everything needs to be on the table. so i'm glad that you all are here at the table today because we look forward to hearing from you. and that's important because whether it's the classroom in new town or a movie theater in aurora, a shopping mall in oregon, congress on your corner, in tucson, arizona, or the 30-plus people killed every day, 30-plus people killed every day and guns are involved in those murders. this is an issue that has produced far too many tragedies and we have the responsibility to come together and work together to figure out the solutions. and i'm sure that we can do that and this meeting today is just one more step in a long line of steps that we're going to have to take in order to deal with this. and it's going to take everything. everything. it's going it take legislation, it's going to take executive orders.

one branch of government can't do it and one part of our community can't do it. everything has to be on the table. congress woman spear held a gun buy back program you heard about, 580 weapons taken off the street. i was in the car, my car in my district when she texted me and told me the success she had and at the same time there was a radio news report, somebody from cal berkeley, from the university, said, you know, this is not successful, it's not a meaningful program, gun buy backs. and the guy said it's like trying to drain the pacific ocean with a bucket. i about ran off the road. no. 1, nobody is trying to drain the pacific ocean, but we are trying to put an end to gun violence. and if one, if one of those 580 guns that jackie spear helped get off the street and the sheriff helped get off the street, if one of those would have otherwise been used in a shooting or a murder, that

buy back was more than 100 percent worth it. so we've got to work together, we've got it figured out and i know we can do it in a way that makes our community safe and protects the second amendment. so speaker pelosi, thank you very much for inviting me. (applause). >> she's very smart. leader pelosi and congresswoman spear are very smart because when we're in their districts they represent the san francisco area so they chose me to pick the people to ask. i'd first like to, the way it's going to work, i'm going to call on you if you have a question. there's some microphones out there and you can get up and ask your question, you can address it to whomever you want or i'll pick who should answer it. the first one is minda finkelstein. >> i was hoping you would call me first. first of all, thank

you so much for being here and for inviting me to come today. i sincerely appreciate it. i want to address you, congressman, because as a gun violence survivor you have been part of us for a very long time so thank you very much. (applause). >> i have had the pleasure of meeting you in washington. i was, like i said, i am a gun violence survivor, i was shot when i was 16 years old in what was a mass shooting in los angeles. i was working as a camp councilor. we all survived. it would not be considered a mass shooting any more. we have all seen the devastate happen in new town and aurora and san francisco and oakland. i was shot by a gun that came in from out of state by a man

who was out on parole who was a self-proclaimed 93 neo-nazi and was able to get his gun at private sale legally, cross state lines, drove in california to los angeles and shot a jewish community center with three 5-year-old kids and myself was shot and was able to shoot and kill a philipino postal worker later that day. i want to know what we are going to do if these legislations are not passed to prevent guns that are legal in other states from coming here and taking lives away from our californians, and san franciscoans. thank you. >> mindy, we've heard that concern a lot on the task force and it's a legitimate concern. in california everybody is required to go through a

background check, you have to buy your -- personal sale has to go through a licensed dealer in order for you it take possession of that, make sure the gun is not stolen, make sure the person buying the gun is eligible to own a firearm. and it's ridiculous that 40 percent of the guns sold today across the country are able to avoid that background check. and that has to be, what happens if the law isn't changed? the law has to change. the best explanation that i have heard has been from an atf agent who said it would be like after 9-11 saying we're going to screen all air passengers at every airport in 60 percent of the states. it doesn't make sense. and it's not an inconvenience. i was telling the speaker on the way in i got a text message from a san

francisco resident who i've known all of his life and he's known me all of his life. i know his parents, they live around the corner from me in st. helena he wanted to be here and he said i want you to know i fully support the universal background checks for anybody who buys a gun. and you know it's not inconvenient, you know, it works because a few years ago, mike, i bought a gun from you and we walked down the street -- we drove down the street to steve's hardware in downtown st. helena, i filled out the gun, he filled out the paperwork, he paid $23 or $24 dollars, in a few days he came in, he knew i had not used the gun in a crime, he was not mentally adjudicated or a criminal and he walked away with the gun. it works, it's an easy thing to do and if anybody says it's going to cause all kinds of problems, they are not correct.

suzanne flecker. >> thank you very much for inviting me to be here. i am a high school teacher at aragon high school in san mateo and i am also the representative to jackie spear and my question is, is there any immediate legislation to fortify schools so that students and faculty can be shown that if there is a violence attack? i am in a classroom where i have all glass and i am very close to the street, so if someone came in there is really nowhere for me to protect my students.

