We are waiting for the tv man to give us a signal. [speaking in native tongue] . Good morning. Welcome to the Annapolis Book festival. My name is paul barrett and this morning we are here to talk about guns and American Society and we have quite a panel of doctors who come at this important topic from very different perspectives. I am a staff writer with Bloomberg Business week magazine and i am the author of a book called glock the rise of americas gun, which is a biography of the glock pistol and the man behind it. Sitting immediately to my left is my friend Craig Whitney who is a vietnam war veteran and retired New York Times correspondent and editor. He is the author of living with guns a liberals case for the Second Amendment. Sitting to his left is daniel webster, lead editor and contributor to a book called reducing gun violence in america informing policy with evidence and analysis daniel directs the Johns Hopkins center for gun policy and research. And farthest to my left is emily miller who is currently Senior Editor of the opinion pages at the Washington Times newspaper but we will be starting this month as the chief Investigative Reporter at fox 5 news. Congratulations on your new job. Sounds very exciting. She is the author of the both emily gets her gun but obama wants to take yours which is about the Current National political debate over gun control. You was awarded the clark mullen of award for investigative reporting from the institute on political journalism in 2012. The baltimore native she is a graduate of georgetown universitys school of Foreign Service so that is a lot of credentials for saturday morning. And i think the way i would like to handle this is i am going to pose some very open ended questions, sparked in my usual liberal minded way by the titles of these three books and i will ask each of their to address the question for couple of minutes and then ask the of the two office to make any responses or comments they would like to make to those and just kind of go down the line like that and tried to reserve some time for questions from the audience which particularly on a topic like this is usually a very fruitful exercise. So lets start with Craig Whitney. Why dont you give us the short version of the liberals case for the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment does not create, did not create a new gun right to have and dont and use guns. It recognized one that existed already. It had existed since jamestown. It is a right in common law. The colonists needed guns to hunt and defend themselves against attack and the purpose of the Second Amendment was to reassure people after the new constitution was drafted and while it was being considered for ratification by the 15 states it was designed to reassure people that the new federal government created could not be if the routes into a tyrannical direction even if it established a Standing Army because the states would have the right to keep up their militias. How could you have a state militia if you didnt have people you could call on to serve in it who knew how to use guns and had them. It has never been, however, a bar, the Second Amendment, there is nothing in it that barred state, local, regulation of the right to have guns to in the interests of Public Safety. In fact in 1792, the year after it was voted on, the federal government established in the militia act requirement that the militias report the names and weapons held by the people whose names were listed to a federal authority. The requirement was observed only kind of sparsely and of course the militias gradually wither away and became transformed into what we know today as the National Guard but to make a long story short, yes, it is a right, it is not an absolute right and it can be regulated. Regulations can differ statebystate, city by city, but they are not barred by the first amendment. The Second Amendment. Excellent historical foundation. Daniel, would you want to elaborate with some thoughts about what the Second Amendment means in this century . First of all i am going to confess i am not a Second Amendment scholar. In our book which i man editor of we do have a chapter looking at constitutional issues and the Second Amendment. The book the we put out reducing gun violence in america, we brought together top scholars to look at what we thought were the most critical policy questions as well as the constitutional analysis and what the public views are as it relates to gun violence and policies to address the problem. I guess the theme i would say throughout this book is that there is evidence that there are certain people who are too dangerous to have guns. That is perhaps obvious. Secondly, theres evidence that when such individuals are legally prohibited there are several studies to show that that reduces violence. Third, that commonsense measures to try to keep guns from dangerous people that are prescribed by law from having done such as universal background check systems, handgun purchase or licensing systems, adequate regulation and oversight of retail firearms sellers, read reduce the diversion of guns to criminals and prohibited people. And that all flow if you just turn on cnn, any news channel when guns are discussed it seems as though theres an Enormous Division in our country but our polling data suggests that isnt really reality. We found, we asked polling questions of 