DEBUNKED: GUN CONTROL LIES

laws actually work the way they're intended? On the special edition of Hold the Line will examine the left's latest calls for new gun restrictions and bust some of the myths of gun control. Welcome to the special edition of Hold the Line. I'm Buck Sexton. This is the usual rhythm. This is, unfortunately the psych that we go through after a horrific mass shooting in this country. Democrats start immediately

shouting about gun control, and I do mean shouting. They're angry at anybody who does not want to go along with these policies. They immediately forget all about the myriad laws out there with regard to gun purchasing, gun transfer, where kind of guns you can have, fl's background checks, all of this. They pretend like it doesn't exist and that there's some kind of a free for all, like we're living in some other period in our history. Just get a gun, go wherever you want with it, and

nothing matters. It's dishonest, it's wrong. But there's a lot of emotional impulse that they use to mobilize people to call for this gun control. Joe Biden, for example, just saying this, we need to do something about guns. Watch this time we have to take the time to do something, and this time it's time for the in it to do something. Do what? That's always the question that we should run anounce. Okay, do do what. We already have

background checks, so we need universal background checks. Really do we think that increasing background checks to private individuals and engaged in a private sale of their own property that's going to stop shootings? Really? Do we think that's going to work? We don't think that's also just going to harass a lot of people who are selling their own property to somebody else. Is that how many shootings is going to stop? I'm just wondering. I think we should

ask these questions. I think it's worth at least getting into it and then banning assault weapons. Assault weapons are used in less than five percent. Some would say less than two or three percent. I think of all shootings across the country, very very small percentage of shootings. But Vice President Harris, for example, it is calling for an assault weapons ban because she says, we know it works. We are not sitting around waiting to figure out. We're

not looking a vaccine. We know what works on this It includes let's have an assault weapon span. You know what an assault weapon is. You know how an assault weapon was designed. It was designed for a specific purpose

to kill a lot of human beings quickly. They don't know what works actually, And these are the same Democrats, by the way, who think that we're all going to be safer if we just don't punish criminals, including violent criminals very much, that if we have progressive prosecutors, if we have defunding of police, if we take social justice over criminal justice as our mantra, that will be better off as a society, safer as a society. We've seen

that's not true. You're thirty percent spike and homicides in twenty twenty nationwide. You have some of the most violent ears in recorded history for dozens of city across the country. So they don't actually know how to stop violence, gun violence,

you name it, but they keep saying they do. And then there are some abject morons like Congressman Swollwell who says things like this, So, I think we've debunked the idea that the answer to a killer with an assault rifle is to have more quote unquote good guys with guns. The good guys with guns are outgunned by the bad guys that we've given guns in our country. What is he even talking about. First of all, no one thinks that,

no one who knows anything has that been debunked. And there are many shootings every year that are either stopped in progress from being a mass casualty event or stopped from becoming a casualty event at all because of somebody who did have a lawful firem who's able to bring it to bear in the situation. But look, here's what we have to do, because this is a national conversation, and the Democrats are insisting, let's have a discussion, let's look at what they want, and then we will debunk

gun control myths. We'll go through this with real experts on the subject. We'll address each of the primary policy proposals of the Democrats and we'll see what we actually are. All right, let's do it. We come back. Editor Bearing Arms dot Com, Cam Edward stops about to discuss the constitutional basis for Americans right to keep in bear arms. Starting right there, Stay with us. Support from my podcast is brought to you by Manscape, the best and men's

