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. (applause). >> rita, your question is a reflection of some of the other questions that have been presented to staff here. i want to say whatever causes all this violence, the mayor talked earlier about jobs and that being an answer to many of the concerns that people have. so the disparity of income, the disparity of equity, the disparity of access to quality

health care, be it mental health care or otherwise, all of these contributed to a situation that is fertile atmosphere for violence and we have differences of opinion of what the role of government should be in all of that. but i do think that the new town, although we know that kids across the country suffer violence and also have been traumatized by it, and now it's new town and so everyone is focused on it and that's really important, this is an opportunity, this is an opportunity for us to address -- i know that gail works with the children's defense fund and she has recognized your leadership. joe. when we met with her about the issue of

violence and the underlying causes of it, she said you really got to get the guns away. in other words we want to do more things at the same time. our colleagues on board at tucson and injured with gabby gifford, he's now a member of congress, he was injured. he worked for 30 years in the mental health community and then he was her assistant and now he's a member of congress. and he said, i had really -- and he represents sun country. he said, i had concluded after thinking through and listening that the only way to keep guns out of the hands of the resident assault magazines out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them is to keep them out of the hands of everyone, of everyone. (applause sxwrierx. >> we do have to address, and

i think it's really important, it's a moral imperative to create jobs, moral imperative to reduce the disparity in income and equity and the rest and it's only getting worse and we have to address that. we have the affordable care act which will implement this and we need more, we need more funding and the rest and we have to do all of that but right now we have to keep these guns out of the hands of people for all the reasons you describe, the poverty and how it has contributed to lack of options. i call it the fury of despair that leads people to do things they might not ordinarily do if they had more hope. and that is the nature of any number of questions that relate to mental health funding,

conditions that beget gun violence, trey talked about youth in our courts and most vulnerable communities. we have to have guns off the street but how about dealing with real questions, how are we dealing with race and poverty? this is systemic. this is community-wide. the interfaith council, thank you for your leadership. how much violence can we tolerate in our country before we declare a state of emergency. thank you, edith, for your question. you see a trend here. we do have questions from a 15-year-old that i think is important to take as we wind down the meeting and then -- technology. >> lagan >> hi, there, my name is logan, i'm a teenager, i'm 15

years old (inaudible) i was thinking, if you are a hunter you have this system and if you are in law enforcement like a police officer or navy seal you have this, that would include background checks, background checks i think are -- if everyone knows how their mental state is, it will help a lot. could you answer that question. >> i will say on the background checks, that should really be what they refer to as a no-brainer. if you buy a gun, you ought to be checked out. we ought to make sure that people who are criminals or people who don't have the mental capacity to properly use a gun, we should keep them out of the hands of those folks and

that's the first line of defense. and that should be just about everyone should have to go through that. there's a lot of work being done to figure out if there's a better way to do it, should you look at some type of app for individual transfers could be made without going through -- you were talking about machine guns and they're already illegal, well, that's not actually true. you can own a machine gun but it's a higher bar that you have to clear to get that. there is more background checks, there is a financial treasury stamp that you have to buy to have one and it's pretty much limited to military type collectors. it gets tough. we're just trying to close the proverbial loopholes, make sure everybody gets one rather than setting up a different -- it's a hard pill for people to swallow just to require the background check.

but we're hammering away on this one. >> kevin asked can we prevent guns from being shown on facebook pages. i'm going to use that question as a place to say that the mayor has been very close to the tech community in san francisco and i'm a big believer in technology. they can find answers. they were telling me yesterday about something put together almost immediately to organize thousands of volunteers in response to sandy and i know the mayor has been wourking with the tech community on this subject. >> absolutely. one of the first things the technology companies did, because we do have a tech chamber of commerce of sf city here in san francisco, they led a national discussion on the web to join in the sandy hook promise that

they personally were taking up this cause and using the web site to spread the information and word that sandy hook should never happen again and as they arrive on the scene of this national debate they are now turning their attention to the very cities that they are located in and realizing that in their home towns we've got this issue. but the technology companies are talking with each other, they are using that web site to have a national discussion so that's a great thing because more people who have the discussion and put in front of them kids whose lives need to be saved, families and safety, are going to be of great benefit of this. they are also part of the national effort with gabby gilford and mark kelly to, again, be part of

those conversations and very difficult ones because many of them are company owners. they want to have those conversations with the nra individuals as well and they are not afraid of those conversations and they use the media to do that. we have a very unique situation here in san francisco in that we have a lot of these companies that are here, they are joining us. they made a very strong commitment to work with us as mayors. this is what we talked about at the u.s. conference of mayors. we have the technology leaders there to actually help us forge the web sites for the mayors against illegal guns, been extremely helpful in using their ability to do this. having said that, there is a phenomenon, there's things by way of content that they cannot control and facebook is one of them. they can't control -- and we're seeing this phenomenon where youth, and we're discovering this even

from just a light peruse he will of our investigators on site that the very youth that are not supposed to have these guns in their hands, they are on parole or in some level of detention, they are on facebook advertising that they have a gun in their hands or they are at the firing range and they are advertising themselves practicing with an illegal gun. these things are very, very disturbing because they are part of the subculture that they are still engaged in the willingness to associate themselves with violent behavior when we're trying to have our legal system capture them early. so this is something we're working on. it's going to be part of our discussions as we work on this, how can we use this other evidence that is suggesting that we got more and more to do and just suggests how deep this thing is. >> mayor, if i can add on to

what you said and maybe using your conversations with the tech folks, one of the things i found very disturbing with the task force, we met with the video industry and talked about the violence in their games which i believe is all part of this culture of violence. and they pointed out that the biggest problem, they have a ratings system that they think is pretty spiffy and works well. but they point out the problem with just the open access to the internet where anybody can design a game, can put it on. there's no ratings system, there's no oversight, there's no peer review, it just goes out there. they talked about a very troubling game called kindergarten killer where the more kin der gart inners you kill, the more points you get.

anything you can help us figure out would be very, very welcome. >> rita, i wanted to give my way of answering your question. we got a lot of problems but let me put it this way: last night there were about as many young people in here as there are now. they came from oakland, richmond, berkeley, many of them here for the first time, didn't know each other. there was really only one thing i was worried about. i didn't know their socioeconomic status, had some poor kids in here, middle class kids, so i wasn't concerned, there was only one thing i was concerned about. even if they had violence on their minds, the only thing i was worried about was whether anybody had a gun. to me it's the most significant factor in violence. i can handle some of those other things. i have no chance with somebody who has a firearm.

