Harry Litman [00:00:07] Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. Yesterday encapsulates the endless loop in which we are mired as a country when it comes to gun safety. First, President Biden unveiled a series of gun safety proposals in the Rose Garden. Biden said gun violence in this country is an epidemic and it's an international embarrassment. Those executive actions are the best he can do in the absence of some bipartisan congressional support, particularly in the Senate, which seems doomed by the strong sway that pro-gun forces such as the NRA have over most of the Republican Party. Then, a few hours after the Biden announcement, we had our fourth mass assault shooting since March 16.
It served to bring home the miserable Groundhog Day dynamic that continues to prevail, in which a new outrage occurs, prompting proposals for gun safety reforms, the Congress fails to act, the immediate furor dies down, and then it all plays out again in the next shooting. The national discourse on gun safety seems not remotely up to the gravity of the issue. It is all heat and no light. Both sides seem to repeat familiar talking points with little prospect of any sort of partial or sensible breakthrough. We turn today to a candid and clear eyed look at the state of the gun debate in this country. What underlies the absolute standoff between opposing factions? Is there any possibility of common ground? Are there possible baby steps the country can take now, or is it a matter of waiting for a change in composition in the Senate? To answer these and related questions, I'm joined by a superb panel of policymakers and political figures who have thought deeply about the issue and lived with it and have been trying to move the debate forward for years. They are:
Conor Lamb. Conor is a Marine and former federal prosecutor who has served as the US representative from Pennsylvania's 17th District since January 2019. Lamb won a special election in March 2018 to represent the 18th District and then went on to defeat incumbent Republican Congressman Keith Rothfus in November to represent the new 17th District. He previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania, my old office and in the US Marine Corps from 2009 to 2013. He describes himself as pro Second Amendment and is himself an enthusiastic gun user. Congressman Lamb, thank you so much for joining us at Talking Feds.
Conor Lamb [00:03:14] Thanks for having me, Harry.
Harry Litman [00:03:15] Congressman Eric Swalwell serves as the US representative for California's 15th Congressional District, he is on a number of House committees and is the co-chair of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. Swalwell is also the founder and chairman emeritus of Future Forum, a group of young Democratic members of Congress focused on issues affecting millennial Americans and the co-founder of both the United Solutions Caucus and the Sharing Economy Caucus. Congressman Swalwell, thank you so much for returning to Talking Feds.
Eric Swalwell [00:03:52] Of course, of course. Thank you, Harry.
Harry Litman [00:03:54] And finally, Kris Brown, the president of Brady, one of America's oldest gun violence prevention groups, a veteran of gun violence prevention work, she started her career on Capitol Hill advocating for the bill that would eventually become the groundbreaking Brady Bill requiring background checks on federally licensed gun sales. During her current tenure as president, she has launched Team Enough, a youth initiative in response to the Parkland shootings and family fire, a safe gun storage campaign. Thank you very much, Kris, for joining us on Talking Feds.
Kris Brown [00:04:29] Thank you, Harry.
Harry Litman [00:04:31] And I think I should disclose at this point that I'm a member of the Brady Regional Leadership Council and also that I have contributed to Congressman Lamb's campaigns. All right, so let's try to set this up. It's a public policy debate that has way more heat than light, I hope here to better understand the mindset of both sides of this seemingly intractable debate. So let's start with a diagnosis of this stalemate, just in descriptive terms, to see if we can make any headway there. So we've all heard the standard storyline, the United States has five to 50 times the gun ownership, gun violence and gun deaths of other developed countries. It's stunning and there's a strong majority of the American people who support at least some reforms, such as background checks.
But at least the narrative goes, every possible reform is foiled, in large part because pro-gun forces will give no quarter, and the NRA, aided by the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, is all powerful. And indeed, the proposals we heard from the president yesterday were basically the first of anything constructive in 30 years. So let me serve up a two part question, so is this standard line accurate or is it over simplistic? And if it's accurate, but it describes a classic problem in democracy where a minority cares about an issue with great intensity. But in other areas like that, the majority has made some headway, I'm thinking, say, about judges. At some point, do we have to say that the pro regulation forces have been misplaying what should be a winning hand?