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at manscape dot com. That's twenty percent off with free shipping at manscape dot com and use code buck to unlock your confidence and always use the right tools with Manscape. When we speak of the of the gun control movement, we have to begin with the text of the Constitution itself. Second Amendment to the US Constitution reads, a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep in bear arms

shall not be infringed. Seems fairly simple, the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed. But many proponents of gun control seating quite differently. So I'm arguing that the right only applies to people in the context of a government regulated militia. So is membership in a state sanctioned militia a prerequisite for owning a firearm? Join me now just spell some of the myths around the gun grabbing movement. Is the editor of bearing arms

dot Com, Cam Eledwards. Cam thanks for being with us absolutely bug, thanks much for the invite. So Cam, we'll get to the well regulated part a moment here, but

let's start with the notion of the militia. The militia component here, just as James Mcreynold's writing the Court's Opinion nineteen thirty nine, USB Miller defined the militia as he debates in the Convention of the History and Legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators show plainly enough the militia comprised all males physically capable of

acting in concert for the common defense. So what do you make of what we know here of the history of this as well as the reality, the constitutional reality of the second Amendments. Yeah, so, I mean you can get even more specific, right, because there's the organized militia and there's the unorganized militia. The unorganized militia is basically us right as the body of the American people according to US Code, it's males between the ages of I

believe seventeen and sixty five comprise the unorganized militia. But I think a fair reading of the unorganized militia today is basically the body of people capable of burying arms in either defense of themselves or the state if necessary. We the people are the militia served well regularly. Someone the anti gun, anti gun movement will say that that phrase empowers the federal government to regular militias. Justice Scalia though,

to find well regulated in dcv. Heller as the objective well regulated implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training. But what do you make of well? I think Justice Scalia had a right. But again, what we're talking about here is a well regulated militia, right, not a well regulated body of people, not a well

regulated group of gun owners. What this basically means is that in the service of a militia, Absolutely you want those militia members to have training, to have some sort of experience where the firearms and the equipment that they're going to be using. But does that mean that every regulation that a gun control advocated wants to propose is all of a sudden going to comport with a Second Amendment because the Second Ament has the word regulated in it.

Of course not. And that's the type of misreading of the Second Amendment that we've been seen frankly for decades now. And cam Let's talk also about the argument. You'll sometimes hear that that the Constitution would only protect the firearms in usage at that time. You know, I know that this is this is not as common as some of the other arguments. People say, well, fine, you're allowed to have a musket as part of a militia. What do

you say to that? Sure, and I guess journalists are allowed to have quill pens and printing presses, right, because the First Amendment could never apply to any sort of means a communication that weren't around in seventeen eighty seven or seventeen ninety one. I mean, look, this is ridiculous, and frankly, the Supreme Court has addressed this as well, first in the Heller decision and then even more explicitly

in a procurium opinion that was handed down. Surely, after Justice Stanton as Galia passed away case called Katano versus Massachusetts, and the state of Massachusetts had banned stun guns, and they claimed that stun guns weren't protected by the second maybe because electronic weapons weren't around at the time of the founding. The Supreme Court said, no, that's not the standard.

That's not the test arms that are in common use for a variety of lawful purposes are prima facie protected by the Second Amendment, and so that would include semi automatic firems. Somebody include lever action rifles. I also find an odd buck that they stick to this when it comes to modern sporting rifles. Nobody ever says, well, you know, revolvers weren't around when the Second Amendment was ratified, so revolvers can't be protected. They use this argument specifically to

go after the guns that they're trying to ban. At this point, their argument, as you say, taken to his logical conclusion, would be that you can't own anything other than a perhaps a brace of single fire pistols, a muzzleloading rifle, maybe a blunderbuss. And again, that's just not how we treat any of our rights. As technology progresses, as time moves on, those rights remain sacrosanct, even though the tools that we might be using, you know, change

from our grandfather's day. Yes, and as cool as a blunderbuss may look, it is not the most reliable firearm to be using, especially if one has to defend oneself. Throwing that one out there, you mentioned a DCV Heller, and also the idea of common usage that obviously comes up cam now because of the huge push. I think the primary push we're seeing from the gun grabbers is that is the assault weapons ban issue. And this this

goes a little bit away from our constitutional analysis. But Biden, for example, we'll say we know that that work, and so we know that if we do that again, it will work again. For one thing, I want, I want to know what you think of the claim that the assault weapons ban of nineteen ninety three I believe, or

