber people, too? didn't you visit them in the hospital? >> yeah, but at the rehab hospital. i think it is called spalding. we were in boston a couple days ago.

this was about a year ago. we visited with a lot of these folks that are now multiple amputees. just saw what they were going through. they draw a little strength from gabby, from her own recovery. >> have you been involved in the therapy or recovery at all? >> not really. [laughter] >> just in the beginning. actually, now we are both really busy. in the beginning, i used to be a lot involved in the physical and occupational speech therapy. gabby is at the point now where it is pretty much just her and the therapist. >> what are you doing? >> all kinds of stuff. i've got a bunch of things. i think we'll get to some of that. >> gabby, do you feel like you are going back to the old gabby or creating a new gabby in this process? >> better, stronger, tougher,

good stuff. >> the new gabby giffords. >> new gabby giffords. >> ok. and how do you maintain a positive outlook? how do you do that? >> i want to make the world a better place, yes. >> because i always see you smiling when i see you. mark, you once told a story about gabby's recovery that included a ring. it was a story about a ring. can you tell us that story? >> yeah, it's actually this ring. when gabby was in a coma in the hospital in tucson, just days after she was injured -- you know, you don't know, the doctors don't even know what amount of brain activity is going on when someone is in a coma. one of the first things we saw where we knew that gabby giffords was still in there somewhere was, while she was unconscious, but, you know, at

some level, she was still thinking and able to pay attention, she, with her eyes closed and still kind of out of it, she pulled off my ring. the one on my finger. she pulled it off and started flipping it through the fingers of her left hand. >> while in a coma. >> yes. so she wasn't exactly fully in a coma. that's when we figured out gabby is still in there. >> and that's something she used to do? >> she would do that at the restaurant. >> that's amazing. and you don't remember, really, right? no. gabby, is it true that in the early phases of your recovery, you just said the word "chicken"? >> chicken, chicken, chicken. chicken, chicken, chicken. chicken, chicken, chicken. >> that was it for a long period of time. >> a long time. >> have you explained why?

>> yes. we knew why even before she started saying anything. the speech therapist said with a left side traumatic brain injury that affects your speech centers, people often do what is called -- on a single word. she picked the word -- >> chicken. >> chicken. >> which is much better than many other options. it could have been a lot worse. >> even appeal to thought among your bravery or anything like that? gabby, what can you do now that you could not do to years ago? >> i drive a car. >> it was pretty amazing, i think. a few months ago, we were out of formula one track in austin, texas. this was a new f1 race here in the united states. we were there on a separate day with the friends of ours.

drive? are you ready to the last time she drove a car was to a safe way to shop and she said she wanted to give it a try. she said she wanted to jump into the passenger seat. i said ok left one. the third summer on the track, she was going 110. she only when all the track once. >> there are videos of people skydiving from after the accident so you will be amazed from what they can do. what is the toughest challenge now? >> i don't like it at all. speech issue that you have from her brain injury. for gabby, the more difficult part is the -- >> finding the right words?

you had torue relearn spanish? >> si. por favor. >> that is amazing. >> once a week, right? she has a spanish instructor that comes over. i try not to be that because i did five years of spanish in high school and this woman completely abuses me. it is great for her because she used to give speeches in spanish and do interviews in spanish and do radio ads for her campaigns in spanish.

>> nelson the dog is a lab retriever mix and has been raised in massachusetts. with thely skyped woman after we got the dock and was only later we found out why she was in prison. it was murder. she raised a great dog. [laughter] >> is he a good dog? >> he does a lot of things. you have gone from not living in the same city to being together a lot. what has that been like? that transition? >> it has been really great. bad things happen to people

sometimes it can be really hard to find the positive things that come out of it. in our case, and our personal relationship, -- before, we had one of those commuter marriages. tucson and houston and washington. now we get to live in the same place so that is a positive thing that came out of a really bad day. >> being closer. gabby, can you tell us what you're working on now? >> american responsible solutions. >> it is a political action committee. it is a super pac try to get our elected leaders to do something about these pretty horrific gun violence. to 20 times the death rate in violence than any other industrialized nation. we can do a lot better than that. we do not need to be there. we need to convince our elected

condition -- officials to do something about these issues. reasonable gun laws that most americans believe in. >> i've seen videos of you shooting guns, including the same gun that gabby was shot with or she owned. can you tell people what your relationship with guns was before the accident and now -- and how it has changed? >> i don't think it has changed much. i have always owned a gun as an adult. i got my first gun when i was done with high school. both my parents were police officers. gabby is from arizona. has lived in the west and is a gun owner. it is not something we did every weekend but we would occasionally shoot our guns at gabby's parents house way out in the desert. before and after. it hasn't really changed all that much. >> but how was it issued a gun?

