Consider This from NPR - On Gun Control, Two Big Steps In Opposite Directions

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Congress and the Supreme Court took big steps in opposite directions last week, in the country's long standing debate on whether and how to regulate guns.Congress passed the first major federal gun legislation in decades, with bipartisan support. President Biden signed it into law on Saturday.Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 opinion striking down a major gun control law in New York. The sweeping ruling puts many other gun regulations in states across the country, on shaky ground.Daniel Webster, whose research focuses on policies intended to reduce gun violence, explains the real world impact he anticipates after these changes. Webster is Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.This episode features reporting from NPR's Nina Totenberg.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has dominated headlines for the last few days, so much so that it almost eclipsed some major developments in a different long-running American debate, the Second Amendment and the fight over gun safety. Last week, the Supreme Court and Congress made big moves in opposite directions. We'll start on the legislative side of this split screen. Over the weekend, President Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. I was there 30 years ago, the last time this nation passed meaningful gun safety laws. And I'm here today for the most significant law to be passed since then.

The push for this bill came after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last month. I received tens of thousands of calls and letters and emails with a singular message. Do something. That's Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who's been endorsed by the NRA. He got together with Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who's been one of the most vocal gun control advocates in Congress

since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. We have a chance to show parents and kids and families that we take their safety seriously. Their bipartisan group ultimately agreed to a narrow compromise bill. It includes expanded background checks for gun buyers between 18 and 21, grants to incentivize states to implement so-called red flag laws, and hundreds of millions of dollars for mental health initiatives. It leaves out many Democratic priorities, like universal expanded background checks or a ban on assault-style weapons. Senator Murphy says it's still a breakthrough. Nobody in a compromise gets everything they want. This bill will be too little for many. It'll be too much

for others. But it isn't a box-checking exercise. And unlike so many previous attempts, this one became law. This bill is going to save thousands of lives. Now let's switch over to the other half of last week's split screen on guns, a 6-3 ruling from the Supreme Court. This decision has made every single one of us less safe from gun violence. That's New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat reacting to the Supreme Court's decision striking down a major gun control law in his state. The law dates back to 1911.

It required applicants for concealed carry permits to demonstrate a particular need, for example, messengers carrying cash. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said the requirement violated the Second Amendment. He said the Constitution protects, quote, an individual's right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. It's a decision with huge implications for laws in other states. Supporters of expansive gun rights are celebrating. Everybody is absolutely ecstatic with the ruling. That's Sam Peretis,

executive director of Gun Owners of California, which filed a friend of the court brief in the case. Here in America, with the tradition that we have and the laws and the constitution we have, every lawful citizen has a pre-existing right to defend themselves with whatever type of firearm they deem necessary to do that in their country, in their state, in their community, in their homes, in their businesses, and their travels. Consider this. The gun control landscape just shifted in America.

What will it mean for rates of gun violence? From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Monday, June 27th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. The case the Supreme Court decided on Thursday was about a New York state law restricting concealed carry, but the implications go way beyond that state. Five other states and the District of Columbia have similar laws on the books,

including California, where state law required people to show good cause to get a permit to carry a gun in public. Be prepared for months for the likely decision that actually did come down. That's California Attorney General Rob Bonta. The most direct and immediate impact is that the good cause or proper cause component of California's existing concealed carry weapon law is not constitutional. He says state lawmakers are working on a new set of requirements for concealed carry permits in response to the ruling, but he says the decision will make it easier to carry a gun in California. The 6-3 ruling by the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority also

puts all kinds of other gun control measures on shaky ground, because Justice Clarence Thomas's opinion lays out a sweeping framework for determining which gun regulations are permissible. Courts may consider only whether gun regulations would have been acceptable when the Constitution was enacted, not public safety concerns. Here's how Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center put it. Basically what this means is that the NRA and other gun rights adherents will have a do-over and can challenge and will challenge dozens and dozens of gun laws well outside New York, well outside the issue of handguns, saying that all the courts that upheld them in the past,

they just were doing it wrong. And now they have to find their inner Clarence Thomas to understand what's allowed. And the court's ruling could even threaten some of the provisions in the gun legislation that President Biden just signed into law over the weekend, according to UCLA law professor Adam Winkler. We didn't have red flag laws. In the 1700s and 1800s, there were no restrictions on the possession of firearms by domestic violence and misdemeanor.

