welcome kira lerner and lois beckett to democracy now!alk about the legislation in washington right now. >> thank you for having me. the legislation moving forward in washington this year, as you mentioned, is called the share act. congressman jeff duncan from south carolina has been pushing this provision called the hearing protection act that he tucked into the share act this summer to put it into a more innocuous sounding bill. what it would do is deregulate the sale of gun silencers. right now, gun silencers are regulated under the national whichms act of 1934 -- means in order to purchase a gun silencer, a buyer has to submit a background check, go through fingerprinting, register their purchase with the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. so there are pretty high firearms to purchase a now. the also the fit to hundred dollar tax. sometimes because of bureaucratic backlog, this can take months. with the hearing protection act tucked away in a share act would do is deregulate silencers so that you would just have to submit insta

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 netw