nineteen eighty four that it worked. And the other part of this is if a R fifteen is the most common rifle owned in America, which I believe they are, and DCV Heller says, common usage is the standard for firearms ownership, how can they ban something that's the most

common rifle that's obviously in common usage. Sorry, I'm throwing two. Yeah, So I'll answer the second question first, and that is the sort of sixty four million dollar question, right, how can you ban some they look, there are more AR fifteens in the hands of American citizens. There are four f one fifty pickup trucks on American roads. Right, the AR fifteen is in common use, and I think that

is the biggest barrier to an acting a nationwide gun band. Now, the appellate courts around the country that have upheld quote unquote to soberban bands in places like Maryland and California have used different arguments, but basically they come down on the side that, well, these arms are actually covered by

the Second Amendment. The Fourth Circuit, which covers Virginia where I live, ruled egregiously that because AR fifteens are like machine guns and that they look like them, that they are covered under Justice Gale is a comment in Heller about, you know, this decision shouldn't cast any doubt on long stead and prohibitions against you know, ownership of machine guns

and the like. So again you've seen the courts abuse and misread what the Supreme Court has said in order to try to uphold this band on what is a commonly owned firearm. Now, as for the efficacy of Biden's gun band back of the nineteen nineties, you know, he is talking about one specific study that used one very narrow definition of what constitutes a quote unquote match shooting, right, and that was I believe a shooting in which six

or more people are killed or injured. If you were to change that dynamic, if you were to lower the number to five, for example, from six, all of a sudden, the statistics change. But what we do know overall is that any homicide in which a rifle is used is a pretty rare event. In the United States. There are actually more people who are killed, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, with fists and feet than with a

rifle of any kind in any given year. So the idea that we're going to focus on this one particular firearm that isn't used in a lot of crime and think that it is going to make an impact on violent crime nationwide, I think is absolutely absurd. This is, I believe, pardon parcel of the gun control advocates and the anti gun democrats plan again to try to turn

our segment right into a privilege. Damn. Let's look at some more of the gun control policies and some of the myths that they are based on when we come back here in a second. The recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas have led both Democrat and

some Republican lawmakers to propose new gun control measures. Tam Edwards is going to return with this in a moment to take a look at what the new laws would mean and how effective they'd be, if effective at all, We return with this special edition of Hold the Line. We intend to do. Raise the age to buy weapons of war, restrict access to ghost guns, outlaw high capacity magazines, banned civilian bump stock sales, cracked down on gun trafficking,

and advanced safegun storage. Recent shootings in Buffalo, New York and you've all the Texas have led the federal lawmakers to propose a whole host of new gun control measures. As Nancy Pelosi was just describing. There, one proposal seems to be gaining bipartisan support, or so called red flag laws, which allow law enforcem to confiscate the firearms with people deemed to be a threat to themselves or others by a court. Join me now again, is the editor of

Pairing Arms. Cam Edwards. Caam, good to have you back, take us through this red flag laws? Have they worked? Would they work? What are the problems as you see it with them? All? Right? So have they worked? First of all, it's really hard to prove that the presence of a flag law prevented a crime from occurring, right, It's hard even for advocates to say, well, if we

hadn't had this, then X would have happened. But the one study that I keep hearing advocates of red flag laws site is a study of Connecticut's red flag law in terms of reducing suicides, and they say that for somewhere between every ten to twenty firearms that were seized, or I should say every ten to twenty red flag petitions that were initiated, one suicide was prevented, which means at best maybe a ten percent reduction in the number

of suicides for every person who was disarmed. So my question then becomes, well, what happened to those other nine to nineteen people? Do they go on to commit suicide by another means? Or were they not dangerous to begin with? You know, this is one of the issues that I have here, Buck, is that red flag laws, we are told are designed to keep danger people from doing dangerous things. But under every red flag law that I've seen an effect. What happens is someone is deemed by a judge to

be dangerous. There may or may not be in a medical evaluation. Most of the time there's not there's a lowered standard of evidence that needs to be presented by the prosecutor. And then once a judge says, yeah, we believe that person's dangerous, they take their legally owned firearms and they leave the dangerous person alone with their knives, with their pills, with their cans of gasoline, and their matches and their car keys. It doesn't actually do anything