So Congress and the Supreme Court each took a big step in opposite directions. Where does that leave us? To understand the real-world impact of these changes, I talked to Daniel Webster of Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on policies intended to reduce gun violence. And I asked him about the claim we heard earlier from Senator Murphy that the new law would save thousands of lives. Is he right?

Well, I certainly hope so. I definitely think that the overall package will lead to less gun violence and therefore translate into lives saved. How many really will be determined on how these policies get implemented. I think it's really important that folks understand that a lot of this is a spending bill of pumping dollars into localities to address gun violence. And how they actually use those resources will determine their ultimate impact.

The same goes for some of the gun regulations. They will give ATF, I think, better tools to address gun trafficking, but how big an impact that has will determine on how they use those. Which provision do you think is likely to potentially have the biggest impact? on right now is addressing the so-called dating partner gap in domestic violence misdemeanor prohibitions. We know that domestic violence these days or intimate partner violence is much more likely to involve dating partners than spouses. And if you look at the data, that's really where we should be focused. So I'm very pleased to see that gap addressed. I also think that the funding for extreme risk protection order laws are sometimes referred to as red flags. I think that will clearly be helpful in addressing risk for mass violence as well as suicides.

Many of the provisions in the legislation seem designed to address mass shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas. As horrific as those shootings are, they actually make up a small percentage of total gun deaths. Do you think that focus makes sense if we're trying to reduce gun violence around the country? Well, certainly mass shootings are important, even though they're small proportionally to the larger problem of gun violence. But I think you're absolutely right that what our country desperately needs is legislation and policymaking that really looks at the totality of gun violence that affects our communities. We're really at a historic rate of

gun violence right now. And many of these measures are not directly on point. One thing we did not talk about is that there is $250 million being allocated for community violence intervention programs. I think that definitely will translate into less gun violence in most affected communities. I'm thinking $250 million, that's like not a lot per big city. I'm not sure how far that goes in a country as big as the United States. Definitely. You're absolutely correct. And I think it's also important to sort of hold that in contrast to the $750 million that's directed more at the problem of mass shooting. So you can look at those two dollar allocations to see the mismatch of what gun violence looks like in America and what our policymakers are responding to. Even as the Senate was taking this step to limit gun violence, the Supreme Court expanded access to guns. How effective were concealed carry laws like the one in New York that the

justices overturned? Well, they were effective. This is one of the most studied forms of gun policy. There's been enormous change over the past 30 years in how states regulate concealed carrying of firearms. What that research shows is that when states do what the Supreme Court says now they must do, that that translates into more gun violence. It's also important to note that those studies are based upon changes in states that don't have the kind of big cities with dense populations like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, places like that. So what I'm concerned about in particular is what will happen in these kind of situations, because there's a reason that the most densely populated cities want the most restrictions on concealed carrying of guns. So what do you expect the decision to mean for gun violence in New York and other big cities that have these

kinds of restrictions? Well, sadly, I think it will mean that there will be more gun violence of many forms. And I think one that we don't think about in this context, but it's actually law enforcement shootings of civilians. The most common situation in which a police officer shoots a civilian is when that civilian is armed. They're coming to some tense encounter, a law enforcement officer, and they're going to be encountering more and more people with guns. Sadly, that tends to lead to more civilians being shot. So the other thing I want to really underscore about the importance of this decision is that the justices in the majority change the rules in essence upon how courts would determine the constitutionality of gun laws moving forward. No longer can courts consider the government interest in reducing gun violence. One of our biggest

public safety and social problems facing our country, the Supreme Court justices just said we can't even consider that when determining whether a law is or is not constitutional. Is there any way to look at the totality of these actions by Congress and the Supreme Court and judge what the upshot is, whether it will ultimately lead to more or less gun violence in the United States? Well, I wish I had a crystal ball. I don't. But, you know, my gut tells me that long term, we may see more harm than good from what transpired in recent days. Daniel Webster is co-director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.