Would America Be Safer Without the Second Amendment?

Today's episode is brought to you by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, FIRE. FIRE defends the free speech rights of all Americans, regardless of their politics. They've stood up for concerned parents at school board meetings, residents silenced at town halls, and college students punished for speaking their minds. No matter how chaotic the culture wars get,

FIRE stays laser-focused on stopping censorship wherever it shows up. The Free Press was founded on a very simple idea, that honest, open inquiry is essential to getting to the truth. And that's why we're grateful to have FIRE on our side and on the side of every person's First Amendment rights. FIRE has secured major free speech victories on campus, in courtrooms, and in the culture at large.

If you're listening to Honestly, you already understand why free speech matters. So support Fire's right to protect it with a tax-deductible gift at thefire.org slash honestly today.

Again, that's thefire.org slash honestly. From the Free Press, this is Honestly, and I'm Barry Weiss. have provoked as much passion or confusion as this one. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, So many questions come up for me. Like, what did the Founding Fathers mean by well-regulated? What do they mean by militia?

And do any of those definitions that inform that Second Amendment hold in 21st century America? You don't need to tell me that we are a nation with more guns than people. and that guns are one of the most divisive symbols in this country of many divisions. To some, they are dangerous. They are symbols of incredible violence. But to others,

They're symbols of freedom and of a particular kind of American freedom. But even if you are a fan of the Second Amendment, the question remains, freedom at what cost? With mass shootings now a fixture of American life, and with so many families wrecked by gun violence, what exactly are we protecting? This debate is about what the Second Amendment really means.

what its limits should be, what the root causes of American gun violence are, and how, if at all, we can address them as a nation. I think about this. Would America be safer? if we had never had the Second Amendment. To debate this topic, I brought together Dana Lash and Alan Dershowitz recently in Chicago, a city that has more than its fair share of gun violence.

Allen took the stage to argue that, yes, America would be safer without the Second Amendment. Allen, of course, is a lawyer. He was a law professor for 50 years at Harvard and the author of too many books to mention. He has litigated and won hundreds of cases in multiple countries, including his pro bono defense of dissidents, such as Natan Sharansky, Václav Havel, and Julian Assange. He is a fierce advocate.

for tighter gun control in the United States, and is as passionate about the First Amendment as he is the Second. Dana Lash faced off against him to argue that no, America would not be safer without the Second Amendment. Dana is one of the country's top nationally syndicated talk radio hosts with her show. It's called The Dana Show. She's also a television commentator, a preeminent Second Amendment advocate.

and author of several books, including the best-selling Hands Off My Gun, defeating the plot to disarm America. Dana is a former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association.

We'll take a quick break, and when we come back, you'll hear opening statements from Alan Dershowitz and Dana Lash. This is a critical debate. You won't want to miss it. Stay with us. Hi, everyone. Barry here with a really exciting announcement that I want to share with you. For a limited time, and this happens like truly once a year, we have a very special offer at the Free Press. You can get 25% off.

Unbelievable deal. An annual free press subscription by going right now to vfp.com slash subscribe. Don't worry. We're going to add the link in the description of this episode. If you've been wanting full access to everything the free press does, essays, investigations, live streams, early access to ticketing, and more, now is the perfect time to upgrade to a paid subscription for 25% off your first year.

Paid Free Press subscribers now also get bonus podcast episodes and reduced ads. If you're already a paid subscriber, this is the perfect opportunity to gift a Free Press subscription to someone you love. To unlock the full free press experience and join our community or to share that community with someone in your life, take advantage of this limited time deal. It's available right now. So go to thefp.com slash subscribe. Fox News is now streaming live on Fox 1.

The voices you trust. The stories you won't find anywhere else. This is the story breaking right now. Fox One, we live for lives. Try it free for seven days. Offers are subject to change. Go to Fox One for complete terms and conditions.

Be it resolved, America would be safer without the Second Amendment. Let's go to Dana. Oh, yes, that's epic. I love it. Thank you, Barry. And thank you, everybody at the Free Press and everybody here, by the way, for coming out to this, no matter what side of the aisle.

that you fall on. I hope that you walk away knowing a lot more than you did when you came here. Obviously, I think we all know where I stand. I don't think that America would be safer if we didn't have a Second Amendment, but it's not even about safety. I think that... is begging the question. I think the title of the debate begs the question. Because we always forget the usage of guns defensively. Whenever we have this debate, everyone focuses on criminal usage. But what everybody leaves out...

are the millions of people that have firearms who have never used them in any kind of criminal fashion and who use them in defense of their life and their life of their loved ones every single day. I mean, it happens two and a half million times annually, which... outweighs criminal usage. We're here in Chicago, a city that I love, even though the Cubs are here. I'm a Cardinals person, St. Louis, you know. I hope I didn't just cost myself a vote, so, you know.

But there is an absolute civil rights icon that comes from Chicago. A man named Otis McDonald. And I really wish that I would have been able to met him before he passed away a few years ago. Because Otis McDonald really changed not just this debate, but also Second Amendment law. This was a man who was born in 1933. He was the son of sharecroppers in Louisiana. And he ended up moving up to Morgan Park in Chicago. I think in the 50s, he served in the United States Army. He was a hunter.

And then when crime started intensifying, he saw this happening in the 70s and in the 80s. Going into the 90s, he wanted to be able to protect himself and his family. And he had shotguns, but that's not going to be the thing that he really needed to protect himself if he's outside, outside of his home, if he's coming home from work, if he's picking his wife up, if he's...

walk into his vehicle, he wanted to be able to protect himself and the lives of his family. Well, he applied. He went to purchase a handgun, and he was denied. There's a handgun ban in Chicago. He's not able to do that. Criminals can do it because they're not following the law, but Otis McDonald was barred because of a law whose purpose was questioned and ultimately defeated, the utility of that law.

So Otis McDonald took the city of Chicago to court and Otis McDonald was victorious. And so as a result, we have a new precedent because of him. I want to say, too, in this audience, and I can't see her right now, but another, I would consider it his successor. She's his successor, Rhonda Izzell with Chicago Guns Matter. God love you, Rhonda. God love you.

Rhonda followed in Mr. McDonald's footsteps. And she also took this city to court. And Rhonda also prevailed. Because why is it that the innocent must be penalized for the choices of the criminals? Why is it the innocent lives? Why do we have to be at the mercy of people who want to be able to access these instruments, but yet we're denied to protect our own lives?