>> well, i can tell you that's why the gun owner at our hearing who builds schools, that's exactly what he said, that most schools are approachable from different directions, there's no way you could secure the whole school. but there are specific areas where additional help from the federal government will allow schools to put better locks on the doors and to do some things that would help provide a safer environment but i thought chief you might want to respond to that a little bit. >> i don't disagree and i actually raised the same question yesterday in dc with the connecticut folks. they said if you make the schools too secure that should a person have already gotten into the school that law enforcement can't get into the school to do what we need to do and in the case of new town, we talked about he actually shot his way through the glass and walked through the glass that he shot out. he never touched a

doorknob. i think better training, better response, i know the teachers in that school, i can't even go into how heroic those teachers were in trying to save the kids. they did everything perfect. one of the problems they have is fire codes versus locking invied versus locking outside. thank god these are such anomalies and thanks to this leadership to make it less, but emergency services whether it be police or fire or teachers need to be able to get in to help also. >> if i just may add to what the chief is saying, we hope that one of the outcomes of this will be legislation that has resources to enable schools to have, whether it's someone from the -- you do this now, i know, to go to the school and take inventory, to size up what the exposure, what the vulnerability is. for example, in new town they were pretty secure except the

glass was not bullet proof. that one thing made all the difference in the world there. i know you are hearing this in the task force, the mayors and all the rest have this concern. we are not all living in steel igloos but we are all realistic about what does work, what enables the police to come in, in this situation. but our children and grandchildren know we want those schools to take stock of what their vul innerables are and do, to the extent that is reasonable and commonsense, do something about it. >> we have started that process through the district with the principals on site with the police chief to do security assessments in each of the sites so that we know it's going to take a long time to rebuild the schools, certainly the resources are going to be a

challenge. while we're doing that, we ought to be able to do some immediate assessments so that teachers, straightors and principals immediately have this mind what those 3 immediate things they can do that save lives when anything should happen. this is that training that can happen right now without waiting for the necessary infrastructure moneys that hopefully will be attached to some of these programs that will come out. >> then also stopping people who shouldn't have guns from getting guns through the background check and if you consider the last data that they have, they found 155,000 people who tried to buy guns who were either criminally or mentally prevented from owning guns and that was only 60 percent of the guns sold. so if you do a better job with that, if we did a better job delivering mental health services, if we have a better juvenile justice system and

better able to deal with the cultural issues that lead to this, it will all work to our advantage in the end. rochelle dicker. >> thank you very much for being here. i am one of the trauma surgeons at san francisco general hospital and i think maybe i can speak for dr. campbell as well when i say i would really like to make my job obsolete. there are a lot of appendicitis cases to deal with. we have ideas on implementation of public health model. mayor lee, you spoke to this a little bit. we have a whole cadre of hospitals out there and a real alliance of hots and trauma surgeons, emergency medicine physicians, social workers, who get to the root causes dr. marshal has listed over here. we have

these capacities and we would love now to know where we can glean more resources and what's happening with the cdc as far as allowing for resources so that we can build on these programs that we know work with our colleagues in the community that help us to get at these root causes. could you speak to that? >> i would just like to acknowledge dr. garcia thank you very much. (applause). >> thank you for your leadership for public health in san francisco and thank you for your very wise desire to make part of your job obsolete. i think it's really interesting to know when we were fighting the fight in the 90's, the appropriations committee, at that time i was

on that subcommittee, we were trying to get just a measure, just a measure of head injuries in our country, head injuries, you could fall down, whatever it is. but the nra and those forces blocked even taking a measure -- we were in the decade of the brain. so all that that implies, the head, that was important. and they wouldn't even -- they blocked funding for measuring head injuries because so many head injuries were from gun violence. so you can't even measure it for other purposes, children falling off a bicycle, anything like that. most recently with the amendment that again only the appropriations committee is the place where they moved in. and if senator feinstein were here, i don't mean to speak for her, but she was telling me yesterday that the amount of money being spent by those who