Eric Swalwell [00:06:26] I would say that we don't have a recent proof of concept where you pass in the House and the Senate, signed into law at the White House, gun safety legislation and then an election where you can prove that you're not going to pay a political price. So instead, we have these dire warnings, these exaggerations from gun rights groups, gun owners, legislators who are really pro gun rights, and they warn what would happen if we were to take, for example, and pass background checks, and so I think we're waiting to see that proof of concept. My wager is that no one is going to pay a political price because the American people want background checks.
Most NRA owners want background checks, but we've not been able to see yet in the Senate that legislation passed. So I think that once we break that dam, we will see it. Also, I would just note, I think Mark Kelly is an excellent proof of concept as well, because he ran unabashedly in favor of gun safety legislation and he's a gun owner himself, married to the founder of one of the largest gun safety organizations out there. So the voters knew exactly what type of senator they were going to get with Mark Kelly, and he won. And I think my colleague Conor Lamb ran also as a gun owner who believed in sensible gun safety laws and he won. So you have these individual proofs of concept, but now we just need a large body like the Senate to take the lead, get it passed and show the world that there's no political price will happen to be safe.
Harry Litman [00:08:00] Do you buy that Congressman Lamb? So you're from a district with a lot of people who are pro 2nd Amendment, pro guns and you're considered a pro-gun Democrat as they go. You also, of course, have an F rating from the NRA that shows their kind of dogmatism on the issue. And you have won narrowly. Do you think it's maybe a paper tiger?
Conor Lamb [00:08:24] No, I don't, because, first of all, I think everything that Eric said is correct, and even to add a little bit to what he said, in that first very tough campaign that I ran where we talked about gun violence, Mark Kelly came and campaigned for me in person and did an event for me right before the election where we were super clear about the need for reforms and how we thought that having a background check bill with some actual teeth in it and closing the Charleston loophole would just help protect people, and treat gun owners more fairly as well by helping their constitutional right from being spoiled by those who choose to break the law. So it is very popular even in places that we think of as hard to reach politically. But I think across issues right now, we're struggling with the realization that it's not enough on an individual issue to have fifty five or 60 percent of the American people with you.
In the way that our constitutional republic is designed, it matters where those people live and it matters where on their priority list the issue is, and the fact is that for a lot of people in areas represented by Republican senators, firearms is like number one or two on their lists. And that's true for some House members as well, but it just means that those of us who are interested in reform, I think need to have maybe a deeper and more realistic understanding of the path to getting a bill to President Biden's desk. And that will probably involve some Republican senators feeling ownership over the issue and feeling like it started with them. Toomey and Manchin got very close to that a couple of years ago, and so I think in the House, we've proven we can put together the votes for this. We've got eight Republican votes on the background check bill and two more on the Charleston loophole. But we have a Senate and we have to be honest with people about that and keep trying to find creative ways to get through that kind of obstacle course that we've set up for ourselves in the federal government.
Harry Litman [00:10:13] It is just as Congressman Lamb says, it's a classic issue in a democracy. You have a smaller group, but they are really intense. Do you think that the pro regulation side just doesn't match them in intensity and maybe that's how the democratic process works? Or do you see some sort of failure here that that is keeping the status quo entrenched?
Kris Brown [00:10:39] I guess there is a failure. It's a failure in one chamber in Congress, not in the House of Representatives, because they've been able to pass two really critical bills that more than 90 percent of Americans support. Let's be clear, this isn't just a majority, this is gun owners and non gun owners. And let's face it, there are a whole host of really important public policies that have been dying on Mitch McConnell's desk. Yes, we have a Democratic majority, very slim, but we have something called the filibuster. And we know that we can't get anything through, our issue or the many other important issues that the House has passed that are sitting in the Senate without reforming the filibuster. And that's the bottom line of it, and quite frankly, if you have an issue in American life where more than 90 percent of Americans are crying for change and one chamber of one hundred people stands in the way of that, then that's why Brady for a year has said, if we can't get this through, we have to end the filibuster.
And that's just the bottom line. And let me be clear about one other thing. I think the NRA is a paper tiger, I'll just be honest about it. They spent over 50 million dollars and that's in reported amounts, it was likely much more than that, electing Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016. The cost of that was after Parkland, after 17 children and educators were mowed down, Donald Trump, we all saw it on TV, sat with Dianne Feinstein and a host of other senators. He was appalled when he learned all of the facts related to gun violence and how easy it was to solve them and even indicated maybe he would restrict high capacity magazines.