31 separate gun policies and just about any policy that was framed around keeping guns from dangerous people there was not only very high support for those policies, there was in most cases no statistical difference between support among gun owners and people who dont own guns, nor was there actually even differences along party lines. So i think we spend way, way too much time talking about the things we disagree about most when there is a lot that can be done that works, that is constitutional, that would lead to fewer gun deaths in america so i think that is my summary of what is in my book. Emily miller, take us back to the Second Amendment for a moment and tell us Craig Whitney spoke about a selfdescribed liberals view of the Second Amendment. What does the Second Amendment mean to you as a gun owner and why does it have so much punch and meaning to so many people in this country . The Second Amendment obviously our Founding Fathers found the right to selfdefense is such an important human rights. Craig whitney and i agree on a lot but the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms originated in the colonies so much as it originated from god giving us a human right to defend ourselves and the Founding Fathers knew that that right was important just as we have a cumin right to freedom of speech, a acumen right to a jury of our peers and the Second Amendment is the right to defend ourselves and this to me was a very personal issue. I was dog sitting for friends and went to take the dog for a walk and in the ten minutes that i was out of the house amanda came in and was robbing it and when i walked back in the house he was in it, robbing at and then he left, he took my wallet, he didnt hurt me physically and i followed him to try to get a picture for the police which was not very smart idea, of armed. But in doing so at the end of the driveway, at the end of this culdesac i found we to pick up trucks and 15 of his buddies standing on the street staring at me. As i turned the corner and saw this they started one of the started running at me. And as i was going to sleep that night, for the first time in my life i thought what if they come back . Im in this house by myself, theres nothing i can do to defend myself, if they want to rape me and murder me, and the police said the fed definitely drug dealers and drug addicts that come to the city from virginia and on the way out want to get some quick cash, i startled them and i thought for the first time in my life i just had a gun by my night table like to defend myself and for me that is when the whole concept behind the Second Amendment, the right to selfdefense, became real and it is my right and i went to get a gun in d. C. Since it has been legal since the heller decision in 2008 by the Supreme Court and it took me four months to legally registered gun and i lawabiding person, i have no criminal record, no intent of hurting anyone, i just wanted gun to defend myself and i saw all these laws that are put in place to stop lawabiding people like me from getting guns. The criminals in d. C. Homicides are of this year, Violent Crime is up, the criminals are getting guns. Of the lawabiding people going to these registration processes, the more look into it the more i have written about it and gone to understand the issue a lot better the most important thing to point out is as daniel said which i do agree with that we all agree there are dangerous people we dont want to have guns. I dont want drug dealers to have guns who are in that house. I dont want a dangerously mentally ill to have guns, i dont want drug dealers, illegal aliens, all these groups that are already prohibited i dont want them to have guns, but no guncontrol law has ever reduced crime. No guncontrol law. And so the laws that are in place, the laws barring the dangers from getting guns are good on the penalty side so we can put them in jail, but bad guys who want to get guns will get guns. There is they steal them they dont do what i did, go to the police station, take a written test, take a five hour class, they dont do that. So i dont believe there is any need to further infringe on a human right we have to selfdefense, the right to keep and bear arms because we already have laws in place. In fact they are working. In the past 20 years the firearm homicide rate is down 50 . Non fatal shootings are down 70 so the laws we have in place, and if you look that the fbi statistics, every year murders by gonna going down so the laws in place are good. I believe the more people who are armed, the more it is the deterrent for further crime and that is the way we can stop, the fact that there is hot gun homicides, the fact there are still 9,000 People Killed by homicide every year, a quarter of them are felony types, we do that by more people, good people having guns and Law Enforcement, 90 of Law Enforcement support more people having carey writes, use of the Detroit Police chief come out and say having more people with gun permits is a deterrent to crime, theyre starting to recognize that, and so that summarizes where i come from in this book and where i am on this issue. Okay, daniel, you studied among other things the regulation of the acquisition of firearms, regulation of the possession of firearms. Family made a rather blunt assertion that no guncontrol law has ever had any affect on crime. Maybe you could take that one concise