So what other civil rights do we feel, what other rights are debatable? There is no other right that is as debated and as treated as much as a second-class right as the Second Amendment. What other rights are we okay with restricting or doing away with? license and fees and obtaining permission from the very people that the amendment, by the way, was supposed to restrict. Let's not forget the original intent of the Second Amendment. Yes, it's about safety.

But you have to remember, when our founders wrote the Second Amendment, we know what they meant. We know exactly what their intentions were. We know what their debates were when they were debating this at the Constitutional Convention. We know what their intentions were in their letters, their correspondence to each other. We know what their intentions were in the Federalist Papers. It's very clear. They didn't call this a privilege. It is a right.

It is a right, not a privilege. And they were very specific with the phrase, shall not be infringed. We know what our founders intentions were with all of this. And with it too. I mean, it's amazing that we're sitting here. You know, I watched the video of my friend Charlie Kirk, who we've known since he was 17 years old. And I watch instances like this, and I think it's horrific what happened.

And it's horrific that there is evil in this world. You're never going to have a perfect world and you're never going to have a guarantee of happiness either. But the one thing that you can have is the access. to instruments that you can use for your own safety. Now, we know exactly what our founders meant with all of this. We know what they meant in terms of protecting people. They just fought a war with an occupying force.

Lexington and Concord was the first official gun grab. We know exactly what their intentions were, and they did not want this fledgling republic to have to go through all of that again and walk down the same path again. So... I don't want to give too many of my cards away before Alan gets up here, too. I'm being very mindful of that as I'm talking to you about this. Let me just give you some statistics here.

74% of felonious, when you're looking at murders, involve guns, and these are all repeat offenders. One in four of it. I mean, we can sit here and go down and down with this 70 percent. The recidivism rate, 70 percent of those who were released in 2010, for instance, were rearrested within eight years for those.

Looking at the recidivism rate, I don't have my glasses on, which I should have brought out here. Bottom line, I hate having notes. Bottom line is this. Bottom line is this. I have a mic on. We're talking about, I know, I'm like standing over here like I need it. Somebody bring Dana her glasses just in case. No. It's back at the hotel. The whole point is this. Our rights aren't determined by criminals, by the choices of criminals. Our safety shouldn't be determined by what criminals do.

The government, there's Supreme Court precedents on this. They have no obligation to protect your life or the life of your loved ones. So why are we going to be disbarred by the entity that says, well, we can't protect you, we can't keep you safe, especially in a city where the same 1,400 repeat...

offenders drive over 86% of the crime. That's a fact in the city of Chicago. It's an absolute fact. And by the way, whenever gun bans are implemented, homicide goes up, violent crime goes up. And we're going to talk more about this in the debate. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me at this wonderful, wonderful debate. First, I want to thank Barry, who is really revolutionizing the world as we sit here today, changing it for the better. And I'm so proud to be called her friend for a long period of time. And so thank you very, very much. Some of you are going to be disappointed tonight because we're going to find a number of areas of agreement.

There are going to be some real disagreements, but we're going to find some real areas of agreement. Let's remember what the topic is. Would America be safer without the Second Amendment? Let me be very clear. I do not want to abolish the Second Amendment. Let me be very clear about that. If I were one of the founding fathers I would have written it a little bit differently. I'm not even sure I would have voted for it.

as a constitutional amendment, as distinguished from a legislative enactment. But it's in the Bill of Rights. And I do not want to tamper with the Bill of Rights. Because once you start asking the question... Would America be safer without the Second Amendment? And if the answer to that is let's abolish the Second Amendment, think of its implications for the First Amendment. America would be a lot safer.

Without a First Amendment, the First Amendment allows people to advocate violence. And I have absolutely no doubt that we would be safer in the narrow sense of safer from physical attacks. without a First Amendment. And I can tell you as a criminal lawyer, here I can tell you from personal experience, the country would be a lot safer without the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, and the Eighth Amendment. How do I know that?

Because I have used those amendments to free guilty criminals. Big secret. Promise you won't tell anybody. Most of my criminal defendant clients have been guilty. And thank God for that. Would anybody want to live in a country where the majority of people charged with crime were innocent? That would be Iran. That would be China. That would be many other countries. But it's not the United States.

it that way, we have enacted the Bill of Rights. And I'm here to tell you that the Bill of Rights makes America less safe. But it's a tradeoff that the founders understood. They understood and they welcomed it. It was Benjamin Franklin who said those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little bit of temporary safety deserve neither. So we know that our...

Constitution balances safety versus liberty and tends to, in the right way, prefer liberty over safety. So I am not going to argue. to abolish the Second Amendment or even to amend the Second Amendment. But I want us to be honest and truthful. The Second Amendment, the wide availability of guns, both legal and illegal. undoubtedly contributes to the massive amount of both gun homicide and ordinary homicide in the country.

Every single study, and I've read hundreds of them, every single study, and with respect, I would like to challenge my distinguished opponent to cite a study, a legitimate study, that shows that The easy availability of guns does not increase gun homicide. There's really no dispute about that.

There's a dispute about whether it also increases non-gun homicide. And there's data both ways on that. But there is no real data to support the... null hypothesis, the claim that easily available guns, which the Second Amendment obviously facilitates, results in massive increases in gun homicide. We have two things that uniquely distinguish America from every other wealthy first world country. We have the most guns and we have the most homicides.

Now, you can argue that's mere correlation, not causation. But the very fact that there is a correlation shifts the burden of proof to you and requires you to tell us why. There is so much more gun homicide, and I would argue ordinary homicide, in a country that has so many guns. Are we crazier than England and Canada? Are we worse people than India and Canada and Australia?

Is there something unique about Americans that inclines us towards so much homicide? Or is it the easy availability of guns? I argue that it is the easy availability of guns, notwithstanding that.

I support the Second Amendment. Thank you. Thanks, Alan. Well, I have to ask, since you brought it up, if you were one of the founders, we're back in, you know, those times. How would you have written it differently? Well, first I would have asked the question, do we want the states to have the right to control guns, the power to control guns? Do we want to have one rule that says that downtown New York should have the same?

approach to gun possession and gun ownership as rural North Carolina? Do we want to have one rule? I would have answered that question probably no. And I would have tried to frame if I lost that vote and we were going to have a Second Amendment, I would have said the right to own and possess guns should be subject to...

