203: Fighting Fear – and Assault Weapons – with Handgun Control Inc. - Red, Blue, and Brady

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
JJ Janflone (00:09):
This is the legal disclaimer where I tell you that
the views, thoughts and opinionsshared on this podcast belong
solely to our guests and hostsand not necessarily Brady or
Brady's affiliates. Please note,this podcast contains
discussions of violence thatsome people may find disturbing.
It's okay, we find it disturbingtoo.

(00:37):
Hey everybody, welcome back toanother episode of Red, Blue,
and Brady. I'm JJ.

Kelly Sampson (00:43):
And I'm Kelly.

And together, we're here for part two of our
episodes on the assault weaponsban.

Yeah, and I think this episode, like the one
before it (which if you haven'tlistened to, press pause, go
listen to it), is really helpfulbecause it gives us some
perspective on what it took toget an assault weapons ban
passed in the first place, andalso helps us be grounded in
lessons learned and what we cando this time.

Exactly. As some of you may know, the assault
weapons ban initially passed in1994, it then lapsed in 2004.
And that can seem, you know, thetime period can seem, I think,
especially for our youngerlisteners, like that was a
lifetime ago, right? But itreally, actually isn't. And
there are so many lessons we canlearn from advocates like our

(01:30):
guest today, the fantasticRichard Aborn, who was then
president of the organizationthat would become Brady, the
Handgun Control Inc. You know,there are so many lessons that
they used to get that ban passedin the first place in 1994, that
we can learn to help get a banpassed in 2023.

Richard Aborn (01:48):
So, my name is Richard Aborn. I'm a lawyer by
training, a former prosecutor,and my experience as a
prosecutor in Manhattan led meto the gun control movement,
which was one of the mostsatisfying times in my life. It
ultimately led me to theleadership of what was then
Handgun Control Inc., now theBrady Campaign. We successfully

(02:09):
passed some legislation duringmy tenure: the Brady Bill, the
ban on assault weapons, the banon large magazines. And we
established a very robust centerto prevent handgun violence,
steeped in the belief that thesolutions to gun violence are
not singular, butmultidisciplinary. And to this
day, I pursue this passion ofmine, to try and do whatever I
can, in my own small way, to tryand reduce gun violence.

I mean, that's astounding. And we're going to
talk about just some of thattoday. You need your own full
podcast series, we'll have tobring you back in just for that,
or memoirs, at the very least.
But I wonder, you know, youstarted on this, but what
brought you into working in gunviolence prevention to begin
with?

It was actually my experience as a homicide DA,
in the Manhattan DA's office.
And it was actually reallysimply this, every time I went
to a homicide, or every time Iever read an autopsy of a
homicide, inevitably it was agun and a handgun. And it became
pretty clear to me, that if wewere going to pursue our highest
calling as prosecutors, which isto prevent crime in the first

(03:11):
place, prosecute if we failed toprevent, that we had to go after
the guns. But I felt that basedon two reasons, one, just the
sheer number of guns that werebeing used in shootings and
killings — it was like 75-80% ofall the killings. And secondly,
I refuse to subscribe to thisnotion that was prevalent at the
time, that Americans weresomehow more violent than other

(03:32):
people. I didn't believe itthen, don't believe it now. It's
just that we have theseinstruments of lethality in our
hands, that when we go toexercise anger, we end up
shooting, as opposed to usingfists or knives or screaming or
something.
So I thought, well, if we reallywant to reduce violence, at that
time in our city, now in ournation, we had to go after the

(03:54):
guns. I went to the then-sittingDA Robert Morgenthau and said,
"why don't you let me see if Ican trace where these guns are
coming from?" I found out veryquickly that they were coming
from out of state, set up one ofthe first interstate strike
forces to buy guns that werecoming into the state illegally.
And I was a DA, I needed law toprosecute, I realized in that

(04:17):
process, that there was just anabsolute dearth of federal law
governing the distribution ofguns. And this light went off,
well of course, we have guns allover the place, there's no law
limiting the distribution ofguns, not even doing a basic
background check on people whoare buying guns. So that really
led me to, well, to be honest, Igot very angry about that. I

