hello and welcome to kqed newsroom. i'm thuy vu. coming up on today's program, in the wake of the tragedy in las vegas, there's renewed debate over gun control. we'll look at whether gun laws did and should be changed. also the u.s. supreme court kicked off a new term monday. 245i8 be deciding cases with lasting impact on immigration, data privacy, and first amendment rights. and finally we will visit the coolest museum in san francisco, dedicated to something sweet. but first wgo to las vegas. it's been five days since the horrific mass shooting at a country music festival there. at least 58 people were killed and about 500 injured before shooter stephen paddock took his own life. he had opened fire from his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the mandalay bay casino hotel.

while authorities are still searching for a motive, the community is left picking up the pieces. more than half of all the victims who died were from california. we'll discuss the intensifying debate over gun control in just a moment. but first let's get an update on the latest from las vegas. joining me now from the public radio station knpr is the senior producer. this has all been so tragic and troubling that perhaps the biggest question now is why did stephen paddock carry out this massacre? based on the flews that investigato -- clues that investigators have been able to gather so far, are they closer to independent tooing that answer? >> i don't think they are. for people within metro, people within the police department, there has been some word from the sheriff who said they thought maybe there was an accomplice. the fbi immediately walked that back. they do have in their possession all of the computer equipment that mr. paddock had. however, he's 64 years old.

he lived in a retirement community. there's not a big expeblgtation they're going to find a lot when they do a forensic analysis of the data because he was not a social media user. he doesn't have the sort of tracks that you and i might leave on social media. there just was not a lot there. >> what about the note that was found in the hotel room? i know it wasn't a manifesto or a suicide note. so what was it? >> again, they're not releasing what that note was. there's speculation it might have been a note to his girlfriend because he did, as a lot of people now know, wire $100,000 to the philippines, which is where his girlfriend -- maybe his ex-girlfriend lived, and she has been flown back to the united states and questioned in los angeles by the fbi. to date, the fbi says there's nothing incriminating in what she has told them. so it's really, as to a motive, which as you correctly surmise, is the huge question, there's just nothing yet. >> joe, you've been covering this story all week. you have lived in las vegas for 20 years.

how would you describe the mood in las vegas right now? >> i would say it's very somber. you don't see this a lot in las vegas. look, none of us live on the strip. some people do work there, but we live regularly lives. there is an excitement in this town all the time, though. but i gauge how the town feels by how they drive. this is a car culture. people drive everywhere, and after 9/11, for instance, people were kind on the highway. they let you cut them off if you did. it was the same way monday after the shooting. people -- and not really to kindness as much as sort of being in shock. i felt that this entire week. >> is there an element of fear as well because now we're seeing some reports come out that stephen paddock had scouted other locations, fenway park in boston, lollapalooza in chicago. is there a sense of fear of being in places that have crowds in vegas? >> and, again, even a week or two weeks before this, there was the ogden high rise in downtown

las vegas that he had tried to get condominiums on the top floor overlooking the festival grounds. i think there is a fear. i don't think people who think about going to festivals would probably go to them immediately right away. as you know, time sort of heals some of the thoughts. it doesn't heal wounds, but people will get by that, and there's a push in this town anyways to get beyond it and not to let it affect their lives. >> and also on the subject of healing, i have to ask you about the victims and the people who were wounded. hundreds of them. how many are still in the hospital? what's the nature of their injuries because if they're still in the hospital at this point, it must be very serious. some of the most serious wounds. >> there's still dozens of people in the hospital critically wounded. their hospital bills are going to be enormous. there has been a fund set up, which has raised about $10 million to date.