Reasonable regulation. I would put that in there and then leave it up to each state. Or I might even add one more thing. Reasonable regulation based on the particular needs of individual locations. That's, I think, what I would have. That's not elegant. But I think it puts the right of gun ownership in its proper perspective.

More with Dana Lash and Alan Dershowitz after the break. Stay with us. America is built on hard work. and powered by American energy. Chevron has spent $44 billion with local businesses across all 50 states since 2022, fueling infrastructure and communities, all while strengthening local economies. Last year, Chevron increased U.S. Visit chevron.com to discover more.

One of the things that people that are on Alan's side of the debate, and even more restrictionist than Alan, will point out is that when the Bill of Rights was written, the average musket fired three rounds per minute. Today, an AR-15 can fire that in a second, obviously. How in your mind, Dana, does the availability of modern weaponry, I won't use the phrase weapons of war, I know that that's contentious.

But how does the difference between a musket in the 1790s and the reality of what people can go out and purchase today, how does that in your mind figure into this debate? I think that, well, I know, I don't think, I know that the founders were aware of the mechanical and technological progressions of firearms because we almost had a belt and gun for the Continental Army, but it was too expensive, and so that...

kind of prohibited them from making that acquisition. I mean, Thomas Jefferson himself owned a Girardini rifle. It's an Austrian rifle that ended up being incorporated by the Austrian military, and that was a repeating rifle. They had the puckle gun as well. The puckle gun was... essentially like a proto-machine gun. They knew

that there was a great capability for firearms. Jefferson was a huge enthusiast of this, and he liked to go and see them being made when he was traveling Europe, because Europe, in fact, we incorporated rifling from the French, and that helped make us incredibly successful towards the end of the War of Independence.

That ended up becoming the Kentucky rifle and all of that. But my point is, is that they were aware of all of this. They knew that this was already going beyond smoothbore muskets. So I would say that. They were aware of it. And that's something that they knew. I think the reason why the Second Amendment was written the way it was is because that the civilians who ended up forming the militia, the civilians always need to be able to have access to the same.

that the occupying force at the time had. But they knew this progression. They knew all of this existed. And so that's where I think people kind of miss it. It wasn't just about smoothbore muskets. They knew where it was going to go. A lot of them had these rifles. I mean, Lewis and Clark ended up using that Austrian rifle as well when they went to go and explore Louisiana Purchase. So they knew it was there.

And as I don't think our rights are anachronistic. It's like saying that free speech has to be limited to quill and parchment because that's just a means. This was a means of a check. on the federal government. And that's how it was devised, more so than safety originally. But the language talks about a well-regulated militia. And people like to pick up on those words. Well-regulated, which...

I want to have a discussion about whether or not we have that right now. And militia. If the founders saw some of what's going on and probably happening within a few miles of here, do you think that they would be flabbergasted? You're a constitutional legal scholar.

I think they would be flabbergasted, but I'm not sure how they would have ended up voting. We just don't know. We can't put ourselves in the mind of the framers. Remember that the Bill of Rights was enacted by the House of Representatives, the Senate. and three-quarters of the states, and each of the states had constitutional conventions, and there were debates, and there would be varying points of view on that issue. I can just imagine a debate in which somebody gets up and says, all right.

They can have muskets and they can have those Austrian guns that fire seven or eight. But should everybody have the right to have a cannon in their home? Yes, they did. I know. And some would say yes and some would say no. They had, though. Some did and some didn't. And the question is, should the city council of Boston be allowed to say, all right, cannons are fine in Worcester, but they're not.

good in downtown Boston. In downtown Boston, we're going to restrict the type of guns you can have to muskets. And then, of course, they invent the Colt .45. And as Justice Marshall said, We wrote a constitution to endure for all times. And so there has to be constitutional interpretation that reasonably construes the constitution to make it relevant to changing times.

But I'm willing to concede for you. I'm willing to concede for you that if you want to know on balance, the framers clearly erred on the side. of more personal possession of guns than of gun restriction. Although I can't imagine that they themselves could have contemplated the kind of... gun use that we see in cities like Chicago, New York and Baltimore and other places. So both of you agree. The founders guaranteed these rights. Yeah. No disagreement about the.

the phrase that this entire debate is based on. Can I add something about that? So well-regulated at the time. didn't mean the government. When you're talking about having a well-regulated, make sure your vehicle's well-regulated before you go on a road trip, it's in working order and you can manage your vehicle. The parlance of the time was it's consistent, they can manage it, because when Washington was getting his arm...

together, they didn't have guns. The guns came from the regulars. The guns came from the civilians. In fact, in order to be in Washington's army, you had to have a firearm in the beginning in order to fight. Otherwise, you had one. There was no entity there that was going to provide you with a gun. So, like when Jane Austen was writing about Mr. Darcy.

and Pride and Prejudice, and she was talking about a man with his well-regulated manners. She isn't talking about the government of England regulating this man's manners. She's talking about this man being in direct control of his behavior. True, is that what it meant? I think so, because the... If I were grading the framers on how they drafted the Second Amendment, they get a C plus with grade inflation.

They should have put well-regulated in the second half, not the first half. After all, in some places, like for example in Concord and Lexington, the guns tend to have been... located in a magazine. A magazine is a central area where the soldiers went to pick up their guns. But people had guns in their homes. They had guns to fight off Native Americans who...

were involved in lethal warfare with them. They had guns, obviously, to protect themselves against criminals. And there were plenty of criminals during the founding period. And so... The amendment isn't drafted very well. I would love to see well-regulated become part of the second part, but Second Amendment advocates dispute that. But what I'm saying is there's not huge disagreement between the two of you about the founders' intent.

And a little bit of disagreement maybe about, well, regulated, but let's move on to the actual substance of your disagreement. Yeah. Okay? Countries like Switzerland and Finland have very high rates of gun ownership. but very low violence rates. What are they doing differently in terms of culture, training, law enforcement, social cohesion that we are not? Well, I mean...

