[applause] [applause] [cheering] i dont want you to be intimidated, but i practiced these jazz hands for ten minutes backstage. Thats not actually a joke and that is the scary thing about it. Good evening and welcome to the 2018 pen america literary awards. Thank you for being here. [applause] honestly im thrilled to be here, very honored to celebrate the mission to protect Free Expression everywhere. Yes you should clap for Free Expression. It is honestly a weird time to be protecting Free Expression. I know that you are thinking but sally it is so obviously not under threat right now. [laughter] certainly not here in the United States of america. I mean, obviously free speech is so free, we have fake speech now. Seriously, i am honored to be here. It is such a big deal. There are so many incredible and important authors that grace us with their words and ideas this year, brilliant visionary inspired writers and of course im talking about ivanka. [laughter] the jokes dont get any bett
And then click share and send by email, facebook, twitter or google . Searchable, easy and free. Created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. Taking you live to the National Press club in washington, d. C. For discussion on the Second Amendment and with paul helmke, former president of the Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence. He will deliver remarks here. He is addressing the political debate surrounding and legislation. He is currently professor at indiana universitys school of public and Environmental Affairs, crazy served as mayor of fort wayne, indiana. This is live coverage here on cspan2. Before we proceed with his introduction would like to thank mr. Richard heller who is responsible for our getting him you. They dont see eye to eye. Mr. Heller [applause] it was his lawsuit that overthrew the d. C. Gun control law which was a landmark decision. Anyhow, thank you and by way of him, we have mr. Helmke here today. Paul is a former mayor
Many of us gave him that opportunity. Many of our activists who are part of the leader of the coalition now they actually formed a forum. They were willing to take bashar on his promises to reform the country introduce it into the modern world and so on and so forth. Unfortunately theres a crack down in the damascus spring and then there was another moment after the assassination of hariri but the damascus situation and early on in the first 40 years i remember very well and i follows minute by minute. We were accepting the argument that they were an old guard and the regime etc. Etc. But after 50 years in power he became fully in charge. The system is highly centralized highly personalized and he immediately reverted to his fathers way of first saying you have external challenges that take precedence over domestic reform and second you were not going to introduce political reforms but introduce economic and he talked about the chinese model but nothing was meaningfully introduced to g
Made a tactical mistake by talking to president obama at that stage. Which takes me back to the game that Ayatollah Khamenei is say ising. He is on record for saying he embraces this diplomatic initiative. He is also on record for saying that he does not trust america as a reliable partner. He believes america is going to get what it wants, and then theyre going to go to the business of overthrowing the Islamic Republic of iran. Now, if these negotiations succeed, Ayatollah Khamenei can come out and say, look, i told you that i accept that i embraced the diplomatic initiative. If on the other hand, if on the other hand the rest does not give the kind of concessions that iran believes it should receive and the negotiations fail, then Ayatollah Khamenei is going to come back and say i told you so, i told you that this is going to fail. The only reason why i accepted it, because the iranian people 51 of you spoke. We have a democracy in iran and, therefore, this is not going to go anywher
Constitution. I am interested in how your group or the syrians or the u. S. Governments, other governments, might address that, those two factors, and to try to make the transition and beyond the day after, as you say, less troublesome. Thank you. Well, i think on the first question, the first part of the question, i personally attended a seminar in sarajevo about the bosnian conflict and lessons for syria. And i think i remember you raised the point that many bosnians warned us of not going through any peace arrangements without having a vision. They said they made that mistake and dayton was imposed on them and there was the constitution which created a paralyzed political institution, the presidency. I think it is a welltaken point, and that is why you always feel we have to think about and that is only the general objectives of democracy, but what kind of democracy, what kind of system, all those details. We have given those issues a lot of thought. Syria is different from bosnia i