the costs are going to be as tro nom cal. you're right. it's hard to say. all i know is there a lot of people who are attached to so many people at this festival, from california especially, but from around the globe. we're just hoping for the best for all of them. >> then i think it strikes at the heart of everyone, right? this could have been your child. you have a family in vegas. we all go to concerts. we go to places with crowds. is there a heightened sense of security in vegas right now? >> i don't sense the heightened sense of security. you do see within mandalay bay, for instance, nobody there at the casino floor. we sent a reporter there yesterday. i would never let my kid -- i'll been honest -- go to an outdoor festival. he's in his teens. and i'll admit tuesday morning when i was driving to work, just thinking about some of the people i had talked to, i teared up in my car. this is very early in the morning. i really can't explain why. i see that happening, though, all over the place, in coffee

shops, grocery stores. you just -- it's really -- i'll never think the same way about a disaster in another part of the world again. i'll feel much more -- i'll be much more affected by it. >> this certainly has been a sad week for everyone, and i know certainly for all the people of las vegas as well. joe, thank you very much. >> you're very welcome. sunday's tragedy is the worst mass shooting in modern u.s. history, and it's reigniting a national debate over gun laws. on thursday, the nra said it supports a federal review of bump stocks, devices that make a semiautomatic weapon fire more like an automatic one. california has some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation, due partly to its own history of gun violence. in 1989, five children were killed in a stockton school yard by a mentally ill man armed with an ak-47. that led california to approve

the nation's first ban on military assault weapons. senator dianne feinstein successfully pushed for passage of the federal assault weapons ban. it expired in 2004. in to 2015, a terrorist attack in san bernardino left 14 people dead. in response, state lawmakers passed six gun control bills including a ban on large capacity ammunition magazines. joining me now to discuss all of this further are alison anderman, managing attorney at the law center to prevent gun violence and lois beckett, a senior reporter with the guardian. she joins us from new york city via skype. welcome to you both. allison, what impact has california's gun laws had on homicide and suicide rates? >> you mentioned the 101 california massacre. my organization was founded in response to that massacre by a group of lawyers, and since then in the past 25 years, we have been working to pass effective evidence-based gun laws at the

local and state law. and what we have seen in that period is a 63% drop in the gun homicide rate and a 46% drop in the gun suicide rate. >> so that's evidence that you think that stricter gun laws work? >> absolutely. and, lois, are there other approaches particular to california? maybe it's regarding social services or economic equities that also play into this, contributing to the drop in homicide rates? >> there are. in both richmond and oakland, communities have taken more data-driven methods, realizing that actually the risk of violence is concentrated in very small networks of people. and if you intervene with them ahead of time, you can change the risk of doing violence and change that behavior and actually support people. so in richmond, using the office of neighborhood safety, leadership programs for young men they thought were likely to commit or be a victim of

homicide, and murders dropped. oakland has done a completely different model but again focused on community and focused on legitimacy and not just criminalizing people but making it safer. along with gun laws, advocates want both. they're finding ways to reduce murders on more. >> i want to talk about what's happening on the national scene. we have a situation where republican lawmakers in washington have for decades rejected gun restrictions. but now there seems to be support growing for regulating bump stock devices. senator feinstein has also proposed ban on these devices. do you think this is possibly a beginning of a breakthrough of stricter gun laws at the federal law? lois? >> this would be the smallest possible step for gun control. it's really important to remember that bump stocks might seem like a serious military thing. they're not. they were a weird toy for gun geeks until sunday night when

they were used in a horrific attack. so a lot of people, even gun aficionados had no idea what they were. so regulating them strictly or banning them is pretty low, and if we see the nra get on board with at least restricting them, it's because as the nr a's chief lobbyist says, not that many people even own these. it's not that hard of a fight. >> how significant is this step that the nra is taking saying, oh, yeah, the atf should take a look at whether bump stocks should be regulated? >> well, i think that anytime the nra gets on board with a gun safety restriction, it's noteworthy. that said -- and i agree with lois that these are not accessories that are in wide use. they probably don't occupy a large market share, which is why the nra is supporting potential restrictions. but i do think that bump stocks are -- signify a larger problem that we have with the gun industry, which is that they are marketing these increasingly dangerous types of militarized accessories, and it is the