With Sweden, their homicide rate was already dropping before they had implemented any kind of restriction in. Also, they have an... I mean... This was already before they had passed all the restrictions that they have in terms of age, in terms of limitations as to what they can have. Magazines. I'm just trying to like, you know, if it's semi-auto, full auto, whatever it is. Interestingly, though.

two of the some of the the top two mass worst mass shootings i think one of them was in norway and that was in 2011. yes oh it was horrible uh 2011. uh and then I think there's the other one was, I have to look at my notes, but the other one was in Europe. It was in the United, some of the two worst ones.

But the point is, is that with Sweden and with Finland, a lot of this is if you're serving in the military, then you're going to be designated a firearm, which is one of the reasons why the firearm rates are so high. Ownership rates are high. But I also think that one of the things that goes entirely unexamined when we're looking at the culture around firearm usage is recidivism. It is restorative justice. It is the...

culture of criminality. It's also drug and gangs, because if you're looking at some of these other countries, especially as it relates to drug and gang violence, and if we want to compare those outliers, I mean, there's no contest between the United States and some of these other countries as well.

But one thing is we own more guns than they do. And yet if you were adjusting this per capita, there's no competition. Right. And that is an argument I think that, Alan, you have to contend with, which is these are countries that have, you know, obviously different population, but have a high rate of gun ownership.

And the guns don't seem to be the problem there. So it's our culture that's the problem. That's why we will never, ever, I've read all these studies, be able to come to any absolute firm conclusions. about causation, but we have some data. Gun deaths, countries, the United States, 14.4 per 100,000. Canada, 2.3 per 100,000. Israel, 1.86, even with terrorism, West Bank problems, etc. Scandinavia, Singapore.

0.01. So what's the takeaway? The takeaway is that the easy availability of guns, not gun ownership per se, but the easy availability of guns, the fact that in a city like Chicago... The United States, of course, as you saw in the beginning, there are more guns than people. I would have no problem with gun ownership of the kind that exists in many of these countries. Many of them have very, very, very

regulated ability to make sure who gets the guns. I have no problem with you owning a gun. I want you to own a gun because you're a Marx woman. You know how to use a gun. You teach gun safety. My problem is the easy availability of guns, which the Second Amendment does encourage because it makes it so much harder.

to impose the kinds of regulations that I would like to see imposed. And even if you move away from just gun homicide and you move to all homicides, the United States, again, 5.76. 100,000 Canada 2.27 United Kingdom 1.15 when you have that incredible disparity among nations that are the same, the only basic answer. And you began to suggest it, but you're not really willing to say it as directly as I'd like you to say it. What you're really saying is Americans are worse people.

No, I'm not. Yeah, that's what you're really saying. Well, let me quote you from 2022, which is very crisp in explaining your view. According to the NRA parrots, this is Alan, not me.

The causes of gun violence are Americans who are evil, mentally ill, and socially maladjusted. Guns don't kill, people do, according to this mantra. But if this were true, then it would follow from the indisputable fact that the United States is among... the world's leaders in gun-related violence and deaths, that we must also lead the world in people who are evil, mentally ill,

and socially maladjusted. I think that's one of his strongest arguments. That is my point. Contend with it. I think that we have a major problem with the restorative justice aspect of it.

Because when you look at the... What is restorative justice? When you think that you can just pat the back of a criminal and be nice to them and they'll stop committing crimes. To put it in layman's terms, that's pretty much it. Criminal justice reform. You think we have more of that than Scandinavia? I think we have a rot.

in our judicial system. Absolutely. But we have much more. Absolutely. But let me, the U.S. isn't even in the top 50 of countries in terms of mass shootings. I mentioned one that was in Norway in 2011. The second was 2015 in Paris. When you mentioned Israel as well, the latest available. data actually excludes terrorism. If you look, excluding terrorism, you're looking at 3.2 per 100,000 versus the United States, 5.5 per 100,000. But when you include terror violence, Israel jumps up to 15.8.

per 100,000. And then, of course, you know, still with the comparison of 5.5 per 100,000 for the United States. They also had to ease back their gun control, and they had over 300,000 applications for firearm permits in the wake of October 7th. You can understand that. And the kibbutz that actually were more successful in repelling Hamas were the ones that had the most firearms, and their people were more organized, and they actually were able to get into their armory.

to to repel that and the ones that were not there were did not. And that's one of the realities as well. We could go and look at England. The bottom line is this. A lot of these countries, they don't adjust any of this information per capita. And I know you mentioned that. That's incredibly significant when you're talking and comparing.

population sizes. Also, when you're looking at the way that these rates are reported, a lot of this information is just, honestly, it's garbage to compare it because England records their stuff entirely differently. I mean, they don't even count it as a homicide unless...

they're actually prosecuting or convicting someone. Without that, that's not even counted in their tally. And I think that's incredibly unfair. If you recorded our numbers the exact same way, you would cut our crime rate, our homicide rate in half. If we recorded it the same...

way that England did, that France did, that Sweden does, that Finland does, that Norway does, that Spain does, you immediately cut our crime rate, our homicide rate in half. When you adjust it per capita, we are competing even. But here's one thing that is left out. Yes, we do own the most firearms, but let's look at defensive gun usages. Defensive gun usage, using a firearm in defense of yourself or the life of someone else, that...

outweighs that of criminal usage. You're talking about two and a half million a year annually. Now there's a little bit of a discrepancy. It can be like a million to two and a half million. One of the reasons for that is the reporting. can vary differently from state to state. But this is something, if we're going to have a discussion as to does it make America safer, we have to consider defensive gun usage. I agree. If I can use my own testimony here.

I mean, I am grateful that I had an AR-15 in my house when I had a crazy person fly halfway across the country and try to break into my front window. And I'm grateful that I wasn't home because they would have been sending a body back. That's guaranteed. I had Fort Worth police that called me to make sure not only that I was okay, but if they had to send a coroner over as well. So those cases...

That counts. Those numbers count. I agree with that. But here's the challenge to your position. If it were true that the easy availability of guns in self-defense would reduce the amount.

of violence, then we would be the safest country on the face of the earth because we have the most guns. But that's not true. We have the most guns, and we are the least safe country. Well, I dispute that, but you could say the same thing with gun bans. Why haven't gun bans lowered or reduced violence in Chicago? Oh, very simple. New York. Simple reason. You have all the gun laws you want here and yet you have a high crime rate. Let me tell you what the reason is. The reason is...