(04:39):
said, of course, Americans areslaughtering each other and this
is unnecessary. And the pain ofthis was, even back then, you
could see that it was falling onyoung men of color. And that
struck me as doubly unfairbecause it was such a
concentration of the violence inour most challenged
neighborhoods. So I actuallyleft the government to go work
on the gun control issue andhelp set up one of the early gun

(05:02):
control groups in New YorkState, and that led me to some
discussions with what was thenthis fledgling group called
Handgun Control, founded by agentleman named Pete Shields out
of San Francisco. Ultimately, Iwent on the board and then
ultimately I was asked to runthe operation, which I did with
great joy for a number of years,great joy and a little bit of

(05:23):
angst, a little bit of tension.

I mean, there's a whole story in what you just
shared about seeing guns playout in crime, tracking them,
realizing they were coming fromout of state, and then seeing
the disproportionate burden on,you know, men of color. That is
a whole thing. We definitelyhave to have you back. But I
want to drill down a little bit.
You mentioned that you becamethe president of Handgun Control

(05:44):
Inc., from 1992 to 1996. Andcould you kind of share for
listeners the history of thatorganization?

Sure. Well, that organization is now the Brady
Campaign, it's the exact sameorganization, just a very smart
change in name. It was startedby a man named Pete Shields, who
was a very senior executive atDuPont, whose son was killed in
a ritualistic slaying in SanFrancisco. And Pete, like many

(06:15):
of us, and particularly peoplethat have suffered these
horrors, became quite incensedabout the gun issue in the
United States and foundedHandgun Control. He got first
Sarah Brady interested andinvolved and then got Jim Brady,
as Jim was able to do so,involved. And a bunch of us

(06:36):
around the country startedcoming together, and our
organization began to grow. Andat that time, I think there was
only one other national guncontrol organization, which I
believe was a ban organization.
I was always opposed, then, andI'm now opposed, to a ban on all
guns. I do think it wouldprobably violate the Second
Amendment, I think there'ssomething to the Second

(06:58):
Amendment. And I also think it'sunnecessary. There are gun
owners across this country whohandle guns in a safe and
responsible way. They keep themlocked up, they train their
children on how to use them.
They don't end up in accidents,that's fine. It's sport, it's
part of the culture it'shunting. Whether you like those

(07:18):
things or not, it's anestablished part of the American
identity. And it's okay, wedon't need to take guns away
from those people. But we doneed to focus our efforts on
making sure that criminals whoare out there to do harm to
others don't have access toguns. And what I liked about
Handgun Control was that it wasvery much aligned in that way.

(07:38):
In fact, if you think of theterm handgun control, it was
about controlling, not banning.
And that's what we still seek to

do (07:47):
control the illegal distribution of handguns. And by
the way, we say handguns tobuttress this notion, because
this was about reducing violentcrime, of course, accidents and
suicides to be short, but thebulk of it was about reducing
violent crime. Keep in mind,while crime is rising very

(08:07):
rapidly, right, this is not thelast time that has occurred in
the last 30 years.
In the late 80s and the 90s,crime was soaring in the United
States. It was actually thenumber three issue in the '92
presidential cycle, which helpsus drive the gun control issue
into the presidential debate.
And we got then GovernorClinton, then became President

(08:28):
Clinton, to endorse us. That wasa seminal moment in this
movement. Suddenly, the guncontrol issue, which had
lingered on the outskirts ofpolitics, became a core issue.
And I was very happy about that.
And frankly, we worked very hardto make that happen. My view

(08:49):
was, until Americans weretalking about the Brady Bill,
the ban on assault weapons andthe ban on large magazines at
their dinner table, we weren'tgoing to win, and making it into
a presidential issue, smack inthe middle of the campaign — and
we can talk about how we didthat — I felt was very
important. And it worked.

And you know, from that kind of seminal
moment, there's another seminalmoment that you were firsthand a
part of and that is that theBrady Bill passed while you were
president of HCI. I'm wonderingif you could talk a little bit
about what that process waslike.