and now that guns have a different meaning for you. one ofof the things -- the interesting things about her injury or one of her neurosurgeons told early on was that any of the positive things about her injury is that she will not suffer from posttraumatic stress. >> you don't remember? right. >> shot first and shot in the head. the memory -- what do you remember from that day? >> toyota. >> she remembers where she parked. if i were to drive the target and park my car and come out 30 minute later -- 30 minutes later, i probably would not remember where my car was. a year later, what we went to the safeway, year to the day, i remember what she parked. she remembered one of her staff members.

that is it. >> no noise? nothing else? that is lucky, maybe. a uniqueness -- position because they're a very isarized -- what you think critical in bringing together those sides of the gun debate? >> it is a condo. issue -- it is a competent issue -- it is not a complicated issue. one of the things we need to do first is to balance out the policies. doing alobby has been very effective job for the past 30 years building a lot of these bridges and washington, d.c.. one of the other parts of this is the try to keep the dialogue going in all parts of the country. here in the country.

around the entire country to build a community of people that want something done on this issue. >> what is reasonable gun policy look like? >> for us -- we have traveled around the country. we visited a lot of states. gabby mentioned last summer we were going to seven states in seven days. getting ideas on what this looks like in places like alaska, north dakota. and after, traveling around and things rises out, to the top or to quickly. checks whichnd goes a long way of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerously meant -- dangerously medically ill. closing those loopholes because that is where 40% of guns purchased. criminals toow

have a very easy way to get a gun? it is illegal for them to do that. they can go through the process without a background check. -- issuese things can around domestic violence which we have having some success. >> i know this is important to you. >> gabby was in washington last week with members of the u.s. senate and a low site we are going to get our first hearing. the issue of domestic violence and guns. there is a judiciary committee. gabby met with senator leahy about that. that is a critical and important step forward. magazine sized of the day gabby was injured. the shooter brought to high-capacity magazines, 32 rounds in each magazine which were -- the first magazine was emptied and 15 seconds. every bullet hit somebody. the summit he really need a 33 round magazine?

question of relationships with the nra that you can bridge back a little bit? >> we have tried. i have spoken with some of the leadership at the nra. there are things the right does that is very important that they do a good job with in regards to gun safety. organization has changed over the last several years. >> in which direction? that, ia direction believe, is to try to support the manufacturers as much as possible. that doesn't make us safer, i don't believe. >> gabby, are you hopeful about the future of gun policy? >> gabby, are you hopeful about it? >> hopeful.

isi think what you're asking the future, are you optimistic about it? >> optimistic. >> it will be a long road i think. >> i am optimistic. years, at least from folks that want common sense legislation passed without a lot of hard work on the political end of this issue. >> i know you both are working on a book. what is the message you want to convey? >> enough is enough. >> that is exactly what she said. [applause] do we really want to live in a country where after the death of 20 kindergartners and first

, the national response is something like that is nothing? -- we can do a lot better than doing absolutely nothing. stop incidentsto of mass shootings that occur at a pretty regular rate. we need to work at that aspect of this and at the same time there was about 35 murders with a gun every single day in this country. a daily to hold of gun violence, what that takes on this nation. how about the cost? the cost of society is pretty great. there was a lot to be done. >> how about we end this on another is enough? good. thank you all. think you both for coming -- thank you both for coming. [applause] >> thank you.

>> ladies and gentlemen, please stay in your seats. on newsmaker, the canadian ambassador to the u.s. talks about the politics of building a 700 mile keystone xl pipeline and canadian proposals i will follow the routes to give canadians routes to a broad. newsmakers, sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. eastern on c-span. our endowment is the historical amount. it is shy of $600 million. perspective, the group is at $6 billion. theard, which represents pinnacle of the nation's endowment is at $34 billion and they have a $6 billion campaign

going on right now does the put it in perspective. if we are going to aspire to excellence,pe of those types of facilities -- facilities to produce that we napped at that kind of investment. responsibility when here she is named to go out and show that we expand. >> howard university interim president dr. wayne frederick on the challenges facing the predominantly black university sunday night at eight eastern and pacific. the organization grassroots the carolina recently hosted its 20th annual dental -- dinner that poses as -- that focuses on gun rights. the gun owner executives of america was there. concealnged to opponents lies author her husband was murdered by a stalker. this is an hour and a half.