Gun control doesn't work in a federal system. It doesn't work where every state has different rules and where there are no rules restricting movement from state to state. Many of the guns that are in Chicago and used every weekend... to kill primarily minority people are guns that were brought in from states that have much more permissive gun laws than Illinois. But I still...

You have to answer this question. Can I make a point on that? Let me finish first. If it were true that easy gun availability and the use of guns in self-defense actually reduces harm size and makes people safer. It would have to follow that the United States would have the lowest rate of homicide or gun homicide because we have the highest rate of gun availability. That is not true. I want to go to the point where you just made the point that you just made about the mobility of firearms. Yeah.

Is it not true that there already exists a federal law that prohibits? Doesn't work. It doesn't work. But then how would you regulate that? You see, I'm not advocating that. But you used it, though, as a negative against it. I'm not saying that there's anything we can do. to make the country safer now. There's so many guns available, more guns than people. I'm just looking for... truth and facts. The fact that there are so many guns makes us less safe. That's a fact. What we can do about it...

It's very difficult. We can't just start taking guns away from people. They did it a little bit in Australia. They did it in a little bit of other countries and it worked somewhat. No, it didn't. Their crime rate skyrocketed and ownership is back to pre-banned levels and defensive gun usage. with Alan's key point here? Which is he thinks that the easy accessibility of firearms makes it less safe. I would say the easy accessibility of firearms as proven by defensive gun usage makes us more safe.

then why don't we have the lowest homicide rate in the country if we have the highest gun ownership rate in the world? Because you have criminals that don't care about whatever law that you want to put out there. They're going to get a gun no matter what. Look, I agree with that.

But easy, that doesn't answer the question. It's the easy availability of guns to these criminals that results in that. Now, you made another point. Well, no, I want to understand your point. I just want to, what do you mean by easy availability in your mind? easier to get a gun. unlawfully and lawfully in the United States than in almost any other westernized, wealthy, democratic country. And yet we have the highest gun rate, rate of gun violence.

Democrat DAs and Democrat cities, do we have the lowest rates of prosecutions for federal gun crimes? It's a terrible thing. I agree with you. But that's not the cause. Let me answer one other point you made. Restorative justice. You said restorative justice. is one of the causes of why we have so much crime. Restorative justice is not an American concept. It started in South Africa after the end of apartheid and then spread all over Europe.

All over Europe, we have restorative justice. There's very little restorative justice in the United States. In fact, European liberals are furious at the United States because we lock them up. We throw away the key. We have the longest possible jail sentences. We have very, very little restorative justice. So that cannot possibly be the reason that we have so much gun violence and ordinary.

Homicide violence. You bring up progressive DAs. Dana brings it up. I agree. Zora Mamdani is elected, obviously. Yep, yep. This is one of several... elections in recent years that have led many liberals I know, even progressives, to go and get trained to use weapons. I understand it. I understand it. Could you be one of those people? I could if I were... if I were... If I were 57 instead of 87 and wearing thick glasses, look, I have been threatened, including today. I got a threat today.

saying they want to hang me from a crane in the middle of the city. And I get these kinds of threats all the time. I have thought about getting a gun. I have thought about it. But I looked into it and I decided, based on everything I've read, that if I have a gun in the house, much more likely it will be used against a member of my family, much more likely that somebody who momentarily gets...

very, very depressed, could use it on themselves. I have decided on balance not to get a gun. If I were much younger and I could go to the Mark Mason, the range, and if you could teach me. I might very well get a gun with a very, very strong lock. And, of course, the problem is if you have so many locks...

to prevent the kids from getting at the guns, you're not going to be able to get to the guns so quickly to stop the criminals. And if you make it easier to get the guns to stop the criminals, you make it easier to get the guns in the hands of the kids. But Alan, as someone who has been sort of... Yeah.

love it, like in the spectrum of truly loving the Second Amendment versus not as comfortable with the Second Amendment. But have recent political shifts in the country over the past decade or so made you happy that we have it? No. No, no, I don't think so. Look, I represented the Jewish Defense League back in the 1960s where Meyer Kahane said every Jew at 22.

And my response to that was, no, we need better police. We need more police. We need the ability for policemen to do their job. But I think that law-abiding people should have access to guns. with very strict regulation of the kind that the NRA is opposed to. So in some respects, the argument here is not about the Second Amendment. It's about whether the Second Amendment should be construed and defined to do two things.

Number one, to allow states and cities to define well-regulated, to define regulation. Differently depending on the circumstances that they face in their own communities That's the most important thing and the second most important thing is to make sure that we have all kinds of restrictions on who can own guns. We have to end up with the rule, the Dana rule, that you get to own a gun and everybody like you gets to own a gun. But a lot of people who today have.

A, own guns, but B, have access to guns that they don't own, but that other people who own had stolen from their cars or stolen from their homes don't have access. When you look at something like Dylann Roof. Like what? Like Dylann Roof, who had a felony conviction, killed nine or 10 people in Charleston. How do you not look at that in the aftermath of these just horrific Sandy Hook, like choose your horrific

place name that is now not even a place in the collective minds of Americans, but just a scene of carnage. How do you look at that just as a person and not think, I wish that we did not have guns in this country? I wish that no one had a gun in this country.

Three quick. Well, I'm going to touch on that. You cited a study that was the Kellerman study about the firearm in the home. That was a study where he actually hit his methodology. And when it came out.

it was discovered that a lot of the cases that he cited to inflate that happened outside of the home. You don't have to persuade me. You can't say that, though, because that was a debunked study. I'm an expert in social science and the law. That's what I taught for all these years. I'm an expert in that Kellerman study. And almost all of these studies on both sides are debunked.

Deeply, deeply flawed. I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Both sides. The second thing, really quickly, is it's not an epidemic of crime. It's endemic to... Actually, like, highly populated areas. In fact, two of the counties... Endemic makes it really sound like we're bad people. Two of the worst counties had 52%. The top two...

52% of the murders in the United States are located in two counties. Well, what about the people? What is it about the people in those two counties that make it so? Repeat offenders like Chicago, same 1,400 people, according to the superintendent of Chicago police that commit over 86% of the crimes, the same repeat offenders. But they're getting guns. Sorry? They have guns.

