People pay their respects at a memorial site for the victims killed in this week's elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Thursday, May 26, 2022.
Dario Lopez-Mills / AP Photo
Will there be any new gun regulations passed?
The two discussed Red Flag Laws, universal background checks, raising the age to purchase a rifle, gun confiscation and what's preventing new gun regulations from being passed.
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Jeremy Long/WITF
Dario Lopez-Mills / AP Photo
People pay their respects at a memorial site for the victims killed in this week's elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Thursday, May 26, 2022.
After a series of mass shootings across the country, including one this past weekend in Philadelphia, policy makers are considering ways to tighten gun laws.
The debate was renewed in the wake of a a gunman killing two teachers and 19 students and wounding 17 others in Uvalde, Texas last month.
Among the potential changes is implementing a nationwide Red Flag Law that allows for firearms to be temporarily seized from people who may present a danger to themselves or others.
Stephen Gutowski is the founder of The Reload dot com — which focuses on gun-related issues and analysis
WITF’s Digital Producer Jeremy Long caught up with him to discuss what, if any, changes are possible
The two discussed Red Flag Laws, universal background checks, raising the age to purchase a rifle, gun confiscation and what’s preventing new gun regulations from being passed.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the conversation:
Stephen Gutowski: My name’s Stephen Gutowski I’m the founder of The Reload com, which is a publication that focuses on sober, serious reporting on firearms, policy and politics.
Jeremy Long: One of the reasons I wanted to chat with you today was there’s obviously after Uvalde, there’s been another push for and calls for gun control. And I just wanted to get your expert opinion on what you’re seeing. And is this time any different than any of the other times that there’s been a push for gun control?
Gutowski: Well, I think a lot of the dynamics are the same as previous fights over gun policy, especially at the national level in Congress, but of course, when you have a shooting that takes the lives of 19 school children, that ratchets up the pressure to pass some sort of response legislatively. The, the big problem is that Republicans and Democrats generally have completely opposing views on what the proper solution is.
And it’s difficult to meet in the middle for them
Long: Do you see any legislation being passed after this shooting, even on maybe a local level. Like Florida upped the purchase age from 18 to 21 for rifles after Parkland. Do you see anything like that happening either in Texas or nationally?
Gutowski: I think that’s absolutely going to happen in New York. And you could certainly see it in a number of other blue states. , It’ll be much harder push in Texas or at the national level though. I don’t want to say that it’s impossible. It certainly could happen right now. There’s a bipartisan group of senators who are meeting to discuss a couple of different policies.
The House is probably going to pass an age restriction on the purchase of at least AR-15s and similar rifles though. Less likely that the Senate will be on board with that. I think red flag model legislation is what you’re more likely to see out of the Senate or some sort of packaged deal that also includes,, increased resources for school security and threat identification.
It is possible that Texas could go the route of Florida after Parkland and, and pass, you know, an age restriction or a red flag law, given that those two states are fairly similar politically, although we haven’t seen any momentum for that in Texas to this point. And we’ve in fact had the governor and Lieutenant governor, say that they’re less interested in new gun restrictions and more interested in more school hardening.
Long: You mentioned red flag laws and I know, Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro. Who’s also the democratic candidate for governor. That’s one of the things he said he would like to see happen is Pennsylvania pass some stronger red flag laws, but I know there’s some concerns from the gun lobby.
And you mentioned it in one of your appearances too, that the red flag laws are a balancing act between keeping people safe and infringement. So how do you balance that and make sure something like a red flag law that’s designed to protect people makes it through.
Gutowski: Yeah, certainly there’ve been several legitimate objections to red flag laws.
Where they’ve been passed or where they’ve been proposed. And to this point, you’ve mainly seen them, uh, in, in bluer states that are more inclined to pass gun restrictions than, than red states. But generally the objections are along the lines of due process protections. There’s concerns that when you’re taking away somebody’s constitutionally protected, right to own a firearm, you have to.
Include a level of legal protections for that individual who’s being accused that are robust. And that’s where some people have issues with the way that red flag orders are processed in some states. Who can request a red flag order is another issue. The enforcement mechanisms for people who abuse the system to go after somebody, they don’t like, you know, perhaps, a messy divorce would be a common example that people will, will give.