combination of the bump stock with a large-capacity ammunition magazine that made the death toll so catastrophic in las vegas. >> and when mass shootings like this happen and we see the resistance to stricter gun laws, a lot of people pin it on the nra partly, you know, that the nra is so powerful and keeps on lobbying against all this. so, allison, why is the nra so powerful? it certainly gives a lot of money to politicians -- lois, rather. but what sets them apart because a lot of special interest groups give money to politicians. what makes the nra more powerful than those groups? >> well, the nra has a 5 million-member grassroots network across the country, and they have more importantly than those big numbers, a lot of dedicated activists in each state who are very passionate, very informed, willing to show up, willing to call. they know how to pull the levers of democracy. if you have a small group of organized people, you can get

very far even if there's a majority with big feelings who disapproves but isn't really show up to stop you. >> so we have a conversation now about bump stocks and they're just one set of small devices. so then how do we construct a larger conversation with new language around gun laws that will actually get somewhere, allison? >> well, i think language is important, but i also do put this on legislators and ask them to have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby because they are not representing the will of their constituents. we know that over 90% of americans support universal background checks, and federal legislators repeatedly fail to enact these laws. and the nra works tirelessly to defeat them. and this similar case in many other specific gun violence prevention policies. we have overwhelming support from the american people, and what stands in the way between the american people and these laws is the legislators. >> allison, there are more than

300 million firearms in this country. lois, rather. i'm speaking to lois now. that's just about enough weapons for every single person in america. so even if you have new legislation banning the sale of new weapons, what do you do about the existing ones? >> so there are obviously other countries who made different choices. like australia, which decided to have mandatory buy-backs, basically confiscating about a third of the country's gun stock and melting down nearly a million weapons. that's what australia did. it's really unlikely that the united states would do that. someone says why can't we be like australia? we're not willing to melt down 90 million guns, so we're not going to do that. but there's a new line of gun control laws or gun violence prevention laws that are focused on america as it is, and they're not saying, how do we ban whole categories of people. we're not saying how we ban whole categories of guns. you're saying most of the time people can have guns and be safe. there are just these moments where they're at very high risk

and having a gun turns into something deadly for them and everyone around them. so one of the most interesting developments on the state level is these extreme risk protection orders which give family members and loved ones and peace officers the ability to petition a court to have someone's guns taken away temporarily. that is something that is much more flexible. it's short-term. it's about lining up the law alongside risk, which is not something that is just you're a risky person or not. over your life, it changes. >> do you want to add to that, allison? >> i completely agree with lois and want to add that a similar law, similar to the extreme risk protection order in connecticut has been studied by researchers from duke university, and they showed that these laws have the potential to reduce suicides and to actually prevent gun suicides. and you have to keep in mind that america's epidemic of gun violence really has a lot to do with suicide. over two-thirds of the gun deaths in this country each year are due to suicide. suicides are not inevitable, and they are preventable. so i agree that extreme risk

protection orders are a very good direction to go in. >> you both seem to be saying that we need a much more holistic approach as well. so allison and lois, thank you both for joining us today. >> thank you. turning now to the supreme court's new term, the justices will tackle data privacy and a case that pits a gay couple against a wedding cake baker. plus the court is considering whether undocumented immigrants can be detained indefinitely without a hearing. joining me to discuss all of this is uc hastings law professor rory little. professor little, nice to have you back on. >> great to be here. thank you. >> a very full docket. the new term began on monday. a lot of cases are significant for california. let's begin with a case that involves issues of religious freedom, freedom of speech, lgbt rights. that's the colorado cake case. >> that's a very big case because a lot of governments including ours in the bay area have anti-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation

among other things. they're looking at whether somebody can first have a religious objection to complying with that non-discrimination law. >> and this is a baker that said he was not going to bake a wedding cake for this gay couple because it violated his religious beliefs. >> it was a quick exchange. they walked in and said they want a cake. they said, i don't do gay weddings and they left. his claim now is you're going to compel me to make a cake for something i don't believe in. that violates my freedom of religion and my freedom of expression. there's not much record to support that actually. >> and we have a big lgbt population here in the bay area. if for some reason there's a ruling in favor of the plaintiff, the baker in this case, what would be the implications for businesses that serve that population here and elsewhere? >> well, the problem here is that you can't really examine somebody's assertion of religious belief. this used to be an objection to racial discrimination. they would say, well, we can't serve races because of our