But that night, he sat down for burgers with Wayne LaPierre, and the very next day he backed off on that. So I don't want to discount how important it is that we have Joe Biden in the presidency. He called on the Senate to act yesterday at that event, but he's moving forward in other ways that are really important that he can. And when we have an epidemic like this, Harry, we need policy. We need better enforcement, though. We need a director of the ATF, and that David Chipman announcement is huge and we need funding. Joe Biden has put about ten billion dollars if you count the five billion and the infrastructure bill and about five billion that he's directing to community violence intervention, that's critical. So I don't want to give anyone the impression we're not advancing and we've advanced a lot in the states, a lot.
Harry Litman [00:13:19] This is a really good point because there's been certain states, the laboratories of federalism that have made changes, they've become part of the data driven argument for certain regulation. But let me push back on you a little bit, Kris, just because this problem predates 2016, it predates Trump, it predates Mitch McConnell as majority leader. And there are other areas where even when they've had a kind of hammerlock, there have been some inroads made. Is it your basic view, and I don't mean this tendentiously is it your view that basically the pro regulation forces have played it best in the last twenty five years and they've just come up against an impenetrable wall? Or are there, as you look back at the landscape, certain missed opportunities for at least baby steps?
Kris Brown [00:14:15] Well, look, one thing that I think is important from my perspective, and I'd love to hear from the two other guests we have here on their perspective, is that the NRA represents the gun industry. In titular way, they try to indicate that they're representing gun owners, but it's just not true. Gun owners support common sense measures like Representative Lamb and Representative Swalwell are moving forward on. The NRA has fought them every step of the way, let's not forget, they oppose Jim and Sarah Brady over six years and seven votes and they haven't changed that one bit. What's changed is that our prevention movement has never been stronger. And that's not just because of Brady, it's because of Giffords. It's because of Everytown, it's because of March for our lives, it's because of the community violence interrupters. And the NRA is in bankruptcy.
Kris Brown [00:15:08] Sounds like you're thinking stay the course and we will break the gridlock.
Eric Swalwell [00:15:13] Harry, my hope here is I think Gen Z is going to bang down the door. I think they're the generation that cares the most about this, the generation that has organized and mobilized, and I also want to just note that in the last two elections, gun safety organizations have spent more money than gun rights organizations. And that represents, I think, this shift. And my parents are Republicans, my brothers are cops, my dad is an NRA owner. And I think what has frustrated him and others is we learn about this bankruptcy proceeding is that it isn't even about gun owner rights. It's a grift for those at the very top. At the very top, they sold fear to their members that Democrats are going to take away your guns. They put me and others on the cover of their magazine and they use that to have the members write small donations to the organization, but it's not even about gun rights.
It's just about people like Wayne LaPierre and others having one hundred foot yachts and private planes and three hundred thousand dollars in stays at the Four Seasons, and so that's what's so sick, is that they, I think they contribute to this fear of their members, but they're not doing it because they're actually worried about any gun safety legislation. They're doing it because they need to fund the lavish lifestyle that they've all become accustomed to on the backs of hard working, blue collar people like my dad, who actually does care about gun rights.
Harry Litman [00:16:46] Or like the people in Pennsylvania-17. So let me put this to you, Congressman Lamb. We've heard a lot, I'm a Democrat and over the last four years of our talking down to the Trump forces, not giving them credit for actually having thought through policy views. Let's focus in on these senators who Kris says are just immoveable. What is their mindset? Why isn't it for six or eight of them, an easy win to buck the NRA just a little bit to the extent of the sort of 90 percent support for something like background checks? Why is it that they fear themselves even taking such small steps?
Conor Lamb [00:17:31] I don't know that I can answer it, unfortunately, because I just don't know what's in their minds. I suspect that many of them came of age politically at a time when the NRA was more powerful than the NRA is today. And what I see across, like different issue areas and generations of politicians that Eric and I served with is I think there are people that get used to a certain kind of like political map in their head and a set of operating procedures for themselves, and then they just don't really break from it over time, even as conditions change.
Harry Litman [00:18:02] You're getting a lot of nods here, by the way, from your co-panelists.