to address the individual. This is a gun control proposal that mask raids as a sort of mental health bill. Most red flag laws do not have any mental health proponent, proposals or components to them whatsoever. And that's by design because that's expensive, right to actually institutionalize somebody to ensure that they're getting the treatment that they need so that they're not in crisis and not truly a danger to themselves,

or there's that cost money, and it's easier. It's simpler to simply, you know, red flag someone and claim that you've addressed the problem. So that's one issue that I have. I have due process concerns with red flag laws, but

I also worry about the unintended consequences. You know, I've been talking to a lot of secondment advocates around the country over the past week, and one of the common concerns that I've heard from people in states that have expansive red flag laws that allow almost anybody to initiate these petitions is that it actually stops people from seeking help.

So you may have had somebody who you know is going through a painful divorce, or maybe they just lost a spouse or a loved one or somebody they want to talk to somebody exactly right, and they want to talk to somebody, and they look, they're they're not suicidal, they're not a danger, but they are gun owners, and they're really concerned that some over zealous counselor is going to say, oh, my gosh, okay, so you're you're talking about depression and you own guns. We've got to get

those guns away from you. And they're concerned about people who are actively going to withdraw from treatment or not seek out treatment because they're afraid that they're going to get caught up in one of these red flag laws. We need to be working towards destigmatizing getting mental health help. We need to be working towards encouraging people to reach out when they need help. And I just I can't help but think that these red flag laws are going to take us down a road we don't want to

go down. Another measure, and I think it's based at some level on the myth that a lot of people believe that we don't have a lot of background checks. I mean millions and millions and millions of them being run all the time. A measure that seems to be getting some traction, including among some Republicans, is universal background check. That's the phrase, it's always used. Here's what Pennsylvania Centator Pat Toomey said recently. Is your proposal to expand background

checks still in it? Well, I certainly hope we're going to have an expansion of background checks. You know, Senator Mansion and I have been working on this for a long time, and we've tried to establish that at least for commercial sales of firearms there ought to be a background check. So sales at gun shows, sales that are advertised over the internet. Okay, so Ken, you know this is we hear this all the time, so please walk us through this. Are there commercial sales where there isn't

a background check? Let's start with that. Yeah, no, And I'm confused why Pat Toomey would try to cloud this issue here. So, no, every commercial sale of a firearm it needs to go through a background check. But again, if you're a private gun owner who is selling a firearm from their personal collection, that's not a commercial sale. Right. Once you are engaged in the commercial business of selling or buying firearms, you were required under federal law to

get a federal firearms license. When we talk about universal background checks, what we are talking about again are those private sales from individual gun owners. And I'll be honest with you, Buck, whether or not you think everybody who buys a gun should go through a background check, A universal background check law does nothing to prevent violent crime because it is impossible to proactively enforce. How do law enforcement know if I'm going to sell my gun to

my neighbor. They don't know. At best, this is something that would be discovered after a crime has been committed, and then you can go back and charge the original seller. But at that point, you know, again the damage has already been done. And frankly, states also have laws can where you can loan you know, if you if your brother in law wants to go hunting, you can give your shotgun as long as he's not a prohibited possessor to that individual. To go right, aren't there situations like

that that are covered under the law that are lawful? Oh? Absolutely? I mean again, that's listen to the status quo. The gold standard is it's your property. You know. Again, as long as you're not breaking the law, as long as you're not knowingly arming feminals, that your property. To do with what you want? Uh? What? What? Again? What the Democrats are trying to do? Here is up in that and here here's here's President Biden on the This is another one that comes up with all this, the gun

show loophole. Why the question now is what will the Congress do? House representatives already passed key measures we need, expanding background checks to cover nearly all gun sales, including at gun shows and online sales. Getting rid of the loophole allows a gun sale to go through after three business days, even if the background check has not been completed. Okay, can I so, first of all, can I can I