>> our first member is nikki goss or. she worked in the tech seek nice club when -- tennessee nightclub when i stalker broken and killed her husband. she was prevented from protecting herself because at unlike north time carolina until recently, she was primitive from carrying her concealed handgun within any restaurant that served out all. i met her at the second amendment march at the number you reserve go and determined -- a number of years ago. she has become a national advocate for restaurant carry and for concealed handgun laws in general. ser.ing you nikki gos

>> 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 community my entire life. i started 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 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 between oklahoma and texas, all private land, always has been private land, they were talking about grabbing land because of this, that or the other, law force or whatever, some nonexistent vegetation. and the militia in those states said we will see you there. they didn't have to deploy. the feds got the message -- this is not the time to be messing around with the american people. we've had it, eric cantor knows it. and others 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 a position -- are you going to work to get the spineless leadership of your party to defund x, y and z programs -- let's start particularly with not raising the debt limit. let's start with defunding zero care. and we can go on from other things who care to be equally dealt with as urgently. i think if we inject that into these campaigns, they will realize that what happened to eric cantor was not a fluke. eric cantor was the first burst of lava coming out of a pent-up volcano that has finally burst forth. so let's do it, folks. [applause]

>> before paul comes up and introduces our final speaker, the volunteers, in about three minutes, are going to go around and collect envelopes. please make sure you made your bid. no bid too small. if you all you have is $5. and throw it into the envelope. 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, all of the funds go towards candidates. and let me be clear that we to candidatesecks ads.we do isry won 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 there anybody else interested in a raffle lott'sfor john

guitar?on for the if there is, raise your hand and i will come by -- there we go. vanna white showing off the guitar. anybody else, raise your hand and i'll come by for that. thank you. >> our next guest, dr. john r. lott jr., is an economist who held research and teaching positions at the university of chicago, yale university, stanford, ucla, wharton and rice and was the chief economist at the united states sentencing commission. his past books included three editions of my favorite more guns, less crime. freedom economics."

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" with 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 discredited. ask senator ted cruz. called discredited by liberals more often than the inestinable economist and author, john lott, author of the book "more guns, less crime." dr. lott's topic for the evening -- and let me get this right -- is making up facts about guns. before i introduce him, though, the board.hoto up on

our history goes back further than you know, john. that's me in about oh, don't know, 1995 or so. i printed out your first copy of first research, "crime carry,nts, right to conceal handgun laws." we took it to elon college, now elon university. that is me approaching sarah brady. she had done a lovely speech on how she wanted to reduce gun violence in america. so i approached her entourage and security closed around her. i said, mrs. brady, i understand you want to reduce violence. i want to help you do that. and she beamed and the security guards parted. and i said, i think you need this. and 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 cnn. and it foreshadowed some of the discussion i would be having, amazingly within a minute or two there, you had several claims that were being made there. that 40% of guns were obtained with background checks. without background checks. these are claims that you would

have seen many times over the by president obama. finally, after a long time, you and have some of the media fact checks, point out survey, ayou have a tiny survey that was done over two decades ago, that was 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, apparent gifting or for an inheritance to a 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. he had a seven-minute presentation a couple weeks ago, like ten days ago. then must have had maybe about 15 false, completely false statements within that 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. let's say i have known obama for number of years. maybe about 18 years or so. we both taught at the university chicago law school for appeared a period 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. but is it dangerous for people to go and produce misinformation? does it create confusion in the and make it show that we might adopt laws that are not correct? yeah, i think there are real dangers and real dangers for people's safety. just you go through a few now. these are quotes that are about 10 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 hands of people who can just do unbelievable damage. we're the only developed nation on earth where this happens. and just typical exaggeration in this case. you the to ask the president, is nation? developed because in july 2011, 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 single person killer. how about germany? most people may not realize this but the 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 effret, germany, 18 people killed, and the other one germany, you had 15 people killed. earlier, we did done work looking at mass public shootings 2000 to 2010 and what you find is that the per capita rate of mass public really isn't that much different than the united states. say, how can that possibly

be? i haven't heard of these things. you look at the attacks which are worse than columbine and yet how many of you have known these attacks 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 american mass shootings than the united states does of europe. you may not realize, finland within the last four years has had several big attacks where ten people or so have been killed at a university or mall. but 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, them up,alled referring to bloomberg's numbers that came out last week about said, andotings, now -- once a week we have something like this happen. let's just take a minute about

these claims that have come out by bloomberg where he says there have been 74 school newtown. since 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 of them critical. none of them going and asking an academic or critic to go and evaluate the type of claim that was there. it was pretty much put out as received wisdom. you've got pretty similar coverage for awhile 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

months.for six 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, they get into a dispute over the money being gambled and he gets shot to death. well, i don't know why this keeps coming up. i have a feeling we're going to have a problem with that. but the question is, is it a tragedy that somebody gets shot near an elementary school whose engaged in gambling? sure it is. nobody wants that to happen. or 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 you talk about these things. many of these events didn't even those types of tragedies,