There’s always concerned that there aren’t enough protections for abusing the red flag order system. And then you also have concerns over the standard of evidence used to grant these orders., there’s different standards of evidence in our legal system and, people who are skeptical of red flag orders want higher standards of evidence to be used for these orders to be granted and then you have of course concerns that if somebody is found to be a danger to themselves or others simply taking away their firearms is not a holistic solution to that problem. So people want to see., other efforts made for anybody who’s subject to one of these orders, but of course, on the other side, you know, the orders are temporary.
They do commonly include the ability for the defendant to petition the court for a hearing, quickly after one of the orders is, has been issued. So it’s not impossible that you can. Craft a red flag bill that would cover all of those concerns. It’s just a matter of, people coming to the table and actually finding that, that, you know, solution that’s going to make the most people supportive of the bill
Long: From what you’ve witnessed are people willing to come to the table and craft that bill to just make everyone happy or is it just, are they too far apart?
Gutowski: I think that, I mean, certainly you’re seeing a bi-partisan group trying to work on some sort of legislation in the Senate at the national level. So there are efforts being made to talk across the aisle. On that point. , but there is obviously an issue of trust,, generally when it comes to each side of the firearms debate because oftentimes neither side trusts the motives or intentions of the other side.
Usually you’ll hear, gun control advocates who believe that anything that isn’t in line with the policy they want, that’s proposed by Republicans or gun rights. Advocates is just a distraction effort or a way to not pass new gun restrictions. And then on the other side, you’ll commonly hear gun rights advocates who argue that, , all of these compromise restrictions, red flag laws or universal background checks are both ineffective stopping mass shootings. And also just, a step on a further path that the real intention of gun control activists is to ban firearms, but that’s, that’s what they argue is the ultimate goal. And so it’s difficult to. See, you know, there’s a lot of loss trust. There’s a lot that you have to overcome .
That’s that’s long seated that, you know, this was the debate that’s been very heavily politicized and polarized for decades now.
Long: Is that what you think is preventing a lot of things like universal background checks? A good red flag law and I’m raising the buying age for certain rifles to , 21 years of age?
Gutowski: Well, I mean, certainly you’ll see policies like the ones you mentioned poll very well, in, media opinion, polling, but one difficulty that you’ll find is those polls don’t often translate to votes necessarily. Even in cases where there’ve been ballot initiatives on the most popular, gun control proposal, universal background checks.
You’ve seen Nevada and Maine hold ballot initiatives on that in 2016 and Nevada passed their bill, but only just barely. And then there was a lot of controversy over the enforcement of it subsequently. And Main didn’t pass theirs. The main referendum on universal background checks failed even, even with the same polling that you’ve been seeing for a long time.
So I think there’s, an element of do these policies actually translate into votes, right. That, that holds us back. And, and of course, you know, when you get down to the disagreement over. , these different policies. I mean, raising the age to 21, for instance, to buy a gun, you know, that’s something.
A lot of people believe as a right, you know, to own a firearm, right? I mean, it’s part of the second amendment of the constitution and the bill of rights. And so restricting that, especially on a sort of broad-based age restriction is going to be inherently controversial to some degree, even if it is popular in polling, .
Long: That makes a lot of sense. And I’m wondering if that’s where some people struggle with wrapping their head around the debate because obviously, and I, you know, it could just be whatever the climate was when the age to purchase a handgun. raised a 21 and I guess some people struggle with trying to equate, well, you can’t own a hand gun at 21, but you can own, uh, an AR or, you know, some other, a rifle at 18. I know for me, that’s kind of what I can’t wrap my head around here in PA with a background checks. , if I sell a hand gun privately, I have to go to a dealer.
We have to go through the background check process, any long guns, I can just sell it out of the back of my car.
Gutowski: Yeah, well, so there’s a, there’s a dichotomy in our law at the federal and state level. Between how we regulate handguns and how we regulate long guns and rifles and shotguns, because generally speaking handguns are far more often used in homicides or even suicides.
So they’ve traditionally faced more regulatory scrutiny than shotguns and rifles have that. That’s why that dichotomy exists. I’m not saying. People should feel one way or the other about it. It certainly, there is a difference between how we regulate those classes of guns, but, , That’s that’s sort of the reason why it’s there because handguns are just the vast majority of gun murders involve a handgun, same for suicides.
That’s why that exists.
