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giving you a front-row seat to democracy. welcome back to washn journal, i am joined by steve gutowski founder and editor of the reload and we will be talking about god policy. welcome to the program. i will remind our listeners you can give us a call if you would like to make a comment or question of our . guest you can do that by a party affiliation (202) 748-8000 democrats, (202) 748-8001 republicans, (202) 748-8002 and a private line for gun owners. (202) 748-8003. tell us what the reload is, what

it is and how it's funded. guest: it is funded through membership dues, it's a member funded organization and we focus on reporting on a national scale about what is happening with firearms throughout the country and capitol hill. host: your website said it sheds light on underreported aspects of gun ownership. it informs rather than enrages. guest: we take a nuanced report to reporting on firearms than you might see on either side of the aisle. i am a certified firearms instructor and have been reporting on this topic for close to a decade. we try to have an informed point of view that helps eliminate our

reporting in a way that's uncommon elsewhere. that is one of the things that sets us apart. host: let's talk about the shooting in nashville. what do we know about the guns used and how they were obtained? guest: there were three firearms the shooter carried on them. a 9 mm handgun, a nine millimeter carbine and an ar-15 pistol which is an ar-15 that has a shorter barrel and no stock. those were obtained as far as we are aware, legally. the police said the shooter did not have a criminal history although they did say two of the three were bought legally and locally which could imply that one of them was not.

we are not clear exactly the details on that. host: the president has called on congress to ban assault weapons. where is that right now and what impact does that actually have? assault weapons were banned in the past but that expired. guest: there is no appetite for a band of that sort. you saw in the last congress, the house passed an assault weapons ban for the first time since the last one passed in 1994 and expired in 2004. that is when democrats controlled the house and it was passed along party lines. they never took up the bill because we did not have the votes. now, republicans control the house and they are opposed to an assault weapons ban which would include an ar-15 and one that is

targeted for these types of bands as well as their use in high-profile shootings. the band was in place for 10 years and in that period, you had a columbine in 1998. there are a lot of states on either side of the issue on how effective the ban was. part of the justice reviews said it did not have an effect on gun crime and it only lasts for 10 years. you still have states that have bans on assault weapons. and they still have mass shootings carried out with firearms.

it's not a cut and dry thing that when we had a band there were no more shootings. it remains an ongoing debate we have valid for 30 years about whether or not that is the right policy to addresses. host: i wonder where you think the american public is at this point? there is a gallup poll that says dissatisfaction with u.s. gun laws its new highs in 63% of americans are dissatisfied with u.s. gun laws, 34% are satisfied and you can see the dissatisfaction going up over time. guest: that is the trend you've seen for a long time. you will see this is cyclical in nature with support for gun

restriction in the immediate aftermath of a high profile shooting. support for new gun it restrictions will increase and then a few months later, it will decrease again. you see a lot of debate in the immediate aftermath of the events. one interesting bit is when you talk about assault weapons bands, it lost support over the last year even with with the uvalde shooting. more people oppose a weapons ban. the trend has been downward and

recent years. host: let's start taking some calls. we have clifford from birmingham, alabama. caller: i have a question i would like to ask the speaker. do you think it would be a good idea for the american people, especially people who love these guns as they do to see how a child bodies looks after one of these weapons has hit one of these children? we get the sanitized version of it. should the public be able to see what these weapons of war are doing? i am not against a gun. i have a 16 shot rifle, that should be ample protection. but these weapons, should the

public be able to see this and think about them after one of these kids have been shot? guest: that is something you have heard from gun control advocates. they want to publish the graphic photos of the aftermath of an attack like this. certainly, people would react to that. i would also say any sort of gunshot wound is going to be a horrific thing to look out regardless of the weapon. host: patrick is in the villages in florida on the independent line. caller: thank you for taking my call. one thing i have always notice after these mass shootings, we never get the blood test of the shooter. were they on some kind of psychotropic drug that drove

them crazy? a couple of more points. according to the wall street journal, the federal government 80% of the medical bills, regardless of the situation, why is the federal government having to pay for them? if the nra had to pay for them i think there would be a lot of debate on how many guns we really need. c-span never brought up, i think it was three years ago when that kid ambushed police. he was so heavily armed with body armor and the rest of it, they had to send a robot a bomb into the take them out.

will we need federal money to harden our schools? cut your sports program. society does not need a sports star. put the money into that. spend the rest of the money protecting your own schools. host: one of his points was about blood testing the shooter. guest: certainly there are ethics when you look at the history of mass shooters in these cases where mental illness plays a significant role in what happened and there may be treatments that they are on. i have not seen any documented evidence that it is the main contributing factor. when you do research on this topic, chronicling these attacks

since 1966 and looked at different patterns. you will see someone spiraling downward into a state of mind where they are a threat to themselves and others. what they recommend is people who see these red flags happening beforehand and notice what is going on with them try and intervene and do what is called off ripping. you try to divert them away from that outcome of creating violence to other sorts of treatment. i think that's a more viable solution to these kinds of attacks than looking at prescription drugs. host: where are you on universal background checks? should they be strengthened? should they be more stringent? guest: that's a long-running debate and is one of the two

major things people have been arguing about over the past 30 years. there hasn't been any movement on that. i don't think it is likely to happen. they did pass a bill last year that did change how the background check system works for 18-24-year-olds and change the definition for domestic abuse or. you saw some progress on that front last year. passing that bill and a lot of people's minds was an action that they took and they won't revisit for a while. host: have we seen any changes or impacts from that act? guest: i don't see any discernible widespread impact.

the way that 18-20 four-year-olds bioweapon has changed creating a de facto waiting. period. it hasn't been long so we haven't seen exactly how bad has played out across the country. in this situation i don't think it applies because the shooter was 28 years old so they would not have been affected by those provisions. host: let's talk to ray he was a gun owner in pennsylvania. caller: good morning and thanks for c-span. i just have a quick question and a comment. i keep hearing the term used, these are weapons of war. can you give us on what countries use ar-15's for the military? number two, we spend a lot of