They're getting guns. They get on the black market, and they're barred by getting them here because they're prohibited possessors in their own state. The black market comes from the white market. But they're prohibited possessors in their own state. You know what? Someone can steal your car and run you over as well. But to quote Bacaria, I mean, should we, like, deny water?

because man can drown in it or fire because it can burn? I mean, we've got to talk about the utility of some of the propositions. There's absolutely no doubt we are always making trade-offs. The question is, with guns, are we making the right trade-off? I don't think we are. Well, I'm going to change your mind on that, but let me, to the roof point. That would be nice. To the roof point. So this, I can't even stand his name. I wrote a lot about this when it happened because this came out.

I know everybody loves James Comey, right? He was the head of the FBI at the time, and they actually had to post an explanation. The reason he was able, that that guy was able to get a rifle, is because of a clerical error.

So in that state, going through the process because he was being charged with a felony he was considered to be a prohibited possessor until he was either exonerated or convicted so at that time he should not have been able to purchase a firearm he had already he had been charged with a felony and then his father went out and committed

straw purchase, which is already against federal law, which is why that there was accountability in that case. But what ended up happening is that he was misidentified as being from a different county. And as a result, that was able to pass through. And Comey had to post a letter to the

FBI's website explaining how that was able to happen. And I just think... You can find anecdotal evidence of all sides. That's not anecdotal. That's how that case happened. No, I'm saying, but it's about one person. Choose any of the mass shootings. Annunciation. Sandy Hook. Let's talk about Parkland. Choose any of them. Parkland, a known entity. This was an individual who had the police called on him 62 times.

many times by members of his own family. He had beaten his mother so bad he knocked teeth out of her head. He had already pulled a gun on another student. He was so violent and disruptive that he had to have a physical minder with him at that school. Now here's one.

and I interviewed teachers, I talked to everybody and obviously the infamous town hall. One of the things that a lot of people don't know and it came out at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Commission when they had that commission and they were trying to figure out what happened.

There was a secret service, retired secret service agent who had a child at that school. And this was three months before it happened. They went to Parkland and he went with a stack of post-its one morning, just a regular morning, walked right into the school. had a stack of post-its and put post-its on all of these students and all of the faculty, went through the whole stack. And he stopped because he had no more post-its. So he went to the superintendent, Runcie.

and was making the case, look, I was able to access this school. I was able to get in. I was able, if this would, if I would have been armed and wanted to murder people. this would have been the casualty list. He said, you have no SRO that I can see. There's no locked doors. There's nothing being done proactively. Furthermore, this individual was known. He was known to the sheriff. He was known to the sheriff's office. He was known to the school.

and nobody did anything. But contend with the people who, in the aftermath of these massacres that regularly take place on American soil, look at a country like Australia and the gun buyback program and say, if we could do it here... practically, that is what we should do. Well, the gun buyback in Australia didn't work because they still had a mass shooting even after. But if you could wave a magic wand.

I mean, I can't, though. I mean, this is, you know, the reality of the world in which we live in. Evil exists. And in Australia, they had a spike in homicides. It went down, coinciding with the increase in firearm ownership back to pre-ban levels. Could we?

Can we agree on one thing? We're having a dispute between the difference between the micro and the macro. You can make dozens and dozens of micro cases on either side. This was a case of mistaken. This was a case of that. There are a lot of them. and on both sides. But it's rare in life that you have a natural experiment that isn't interfered with by human beings.

The natural experiment we have is on gun availability and gun ownership. And what we find when we look at the data are two indisputable facts. There are more guns in the United States than in any westernized country in the world. there's more gun violence and more gun deaths in the United States than in any country in the world. No matter how you slice the data, nobody can dispute those facts. That's a natural experiment.

And it proves to me conclusively that it is less safe when you have easily available guns, even though there are some benefits to it, some very strong benefits, just like there are benefits to swimming pools and to cars. There are tremendous benefits to gun ownership, but there are also tremendous disadvantages. And all I want is an honest, direct, fact-based analysis of whether or not...

Widespread gun ownership, which we admit is caused by the Second Amendment, does make us more safe or less safe. The answer is it makes us... less safe, but maybe it's worth it because the liberty interests involved have to be balanced against the safety interests. But I want an honest debate that acknowledges that the liberty interests are not.

cheap. They're expensive, just like in the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, and the Eighth Amendment. But you can't disregard, though, numerous examples of absence of action and action that could have been taken to prevent something tragic because this all comes together to form a pattern. It forms a trend. This informs law. This informs how our courts act. This informs how we actually regulate certain things like two-way states.

by state. So that's something that comes into play that you can't just simply disregard because this has been one of my criticisms with all of this in the beginning. My contention is that It's not that the availability of firearms makes us less safe. I actually think it makes us safer. How do you explain the data? Well, our homicide rate's been dropping. That's one thing. And that's one of the things we were... But it's 10 times higher.

than it is in other similarly situated countries. Well, I just told you, it's impossible to fairly compare that. So it's not ten times, it's eight times. No, it's not ten times at all. So it's seven times. It's higher, isn't it? But here's the thing. Here's the thing, though. Why is it that free people should be punished for what criminals do? You mentioned that you have this easy availability.

I don't understand what you're talking about with this easy availability. A prohibited possessor is a prohibited possessor. Just because they can go and get a firearm in Indiana and they're ineligible in Illinois, that's already a federal law. We know who they are because they keep...

arresting them in Chicago. The same 1,400 people. After they kill. Why do they keep letting them back out on the street? There was a case here just last month where a guy got a felony gun charge dismissed. But they're going to let them out on the street. I'd rather have them... go on the street without a gun than with a gun. That's what makes us less safe, is the constant.

capture and release. I agree with that. I agree with that. I said that. So why should I be disarmed? Because a lot of factors contribute to it. One of the most important factors is the easy availability of gun. When you combine that. with judges who let people out on bail, when you combine that with restorative justice, when you combine that with all of those factors, that explains the totality of the great...

Homicide rate, but you cannot exclude easily available guns. Do you think that guns are not easily available in America? Have you tried to purchase a firearm? Of course not. Have I what? You keep saying. You keep saying easy availability, and I'm like, have you actually tried to purchase a gun? I could easily get one. I have so many criminal defendants. I want you to try to go buy a New York. One phone call. I could get...