I'm not unaccustomed to hard work. That
was probably the hardest any ofus ever worked in our lives. And
And we organized, I think Icriss-crossed the country 100
it was a total labor of joystrewn with a lot of frustrating
moments, a lot ofdisappointment, but really
undergirded by just sheerdetermination, sheer tenacity,
and the absolute belief that ifwe rallied enough people in the

(09:40):
country, we could do this. And Iwill say unequivocally, those
three bills passed becauseAmericans across the United
States gathered together andsaid we're going to move the
Congress to do this. And by theincredibly dedicated staff at
what was then Handgun Control,people that I saw just pour
their hearts and souls into thiseffort. It was a highly

(10:02):
disciplined, multi-year process,highly disciplined politically,
we had a very, very sharp teamthat worked the Hill. And we
had, as all groups do, a ratingsystem for each member of
Congress. We focused on thosemembers of Congress that we
thought we could bring over toour side, and then even
occasionally would sort oftiptoe into those we thought

(10:24):
would never come our way, justopen a dialogue.
In that vein of that passion,I'm guessing that no one slept,
times just speaking with localgroups, because our belief was,
the more you could involve thegrassroots in this and make this
national effort resonate at thelocal level, the more progress
you can make, because, as muchas we all like to get supporting

(10:45):
editorials in the WashingtonPost and The New York Times,
what really matters is thehometown paper of a member of
Congress you're trying topersuade. So we did a lot of
that work with a terrificcommunications team at Handgun
Control, and then we justrallied people around the
country. And we were verydisciplined about transferring
that momentum that was occurringat the local level to the Hill.

(11:08):
And there are lots ofmechanisms, as you know, to do
that. So it was a highlycoordinated, very disciplined
effort that resulted in thepatent and the passage of this.
But if there was one word that Ithink best captured the spirit
with which people approach this,it would be passion. It was the
passion to get this done,because we knew, literally,

(11:32):
literally lives were at stake.
And we simply were not going tostop. I wasn't leaving
Washington until I got it done.
I had no desire to have a careerin Washington, I really didn't.
I had a desire to do threethings: get the three bills
passed , build a center, andthen leave. But I wasn't leaving
until we got it done. And everysingle person with staff
believed thatbecause in '93 you have the

(11:56):
background check bill. And thenin 1994, there's the assault
weapons ban, which is anotherpiece of legislation that was
kind of on your list of thethings to get passed. And I'm
wondering if you can kind ofbreak down for our listeners
too, you know, why sort of thatone, two punch of background
checks, of an assault weaponsban, of the other legislation,
why it was so important for allof those things to kind of

(12:16):
happen together andsimultaneously?
There were a number of reasonsand thank you for the question.
It's a very perceptive question.
That was not by accident. Thatwas totally by design.
Originally, just to go back alittle bit, originally, the
Brady Bill had been put on thecrime bill, which then President
Clinton and Chairman Biden,Biden was chairman of judiciary,
he was our chairperson, don'tforget, he was chairman of the

(12:39):
judiciary, they really wanted toget the crime bill through the
Congress. We at HCI, HandgunControl, were very concerned
that the crime bill was notgoing to move rapidly. And Brady
was attached to the crime bill.
So we mounted a campaign, whichwe called free the Brady Bill,
to both get attention and todecouple it from the crime bill,

(13:00):
because our belief was, and Ireally believe this, that if we
could build up a big head ofsteam, a lot of national
momentum around Brady, we couldthen take that momentum, bring
it over to the ban on assaultweapons and the ban on large
magazines, tap into that energy,and keep it going to pass the
other two bills. We did make adeal, if you will, with the

(13:23):
White House and with the Senateto put the assault weapons ban
and the ban on large magazinesonto the crime bill. But we did
get the Brady Bill off. And thatworked. You know, if you break
down the chemistry of passion,one of the elements you'll see
in it, is adrenaline. There wasa lot of adrenaline coming out
of the passage of Brady. And aswe passed Brady, I think we took

(13:47):
the weekend off, maybe ,I thinkit was Thanksgiving weekend.
Maybe we even took the Thursdayoff. And then I went right back
to the White House right awayand went into see Mr.
Stephanopoulos and said let's goafter assault weapons. I think
he thought I was a little bitloony. But we went out. I said,
let's do it. We've got themomentum. I know what's out
there in the country. Let'spursue this. If it goes down, we
go down. And they said fine, youknow, do what you can out there.