Conor Lamb [00:18:05] Yeah. I mean, I think if you're not in really competitive races especially, you might have missed the significance of what Eric just said about the gun safety groups spending more and doing more in the last election. But I can't tell you how important and visible and active moms demand action is in my district. They're a major force, and not just within the confines of their organization. Their members are joining the local Democratic committee and the local independent Democratic clubs, and they show up like when we have a canvasing around election time to go out and get votes and all that kind of stuff. They're wearing their moms demand action T-shirt, but they're part of the democratic process, small d and big D, and they are now a force to be reckoned with politically. And I'm not sure that every senator and member who's been around a long time understands that, even the Republican in my own state did, and Mike Bloomberg had nice things to say about him. So there is a reward for Republicans that are willing to acknowledge the common sense position here, but some of them are just a little slow on the uptake, I guess.
Harry Litman [00:19:07] Their vaunted as having money and getting directly to McConnell, but the NRA, in my experience, the Second Amendment crowd has a very good ground game that they mobilize quite quickly in individual states when they think someone's going 'squishy,' in their words.
Eric Swalwell [00:19:24] I was interested, as Conor or Kris had noticed, in the last year or so, as the NRA has been weakened, and traditionally when there is a tragic shooting, the operating procedure for the NRA is to say nothing, to just go underground. But I've noticed, just as we are on this carousel of mass shootings, is that it's not the NRA who's speaking up, it's actually the influencers in the Republican Party who immediately, reflexively, I think recognize that the NRA has been weakened and they are the ones who are almost trying to — I don't know if it's troll on the issue or send the warning shots across to anyone who would dare to do something, but we saw that recently with Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson and others, and we haven't seen that in the past. That's a new phenomenon, I think.
Conor Lamb [00:20:12] Yeah, that's right. And these people all have a bigger reach now as candidates. I think the NRA used to fund direct mail and things that were the way you reach people. But like the guy I ran against in the last congressional campaign had massive social media following, on Fox News all the time, being retweeted by the Trumps and all those people in their little world. And they would very ably fuse the gun language with, for example, the defunding the police message, to imply that the liberals want to not only weaken your police department, but take away your ability to protect yourself with a firearm. Yeah, it was almost like they didn't need the NRA as much as maybe they used to, and I think when you see the rise of these groups like the Oath Keepers and the proud boys and others who really emphasize the gun issue, the ecosystem has changed on their side. But I do think that being fragmented, they might be a little bit weaker now than it was before, and time will tell.
Harry Litman [00:21:08] Is part of the problem here rhetorical? I've noticed Representative Lamb, you're in a perfect kind of litmus test because if you are like your district, you do have people who care a lot about the issues but aren't as dogmatic about, for example, background checks, but we're told at least that, like the language 'gun control' gets people nervous and maybe we should be switching to more of a public health paradigm and that sort of thing. Does it play out at just at that sort of elementary level of just word choice?
Kris Brown [00:21:42] Yeah, I think that's a really great question, Harry, and it's important to get back to Congressman Swalwell's point about the NRA bankruptcy and what's really happening behind that. Part of the reason they did that is I don't have all of the information, but it's my understanding that the NRA was spending somewhere between two to four million dollars defending itself against two concurrent lawsuits, one by Ackerman McQueen, and that was their marketing agency for 20 plus years, and then, of course, Tish James, the attorney general of New York. The issue with Ackerman McQueen is the NRA was a marketing machine. What all of the folks who they contributed to could count on is messaging guidance at every step of the way in response to anything that they were trying to fight against, and certainly to support the kinds of measures that were moving forward.
We have seen that drop significantly because Ackerman McQueen hates the NRA now, and is suing them in court. And in fact, if you want some fun times, just listen to the deposition testimony of Wayne LaPierre talking about his feeling of lack of safety and heading off to a yacht after these shootings. The rhetoric is key, Harry, and that's one of the things that I think it's very important that they have lost out on, but Conor's point is important too, Representative Lamb, because there are other groups there vying to fill that space that are even more fringe groups. And we have to watch out for that and see how that shakes out.
Harry Litman [00:23:19] All right. So let's try now to move to substance, even in this last half hour in describing the problem, all of us, but you in particular, Kris, served up the terrible epidemic of assault like we had yesterday in Texas, but especially Boulder and Atlanta. These gut wrenching seismic events of lone gunman, often an assault shooting. But it's nevertheless the case, that's a really small part of the gun violence problem in the country, probably about one or one and a half percent of the 40 thousand plus deaths from suicide and homicide.