Submachines. I could probably get a nuclear weapon. Can you show that number with me? Nobody heard that. Try buying a gun in New York and see how that, legally, and see how that works for you. Well, I'd move to a... I would love to be there to watch that. Try buying a gun here.

and see how that works for you. I would love to watch that. You keep saying this phrase, easy accessibility. That is a made-up unicorn, kitten, and sunshine phrase. That doesn't exist. This was like a TV show, because what I would do is I would say to you that in 48 hours... I could get a gun. We could actually run that experiment. We could do that experiment. I know exactly who to call, how much it would cost, and where he would get it from. How long you got to wait to get it? Probably...

24 hours. What's the process? Not New York. What's the process? No, no, no. I'm not talking about legally. I'm talking about through my clients. Oh, that's what we're talking about. Because we're talking about the legal aspect of it. I'm not going to have my rights judged by what a criminal does. No, no, no. You can't, but you have to have your rights judged by the actual...

factual implications. If something that's legal, let me give you an analogy. If people are using certain kinds of pharmaceuticals legally, and then... A lot of people then get to use it illegally. Then you have to ask yourself, shouldn't we be regulating the legal aspects of it in order to prevent it? from becoming the fentanyl killing. I think the same thing is true with guns. Yes.

If we could have a pure world in which only you and your people and friends had guns, I would have no problem. But we know that when you have guns, criminals get guns. And when as a result of that, more crimes are committed. We can do more. to regulate your availability of guns so that only people like you and not people who are going to get the gun legally and then sell it on the black market illegally get the guns. Let me understand this. I should have my rights abridged. because

Judges don't throw harsh sentences at repeat offenders and they allow these people to go out and reoffend. I didn't say that. Because that's how this works. No, what I said is this. Ultimately, if you follow that logic to the conclusion, the conclusion is that an innocent person's rights must be a bridge.

because DAs in Chicago drop felony charges on repeat offenders when it concerns gun charges. I'm saying that there are a lot of factors. That's what you're telling me. That's not my argument. But that's where it goes, though. No, it's not. It's not. Let me tell you what my argument is so I'm clear again. There are a lot of factors that go into the high homicide rates. Those factors include judges like that.

include the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Yes, I know. I know this. Let me finish my argument, please. Finish your argument, and then we're going to go to closing statements. Yes. So we know that there are many, many factors. The most significant among those factors is the easy availability of guns, which means that when the judge lets the person out, the person goes and gets a gun and becomes a recidivist and commits crimes.

All I have to prove to win my part of the debate is that the easy availability of guns is a significant contributing factor. to the homicide rate not that it's the only factor and you can't just come back and say ah that means because of what criminals are doing you're abridging the rights of innocent people what we're doing is we're creating a reasonable Faced on bad data. No, no, there's some...

You can't ignore the data. I can. Here's why. No, no, no. You can't ignore the macro data. I ignore bad data. The macro data. I'm not going to get into it. If I interject, because I do enjoy listening to you, but let me interject here.

When we're talking about gun control and when we're talking about regulating what you describe as the easy accessibility, and please, dear heavens, and I mean this most sincerely, if you do choose to go buy a gun, let me bring a camera crew to film it. Sure. Happy to do it. Because I want to watch all this.

I will take you hog hunting in a chopper. I think I have a harder time buying... Okay, I swear to you. I'll have a harder time buying the illegal gun if there's a... If there's a camera... It's not as great as I ever thought I would hear. But let me point this out. The number one cause, because I know this is a statistic that's thrown out, and I know that this also is probably forming the basis of concern, is when you're talking about, and you mentioned this, Barry, earlier on.

I always hear these stats, like the number one killer of children is firearms. It's actually not. It's drowning. It's drowning. It's automobile. It's all of these other things. But that has no impact on whether or not we should keep guns from being used to kill children. When you're talking about people being safe, keeping people safe, you... are continually

continually excluding defensive gun usage. For instance, I mean, a person is 85% more likely to defend themselves with a gun than be fatally shot by one. You know, you gave me the Arthur Kellerman study that was debunked 12 years ago. I mean, and you're using that as a fact about- I wasn't giving you a step. Betty, I was giving you macro... Well, that's where that came from. No, I was giving you macro data that says, if it were true...

that the easy availability of guns would allow people to shoot in self-defense and reduce homicides, then it would follow that the United States would have the lowest gun homicide rate, but they have the highest. That's a macro piece of data that doesn't require studies. When you're talking about adjusting per capita, and especially when you consider two of the worst shootings were outside of the United States. Can I ask you something? Because part of the frame that...

Alan, I think, laid out earlier that's helpful is the tension between liberty and safety. If the United States adopted mandatory gun training for the use of, in order to own a gun, sort of like driver's ed. Would that to you feel like an abridgment of rights? Absolutely. Even if you were the one who did the training. Absolutely. And you could pick the trainers. Absolutely. See, that's not a rational argument. Why don't you treat the Second Amendment as a second?

The Second Amendment isn't a second class right. We don't do that with speech. We do. Oh, we do. Time, place, and manner of restrictions. Because we have the right of free association. We have the right of free association. We have the right not to sit with, you know, a terrorist supporting bigot. There are all kinds of restrictions on bail. There are all kinds of restrictions on the right to counsel.

There are all kinds of restrictions on every constitutional right. And we have restrictions on the Second Amendment. Let's have reasonable restrictions on the Second Amendment. I don't get to own full auto. I have to go and get a tax stamp and do all that and jump through a bunch of hoops and pay an exorbitant amount of money if I want something that's an NFA item. National Firearms Act. Which, by the way, another thing.

You want to talk about data? The assault weapons ban didn't work. It was a complete and utter failure. Assault weapons are not a major contributor to day-to-day homicides. But that is the rifle that everyone cites and they use as the thing for gun control. Did you notice that I didn't cite it? I was waiting for you to. I'm arguing for...

is reasonable restrictions, yes, mandatory. We have those. No, we don't. We should have mandatory schooling. We should have all kinds of- So mandatory training. I will say training. Alan, if you were president, mandatory training. Yeah. Or King. Licensing. Very, very rigid licensing requirements. Gun controllers ran all gun education out of schools. Who?

gun control lobby ran gun education and hunters that out of schools. Yeah, but let's make it mandatory. Let's make it mandatory. The NRA does a great job in educating and in teaching. I commend them for it. Now let's turn that into the law that... every person who gets a gun is required to go through NRA training. I reject the assumption that the right is on the innocent and not the criminals. We don't know who the gun gets to. We know who these people are. You know, but...

