off the train of doing anything about gun control. so there s that issue. once the democrats start pushing bans, the issue falls apart. the other one kim mentioned is mental health. in virtually all of the shootings, whether in florida, newtown, aurora, university of west virginia, every one of the shooters was severely mentally ill. donald trump mentioned that in his cpac speech. he talked about this. this is basically off the table as far as congress is concerned. that s not in the middle of the argument we re having right now. washington post did a poll on this in the past week. 77% of respondents said mental illness was the primary cause of the shootings. bill? i think mental illness is a big part of it but it s not the only part. politically, the republicans are in a position because there s a republican congress and a republican president to do something. i m very skeptical. i m not a gun owner, have no desire to own a gun. but apart from the
of them are happening locally that you don t hear much about and again, they almost always involve mentally ill people who manage to legally acquire the weapon. we need to draw a line and it won t be easy to do, there s lots of obstacles in the way, constitutional, associat socialr obstacles but i think it has to be done. i think everyone agrees, president trump, the democratic party, the nra, the school protesters agree that the shooter in parkland should not have been allowed to have a gun and yet he had one. how do we work together to keep that from happening as you saw the other night in the town hall, all we heard was name calling, yelling and swearing. paul: we have to start the conversation. thank you for being here. thank you. paul: still ahead the trump administration announcing new sanctions against north korea in
guns used in the commission of these crimes are illegally obtained. what we need to do in this country, paul, is not h declarea war on certain types of guns and accessories. we need to declare a war on illegal guns, guns that are stolen, guns that are stolen and sold or smuggled and sold, guns from straw purchases, which is where someone who is allowed legally to buy a gun, does so and turns the gun over to someone else, usually at a huge profit, who cannot buy a gun. if we focus paul: you want to focus on that. it s a fair point and an interesting one. if the staw chute the stat stats right now, why aren t we enforcing them now? because they re not high priorities. the federal law against straw
that s what is not in the law is deterrents, but if you deter people from carrying illegal guns or acquiring illegal guns, then, yes, you ll see the supply dry up, the supply dries up and criminals have trouble getting guns which they don t have trouble getting right now. the second issue is of course mentally ill people acquiring. paul: i think everybody can agree we would like to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. the problem that i see, and we ve been talking about this for many years, is state laws that make it many state laws make it very hard to intervene, even somebody who looks like they are a threat and either forcing them to get on their medication, hospitalizing them, much less taking a gun out of their hands. this is especially drew i try state in washington where you have to be in imminent threat,
there s clearly a move, it s not just bans on guns, people want consistent phconfiscation. they invoke australia all the time and australia confiscated all the weapons. even they re not clear, they didn t have that many mass shootings before. let s say we get a bill through congress, raises the age to 21 for buying guns, eliminates bump stocks, strengthens registrations, strengthens background checks, becomes federal law, two years later we have another shooting. are we back at the same we are, absolutely. politically, the house passed a bill as you know that included a couple of these things, the better registration close one of these background check loopholes but they paired it with a law that is a priority of the national rifle association, which is reciprocal concealed carry. this means if you have a concealed carry weapons permit in texas, you can go to new york city, which is very hard to get a gun, and still carry there.