Long: One of the other things that I wanted to touch on with you is I know when you were on CNN, you mentioned that not a single policy being proposed, just one policy alone that has been proposed since Uvalde, would have prevented that shooting that, and you kind of hinted at it, it has to be a series of policies.
What do those policies look like?
Gutowski: I’m generally not, an advocate, you know, that’s not the role that I play with, you know, uh, analyst or a. A reporter. So I don’t want to get into like saying which policies I support, but I would, what I would say is that, , you can, you can implement any of these policies or you can look at places where they’ve been implemented and you can find mass shootings or mass murder that’s occurred, Despite those restrictions being in place or would have occurred regardless.
Right. Does that, does that make sense? Like universal background checks, for instance, it might be good policy, you know, certainly people feel that a lot of people feel that way, but clearly it would not have prevented Buffalo or, or Texas because. Both of those shooters went through background checks. In fact, most of these mass murderers have passed background checks often because the red flags in their history, the different incidents that they’d been involved with before they carry out their attack, that could have a seen legal action taken against them or mental health restrictions placed on them, just weren’t followed through on, I mean, you certainly saw that Buffalo.
As far as like what, what’s the perfect combination of policies to fix all the mass shootings, uh, just stopped them tomorrow. Well, you know, I don’t even, even though I don’t think that there’s one magic switch, I’m not sure that you can articulate the perfect combination of policy to do it either.
Even in places that have total bans on all gun ownership by civilians. They still see mass shootings, even if they are perhaps, you know, some more developed countries see them at a lower rate, but you know, there are a lot of countries that have total gun bans that have even higher murder rates or incidents of mass violence than the United States does.
Do you think. I don’t want to say saying it’s too late to try and fix the problem. Sounds very pessimistic. And I don’t want to come off that way, but I mean, with the assault rifle ban, , going away in the in 2004, uh, and then with the, you know, obviously the record firearm sales the past several years, Is the genie out of the bottle.
Can we put the genie back in the bottle?
Gutowski: I think that the idea of gun confiscation in America is wholly unrealistic just on a logistical level. Um, you know, not that that’s what everybody is. Promote, you know, calling for people who want gun control, don’t all necessarily want a total ban and complication of firearms.
But just to answer your question, there’s 400 million plus firearms in the United States. The number of civilian owned firearms is 400 times the number of. Small arms that law enforcement has in their arsenal, in the United State, the entire country.
Just to give you a basic idea. I believe it’s about a hundred times as many as the US military has. And it’s about three times the amount that the entire world’s military combined have. So the, just to give you a scale, something that I think people don’t really understand or is the context of that, right? They understand there are a lot of guns United States, but I don’t think most people really get the scale of it because just saying there’s a lot, there’s 400 million guns.
I think people assume that means there’s a lot of guns when really what it means is American civilians own three times the number of guns. As the entire world militaries combined. Right? So even if you don’t have, you wanted to try and confiscate them all, or uninvent the gun or whatever, it’s not logistically possible at that scale.
And even AR-15s, there’s estimated to be 18 million of those. So even if 90% of people tomorrow decided they wanted to get rid of their cars and turn them in. You know, you only have 10% left to try and collect. That’s more than double in AR 15s alone. The number of all small arms owned by law enforcement in the entire country.
it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do to prevent. Mass shootings, especially. If people actually follow through on some of the warning signs given off by some of these mass shooters before they committed their attacks right now, you know, it’s obviously easier to see these things in hindsight and not everybody who makes a threat or does something that indicates they might be a danger to themselves or others is going to carry out an attack.
In fact, the vast majority of them won’t, but if people actually. Intervene have them, , committed or taken for mental health evaluation at least, or, you know, utilize the red flag laws available. If, if there is one in your state, you know, follow through on prosecutions for people who’ve committed, serious crimes of domestic violence or felonies, you know, those things would make you a prohibited person.
Wouldn’t legally buy a gun, after those sorts of convictions. But the fact is. Oftentimes those things aren’t followed through and these sorts of shooters kind of fall through the cracks. And until, you know, they ended up murdering a bunch of people.
Well, thank you for your time. Is there anything else you wanted to add or mention or touch on?
Gutowski: No, you know, I think we covered a lot there.
Yeah, we did. And I appreciate it. And I appreciate your insight.
Gutowski: Yeah, absolutely.
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