just like bough? I mean, obviously, in New York you can't buy anything, but in some states he's just buy an AAR fifteen and no background check and they just send it to you in the mail. Is that how it works online? And no, no, um no, it typically listen. Okay, So there's a lot to unpacks their Uh, let's start with the quote unquote gun show loophole again. If you are in the business of selling firearms, you have to

put your customers through a background check. If you are a private gun owner who maybe has a table that you rented a gun show because you're selling a couple of guns from a private collection, or you run into somebody at the gun show and you're talking about you know what it is that they're looking for, and you say, oh, you know what, I've actually been looking to sell one

of my pistols. I'll sell it to you. Those are private sales, and again, there's no way to proactively enforce a background check law to require those people to go to an FFL and have a background check run before that gun is sold. Even if you were to require this at every gun show, what's to stop those individuals from walking outside of the parking lot and saying, Hey, you know what, I'll meet you up, meet up in the part, you know, at your house an hour from now.

This is no solution to actually addressing violent crime. As for you know, selling guns out of state, the current federal law is that if you purchase a handgun, if I, you know, in Virginia as a Virginia resident, if I were to go to Meryl under Pennsylvania up to New York, god forbid, I would have to have that firearm shipped back to an FFL in Virginia before I could take possession of it. Some states may have laws requiring that for long guns as well, but that is not a

federal requirement. So even if you buy a gunn retail in another state, under federal law, you can actually pick that gun up there in the state where you're at, as opposed to the state where you live. But the idea that you know, again, you're just seeing these massive amounts of people who are you know, popping up online and saying, Hey, I got a gun to sell you. I'm going to ship at via ups. No, that's not happening, And even if it was, buck it wouldn't be addressed

by a background check law. Amazing, damn appreciate the expertise. It's always man. Thanks for being with us. Yeah, you're bet, Thanks Bud. We'll be right back with more of this special edition of Hold the Line. Each morning, the President of the United States receives a highly classified briefing on the most important issues facing the country. It's called the President's Daily Brief or PDB. It's delivered by America's spies

and analysts. Well, now you can hear your very own PDB in the form of a podcast hosted by me Brian Dean Wright, a former CIA operations officer. Each morning at six am Eastern, I'll bring you fifteen to twenty minutes of the most important issues facing the country, giving you the critical intelligence and analysis you need to start your morning. This time we have to take the time to do something, and this time it's time for the Senate to do something. Do something. That's the refrain we

constantly here. After every mass shooting, inevitably, the anti gun crowd calls for a more background check, stricter control over so called assault weapons, or more gun free zones. But a few people take the time to determine if the gun control measures being proposed would work to prevent crime or mass shootings. Thankfully, one man has actually done the work, looked at the data. John Lott is the author of More Guns, Less crime and the president of the Crime

Prevention Research Center. He joins me, Now, John, thanks for being with us. Thanks for me in book, John, you literally wrote the book on the issue of crime and gun control. I want to go through some of the more common gun control measures and honestly gun control myths that we hear about here about Let's start with gun free zone. Right. The idea here that the left puts forward is gun free zones prevent gun crimes. What does

the data tell us? Right? But I mean, let me first of all say, for twenty years, over twenty years, I've wanted to go and do something. I find it very frustrating. Unfortunately, I think the text proposals said gun control advocates people like prison buying put out will actually either make things worse or have no impact. One thing that I think would make a huge difference is getting

rid of these gun free zones. Ninety six percent of the successful mass public shootings keep on occurring in places where guns are banned. I understand what's hoped for here. The notion is you simply go and ban guns from certain areas, then you won't have gun crimes in those areas. Unfortunately, I think this is one example where the opposite happens.