oppose gun violence prevention is so astoupblding and that the public has to have a clear picture of what is at stake and how they are stopping every step of the way, just the documentation of what the challenge is. and if you can avoid documenting it then what's the problem? you know, what's the problem? so we have a very big fight on our hands and part of it will be that we have to have, getting back to your phrase, evidence based decision making and then we will do the right thing. nobody here is from the flat earth society. we believe in science, we're not afraid of it. we believe in measuring things and it would be wonderfully helpful to get rid of the teaheart amendments and get some funding. there's some wonderful things we could do.

sam luiz >> good afternoon, leader pelosi and thank you for leading this discussion. i do, i did pose a question but before i state my question i'd like to make a comment and that is it was and it is a sad situation back in connecticut where we see all these innocent children losing their lives attributed to one mass murderer. but we are here in san francisco and communities of color and bayview hunter's point, in the mission, in the western addition, we lose our children, our youth, our human beings, and losing one human being to gun violence is losing one too many. so thank you for your comments also, mayor ed lee. in this morning's article, there's an interesting article related to tracking and related

also to universal reporting. there is approximately 20,000 individuals that have been identified as having lost their legitimate right to own a weapon, a gun or guns, because convicted of a felony or for other reasons. there seems to be, the way the article is written, there seems to be a couple of barriers that perhaps will not allow for a process to be implemented so that those guns can be confiscated so my question to you, to you specifically leader pelosi and mayor lee, about exerting any influence with our state officials to be sure the process is created and those guns are in fact confiscated. >> let me start and the speaker and the mayor can add on. the program that you are talking about is outstanding program called armed and prohibited. people have bought

guns legally and now they are prohibited from owning guns for various reasons. there's 19,000 of them, of the individuals, and they estimate 40,000 guns out there in the hands of these prohibited individuals. and i would bet there are probably more because they are only going by the guns that are registered which means handguns and assault weapons and it's more than likely that they have more than those two types of guns. the big constraint is, no surprise, money. they only have 33 doj agents going out knocking on these doors and they need more help. there's a couple ways they can do it. they can work with local law enforcement, police officers and sheriff's deputies, to allow them to do a little bit more but it's been a very successful program. it works in california even though they are behind because of staffing. it's impossible for it to work

in states where they don't register firearms. and it's, i don't want to sound defeatist, but it would be very difficult to get a national law that required any kind of gun registration but on the task force we're talking about ways we might be able to incentivize states to adopt this program and incentivize them by providing them with additional resources. but you're right, it's a great program, we need to do more of it. >> we support -- california has some of the best gun prevention, gun violence prevention laws in the country. we still have to do more and it still has to be funded but it has led the way and will continue to do so. we can learn more but, yes, we would encourage our legislators to do more. >> the majority of the mayors in the state of california have joined too. we all signed the same letters and we're sending

them back to sacramento and washington, dc we are talking about additional strategies we can use to join up because it isn't -- again, if we don't talk about it, if we don't join, this is why we formed mayors against illegal guns as a national effort. >> i want to jupbld underscore the costs associated. in california for every gun they take out each year there's 33 guns that should be taken out. it will not succeed unless more money is put into it. we would need to spend i think it's $50 million to deal with that backlog here in california and where that money is going to come, i don't know. we're, like, $6 million is what they

are actually allocated right now. >> pastor williams. >> (inaudible) people that responded (inaudible) the bayview area, if i wanted to buy a gun, i'm an expert in all kinds of weapons the military has, (inaudible) but i don't want to do that because i'm already surrounded with a lot of violence and i didn't want to be not a victim of violence but i didn't want to be the person that would instigate it because there's so many young people roaming around my

neighborhood that always act like they want (inaudible) my point is this i think what's missing, listened to all that's been said and enjoying hearing what you are saying, but i think from a pastor's standpoint, what we are missing in this equation is god. and what i mean by that is because we're not training our children and i thank you, madam pelosi, for mentioning james 1:26, we need to not just be hearers of the word but we need to be doers. i can't say enough about those kids, two little ones, 11 and 7, with all this violence i hope we didn't make a mistake because i would not know what to say, how to feel, if my kid's school is going to