assertion and tell us the research you have done and other people have done to address that assertion. Thank you, paul. First of all i just want to agree with one underlying premise of what emily millers experience was it is ridiculous that you have to go through something for four months to get a gun. But these laws you got the i just want the actual that is what im trying to do, get to the facts. I will give you a free copy of my book, there will be several studies in their cited that shows guncontrol laws have reduced violence is give us an example two. Of course. There are now three published studies and im a coauthor on one showing that laws that prohibit those who are under restraining orders for Domestic Violence are prohibited from having firearms. There are three publish articles showing that those have led to significant reductions in intimate parter homicides. Very strong studies, every single one of them. How many of those studies were funded by bloomberg . None of them. None of them. We are this is not sort of a cabletv back and forth. Were going to go one at a time and i will use my moderators privilege. These are all scientifically Peer Reviewed articles. They are not funded by bloomberg. You want to make this about Michael Bloomberg the want to make this about facts . Leah talking about facts . I can back up everything that is in my book and anything that i published. That is one such example. Digest published a study within the past month showing that missouri at a licensing system for those who wanted to purchase handguns in that state. If you wanted to purchase a handgun your first step was go to the local Sheriffs Office and they would do a thorough background check. It did not take four months. This study was from 1996 on want to point out. No. The study just came out a month ago. When did the laws changed . The law changed in 2007. Let me finish. Folks im going to Say Something very strongly. Lets let each person talk. The point here is not to have a quick back and forth among the panelists but to actually let the panelists expressed coherent thought and then have the next person respond in kind, okay . Thank you. Just to finish what i was saying, we just published the study, missouri had a law requiring licensing for those purchasing handguns, it was not a long a laggard system but it did require you to apply directly at your local Sheriffs Office and it was good for 30 days and it was a way to ensure all handgun transactions there was a background check. It repeals that law in 2007. We just published a study that showed that it significantly lead to increased rates of homicide, it only affected homicides with guns, it affected homicides throughout the state and we will doubt just about every competing hypothesis we could think of that might have explained such a sudden increase in homicides to also correspond with a doubling of the diversion of guns to criminals. Those adjust two examples. I could go on more but we dont have enough time but i am happy to talk about any study you would like. Could you address this from your perspective, Craig Whitney . Your reading of this and familiarity with the debate about whether particular gun regulations do or do not have some potential to reduce crime . I think if you look at the overall Violent Crime statistics in this country they have Violent Crime has significantly gone down in recent decades even in places like compared to 25 years ago, Like Washington and chicago which were relatively higher rates than new york city. So the gun laws are part of the legal system that has to be kept in mind when you try to figure out why the rates of gone down. There were lots of other reasons too. Guncontrol laws alone cant solve our gun violence problem, but good ones based on common sense, Common Ground, if you find the Common Ground between the people who value their gun rights and the people who are more concerned about Public Safety there is Common Ground that can be found. We heard Common Ground despite tension on this panel this morning. Emily miller quite emphatically said she opposes and the other 3 panelists do, the idea that convicted felons should acquire guns. People who have been shown to be dangerously mentally ill and so forth. Those rules can only be enforced if theres a lot and someone enforces the law. On the other hand, there certainly is an issue for proponents of stiffer guncontrol because as we point out, Violent Crime has gone down steadily after rising from nearly 60s to the early 90s it has come down for the last 30 years and it is very hard to associate that in any cause and effect way with guncontrol laws and you can take a sample such as my home town, new york where the gun control laws have remained essentially the same but for the last 30 years gun violence has decrease radically, so clearly wasnt any change in the gun control laws that had anything to do with that decrease in crime. Emily miller, lets come to you now and give you a chance to expand on something in your book, the subtitlethe main title of your book is emily gets her gun but obama wants to take yours and you gave an eloquent and poignant description of what prompted you to obtain a firearm. The subtitle of your book, emily gets her gun but obama wants to take yours, as in obama wants to take your gun. Maybe you could elaborate on that subtitling tell us what you mean and what evidence there is to show