That when you go and you ban guns in certain places, the most law binding good citizens who obey that, and rather than deterring criminals from going committing crimes in those places, it actually serves as a magnet for them to go and commit crimes. And that, you know, just look at the last few attacks that we've had. The Tulsa hospital shooting was a gun free zone. The school in Texas was a gun free zone. Thirty percent of the schools in Texas actually have armed teachers and staff, but this

wasn't one of them. You look at the Buffalo grocery store shooter. If people actually go and read the murderer's manifesto there, he actually talks about how he picked the particular target that he did. He wanted to go to a place where he knew the civilians there would not have for many concealed handguns for protection because it would make his job so much more difficult. And he's not

the only one. We have many cases where we've gone through diaries or manifestos or other things that these murderers and these mass public shootings have left over time. These people may be crazy in some sense, but they're not stupid. Their goal is to try to kill as many people as possible, and if they go to a place where victims aren't able to go and defend themselves, they're going to be more successful. I mean, let me put it

to you this way. Let's say God forbid, somebody was stalking you or your fami and it was really seriously threatening you. Would you feel safe for putting a sign in front of your home that said your home is

a gun free zone. Do you think that if the attacker went up to the house and he said, well, there are no guns allowed in this place, so I'm not going to take my weapon in there, that that's somehow going to determine if anything could have the opposite impact, He would know that people in there weren't able to defend themselves. Look at the penalty that you face for taking a gun into a gun free zone like a school. You face an additional two or three years in prison.

If somebody's going to go and kill twenty one people in that place, you're already facing twenty one life sentences or twenty one death penalties. Do you really think an additional two or three year sentence is going to be well that that's going to be what's going to keep him from going and committing that crime. It's just ridiculous. These guys want to kill as many people as possible, and they know if they go to a place where victims can't defend themselves, they're going to be able to

go and kill more people. Their goal is to try to get media coverage. I'll give you an example. You

look at the Sandy Hook killer. He had done what police described as essentially a doctoral dissertation where he had looked at mass shootings over the previous forty years, not only in the United States, but attacks around the world, and he apparently had grafted out the relationship between the number of people killed and attacks and the amount of media coverage to god and his goal, according to one police report, was to go and kill more people than

the Norway killer had killed because Norway killer, at that time, this was before the Paris attack, had killed the most people in a mass public shooting, and he believed that if he could only kill more people than the Norway person who killed sixty seven people with a gun, that

he could get even more worldwide media attention. John, I want to also ask you about another gun control myth, the idea that just aggregate gun ownership effectively, the more people who own guns, the more crime there is with guns, legal gun ownership we're talking about here. What can you tell us about that, Well, that's simply not true. May I'll give you a simple statistic. Net is, there are a number of places around the world, not just in the United States, that have either tried to ban all

guns or all handguns. People are experienced familiar with the experiences in Chicago and Washington, d C. And yet every single place that's banned either all guns or all handguns has seen an increase in murder rates. Afterwards, you think, out of randomness, once or twice, you'd at least get the murder rates and homicide rates to go down or at least stay the same. But yet every single time

it goes up, often by large amount. Now, in the cases of Chicago and Washington, DC, gun control I advocates will say, well, that really wasn't a fair test, because unless you go and ban guns every place in the country, criminals will still get guns from the rest of Illinois, or from Indiana, or from Maryland and Virginia. You know, the thing is one it would have been nice if they had told us to begin with that they thought

that the experiment was going to fail. But two, the problem that you face is that their countries around the world that have banned either all guns or all handguns. You have island nations that have done that that don't have a neighbor that they can easily go and blame for supplying the guns. And you see the same type of panttern whether it be Jamaica or Ireland or the UK.

And the reason is pretty simple, and that is when you go and you ban guns, you may make it somewhat more difficult for some criminals to get guns, but it's primarily going to be the most law abiding, good citizens who obey the law and turning their guns. And if you disarm law abiding citizens relative to criminals, you actually make it easier for criminals to go and commit crimes. They have less to worry about been doing it, and they become bolder in terms of committing those types of crimes.