Why do we let them out on the street and then say, well, we have no legal obligation to protect your life. However, you can't own a firearm. In Germany, you can drive 110 miles. We're not Germany, though. We're not Germany. We're the United States of America. You can drive 110 miles an hour on that highway. in the United States we have

controls. You can't. You can go 55 or 65 and it's so frustrating. Driving a car is not considered a natural right. You have all kinds of regulations on cars. That's a privilege, not a right. Let's have comparable regulations on guns. But that's a privilege, not a right.

The right to travel and interstate commerce. 48 hours from now, he's going to call up a friend of O.J. Simpson's. He is going to have... some kind of crazy weaponry, and we're going to go viral because we're taking Alan Dershowitz hog hunting in Texas. That's where I'm seeing this going. Okay, let's give a round of applause for both of our debateers. So we are going to closing statements. It is two minutes on the clock.

Dana, you don't have to stand at the podium if you don't want. You could face, you could sit here, whatever you want. I feel like Alan's going to do it. If Alan's going to do it, I'll sit. No, no, he's going to stand. I'll sit if you sit. What do you want to do? Sit.

You want to sit? Okay, all right. All right, we'll sit then. I'm so comfortable here with... It is, and it's actually a very nice chair, although I keep hitting my mic, and I'm trying not to talk with my hands. So I just go now from here? Okay, so let me... I've... I've lived this and I've seen what happens when good people don't have the means to protect themselves. And I'm grateful that I have never been in that position to where I did not have a means of defense.

I also think it's incredibly tyrannical to expect innocent people to forfeit their liberty in order to accommodate the indulgence, our judicial system and our society's indulgence of criminality. I mean, no one's going up to you and taking your cars away because of drunk drivers. No one's telling you that you can't own a pool or that you can't go swimming because we have drownings. These are...

laws that have no utilitarian purpose. They're things that people are passing because they want to feel good without having to do something to actually solve the problem. We keep talking about the phrase gun violence, but what are we talking about in terms of, you know, violence?

in our culture in terms of the garbage that we're filtering in AI slop and brain rot on social media. I mean, we could go on and on with that. We have a serious problem in this country with our culture. We've always had firearms with us. In fact,

If you look, our homicide rate has dramatically dropped. It was actually a heck of a lot higher. Right now, you have cities like Chicago and Baltimore that currently have murder rates higher than Old West cattle towns, I mean, for crying out loud. The whole issue... though is if we're talking about does the second amendment keep you safer uh i like being able to protect myself because i can't afford the private security like i have tonight to make sure that no one

tries to hurt us. I can't afford to have this epic security that we have. They're amazing people. We have a great detail. That's very expensive. To expect other people to be able to pay for something like that is a form of class warfare. This is one of the things that the Second Amendment is such a...

great equalizer at is because everybody has the ability to go out and protect themselves and to get training. And it's so easy to go out and get training. And I think it is a horrible stereotype to assume that people don't get everybody I know does. But I'll say this, though, too. The United States is incredibly unique. When you adjust the comparisons per capita,

All of this stuff is blown out of the water. When you look at the violent crime rates in other nations, violent crime is through the roof in England, rape assault through the roof in England. I mean, if you want to compare those numbers, we can. But...

Our rights should not be determined by criminality. And if we have justices that don't want to take repeat offenders off the streets, isn't that more of an argument for you to be able to protect yourself using the Second Amendment as opposed to against it? That never has never made. sense to me so I think that that would be I mean

I'm sure you're going to say something. I'm going to have more to argue with it. OK, we'll continue. OK, I can talk to you guys about this for like two more. Alan gets three minutes on the clock because Dana got three minutes. You get three minutes. Thank you. First, our points of agreement.

good people should be able to protect themselves i agree with that completely good people should be willing to take classes should be willing to have their guns licensed should be willing to make sure that their guns are put in safe places good people should be able to protect themselves we with that. I don't agree with you that

We are in a good situation. You say the crime rate is going down in America. It's going up in England. The crime rate in America, violent crime, is at an awful, awful situation, particularly in major urban centers. And we can do something to prevent it. We can do many things. We can stop judges from freeing people who should be detained. We can make sure that if we want to have restorative justice, we should do it in a sensible way. There are many things we can do.

that will reduce the crime rate even further is to impose limitations on gun possession and gun ownership to be more sure than we are today that there isn't leakage from the good people. to the bad people. And for me, I want to be very clear. I do not want to tamper with the First Amendment or the Second Amendment or the Fourth Amendment or the Sixth. All of them. It's in the nature of rights.

that they generally make the citizens less safe, that we are prepared to have a trade-off between safety and liberty, as Benjamin Franklin said. All I'm asking for in this debate is that we base that...

analysis, that cost-benefit analysis on actual facts, on truth, on honesty, and on transparency. And I submit to you that the natural data that we have... from countries all over the world conclusively demonstrate that if we had many, many fewer guns in this country, in the hands of criminals and in the hands of irresponsible people, some of them good people.

Some suicides and other crimes, accidental crimes, are committed by good people. But if we had fewer guns, we'd have fewer deaths. So I stand by the proposition that the Second Amendment... makes it less safe for America. but I support the Second Amendment, but I support looking at the Second Amendment and its costs in an honest and direct way. Honesty and transparency are essential.

to democratic decision-making. And I think this debate has increased the transparency and fact-based honesty. So I'm very pleased and honored to have participated in it. Thank you. Okay. I cannot get the image of Alan Dershowitz hunting pigs out of my head. So it's time to see who won the debate tonight. Okay, we began with 55-45 and Alan moved 5%. Yes, 5%. So Alan Dershowitz is the winner of tonight's pre-press debate.

We are all the winners. We are all the winners. This isn't about winning and losing. It's about learning. The Free Press, and me personally if necessary, will be sponsoring a trip for Alan Dershowitz. to go to Texas to learn to shoot along with Dana Lash. Have a great night, everybody.

Thanks for listening. If you liked this conversation or disliked it, or if it annoyed you, or if it made you change your mind, and we hope maybe it at least challenged you, share it with your friends and family and use it to have an honest conversation of your own. Last but not least, if you want to support the free press, there's just one way to do it. It's by going to thefp.com and becoming a subscriber today. Thanks, and I'll see you next time.