that obama wants to take my gun or the gun owned by someone in the audience. In 1996 president obama said if he wanted to ban all handguns and he said yes. Expanded on that four years later when he was running for state office and said it might not be feasible but he would in principle still support banning all handguns. Zen as recently as 2012 after the horrendous tragedy of newtown president obama and Mike Bloomberg who funds the firm daniel works for came out within the same day that four children killed and said we should start banning rifles. When they start talk about banning rifles, banning handguns, that is taking peoples guns away. Theyre not talking about taking criminals guns away because it is already illegal for the criminals to have guns. Is already illegal for the felons and drug addicts to have guns. The reason any of us get guns, the good guys is to defend ourselves. Not to hurt anyone. We are not homicidal maniacs. We are the good guys so we want to get guns to defend ourselves and when obama, the president of the United States, at the time he is being funded by new york city mayor Michael Bloomberg. I notice you mention Michael Bloomberg over and over. I think your point about Michael Bloomberg has been established. My point is it changed the dynamic of this debate because there has never been so much money poured into it. Michael bloomberg in his last year spent 30 million, add half a Million Dollars to the Gun Policy Institute you run in the last year, it changed the debate because he is running for senate, people in the house purely i dont think president obamas agenda because it is not supported, overwhelming majority of americans, it is up 9 in the past eight months do not support more guncontrol laws. 67 to not support it. President s objective and quite frankly his success in passing guncontrol laws in 8 states, 100 due to all the money being put in politics by Michael Bloomberg, he has said this year he will spend 25 million in 25 races so this is outspending the and r. I. 10 or 20fold. That is why this is an important factor because it is not the will of the people. Look at any poll you will never find a poll which shows a majority of people favor more restrictions on Second Amendment rights . Very interesting way to frame it. Are going to go back and forth now that it is my turn . No. I asked you to make a statement. She made an extended statement and now the other two members of the panel will make shorter statements responding to yours which all can be done in a very simple way. There has been a whole lot of money on this gun issue that for a very long time, far more on the gun program lobbys side than on the other side. I want to make that point. I think it is very misleading to ask a poll question to you think we should have more restrictions on fill in the blank, on anything, we dont like to be restricted. That is not really the question. The question is, what policies do people favor to make us safer. I am not about banning guns, i am about looking for what craig mentioned, a lot of Common Ground, there are basic common sense ways to address that, we ought to do it. You present the situation simplistically. Theres one category of individuals, we know they are all evil, they will never obey any law, theres another set of individuals who will never do anything wrong with a gun and the world doesnt look that way. I am sorry. The final point i will make is this notion that it is hopeless to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, i will grant you there are some people, that probably is the case because of their makeup, the resources they might have, they will probably successfully be able to get a gun and do bad things on it. But the world is not so clean. There are a lot of people with sufficient barriers where a gun is not readily available means the difference between life and death. It wont solve all gun violence, nothing will. And as far as the big reductions we have seen in new york city there were no new gun laws passed, did new york use and take advantage of their gun laws to reduce homicides substantially . Most definitely. Craig, thoughts . The nra which i am a member of me too by the way. Has certainly outspend mayor bloomberg and it has been more effective than mayor bloombergs side has and look what happens in the senate in washington just a year ago. All of those guncontrol measures various senators proposed, not obama but senators each supported them, yes. They failed to overcome the 60 vote hurdle that they faced with a filibuster. Some of them got a majority of senators in favor but not 60. But i think the basic thrust of the most powerful measures proposed was wrong. Was to ban new sales of the socalled Assault Rifles because an Assault Rifle had been used in newtown. If you look at the Mass Shootings we have had in our country in recent years, the Common Thread among them is not Assault Rifles so much as Mental Illness. Wasnt diagnosed and treated. We have a dismal Mental Health system, treatment system in the United States. We dismantle that because of the excesses and abuses of mental hospitals, we didnt replace it with anything. And improving diagnosis and treatment of Mental Illness would do more to reduce Mass Shootings, i think, than any guncontrol measure would. The problem of Mass Shootings certainly is a distinct one and i think indisputably is linked to Mental Health issues and