But you know, again, there are other ways you can look at it. I personally find looking at lots of different places over time a lot more convincing. You know, one of the things that people will make comparisons with is. They'll say, look at the United Kingdom in the United States. The United Kingdom has very few homicides compared to the United States, and they have extremely strict gun control laws. Many types of guns like handguns and rifles or banned,

and yet they have a lower homicide rates. So it must be the strict gun control laws that caused the lower homicide rate. In fact, if you look before they had the gun control laws there, they had even lower homicide rates relative to the United States. That they're homicide rates went up. They still may be lower than the rate in the United States, but they went up relative to what they had been before when they had those

types of strict gun control laws. That we're there. And you know, I could go on just making other types of comparisons across places, but I think it's pretty clear that when you look at the data correctly, that there's a very clear relationship. Look, police are extremely important. Anybody who's ready my work knows that. I think police are the single most important factor for reducing crime. But the police themselves know that they virtually always arrived on the

crime scene after the crimes occurred. And the question is what's the safest course of action for people to take police. I want to get into this with you some more. If we can just take a moment, you'll come back into that issue and more of the gun control myths that are out there in just a moment. Sure, it's hard to talk about gun control without discussing the left. Favorite target of it are fifteens, so called the salt weapons.

After the break, we'll separate fact from fiction behind America's most popular rifle, this special edition of Hold the Line. Stay with us, so listen. I think there's a difference between what we should be doing and what is reasonable to expect from this Congress. What we should be doing is taking these weapons of war out of the hands

of civilians. In nineteen ninety four, then President Bill Clinton signed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which prohibited the manufactured, transfer, or possession of semi automatic assault weapons, including the Air fifteen and AK forty seven. The band expired in two thousand and four, and gun control proponents like Senator Chris Murphy, I've been trying to get it back on the books ever since. But what would another assault weapons ban actually

mean for crime in this country? Joined me once again, as the author of More Guns, Less Crime and the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center John Lot John, thanks for staying with us. Thank you. Let's start with definitions. We hear the AR fifteen similar rifles being called weapons of war. How does the government actually define an assault weapon?

I mean, with the original Assault Weapons Band, you had Senator Guyan Feinstein's staff go through and look through canalogs of guns and essentially but check marks next to guns that they thought look particularly scary. They would also they also had a definition where if guns had two or more of a different combination like you know, threaded magazine, threaded barrels, or you know, could hold a bayonet or a grenade launcher or other things. I had two or

more of these different characteristics, than the guns would be banned. Look, I mean, there's been a lot of academic research has been done. There's been research that was even paid for by the Clinton administration that simply hasn't found any benefits shall impact in terms of any type of buy on crime or any type of mass public shooting. There's a simple reason for that, simply banning guns based on how they look. I mean, they often refer to these as

military style weapons where the keyword is style. Look at me. At least if you talked about banning guns based on how they function, it might make some sense. The three different types of guns out there. Generally, when you're talking about rifles, there's manually loaded guns where you pull a trigger, a bullet comes out, and then you have to physically

yourself put another bullet in the chamber. You have semi automatic guns where one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out, the gun reloads itself, one pull the trigger, one bullet comes out, and so on, and then you have fully automatic guns machine guns where as long as you have the trigger depressed, bullets are going to come out. We're not talking about machine guns here, despite many times the media refers to them as that. We're talking about semi

ont guns. Eighty five percent of the handguns sold in the United States are semi automatic guns. Very similar percentage of rifles in the United States or semi automatic guns, so the vast majority in If you're using a gun defensively, having a semi automatic gun can be very beneficial if you're facing more than one attacker and have to fire the gun more than once, or you fire and miss, or you fire and wound, but don't incapacitate the attacker.