religion. and we have so far said, no, that doesn't overcome the anti-discrimination principle of the equal protection clause of the constitution. so this could really give businesses an out in lots of ways that would further bias. >> another case that's being closely watched involves immigration. as you know, on thursday, california became the country's first sanctuary state. so immigration applicants are surely watching this other case before the court. and this is the question of whether the government can detain undocumented immigrants indefinitely, without a hearing. they heard arguments tuesday. what's at stake here? >> boy, that's a very big case too. the argument that you can hold a human being in detention without any kind of justification or hearing for a long time really is disturbing under the constitution. the claim here by the government is when somebody is not a citizen, they are undocumented, they are seeking admission, they're here but they're seeking admission technically, they can

be detained just for anything. not even a hearing. so the question in this case isn't should these people be released. it's just should they get a hearing before they're detained. >> and there's another case that really touches everybody because we all have cell phones now, right? and this is a case that involves how our personal data is used. and it involves a man who was convicted of robbery. it's partly based on records provided by his cell phone company without a warrant. so what implications would this have for all of us? >> this is another case that could be very major. we all share data with third-party providers in our social media. we sign those terms of agreement. we don't read them. and we don't really believe that data is instantly available to the government. and it's very private data sometimes. so the question here is when you have, quote, shared that data with somebody, because you have to to have a phone. you have to to have a facebook account. does that allow the government

to get that private data and put it all together without even a search warrant, without any judicial oversight? another big case, because in the past the court has said you share it with somebody, you lose your privacy interest. we don't really believe that in our hearts. we don't feel that way. so it's a big case for the fourth amendment. >> another big case, union dues, right? this came up before when justice scalia was alive. now it's back. >> this union dues case, everyone thought it would go against the unions. this is whether a union can require everybody in the union to pay their dues because they're negotiating for fair practices for everybody, even if a member doesn't want to pay the dues. they say they don't like the union, let's say. you're required to join the union in a lot of employers. if they can't collect dues from everyone, this could really hurt the unions. the california case two terms ago was dismissed because scalia died unexpectedly, and now

they've granted another case from a different state on this same issue. and unless justice gorsuch votes in a way that surprises us, probably going to go against the unions. >> and lots of unions are watching this. the teachers union, for example. >> the teachers union in california is very concerned about this. >> another case real quickly, the travel ban, right? there were these challenges that were going to be heard. the court is now putting that on hold. does the latest travel ban that president trump came out with, 3.0, does that render the prior challenges moot? >> well, that's the question. there's a lawsuit now filed against travel bans 3, and the claim is this moots the prior case. there's a really big issue here which is if it does moot that case, if they have to dismiss it, should they vacate the decisions below? they really shouldn't vacate those decisions because of course it's the government's decision to moot this case. they didn't have to do it. so those lower court decisions are very important decisions. statutory decisions, constitutional decisions. to vacate them can really -- it

would be too bad in a sense for all the litigation around this area. >> we only have about 30 seconds remaining but can you touch real quickly on justice gorsuch. this is his first full term. do you expect he will be more conservative than justice scalia? >> you never know. he's -- he's shown that he's very confident, and his votes at the end of last term were very conservative. so far i think he's trying to moderate his oral argument views, but we'll know when he votes in these cases. >> all right. uc hastings law professor, a lot to cover and a lot to watch. thank you very much. >> thank you. it's been a tough week for all of us. so we thought we would round out the week with something sweet. ice cream. there's now a traveling museum devoted to it. kqed has the scoop. ♪ >> we wanted to create a space that brought people together. this is a space that is unifying. it's a safe space. it's empowering, and ice cream is such a beloved treat that it