does not lend itself to being addressed by the kind of societywyatt issues about the sale of guns demonstrated in the most direct way and all these mass shooters are able to obtain the weapons that they use legally, and so that further enforcement of those laws wouldnt stop those issues. We have been talking for about 30 minutes now. I will bet that there are some people in the audience who would like to ask questions, so i would like to move to that portion of the program and ask anyone who has a question, theres a microphone set up there to stand up and ask this question and the way we will do this is each of the panelists concisely address whatever question is raised. Audience . Here come a couple of people. Hi. First of all, i would like to thank each of you for coming out today, really valuable discussion. And i had a similar awakening. Is the mic on . Anyway, my mother was shot in a robbery when i was 15 years old and so i was afraid of guns and then what opened my eyes was when the Supreme Court said theyre not did bound to protect me and theyre rolling in the war in case. And i discovered all the hurdles i had to go through to make a purchase as well and i got involved last year. So what i would like to talk about ideas all weapons ban and magazine side limitations because i really dont think they do anything. Specifically if you look at what happened in the shooting just this week, he had to do a manual reload so how does that help . That is these Mass Shootings that have to do with emanual remote. I dont think there is any substantial evidence that those actually help. Thank you very much. May be framing that is a question. We will put it this way. Would a ban on militarystyle semiautomatic rifles that can be equipped with a large capacity magazines have a significant effect on crime . Why dont we go down the line and each introduced answer that is a question. Your thoughts. Would not have a significant effect on crime. Assault rifles dont figure importantly in violent street crime, street shootings, assaults. Arguably could have more of an effect on Mass Shootings but as i said id think other measures would have more of an affect anna ban on Assault Rifles or extended magazines. I agree with craig that in terms of thinking about assault weapon ban or restrictions on magazine capacity in terms of broader approach to reduce Violent Crime and gun violence, you are probably not going to see that because again, they principally are relevant more in a mass shooting context. You can look at a variety of Mass Shootings and in some cases like the recent one you pointed out, there was ability to reload. You can also look at mass shooting context in which when a person was reloading is when people escaped or the person was incapacitated. One that comes to mind is in tucson when jarrett law there laughner was tackled when he was going to reload but he had a large capacity magazine and was able to kill and injure a very large number of people. There is a direct correlation between the ammunition capacity that the shooters have and how many people get shot in these incidents. So the capacity is relevant in Mass Shootings, not in whether they occur or not but how many people are shot. That is my own view. We will leave it there and give Craig Whitney a chance to shine in. I am sorry about your mother. That is horrible and i am so sorry about that. I dont look. As 9,000 russo gun murders a year about 300 rifles of any sort, the one who backed the assault weapons ban last year, people who are killed to clarify for those who are not familiar with them, what we in the media or other is called assault weapons is not an automatic gun. Is a rifle with certain ergonomic characteristics whether it is a pistol grip it is the style, not the caliber, not the speed. The only thing that the finds politically assault weapon versus rifle but again, even Dianne Feinstein said it is i dont know where she gets the numbers because lawenforcement doesnt characterize styles whether it affects crime, but police did a survey last year, 15,000 current and retired Law Enforcement and 96 said assault weapons bans will not affect crimes. 92 said changing the magazine capacity will not affect crime. Lets look at the guys on the street who are doing the crime and ask them how to handle it. Next question. What emily miller said about bad guys who have guns, who bought them from somebody who also sold them but wouldnt those guns have come from households of people who acquired them legally and they were stolen from someone who got it legally . Wouldnt reducing the amount of legally owned guns reduce the amount of illegal guns on the street . Theres an interesting question. Lets boil it down to that last sentence with a question mark at the end. What and reducing the overall supply of guns which as an aside is generally estimated today at 300 million firearms in private hands in the United States not including the police or the military, in civilian hands. Would reducing that overall supply, 300 million, would that reduce the number of guns on the black market. Are being used in crime . I think clearly yes but are we ever going to reduce the number of significantly below where it is now . Not all stolen or illegal guns, not all illegal guns are stolen. A lot are acquired illegally in the first place through the black market. To pick up on what craig just said, it is not in line with the