I wonder if people are focusing too much on that. There was a recent op ed that I'm sure you saw in The Washington Post, Kris, where one of your predecessors said we should be looking less at assault shootings and more at the things that cause more of the violence. On the other hand, of course, just stepping back in briefly to politics, it is the one issue that over and over again inflames Americans and catches their attention. But should we be thinking less about these terrible events that I can say from my law enforcement experience are very hard to prevent, and more about basically the run of the mill violence with largely identifiable people?
Conor Lamb [00:24:49] Yeah, I think it is a really important way of reminding people that there is a massive day to day epidemic of gun violence, particularly in our large cities, that takes the lives of young, black and brown, particularly young men every day. And many of them never get a rally or a parade held for them, or they don't experience the same kind of activism around those killings that you do when you have these suburban mass shootings. And I don't think we need to be in the position of choosing as legislators or advocates to fight for one group over the other, but I do think we always have to acknowledge that in percentage terms, the mass shootings are the tip of a very dangerous and bad iceberg, and that there's a lot beneath that that is committed day to day with handguns and other sort of smaller weapons. And so our solutions should be designed toward helping and protecting the maximum amount of people possible. I think there are a lot of us who would vote for a comprehensive solution that does background checks, Charleston loophole, red flag laws, and also bans future sales of assault weapons. I certainly would vote for that.
Harry Litman [00:25:56] Can I just ask you briefly to tell us what the Charleston loophole is?
Conor Lamb [00:26:00] Yeah, it's a really important one, and probably the one that I'm most directly experienced in my old job. And for those listening, I worked in the same U.S. attorney's office where Harry was the US attorney, years later. But basically what it does is it ends the situation — people think there's a background check, you get a yes or no answer. But in reality, a lot of times the gun store clerk, when they run the background check, gets an ambiguous answer. There might be something in your criminal history, and it's not clear if that offense disqualifies you or not from owning a firearm, which means someone has to go and chase down the record of what you did, or what you were charged with, and find out. Under the current law, federally, you basically get three days for the FBI or law enforcement to chase down that answer, and if they don't do it within three days, the tie goes to the buyer and the buyer gets to get it. And that happened to Dylann Roof, who did the church shooting in Charleston.
He should have failed his background check, they didn't complete it in time, he got the weapon and went and killed all those people. And so our bill would have lengthened that timeline to at least ten days, and even longer than that if law enforcement requested. Again, the simple fact being, we just want to find out if you're qualified or not to have a firearm, and I think everyone agrees that's fine. But my point is those types of measures are extremely effective against gun crime because they address all types of firearms and therefore are applicable to all forms of gun violence. And for the advocates who focus on the assault weapons and encourage us to pass assault weapons bans, many of us are supportive of that. I am, but I think it's always important for us to remind people that one of the reasons it's harder to count votes for something like assault weapons is because the Republicans know that it affects a smaller number of crimes, and therefore they think they have a stronger argument to keep those legal compared to measures that affect the day to day toll of gun violence in our cities.
Eric Swalwell [00:27:53] And on the Charleston loophole, it's not inconsequential if you're talking over a ten year period. Had the legislation that Conor worked on been in place, over thirty thousand weapons would not have been sold to unauthorized buyers. So that's a lot of potential lives that would have been saved. As a former prosecutor myself Harry, I can tell you there are a number of homicides I prosecuted before a jury where, you know, yes, of course, a background check may have helped. Sure, restrictions on ammunition may have helped. But I saw working in Oakland that a lot of times it was just a lack of hope that people had around them, and that is much harder to fix. We all commit ourselves to passing gun safety legislation, but investing in communities and having an infrastructure where people know right from wrong, they value life, they have role models around them, they have education systems, their parents have good paying jobs. I mean, that also, I have found as a prosecutor, is just as important. And when I ran for president, it only lasted a cup of coffee, so if you don't remember it that's OK. I did go to cities like Philadelphia —
Harry Litman [00:29:01] But it was mellow and delicious...
Eric Swalwell [00:29:03] I went to Philadelphia and Chicago and one person, a mother in Chicago told me something I'll never forget. She was like leading the block organization that she had started on the South Side, and she said, 'Eric, every homicide in our city is also a suicide.' And I didn't understand what she meant, but she went on to articulate that if you have a young black man shooting another young black man in her neighborhood, the shooter also wanted to die. The shooter, she told me, chances are, wakes up at a different home every morning, doesn't have his own clothes seven days a week to wear, is hungry, is always looking over his shoulder. And she said because of the stigmatism of suicide, often you know that if you kill someone else who has tension or beef with you, you're going to have a target on your back and that's going to be your way out. And so there's a lot we can do on gun safety, but that is also something that's much deeper and much more challenging, but cannot be forgotten.