(14:10):
And so the staff went home, hada bite to eat, spent time with
their families, and came rightback and keep in mind we had
staff across the country. Sopeople were keeping all sorts of
hours.

And on that point, you mentioned this
adrenaline keeping you allgoing, but just on a personal
note, what was it like workingin gun violence prevention at
that time for you? And for thestaff? You know, what was the
office mood like? I would loveto kind of understand just the
first-person feeling.

So you have to understand the arc here. And I'm
just going to be blunt, I'm justgoing to be perfectly blunt
about this. When we firststarted doing this, people
didn't really know what it was.
They didn't really understandwhat the issue was. They didn't
know what the term meant. I hadcolleagues in the government
saying, "my God, you left thegovernment to do this? What was
he doing? Why are you wastingyour time?" But I believed in it

(15:01):
and very quickly found a numberof people that believed in it.
And if you understand anythingabout organizing, one of the
first key successes toorganizing, is to make sure you
try and find like-minded people,because there's unity and
strength, right? There'smomentum and strength. So we
started doing that, we starteddoing it. But it was a rump

(15:22):
organization, it was small, instaff and budget. There was this
huge monolith out there calledthe NRA, they were absolutely
crushing us. So we knew it wasan uphill battle. But when
you're facing an uphill battle,every step feels like a victory.
And we started thinking aboutnot ultimate victories, the
signing of legislation, butincremental victories, and in

(15:44):
order to send messages ofmomentum to the country, and to
build the movement in the eye ofthe press, and therefore on the
Hill, we would look for littlevictories.
Go to Kansas City and get yourKansas City group to pass a City
Council resolution, go to NewYork State and get the state
legislature to pass, just dowhatever you could to start

(16:07):
building momentum. And the staffat HCI was, I don't know what
the staff is now at Brady, butit was small, it was small. They
understood that and they reallyembrace it. In fact, they had
been doing some of those thingsbefore I got there. So there was
this constant sense of struggle,but incremental progress, and
that was really the importantpiece. We would actually take

(16:29):
votes to tell you the truth,knowing we're going to lose,
then take the vote again, andlose by a little bit less, and
proclaim victory. Because it wasa victory. We've picked up three
more people on our march towardsa a majority vote. So we did a
lot of that. I'm not going tosay it was easy. It wasn't. But
it was a joint labor of love.
Everybody was united around thegoal and people were really

(16:50):
putting in the work they neededto put in, in order to do it.
And it was fantastic. But noteasy. Don't let me convey that
this was easy. This was a toughthing to get done. And you all
know, politics is a brassknuckle sports. People were
perfectly happy to bloody us upif they wanted to. And the NRA
was, you know, they were a bigenemy. I mean don't

(17:12):
underestimate the power thatthey had, both in ways seen and
unseen. And we just steadilychipped away at that until
ultimately, it worked.

Yeah, we still have I feel like it's still big
Little Engine That Could energyat Brady today.

Well put, well put, but, you know Margaret
Mead's famous saying, you willalways be amazed at what a group
of well-minded, connectedindividuals can accomplish.
That's this.

I wonder when you're talking about sort of
these incremental victories, orlike sometimes you take a loss,
knowing that maybe it can helpyou get a win in the future,
right, how did everyone feelabout things like the sunset
provision being written into theassault weapons ban? So knowing
that maybe you win, you know,you're winning for 10 years and
then it's going away, was thatpart of the strategy as well?

(17:58):
Was that the thought? Or, youknow, what happened there?
Because I think that's aquestion that a lot of folks
have.