facts that the overwhelming majority of guns on the market are stolen. Prisoner surveys when you ask how they got their gun 10 said they stole it, others got it on the black market. We dont know exactly again the path that those guns took. We know that some firearms are purchased illegally, and purchased from legitimate Retail Outlet so there is a variety of has the guns take from the factory into the hands precisely. Ive published several studies that showed proper regulations on gun sales prevent the diversion into that illicit market where criminals get guns. To the very specific point of more gun ownership meaning more guns to the illicit market, there is a positive correlation you can see in a number of studies that back up your general point but i agree with craig said that is not how we are going to make a big impact on crime, we are generally going to reduce gun ownership. That is not politically possible, that is not the sort of the way to go. I would love it if there were more efforts to focus on securing firearms within homes to reduce deaths. I think there is a lot to be gained from proper and safe storage of firearms. Your thoughts . I dont like to talk about hypotheticals. Violent crime is a complicated issue, is not about guns. Experts footwells factors related to violence, Violent Crime, everything from environment, employment, drugs, density of population. Hypotheticals are cast although if we look at current rates, gun ownership, civilian gun ownership is the highest it has ever been. Almost 50 of households in this country have a gun in their homes so gun ownership is going like this. At the same time as i said earlier this isnt funny . Usage of thing bling leif olson goahead. False. That i will ignore. And gun crime if you look that the fbi numbers have gone down, dan curtis 50 as i said earlier. Gun ownership is on the rise and has been significantly, gun crime is at the lowest rate has been in 20 years. It is the opposite of what you asked before, less guns would equal less gun crime, theres no reason to believe that is the case. A lot of these things are subject to dispute but lets get a few more questions on the table. I was the 30 year federal Law Enforcement officer, 13 years as a firearms instructor and im a gun owner and i know this is an emotional issue but i do not seek when we talk about gun registration or background checks, that that is as some people say an attempt to take my gun away. It is the very logical, as you said there are 300 million guns in this country and more being bought every day so we wont get rid of them so we have to take steps to try to control, background checks and registration seems to me to be good steps. The other problem i have as a former federal Law Enforcement officer are the stand your ground laws and the laws on concealed weapons. As a lawenforcement officer i wouldnt have wanted to go into that place in colorado and 40 or 50 people pulling guns and not knowing who was the bad guy or who was the good guy. The problem is as of firearms instructor, and i know even federal Law Enforcement agents are not the best shots. We go out quarterly and are required to get them up to speed. If you just give an individual a handgun and there is no requirement to know how to use it properly, there is a lot of danger in that and a lot of accidental shootings and suicides and homicides. You should probably be on this panel and we should be asking you questions because you probably know more about firearms and their use than anyone else in this room. Let me plucked out from that series of helpful observations one topic and turn it into a question which is what do we think about the advisability of the socalled stand your ground laws . Craig. Any law that makes it easier to kill people is a bad one. We that that. Concisely put. I would agree with craigs point. There are at least we to studies now showing that stand your ground laws led to increased rates in homicide, in the study that i mentioned before in missouris law we did examine stand your ground. We should increases associated with the laws but not statistically significant but generally it doesnt seem to me to be wise public policy. Before i get to emily i should have described exactly what stand your ground laws are, they are a variation on the traditional notion that one is allowed to defend oneself and traditionally theres also a concept in the law that if you are in your own home you can use deadly force to defend yourself in the face of a threat of deadly force and stand your ground laws expand on that concept and say that if you reasonably perceive a deadly threat anywhere outside your home you are within your rights to use deadly force in response to that. These laws have been passed in a number of states and have led in several particular instances to highly controversial cases. I dont want to go into the details of those but emily i suspect you may have a contrasting view of the stand your ground laws and the trend in that direction. I think when you describe the lawyer left up to 2 important facts. One is if you are going to use stand your ground as a defense you have to not have initiated the crime. You have to be on the defense and number 2 you cant reasonably get away. You have to be under attack, the other person has to have attacked u. N. And you cant get away and then you can use deadly force and the reason these laws of come that