Kris Brown [00:30:05] I think what Congressman Swalwell is saying is so important, but that is a big reason why we should be very excited about the kind of people that we have in Congress who are on here today, and who are leading in the White House. Because the five billion dollars that's in the infrastructure bill, that five billion about that was redirected from current funds into community violence intervention, provides supports in communities that experience every day gun violence. And these are critically important programs that provide support to individuals just like that investment is absolutely necessary. If I think about an assault weapons ban or expanding the Brady law, closing the Charleston loophole, I have to say the way we look at it is the way it is in America. We have an epidemic. Homicide is different than suicide is different than unintentional injury of kids in the home is a little different than domestic violence. There's not any one solution. We need a combination of solutions. And so each of these things as important, as Representative Lamb said some of these policies will likely save many more lives than others, but it doesn't mean any of them is unimportant to consider and debate.
Harry Litman [00:31:26] OK, fair enough, and I'd actually like to speak to this one from my personal experience. In that op ed, Kris, by your predecessors, one of the things that were mentioned is the success stories of certain, especially medium-city gun violence reduction programs. And this was in the pre Conor Lamb period of the US attorney's office. The thing that was my main priority was such a program, but the issue that Congressman Swalwell is identifying is paramount because on the one hand, we really could identify in a city like Pittsburgh, honestly, it was stunning, but two, three, four hundred people who were the most likely to be responsible for gun violence. There were many tools that the federal government could bring to bear, and that we did bring to bear in a sort of hard nosed way, stronger penalties and leverage on probation, public housing.
But it was so essential and I tried very hard here, it is the sort of key part of the most successful programs, to have a dual approach where you're working with the community, you're able to offer some kind of hope, some kind of structure, some kind of support and not simply be going after it with 'the feds are coming,' though I don't want to discount that aspect of it as well. All right, but I am glad we touched on the assault weapon point. I just want to also raise a counterpoint, which is a big argument you hear on the other side is we need these guns to foil burglaries or protect our homes. And in the same way that assault weapons by numbers account for a fairly small percentage of gun violence, it's also a rarity that people actually are able to use guns for that purpose. And much more likely, if they have them for that purpose, they'll wind up being the cause of an accidental homicide of somebody in their own home, their own family.
Eric Swalwell [00:33:24] To close this point, while we can measure the deaths by assault weapons, and every homicide is a tragedy and a loss, what I think is immeasurable in why it is important that we continue to pursue reform there as well, is for kids in school today. You can't measure the trauma and the fear that they go through, that someone's going to walk through the door with an assault weapon. And so that is also a reason to take action here is because you have a whole generation of kids who do live with this trauma. And until they see real concrete action on it, that's not going away.
Harry Litman [00:33:59] It's a great point. I mean, three of them are mine, they really live with it. All right. Let's turn now just to what is on the table. So we have H.R. 8, H.R. 1446 that have both landed in the Senate. They had each of them, a little bit of Republican support. Congressman Lamb sponsored one, voted for the other. We heard Joe Manchin and his name always comes up here, say he doesn't want to change the filibuster, not a hair on its head. So as a practical matter, are these two passed bills that have a lot of provisions that a strong majority of the American people support dead in the water?
Conor Lamb [00:34:41] I think probably not. I think that H.R. 8 in particular, the background check bill, very similar to the what was known as Manchin Toomey just a few years ago. And folks to the left of him don't always realize this or want to admit it, but in the comments that Senator Manchin makes about bipartisan compromise and even about the filibuster, one of the things that I believe he does is, is work to gain and preserve credibility with his Republican colleagues so that he can be in a position to do something like negotiate a breakthrough on gun reform. And he has been very vocal in favor of strengthening the background check system and applying it to everybody, and I think if we are able to get a filibuster proof deal here, it will probably be due to his history of really working for that. And I know it means a lot to him.
Harry Litman [00:35:31] Filibuster proof meaning 60 votes, at least nine R's.
Conor Lamb [00:35:35] Yeah, and I don't know, maybe Eric remembers, Manchin/Toomey was close, they were counting Senate votes north of 50 and they just didn't know where to get there. But that's to me why I think there's at least some prospect of it happening.