just felt like the perfect combination. >> this isn't your typical museum where the artwork is behind plates of glass. here the artwork is meant to be touched, interacted with. why did you take such an unconventionable approach? >> i find museums can be a little bit isolating. there's this sense you can't touch anything or you're going to break something. i think when you have that level of degree of constriction, it limits people from truly being able to express themselves. we wanted to create a space where people could be their authentic selves. they could laugh and touch something and nothing would break. it's flipping the consent of a traditional museum on its head. >> also also made for millennials and their love of snapchat and instagram. how did social media influence your -- >> it wasn't so much that led to the aesthetic design. more so the sense of capturing the moment and what could we do from a design perspective that really allowed people to transport back. we feel the more visual the

space is, the more people are able to do so. >> the museum of ice cream features nine different themed rooms including a gummy bear garden, rock candy gave, and the main attraction, a swimming pool filled with plastic sprinkles. >> there's just something so therapeutic, they look like real sprinkles. >> how many sprinkles are in this thing roughly? >> 100 million sprinkles. >> wow. after using an air hose to remove all the sprinkles sticking to my clothes, madison took me to meet grand, a unicorn standing tall in a field of rainbows. >> my favorite room is our rainbow room. it's an homage to san francisco for the diversity that this city has fostered and created for its entire existence. inclusivist and making sure all people feel protected in this

space is a huge mission of ours, something that we strongly value. >> but no trip to a museum for ice cream would be complete without delicious reminders of why this timeless treat never goes out of style. even after a makeover for millennials. >> all right. welcome. >> oh, my gosh. this is amazing. i've stepped into a '50s diner. >> exactly. that's the intention behind it. it's also our scoop of the month room. >> what you have is gingersnap flavored ice cream. then we're going to add this lovely strawberry sauce. >> we want to make sure this city feels we are working collaboration with creameries that have been around for a while. >> that's the answer we want. >> at the museum of ice cream, you won't encounter artwork that's overtly political, but

you can still express your opinion. even a political one in the message statement room. >> we wanted to create a space where people could take their emotions and how they felt and make a statement on the walls. we believe that this is -- an equalizing space is an opportunity for you to feel your authentic self, and if you have something to say that is political or socially oriented, feel free to say it. >> what does ice cream mean to you? >> when i think about it, it brings me back to my childhood. i think of being a kid and sitting in my house and hearing the ice cream truck go off and the excitement and exhilaration i got from running outside and catching that truck to get my iets cream. i also associate it with my first memories of having autonomy. i remember my parents being, like, here's $5. go out and get the ice cream by yourself. there's just something with that, that level of independence i just greatly associate with ice cream. >> maybe our universal love for ice cream springs from memories

of what it was like to be a kid. when your toughest decision was deciding what kind of scoop to get. or maybe it's because we associate sharing a cone with friends and family in times of celebration just as this woman and her family were doing when i caught up with the museum. >> i love it. it's phenomenal. it's more than i ever imagined. we're celebrating my daughter's first birthday today, and i'm excited to show her these pictures when she grows up and let her know that you went to a place that not everybody gets to go to. i think ice cream brings happiness. who eats ice cream and is sad? it's fun whether it's soft serve or, you know, out of a tub or whatever. it's fun. it feels good. >> we have people from cultures from all over the world who are coming together and talking with somebody they probably never would have had the opportunity to speak with. and they're talking about ice cream. and they're having fun. when you see the power of human connection in such a simplified form, i think it can be a great example of how we should move forward as a country.

>> the museum of ice cream is at one grand avenue in san francisco. it runs through february. tickets are currently sold out, but you can follow them on instagram to find out when more tickets may go on sale. for more of coverage, please go to kqed.org/newsroom. i'm thuy vu. thank you for joining us. ♪ take

in your quest for total health. >>optimum health that encompasses mind, body and spirit. >>so join us now as we head to the frontiers of integrative health and well-being >>with judy brooks, >>roy walkenhorst >>and michele bernhardt, our inner world guide. >>on healing quest hi. thanks so much for joining us today. let's face it - it's a busy world out there, with lots of distractions. >>but what if we could actually train our brains to really focus on the things we need to? >>"this seems like a particular domain where training people to attend differently could provide incredible benefits." >>we'll join four scientists as they work to piece together a puzzle with a hundred trillion parts. >>"you could say that this is, perhaps, one of, if not the greatest, remaining challenges in science."