is not right. Yes it is. The whole deck is you do not have to retreat. No. The traditional understanding that is not accurately yet an obligation to retreat and withstand the ground laws do, what recodified is you do not have to retreat, is that if your innocently standing at the gas station or on the corner downtown and someone approaches you and presents what could reasonably be interpreted as a deadly threat rather and turnaround and runaway you can take your legally own handgun out and shoot that person and try to kill them. That is not. That is the title, stand your ground. I know you are the moderator. Let me also clarified again it is a legal term that means when you are prosecuted, after the fact when it goes to court or goes to the police station, if you could not get away without getting extreme bodily harm or kill, then you have the right to shoot back. If you are in your car and the windows are closed and you hit the gas pedal or if you can slammed the door and get away that is different story because nobody wants to shoot someone just for the heck of it. What this is, theres nothing new here in the law, what is inside your home, state your ground is outside your home. The same concept of self defense that has been around since the middle ages, mans home is your castle. Laws throughout the country in the last ten years or so, people assume that they were allowed to issue back in situations when they were attacked and couldnt get away but what happens is people are being prosecuted. That was the case of a man in jail in georgia he was on his property, a man ran up with a gun, aimed at him, he shot him back and he is in jail because they dont have stand your ground. That is what the difference is. I have a question for mr. Webster but a couple things of come of the limelight to address. I am an advocate for concealed carry as well as open kerri but i am equally an advocate for adequate training which is what our former federal friends over here brought up. I dont like the idea of anyone carrying without training. So the scenario of 30 or 40 people in the theater not knowing who is the good guy or the bad guy, if the solid Training Programs are followed that is not an issue. I would like to point out that every one of these Mass Shootings have happened in gun free zones. So there was no opportunity for anyone to end the threat early. It is unfortunate that someone goes off, someone else dies but if we have the opportunity, through relaxed carry laws, these threats can be stopped quicker. Can i get you to clarify . On the one hand you said you are uncomfortable with the Movie Theater scenario with lots of people shooting and trained people. There are numerous training venues out there whether it is through nra or other organizations many of whom are here locally. What question was that . Mr. Webster is relying on polls and surveys and studies but you contradicted yourself several times today. I would like to have you answer to one of them. You say in your polling you purposefully worked questions in order to get supporting response. I did not say that. I have notes, i can read from them if you like. When you were addressing emily shortly thereafter you said that when polls are done in support of gun rights is not a good thing to work for questions in a particular way. I would like you to enter to that please. Basically saying i did not word any of our survey items to get a particular response. They were worded to address a policy. What the policy did and what its purpose was, and i will end at that. I am the maryland state leader for the wellarmed woman. I believe in the training as well. And all the politicians, all the people, even you four, really excluding emily because i know she knows what do you really think, do we really think criminals are going to obey the laws . Laws are good, laws to help but criminals do not obey laws so my question is simple. You have heard it a million times. Do criminals obey laws . They do not. I would love to take that one. Only three minutes left so lets each address the question one minute a piece. I have heard speeders dont obey the speed limit so that logic, why have a lot because someone is going to break it . I just dont buy. That is precisely what you said. Criminals dont obey gun laws so why should we have them . The laws let me finish my sentence. Two more sentences from danielle and we will move on. Policies are designed to hold people accountable so they dont put guns in the hands of prohibited people. So if there is no accountability it will be very easy for them to get a gun. Well have a couple minutes. Emily. What you are saying is that because daniel advocates for more gun control, more gun laws are not going to reduce the 9,000 deaths. They are not like me. They will register the person, and theyre not going to go and register a gun. And the background check, and to clarify earlier the background checks. And if they go to a dealer, and everybody else in this panel, to a background check to see if you are a felon or dangerously mentally ill. And that straw trafficking and other ways, to avoid those systems. We will wrap it up, criminals dont of a law. At prosecuting them to the maximum extent. Around applause for our panel. [applause] thank you. Right, yes, the authors will be very grateful if you follow us down the yellow brick road and signing copies of your books. A [inaudible conversations]