Eric Swalwell [00:35:47] Post Sandy Hook, we lost on the background checks bill, people on our side, too, and we have to make sure we can have all 50 on our side. I'm just like Conor, I know Chris Murphy as well is in the mix on this, trying to negotiate a deal that we can get 60. So my position is seek 60, try and achieve that, and then if you can't, then you have to be realistic about what it means if we don't do anything. And that's where I think going back to what Kris said earlier, when you have 90 percent of the American people saying we want this for our community, we want to feel safer. That, to me is worth the fence around the filibuster to make it happen. But I think you should seek 60 first, show the American people where everyone is and then we can't achieve that, recognize the consequences.
Harry Litman [00:36:27] So you'd actually force some kind of vote and have the possible moderate R's stand up and be counted? Is that what you mean, Congressman?
Eric Swalwell [00:36:34] Exactly.
Kris Brown [00:36:35] I agree with that. I think that's the right approach, and a big part of this is we haven't had since Manchin/Toomey, which really took the wind out of the sails of our movement. In some ways that was tragic, to have a bill that was moving forward that still could not get past, and a lot of people psychologically took years to get past that. Having another vote, having another bill come to the floor is something that McConnell stood in the way for when he controlled the Senate last time for a reason. He doesn't want everyone to be on the record on this, and I think putting them on the record has the benefit of potentially getting to 60 if we can, and I think that's well worth trying. And if we can't, it certainly raises the specter of what to do about the filibuster.
Harry Litman [00:37:21] It does tell you a lot that there are people who are scared to vote, are scared to actually stand up and be spoken about their roles in, I guess, representative democracy. What about the president? So when we talk about the filibuster in this and other settings, people point to the prospect maybe it's a little bit illusory, but the hope that given his relationships and his long time service in the Senate, he's able to make a difference and push it into the mid 50s, high 50s. And yet yesterday was a banner day, wasn't it, Kris Brown? Because, you know, he's in the Rose Garden and unveiling proposals, but there's some doubt about how much political capital he's going to want to spend on this with everything else he has going. Do you think you absolutely need a strong bully pulpit push from Biden in order to get past the filibuster?
Kris Brown [00:38:25] I don't know whether it's an absolutely critical ingredient, but folks in the Senate, of course, folks in Congress are going to take their lead from the president, and him annunciating especially part of the thing that was so moving yesterday is to have someone who is leading our country, who understands the pain, the deep pain that we have too many families in these countries suffering. I was sitting next to Fred Guttenberg when President Biden mentioned Jamie and he wept uncontrollably. It was painful, so painful to watch, and this is what we're subjecting our fellow Americans to. So I think Joe Biden, not just the bully pulpit, but the emotional clarity that he brings to this is absolutely critical and he should continue to do so. I think Joe Manchin will play a hugely important role. I think he wants to play that to some extent regardless, but certainly encouraging that would be very helpful.
Conor Lamb [00:39:23] I think that President Biden has a huge role to play, if for no other reason than what he accomplished yesterday, which is to make really clear to these families who have been affected by gun violence that we are not giving up. And I think this issue, more than any other what I tend to get from people is they just cannot believe how many tragedies we've been through and how gruesome they have been that it can't change the mind of these intractable people in the Senate in particular. And the fact is that they are in six year terms, many of them are completely beholden to Donald Trump for the future of their political life. And so there is not a lot of room for them to move in the political reality that they live in, and this conflict could be long, but we will win it. We keep all coming back to how American public opinion is on our side, and I believe that, and I believe as long as we continue to convey respect for the rights of firearms owners, but a laser focus on the damage done by gun violence, we will get there at the end of the day. It is imperative that people like President Biden let everyone know in the meantime that we're not forgetting and we're not giving up. And I think that's what he accomplished yesterday.
Harry Litman [00:40:32] This really is his strength. There's only so much you can do by executive action, but his overall rhetorical point, this is an epidemic. It's an embarrassment in the world, focusing on where we are, that's the role of the president. And he also comes at it perhaps a little bit like both of you do, too, with a background that hopefully makes it credible. But he can set this sort of broad tone that makes it harder and harder to have the complete sort of obstructionist attitude of Mitch McConnell and the most dogmatic R's. OK, let's assume a sunny world in which H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446 have passed, where would the next sort of big push come, do you think?