So no, we never wanted a sunset, it was not
something that we would havecontemplated. We hadn't put it
up strategically. But, we got toa point where we were a number
of votes short in the Senate.
And we're told, in a verycrystal clear way, you have one

of two choices (18:17):
either take a 10-year sunset or you're not
going to get the vote, come backand fight another day. It was an
extremely difficult strategicdecision to make. And here's
why. We understood very, verywell, that we had enormous
momentum in the country. We alsounderstood that rebuilding that
momentum was going to be verydifficult. We would no longer

(18:38):
have the singular focus, thesupport from the White House
would likely dissipate, and,therefore, the support from the
Senate and the House woulddissipate. And who knew what was
going to happen in the nextelection? Versus getting the
three votes that we needed topass the legislation with this
10-year sunset. And we brazenlybut, clearly mistakenly,

(18:59):
believed that no president andno Congress 10 years down the
road in 2004, the date was sofar away that it seemed like the
future that would never arrive,would put these weapons and
these magazines back on thestreets. We were also quite
confident it was going to work.
So we thought we would have thevote, and no one would want to

(19:20):
tackle the issue again. We wonthe vote, not by many, we won
the vote, but you only got towin by one. We won the vote. We
got the bill in place for 10years. It worked. The data now
is clear that it worked. It'sirrefutable. But, we mistakenly
believed that the Republicanswould never put the guns back on
the streets. And they did. I'mjust calling it the way it is.

(19:42):
The Republicans put these gunsback on the streets and they
should be held responsible forthat to this day. They should be
held responsible for not takingthose guns back off the street,
particularly now, where it'sjust beyond cabal. It's just
beyond question that these gunsare the principal
instrumentality in all thesemass shootings. You know the

(20:03):
data as well as I do, but youcannot refute that.

This is a very unfair question, but you know,
sort of looking back maybe evenjust at your time at HCI, or the
movement more broadly, is theresomething that you wished that
you had all done differently? Inretrospect?

Sure, you know, you always have to look back.
Contextually, everybody thoughtwe were going to fail. Nobody
thought we were going to passeverything. Everybody was
against us every step of theway, it was about. I do wish we
had not left the loopholes inBrady. We just didn't think we
could close them. And again, youmake very hard-nosed political

(20:40):
decisions. In retrospect, Idon't think we would have failed
if we tried to include that inBrady, who knows? You know, I
don't really know. That'scertainly a large regret. That
in some ways is probably thelargest. And the fact that we
were able to do assault weaponson the heel of Brady helped
preserve the movement and keptthe movement going. After I

(21:04):
left, it's not crystal clear inmy mind, whether the movement
continued to expand or if itshrank for a while because the
issue receded. If it did shrink,that's a failure on our part, we
should have had mechanisms inplace to sustain it. But
actually, I don't know thathistory. But I think not closing
the Brady loopholes that nowexist and everybody's trying to

(21:28):
close, which is ridiculous wehave to have these arguments,
was probably a pretty bigmistake.
We almost didn't have aseverability clause in the Brady
Bill, but somebody from legalcaught that. And a week or so
before, we're calling up for avote, we quickly ran to the Hill
and amended the bill. Thank God,that would have been a massive
mistake if we had let that gothrough. I don't think they

(21:51):
were, I mean there were tacticalmistakes we made along the way,
but they aren't worth reviewingnow. I think that maybe we could
have built out, we were at a hotmoment, right, we were centering
the country on this, maybe wecould have built out the
coalition a little more. Butunderstand, we were just
overwhelmed. Every breath wentinto passing this legislation.

(22:13):
So you really weren't thinkingin this very broad way at the
time. You are hyperfocused. AsJim used to say to me all the
time, "keep your eye on theprize, keep your eye on the
prize." Jim would come up to meall the time and go like this:
"Richard, don't get distracted,keep your eye on the prize." You
know, the famous keep your eyeon the prize saying. So we were
doing that, we were justhyperfocused on getting thesse
three bills through Congress.
Maybe we didn't move, you know,we were equally proactive on

(22:37):
the non-legislative side, wereally put a lot of effort into
building CPAs, centers forpreventing hand gun violence.
And we got school curriculumsestablished across the country
based on conflict resolutionskills. We started litigation
strategies, we started a programwith all the pediatricians

(22:59):
across the country to getdoctors to talk to parents about
the dangers of guns in the home.
So much so, it finally got suedby the NRA, it was so
successful. We worked veryactively with Hollywood on their
messaging about guns andviolence. Maybe we could have
pushed that a little bit more,because we had all this
momentum. But I don't know ifthat was a mistake as such. It

(23:20):
just was at some point 24 hoursdo run out.