any deaths or injuries occurring. i'll just show you one possibly better way of looking at this,hd to the number of deaths over time. you take the 15 instances that cnn claims has 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 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. that's a greater drop than we had over that same period of time in terms of murder rates that have 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. because it takes away a little bit from trying to exaggerate the fear factor there i think. again, one death is too many. and i'm happy to talk about things that can be done in order to try to prevent those attacks that still do occur. but if we're going to have a sensible debate, we at least have to agree what's happening to the numbers here. i will give you another quote from the president. we're going to put some common sense rules in place that make a at least, in 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. well, i showed you a misstatement by the president with regard to the background checks that were there. it's not too surprising when, if people hear those types of claims, that they may also make mistakes with regard to what they think the current laws are or not. you look at this and in fact, you know, you can get some surveys that go and say -- do you support background checks on gun seals? sales? 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 pugh 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 by 62% to 22%, 67% to 22% margin were disappointed as a result of that. you can see other polls that when they specifically ask them about the actual law that was up there -- the other thing that's interesting, 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 poll that included background checks in their list by 63% to 32% margin, they don't believe that tighter background controls, quote, they would not be effective in obtaining criminals -- preventing criminals from .btaining 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 two million prohibited people stopped from buying guns because of background checks, the right terminology is there

are two million initial denials. but there's a huge difference between using the term initial denial and prohibited people being prevented. 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 who had a name similar to him and therefore stopped from flying. ok, i assume 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. they are people who made mistakes and didn't realize they had some covered chance offense that 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 he basicallythat admitted thattine though they for backgroundh checks or other gun control laws tragedies, horrible them.on't stop many people know these people would not be stopped by background checks. let me read what he says, quote, because people perceive a the policy solution that we have to offer and the

way some of these mass shootings happened -- we know it's a messaging for us, i think. it's a messaging problem where mass shooting happened and nothing we have to offer, nothing we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting. challenge.a i'll give you another example. how these things get phrased. if i just go and ask you, are you in favor of background checks on gun sales, it gets a very high rate. people think it should be done. but just a little more information, national shootings sports foundation hired somebody ando an alternative poll 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 sales? show 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 through this. the president has this boogieman in terms of gun groups and such as people here, having all the money and therefore that's politicians to vote the way they do. 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. just this year, the n.r.a.,

according to the new york "times," typically spends $20 election cycle. bloomberg spending pledging to spend $50 million a year and giffords group is going to spend $20 million this year. so you get an idea. those are just two of them. i could go on. literally there's like 15 of quotes in just seven minutes. i will just go through a couple more. and we have this. it's the internet trying to log on here. australia just said, well, that's it, we aren't seeing that very and basically imposed strict, tough gun laws and they haven't had a mass shooting since. i could talk about the fact that they did have a buyback. have gone back up again now.

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. lookant to go and try to at things systematically. 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 biased coin 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. as i say, germany has much more than australia has and yet it's had some of the thet mass shootings in world. but they wouldn't want to include that in their discussions. what tried to do with bill landis, at the university of chicago, we 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.

there was about a 60% drop in the rate at which these attacks occurred and 80% drop in which people were killed or injured from these attacks. the reason why you looked at all of the states, rather than just picking one, is because you just -- there are so many thing change.s that can if i can go and pick one state, i hope nobody would believe that. so now i talk about an example, because i've written some things about multiple studies that bloomberg's 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, groups claimed that ended federally funded research, that 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 scientists can violence.arch gun this is after obama kind of rules.rally changed the or gun research is allowed again. with the star claims, quote, and academics were forced to stop their research at the point of a at least at the insistence of the national rifle association. in april 2013, abc, "20/20" ran a segment entitled c.d.c. ban on gun research caused lasting

damage, or c.d.c. noted in 1986 lobby congress to pull millions of dollars out of the firearm research and that results essentially in a 17-year moratorium on major studies about gun injuries. well, just to kind of say here, so this was a study by bloomberg. i'll give you one quote from the bloomberg study. it says, quote, the amendment that so-called dickey amendment, quote, has driven many experts -- has driven many experts to abandon the field and keep young researchers from taking it up. means a decline in the number of articles. that seems clear. but the decline in federal research has undermined overall becausee creation scholars are highly dependent 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. but in any case, the bill itself, the way it's read, quote, none of the funds made available for injury prevention control at the centers for control and prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control. that's all it said. so 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. it had gone up a little bit. hugely in 2013.

but the problem is they were never saying that the percentage of articles were falling. they were talking about people 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 that medical journal articles on everything else went up even more. to me that's a completely different type of claim. for example, if you just looked at the number of articles, so it's growing quite quickly. it's true, it didn't keep on growing at the same rate but it's still has gone up a little bit afterwards and by 2013 it's about double what it was in 1996. and if you look at the total number of pages because they say how substantial are these articles that are there, you find an even bigger increase in the number of pages in medical journals because the average article on firearms became