Kris Brown [00:41:25] He mentioned it yesterday, at least from my perspective, and I'm not saying this would be easy, but what I'd like to see is a repeal of PLCAA. That's the law that provides immunity to the gun industry, the only industry in our nation to have such immunity. And it really has hurt all Americans, those injured or killed through negligent design, unable putatively, I'm not saying people aren't still suing, we are, but we have to circumvent PLCAA to have our day in court, which is grossly unfair and un-American. And I do believe that it has discouraged the industry to invest in R&D in a real and meaningful way to make their products safer. So to me, this would be a huge change, a welcome change. And Joe Biden said yesterday that should be on the table, and we agree.
Eric Swalwell [00:42:15] And also build on what Kris said, not only for the industry to make the products safer, but to be a partner in the mission to have gun safety. Because right now theres no interest at all in working with us, but if they lost that immunity, I do believe they would have a vested interest in how we can still have firearms to shoot for sport, hunt, protect yourself, but also to make sure that the most dangerous weapons don't get in the hands of the most dangerous people. And I think they would have an interest in being at the table if they didn't have that immunity.
Kris Brown [00:42:45] Yep.
Conor Lamb [00:42:45] Yeah, and then I think the other thing that that we sometimes forget to keep talking about, but in my view, it's really the most impactful on a day to day basis, is continuing to reform and improve the way we police gun violence. And if you look at the history of the way the NRA has tried to influence this whole issue, one of the things they did for a long time was attack the ATF budget and attack the types of resources that the ATF has. So there was an amazing article written a few years ago about the way the ATF still runs on these paper records in like a big warehouse in West Virginia somewhere. And they haven't been able to digitize like other government agencies because of the specific things that the NRA has done to them. The ATF, I worked with them a lot, I'm sure you did as well, Harry, they have phenomenal agents who really know how to spot the patterns and trends in straw purchasing and guns going into the wrong hands.
They understand violence prevention from a law enforcement point of view and trying to find the people who are most likely to commit gun violence and find ways to get them off the streets. But I felt like day to day as a federal prosecutor, if I wanted to do a big drug case like a big cocaine or even heroin wiretap case investigation, I had a lot of dollars and manpower and legal tools at my fingerprints to do that, and my gun cases just always seemed a lot smaller. It just always seemed like there were fewer agents, fewer things available, and I think that needs to be flipped. It's not to say that drugs aren't a big problem, they are, but I think that gun violence is a much bigger problem on a day to day basis than cocaine is. And I don't think that our federal law enforcement system treats it that way, and that's something we need to change.
Harry Litman [00:44:26] All right. And not to be glib, but I think it really is about the appointment of certain US attorneys and that that's where it will go down. Just a quick point about industry, which I think there is a way of industry is always saying, and it was my experience, they are mostly clean, and yet there are identifiable, really corrupt dealers, unlicensed dealers included, who make it harder for them competitively, et cetera. And they ought to be able to be brought into a sort of targeted focus on those bad dealers, just as we have targeted focus on certain possible gun violence perpetrators. We've just a minute left for our final feature on Talking Feds of Five Words or Fewer, where we take a question from a listener and each of us has to answer in five words or fewer. Today's question comes from Teddy Busser, who asks, 'Will David Chapman be confirmed to lead the ATF?'
Kris Brown [00:45:27] Potentially tough, but will happen.
Eric Swalwell [00:45:31] Yes, we'll be better off.
Conor Lamb [00:45:33] Give him a chance.
Harry Litman [00:45:35] Fingers crossed.
Harry Litman [00:45:39] Thank you very much to Kris Brown, Congressman Conor Lamb and Congressman Eric Swalwell, and thank you very much, listeners, for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts, and please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter, @TalkingFedsPod , to find out about future episodes and other Feds-related content. You can check us out on the web, talkingfeds.com , where we have full episode transcripts, and you can look to see our latest offerings on Patreon, where we post discussions about special topics exclusively for supporters. Submit your questions to questions@talkingfeds.com , whether it's for Five Words or Fewer or general questions about the inner workings of the legal system for our Sidebar segments. Thanks for tuning in, and don't worry: as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking.
Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Dawn Griffin are our contributing writers. Production assistance by Matt McArdle. Research assistance by Abbey Meyer. Our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Our gratitude, as always, to the amazing Philip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Dalito, LLC. I'm Harry Litman, see you next time.