And you know, now we're sitting here in another,
you know, era, where we're onceagain trying to pass or renew I
guess I should say, an assaultweapons ban. And so I'm
wondering, what do you thinkabout these current efforts to
pass that bill? Is a differentthis time around?

Well, you have more players on the playing
field now. I wish all the groupswould unite behind a common
message around this. We hadextreme message discipline, we
were really good at havingmessage discipline. And that's
really important in thisatmosphere. So I think that
would be really important. Oneof the keys to our success in

(24:02):
the 90s was that we were able tobuild out the coalition of
groups that were supporting guncontrol. We went from victims,
to victims and advocates, andeducators, doctors, and then we
made a very big effort to bringlaw enforcement in. And this is
the 90s, now. Now, that made abig, big difference on the Hill.
It was one thing for the NRA totalk down to a victim and

(24:24):
dismiss them as being emotional,but it was much tougher to talk
down to people who carry gunsevery day and face the horrors
of gun violence in their jobs ona frequent basis. I think one of
the things that has to be donenow is to continue building out
that coalition. And I've alwaysthought that the missing piece
was gun owners who support guncontrol. And there's a very

(24:44):
large contingent of gun ownersout there who do support gun
control. In fact, we've spentthe last two years setting up a
parallel organization called97%, which is to provide a safe
space for gun owners to cometogether and talk about gun
control. And we're hoping byexpanding the coalition, we can

(25:05):
aid in some way the overallefforts to promote other gun
control legislation. Will gunowners support a ban on assault
weapons? Not sure, they don'tlike the "B word." But I do
believe they will support a banon large magazines. They know
you don't need 34 rounds to gohunting.

I wonder if that's what you've sort of seen in this
long history of advocacy andworking in the space changing,
even between, you know, maybegun-owning attitudes, or how the
U.S. has a whole responds to gunviolence, because there's, as
you said, there's a new playeron the field, like Gen Z is an
unexpected massive force, Ithink that no one was expecting

(25:40):
to hit the ground running in theway that they did. But I'm just
curious, what you've seenchange?

Well, I have to give you a sort of a timestamped
response. I think in the lasttwo or three years, it's become
even more complex than italready was. Trust me, I get the
complexity of passinglegislation, firsthand, I get it
in the space. The big factor nowis that people are scared. And
they're scared because of thedivision and I'm sorry, but a

(26:09):
lot of the racial attitudes inthe United States. And until we
tackle that fear, this issuebecomes all the more difficult.
You see that in the increasednumber of gun sales, reflected
in the Brady background checknumbers, skyrocket. Gun sales,
just maybe they tapered off thelast month or so, but they've
been skyrocketing. You also seeit in the number of illegal guns

(26:33):
now showing up in cities and thesharp increase in shooting and
murder rates. So people arereally frightened, and they want
their guns. So that puts anadditional burden on the gun
control movement, whatever termyou want to use, to convince
people that we're not a gun banmovement, at the very moment
you're moving for a ban onassault weapons. It's a tricky

(26:57):
linguistic argument. But we didit before. And you can do that,
again. You don't have toconvince everybody in this,
The good side of that, good inthe sense of it helps you
politically, is that it puts theissue back out there once again,

(27:17):
in a way that it hasn't been outthere for 20 years. With the
murder rate skyrocketing in allthe cities across the United
don't forget that, you just gotto convince that reasonable
middle to come your way. Now, sothat's the hard side ,that
States, the shooting ratesskyrocketing everywhere, people
want solutions. So in some ways,it's 1992 all over again. And
you're coming up on the '22elections, where I hope the gun
control issue really playsprominently in a number of

(27:40):
races. And then of course, the'24 cycle, where it'll be
critical. The big challenge, andI know you know this, but the
big challenge in '22 is to makesure that some races are win, if
not wholly, at least in part onthe issue. And the press writes
that the next day, the presssays, I'm making this up, in
Rhode Island CD-1, the gun issuedominated and the candidate

(28:03):
supporting gun control won or inreverse, the gun control boom
was able to knock somebody outof office based on their stand
on the gun issue. So in someways, it's tougher because
people are so frightened. But,in some ways, that's actually
people are scared.
something that could be flippedto your benefit, if the
linguistics are handledproperly. Because there's

(28:25):
political demand out there nowfor government to react. And
this is one of the reactions.
And now you have the data. Youhave the data now, which is a
big help in legislation.