>> thank you, joe, i thought it would be useful to get a one-minute wrap up from each of our participants here who may not have addressed some of the other concerns. council woman spear, thank you for your leadership. >> thank you all for being here. our no. 1 responsibility is to protect the public safety and this is a no. 1 issue in that regard. we've got to stop being afraid of any group that is out there that wants to shut us down. it is time for us to do what is necessary to make sure that no one has to be afraid to walk a kid to school or go to the movies or go to the shopping mall and right now people are afraid. i didn't talk very much about magazines. i held 100 round capacity magazine in my hand last saturday. there's no need for any of these magazines to be on a 10-round clip. i think we should not just ban them, i

think we should recall them and pay back people for their $20 magazine but get them out of our community. (applause). >> going to date me now. the time is now, but think about this. this is 50 years after the march on washington, 50 years after the i have a dream speech. that man stood for what? nonviolence. this is 150 years after the emancipation proclamation so everybody the same now. the window isn't going to be open very long, the political will is there. obviously we're saying let's move forward, let's keep our foot on the gas until we get all of this done. >> thank you, joe, and thank

you everyone. joe's comments and jackie's are reminisce epblt of reverend king when you alluded to his remarks. years ago he talked about the fierce urgency of now. he talked about it then, we talk about it now. (inaudible) council on civil rights and they are talking about having to act now. seize the moment. we have to seize this moment. your question about the language that we use, this is a fight. when i watched mr. thompson's hearings on tv, they were broadcast over and over again, one thing you can see at these hearings, the antigun violence prevention people only had one message, the second amendment. they all stood up and said the exact same thing and with all of our good intentions, our folks had one thing or another and one thing

and another but we do have to have something that just rides it home. it was the president who said it very well. he said, you have an a-plus rating from the nra or do you want to have safety for our children? stop the funerals. stop the funerals. what i'd like to do is follow up to this, joe, with your permission, mr. mayor, and barbara for you to be part of it, is to bring bobby scott out to talk about the violence issue. those questions have been raised over and over again and he has been a champion on this issue. it's the promise act for reducing violence and increasing opportunity for young people in some of our leading communities and i think that would be an appropriate follow-up to this at some time in the near future. with that i again thank you all very much for coming. all of you are leaders in the

community one way or another. as staff said, we absolutely have to get this done. now, it's going to be hard. big money, senator feinstein will tell you big money on the other side misrepresenting the facts. we want evidence-based solutions that get the job done that are sustainable and our president said i'm going to give this my all. so we have great leadership on the issue and much of it is in this room today. thank you. (applause). >> thank you, everybody. if there's anything i got out of this, i have more belief about this. we have need to have a lot more people conversing about this issue. i know of no other way to make the changes that we need to do except to build more consensus across racial lines, across class

lines, across religious lines, build the consensus and talk to more and more people. keep this in front of us. we cannot abandon our kids or our families out of fear. we have to do even more engagements to get results. thanks. (applause). >> very quickly for the ladies that wanted to get an assessment at your school, here is my card for you, we can get that done by friday and make sure the kids are safe. just to echo it, the congressman would say, machine guns are legal in 39 states to be privately owned. these guns do travel. i know the mayor is doing so much locally but have our national leaders to our right here standing up saying it's so important to have a national discussion, to have all these laws apply nationally and the decision that they did say banning dangerous weapons

still presumed legal and kuepbs stal, i would say machine guns and weapons of war that kill kids are unusual and unusual enough for me and i'd like to have them gone. >> thank you very much for being here. leader pelosi, thank you for being here. (applause). >> distinguished panel members, thank you for being here today. thank you for what you do here every day. your service is very very much appreciated and your help in this is just so important i can't begin to tell you how important it is. and i want to leave you with a couple thoughts. jackie spear talked about 100 shot magazine. nancy pelosi said that i call them assault magazines. i don't know what else to call them. 30 shots? it's an assault magazine, that's all that it can possibly be. and there's no law against it in most states.

on december 14th, a day that will be burned into our memory forever, you can probably, when somebody says where were you when sandy hook tragedy happened, you probably know. i was duck hunting. i told you i'm a hunter. i was duck hunting in the yolo bypass, 3 shots in my shotgun. federal law limits me to 3 shots in my shotgun. yet they sell assault magazines, 100 rounds, 30 rounds. it's absolutely ridiculous. california has some of the toughest laws in the country. folks will tell you a member who said you got to watch out for the slippery slope, we hear it time and time again, pretty soon we're not going to have any guns. california has the toughest laws in the land, some of the toughest laws. no assault weapons, you can't have a 10 shot magazine -- only 10 shots in your magazine, you have to go through a licensed

dealer to sell a firearm. let me tell you about the slippery slope in california and how it's prevented folks from exercising their rights under the second amendment last year legally 600,000 guns were sold in california. there is no slippery slope. what we're talking about is responsible laws, responsible gun owners and safer communities and you are part of making it happen. so thank you all very much. (applause). * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *