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every porches -- every purchase hopes us -- helps us fund nonprofit. >> welcome back to washington journal, i am joined now by stephen the tell. 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 money overseas to countries who hate our guts. why can't we divert that money towards putting two police officers in every school? these are soft targets and the reason we are soft targets because there is nothing there preventing anyone from walking through those doors. guest: while the ar-15 is not employed by any military, because it's a semiautomatic only version of what in our military would be called the m4. a military that has a cousin, but the turn of phrase weapon of war is a fuzzy one because most

firearm actions, semi automatic revolvers, pump action shotguns have been employed for military use but we don't call remington's a weapon of war. there is a military version of it. i appreciate the point about how we talk about firearms as well. host: let's speak to kelly a republican from indiana. caller: hi, good morning. i want to say something to the gentleman. about 60 years ago my uncle was a policeman and he was talking about his gun and he said, a gun is used to kill.

simple as that. i hear people talk about the assault weapon in this and that. my heart goes out to all of these children that have been killed. those children could not have been killed if the weapons were not able to be purchased. i think they should be banned. all weapons of that type should be only sold to the military and they should not be no import or export without governmental approval. the people who care about assault weapons care more than they do a dollar. guest: there is a long running debate about semiautomatic

firearms, are they too dangerous for civilian use? it is highly contentious generally, the public is split on this question. most states do not have an assault weapon ban. delaware and illinois past a new law last year and they are facing court challenges. delaware's ban was upheld by a federal judge yesterday. there is still a lot of action. host: you had a recent story on your website the reload that said the supreme court's decision in new york state's case has had wide reaching consequences. guest: there was a paper released by professor at

pepperdine, jake charles that wrote that all of the cases that have been decided since last june, 20's 22 second amendment amendments have come through. heller didn't have any successful claims in the first year. there is a lot of good reasons for that, the bruin decision on the supreme court was a reputation of how the lower codes had been handling the second amendment cases. you have probably heard the way they treated it as a second-class right. not only did they have this

denunciation about how lower courts handled it but how they should decide them going forward. you are seeing the significant effect. host: kathy is calling us from ohio, a democrat. caller: i'm a little bit nervous but the reason is, i was shot at twice in my own home. i don't know who did it or what kind of gun it was. it made a popcorn sound and i was shot out and a half circle arch in the bullets rained down and at that moment, all the work i did in school and everything went away and all that mattered was that i lived in a house with stone walls and i ran into the

house for protection. i am so grateful for those stone walls. after that, i was very scared for a long time. and now i feel betrayed by my own country. how could we let the situation get this bad? i am deeply concerned about the logic of our leaders. let's think outside the box? can we do something crazy and awesome like collect all of our automatic guns and send them to ukraine where they need them? let's do something awesome instead of this crap. guest: full automatic firearms have been banned since 1986. you can't go to gun store in and buy a fully automatic. as far as people surrendering their guns are sending them to

ukraine, i don't think that's likely. host: a lot of people will say the issue is that we don't need more gun control laws we need to enforce the ones that are on the books. where are you on that? guest: that is a common argument you will hear from pro-grad advocates and there is some truth to that. you see a lot of laws broken. straw purchases when someone buys a gun that has a clean record but they buy it or someone they know can't have one. i don't think anyone is opposed to that law which is already in place. but it doesn't get prosecuted at nearly the same rate as other types of laws. you hear a lot of complaints about prosecutors reducing

charges when there are gun crimes at the state levels. it is been a point of contention over the past several years. there is legitimacy to that. i don't think there is any one light switch you can flip that is going to solve gun violence or mass shootings. there are a lot of separate issues when you talk about different kinds of gun violence that probably need to have their own solutions looked at. some of the will involve stringent enforcement laws. host: we have been in rochester, new york. caller: i have a question and

comment. one regarding ukraine and the other gun control. regarding gun control, when are we going to start putting the fear of god and to murderers? when will we institute the death penalty for any mass shooter regardless of age and execute them by tribunal? they shoot up the school and they get the firing squad. second question, why is there is c-span media background on the war in ukraine. host: he is talking about punishments for shooters and in a lot of cases there killed at the scene. guest: what the right punishment for a mass murderer, people have different opinions on the death penalty.

whether dying is a deterrent for someone who is undertaking a mass shooting because a lot of them die in the process and often times that seems that is their goal. having someone there who can engage with them will perhaps have a greater effect. the difference between what happened here and uvalde is the time with which they were confronted. they were able to engage the shooter within 14 minutes and that probably saved a lot of lives. host: avery is in new jersey and is a gun owner. caller: thank you so much for taking my call.

this question is for your guests. can you hear me? my question is, i think i have the solution to this gun problem we are having here in america. especially here in south jersey. they have not said anything about bullets, nothing about owning guns. if you increase the price of bullets i think that would cut that a whole lot. could you take a survey to see if anybody agrees about that? host: what you think about banning ammunition? guest: there have been attempts to ban some kinds of ammunition. that is on the fringes of those.

one of the main problems he would run into with any sort of attempt to ban or regulate to the point where people cannot afford it you would run into constitutional issues because it's effectively just banning guns by another means. the current understanding of the supreme court is that firearms are protected by the second amendment and that extends to things like ammunition. like you can have a gun but you can't buy a gun. i think those arguments will not went out in the end as far as being constitutional. host: what will you be looking at for the next election? what issues will you be watching? guest: guns will play a big role

because there is a stark contrast between president biden and whoever wins the republican nomination because at this point the parties are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum. the president wants to ban some of the most popular firearms in the country. republicans want things like requiring each state to recognize concealed carry permits. you don't see any crossover or bipartisan support for. voters will have a choice on that issue. host: steve gutowski >> c-span camping 2024 coverage,

watch our coverage on the campaign trail, meet and greets, speeches and events. to make up your own mind, campaign 2000 20 four on c-span network, c-span now or anytime online at c-span.org. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. ♪ >> fridays at 8 p.m. eastern, c-span brings you afterwords a program where nonfiction authors are interviewed on their latest books. this week, pulitzer prize winning author shares his views on how americans can spread their wealth so that everyone is prosperous. he is interviewed by jason to borrow. watch afterwords on c-span.

♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including >> fox. >> homework can be hard. >> cox supports c-span along with these other television providers givi you a front row seat to democracy. >> members of congress reacted to the school shooting in nashville tennessee. urging lawmakers to do more to protect students from a mass shooting. josh hawley recognizin nashville's law enforceme