You may be very thankful that the gun quickly reloads itself. If you have to manually put another bull in the chamber, you may not have the luxury of time to go and fire the gun again. But here's the deal with the AR fifteens. They're essentially hunting rifles that just look on the outside like a military weapon. No military in the world uses these guns. In fact, they're considered small caliber hunting rifles. You know, point two two three, It

tells you the diameter of the bullet. It's a little bit over point two two inches in diameter. People may be familiar with twenty two caliber rifles that are there. They know that in any type of mass production, that's the most common small caliber bullet that you have. In fact, most states won't allow you to use an air of fifteen to go and hunt deer because the concern that the caliber isn't large enough to make sure that you'll kill the deer. It's more likely that you'll just end

up wounding the deer that's there. They don't want the deer to run off and suffer someplace, but look to go with John John. Let me ask, because because he touched on this, The Biden administration line on this is he will say we know what works, and he'll say specific Joe Biden will say I was a part of what worked, which was this nineteen ninety four assault weapons ban. What data do they point to? I mean, I think they say, well, there are fewer mass shootings after this.

Is that true? Well, okay, you may. If you look at mass public shootings, you may, depending upon which data set that you look at and how it's to find, you may find a drop of one or two, you know, in terms of the rate in the ten years before versus the ten years after. Or you may find no, you see no change in terms of the number of attacks with assault weapons. You know, it's not statistically significant.

It's very tiny, even if you use the data sets that they want, with the way that they want to go and selectively define the things that are there. But even if you use the data sets and the way they want to use it, there's another way to look at it, and that is to go and look at the percent of mass public shootings involving assault weapons. So even if you take their numbers, okay, the way that

they want. What you find is that the percentage of attack using assault weapons actually rose during the time that there was the assault weapons ban and fell afterwards. So if the band is going to be responsible for any drop, no matter how tiny it is, then surely the share of attack using assault weapons is going to have to

fall over that period of time. And the opposite is true, because there's no way it's going to be driving the drop in the total if the share, if you don't have a relatively bigger drop in the number of attacks with assault weapons that are there, and so you know it just they I can't tell you the number. There's been dozens of studies that have been done looking at this.

There's one guy named Rivas who's professor at the Teaching College at Columbia who's done work on this is his own definition of these things, different from Jones and myself and others that have put together these types of data, and he's the one that they cite. But even if he use his work, it's not a statistically significant drop. It's like a drop of like one or two between those periods of time. And even with his share of attacks with the salt weapons goes up during the band

and then falls when the band ends. So, John, I got to ask you before before we close here, what does your extensive research many years on this topic tell tell you and therefore all of us, about what would actually be effective at reducing violence with violence with firearms in America? What actually helps bring that down? Well, it's not rocket science. You want to make it risking for people to go and commit crimes if you want to. First of all, people need to know that less than

eight percent of violent crime involves guns. Okay, I know Biden wants to talk about violent crime is so a gun problem there. But the way you reduce violent crime generally is the same way that you reduce violent crime with guns. You have higher rest rates, higher conviction rates. So when Biden went to New York in February for his fourth big speech on violent crime, if it were me, I would have had a Sister Soldier type moment. I would say, look, you guys cut the police budget by

a billion dollars a year. Is it surprising you get more crime. You have district attorneys who are refusing to prosecute violent criminals. You have over half the inmates being released from local jails during this period. Time you have bail reform so that violent criminals are being let out on no bail. You know, here you have people that have committed attempted murder okay, who are facing multiple felonies, who are going to be facing decades in jail if

they're convicted. What did you know and you let them out on no bail? What's their cost for taking doing another crime? I mean, if you're already facing twenty five or thirty years potential prison term, what am I going to do? Is the second life sentence I'm going to give you going to be the sentence is going to law enforcement and basically the opposite of the trajectory of

the progressive prosecutors and the Democrats. The Democrat matt and mass incarceration Lineman here for years, John, always appreciate your work. Thanks for being with us, Thank you for being there and getting rid of gun free zones with regard to man's public shootings. But thank you for being there. Thank you. That's all the time we have for the special edition of Hold the Line. I'd like to thank my guest Cam Edwards and John Lott for sharing their deep expertise

on this issue. Bill O'Reilly is up next. As always, Fields High. Each morning, the President of the United States receives a highly classified briefing on the most important issues facing the country. It's called the President's Daily Brief PDB. It's delivered by America's spies and analysts. Well, now you can hear your very own PDB in the form of a podcast hosted by me Brian Dean Wright, a former

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