I just want to make sure I understand, when you
say people are frightened andyou alluded to race, are you
saying that people have beensort of, through marketing or
through the NRA or throughgroups, have been led to believe
that there's some scary Blackperson or something like that,
that has a gun? And so is thefear a racialized fear? Is that

(29:00):
what you're saying? Or is itmore that there's a fear just in
general because of people seeingcrime, and they've been sort of
convinced that they need a gunfor that?

I think it's a little bit in between those two
things. This whole argument overwhite replacement doctrine, I
think has really shaken up a lotof Americans. They don't exactly
know what it is. It's beingcompletely mislabeled, misused,
I would say intentionally, butwho knows. And I think that has

(29:33):
frightened a lot of people. Andthen also people are seeing a
lot of urban crime. And theyassociate that with people of
color, at times, in their minds.
So I don't think it's like aWillie Horton moment to go way,
way back to caucus where they'reafraid of a Black individual
coming up to them with a weapon.
I don't think it's that, Ireally don't think it's that. I
think it's a generalized fear ofcrime, but undergirded by what

(29:57):
they're seeing happening in thecity, which is one of the big
scandals the United States thatshouldn't be, we need to really
focus all of our efforts. Mostof the work I do now is thinking
comprehensively about violencereduction. We really need to
focus our efforts onunderstanding why that's
happening and what we can doboth in terms of short-term
mitigation and long-termmitigation. That's a whole

(30:19):
conversation onto itself. So Ithink the answer is it's
somewhere between the two linesyou put up.

Does that fear surprise you at all?

I've been quoted saying this, I've been shocked
at the number of people who havecome up to me and said, "you
know what, I think it's time toget a gun," that I never dreamed
would get a gun. They justwouldn't do it. It wouldn't even
occur to them. And they're goingout there, doing it
legitimately, but they're goingout there buying out rifles, and
they're buying handguns, theirfrightened. And that's, that's a
big warning sign. A nationfrightened is a nation in peril.

(30:51):
So we really have to do what wecan to try and mitigate some of
this fear. Its not easy, I'm notsuggesting any of this is easy.

Is there anything that sort of frustrates you too,
having been in the movement solong? Because this seems like
this would get, I mean, I know,I get frustrated and I've been
in it for a hot second comparedto you.

The thing that frustrates me the most about
these sorts of discussions, notyou two, you two are wonderful,
but these sorts of discussions,is the amount of purposeful
misinformation that the otherside pumps out. I'm going to
tell you something which upset alot of people with time, when I
came into Brady, I went out andraised a bunch of dough from
some foundations I knew in NewYork to hire a research director

(31:31):
and people saying, researchdirector, what the heck are you
doing? We're trying to passlegislation. I said, if we're
going to pass legislation, wehave to refute the amount of
just false information that theother side is putting out. And I
can only refute it if we havethe facts, he who has the facts
ultimately wins. So we put a lotof effort into getting the

(31:52):
facts. So we could put thosefacts out there. That still
persists. There's so muchmisinformation out there. And
that frustrates me. Look atassault weapons, didn't work,
didn't work, didn't work.
Baloney, it worked. We knowthat. So that sort of is one of
the things that bothers me themost and never quite get enough
time to talk about, particularlyif there's somebody from the NRA
on the show with me, it justbecomes a thing. I've stopped

(32:15):
doing a silly screen match.

For people who are listening who want to get
involved or who are kind ofthinking, you know, I would love
to get involved, but let's bereal, nothing ever really
changes, so why should I try?
What would you say to someonewho kind of feels that way right
now?

Look at the history of the gun control
movement. Everybody said to usall the time, nothing's going to
happen. Why are you wasting yourtime? Everybody believed we
would go nowhere. I mean,nowhere. And as I said earlier,
friends of mine who cared aboutme said, "what the heck are you
doing? You've got this greatthing going in the government,
you got this great thing goingalong? Why are you leaving all

(32:56):
this?" It happened, becausepeople across the country joined
hands, if you will, in commonpurpose, and were dedicated on
behalf of fellow Americans toget this passed. And it worked
because there was just so muchdetermination, so much passion,
and so much energy. You know, Idon't care if you can't outspend

(33:17):
your other opponent, but don'tever let them out work you. And
they never ever, ever outworkedus. And then the NRA will tell
you that, they in fact, theywere shocked. We were hitting
them all over the country. Neverleft the other side at work you
and this will happen. It'shappened before. And it can
happen again. If people want toget involved, they should
understand that nobody can doeverything. But just because you

(33:41):
can't do everything, doesn'tmean you shouldn't do everything
you can, if you will. So peoplecan get involved by volunteering
for a local group, they canreach out to Brady, I'm sure
Brady has national organizingmechanisms within the
organization or reach out tosome of the other groups, but
find a way to connect at thelocal level. And if you don't

(34:02):
want to be actively involved, wealways need money. Money is in
many ways the life behindpolitics. I don't care whether
you're running for office, whichI've done, or whether you're
pushing an issue, we need money,so you can contribute. So there
are a number of ways to getinvolved. And if you don't want
to do those things, get yourselfacquainted with the facts, be

(34:24):
the person in the room thatreally knows the facts about gun
violence. And when somebody inthe room says something, you can
say no, that's not true. So beknowledgeable, and being
knowledgeable, you make yourselfin a sense, an ambassador for
the movement and that'sincredibly potent. And
understand when you do that,your friends do that, your
social network does that, andpretty soon, you're blossoming

(34:46):
out and spreading out. So thereare any number of ways to get
involved from the very small,which I just said, to much
larger volunteering.

No, thank you so much, Richard. I always think
it's great to end on a note ofstuff that you can do, you can
get involved in, I think it'sway too easy in this movement,
otherwise or actually, you know,goodness just in this world, to
get frustrated or to feel stuck,like there's nothing we can do.
And as you've outlined, thereare so many things we can do. So
thank you so, so much.

Well, that was a good conversation. And it
really, it left me feeling sortof, I guess the word would be
fired up to see when all of thisfirst began, there were so many
naysayers who just, whetherbecause they didn't want to
believe or it was unimaginable,just didn't think that Richard

(35:36):
and his colleagues would getanywhere. But they had sort of a
clarity of purpose, and theyjust stuck to it and kept the
goal in mind at all times. Andthat kind of helped them
remaining. And I feel like,although we have so many
Americans on our side, there'sstill a lot of, just for a

(35:57):
variety of reasons, forcesagainst us. And so I really
appreciate seeing that justkeeping the goal in mind and
moving towards it.

I mean, I second all of that, Kelly, but I think
that's kind of my takeaway. Itsjust that you have to keep the
momentum going and I think sortof that that message of
resiliency, right, thatsometimes you get knocked down,
sometimes you have to lose towin. And so I'm just kind of
repeating that to myself alittle bit as as we move forward
into the new year.

I love that sometimes you have to lose to
win.

Hey, want to share the podcast? Listeners can now
get in touch with us here atRed, Blue, and Brady via phone
or text message. Simply call ortext us at 480-744-3452 with
your thoughts, questions,concerns, ideas, whatever! Kelly
and I are standing by.

Thanks for listening. As always, Brady's
life-saving work in Congress,the courts, and communities
across the country is madepossible thanks to you. For more
information on Brady or how toget involved in the fight
against gun violence, pleaselike and subscribe to the
podcast. Get in touch with us atBradyunited.org or on social
@Bradybuzz. Be brave, andremember, take action not sides.

All Episodes

203: Fighting Fear – and Assault Weapons – with Handgun Control Inc.

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Cold Case Files: Miami

24/7 News: The Latest

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}203: Fighting Fear – and Assault Weapons – with Handgun Control Inc.