be attacked by a maniac. right now i can walk into any school in the san francisco bayview area without anybody questioning my credential and i've done that. the reason why i've done that is because i go in there to check make sure every elementary, every public school complies with williams versus state of california law which my son and i started and was signed into law by arnold schwarzenegger in 2004. and even today, even that law is not complied with by the principals, teachers, staff and the schools of california. so it's so sad for me that i've worked this hard without sounding the alarm, blowing the trumpet or anything, that i was the author of this law. but now it's still violated in the schools of california. so my point is this. we need to bring god back into the equation. we need to bring god

back into the equation. with god, we can do everything. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. (applause). >> mark lynch. >> thanks so much for having this get-together. i've seen a lot of people that are able to talk to each other and have calm discussions but i'm a leader of a construction trade union in san mateo county and i know what's on my members and this is not the kind of discussion we could have because of in college in a debate class, things like red herrings and slippery slopes and when i listen to the radio i feel i'm playing a kind of bingo game, i call it as i see it. you have had several meetings already and all of you

on the dais that have a career doing this, can you give some of us in the audience some advice, we're all going to go back to our memberships of different kinds and we need to make sure they can talk about these things peaceful. looking for some advice. >> i'd be happy to meet with your members on these issues. i know your members are hunters and gun owners and i remember when i first ran for office i went before 500 labor leaders looking for an endorsement and the first question they asked me was how are you on guns? i said what i told you, i've hunted and been a gun owner my whole life. the next question they asked me was, yeah, how are you on guns? the next question after that was, yeah, but how are you on guns? so i understand their concerns. there's a couple things you should share with your members. one, the heller decision stated that individuals have the right to own firearms but

with the second amendment comes responsibilities. just like the first amendment, you have the right to free speech but you can't incite a riot. with a firearm, you have to use it appropriately, it has to be an appropriate firearm. as justice scalia said, he's not any shrinking left wing violet, he's the one who stated there could and should be regulations. so nobody is trying to take your members' guns away, they can go out and shoot, they can hunt, they can have them for self-protection but they need to abide by the law in doing so. >> if i may, i think it's important, the chief and i discussed this last week, we were at a luncheon, the chief was saying something, i just happened to chime in. it's important to get different people in the room to be

introduced to different sets of ideas. i remember this person was an nra member and they said, thanks, i never thought of it that way and he actually applauded what i had to say, you made me think about something differently. i'm going to go home and think about that. i wasn't hostile, i was just giving him something to think about and he appreciated it and said he would invite me to some other meetings, they would appreciate hearing something different. i think it's important to get different people in the room and agree not to fight. absolutely. >> rita semmel >> thank you very much. i am so grateful to all of you for being here and for letting me be here. (inaudible) chair of

the board and the director and we've been concerned about this as every american has been, but we wanted to do more than just be concerned so we're working with the mayor's office to try and have a convening of clergy in the affected districts of san francisco, not only to talk about taking the guns, what needs to be done about the guns, but analyze the issues. because the subject is more than just guns, it's poverty, it's jobs. i'm repeating your words, mayor lee, and i appreciate them because i think you are absolutely right. what is some of this legislation that you are considering perhaps take some of these other issues into consideration and by the way, if you are interested, we're going to have this convening with the mayor and the health department and other people on march the 7th at saint mary's cathedral. i had to do a little advertising.

>> mr. mayor, do you want to speak to that first? >> first of all i want to thank the interfaith council and all the members and the community that we're reaching. i'm still thinking about i think joe and the police chief are right, how do we talk to other groups? the easiest way, the thing that i have been so successful is continue telling people, you have to put yourself or your kids and replace them with somebody else's kids in your mind, that others' kids are your kids. we're all parents, a great society. if you start thinking beyond what you are comfortable with and start caring about other kids, i think that begins opening the door of understanding because kids in bayview, kids in the mission, kids in the western addition, deserve no less than kids in the west side of the city or the safest side of the city.