Is the Tide Turning on Gun Reform?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2019

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, the House held hearings on gun violence, the first in eight years. In the 2018 elections, gun-reform groups outspent the N.R.A.—which appears to be in financial trouble. After years of greatly expanded gun rights, is the tide turning on gun reform? In this special episode, David Remnick talks with Lucy McBath, who ran for Congress as a gun reformer and won in the conservative district once represented by Newt Gingrich. We’ll hear from the reporter Mike Spies, the criminal-justice professor April Zeoli, the Navy veteran Will Mackin, and the gun-violence survivor Sarah Engle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:09.5	We welcome all of our distinguished witnesses and thank them for participating in today's hearing.
0:14.9	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:17.8	Now, if you'd please rise, I will begin by swearing you in.
0:21.1	Last week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives held a hearing on gun violence.
0:26.0	And raise your right hands. Do you swear or affirm...
0:29.9	Congress holds hearings all the time, on everything under the sun, but Wednesday was different.
0:36.1	Because Congress hasn't held a hearing on gun violence for eight years.
0:40.4	People on many sides of this issue spoke, including a survivor of the Parkland school shooting.
0:45.9	Rather than listen to special interests, I ask you to listen to the nation's young people and the overwhelming
0:51.0	majority of Americans who have had enough. We have had enough of gun violence in our schools, in our movie theaters, our places of worship,
0:59.0	in nightclubs and restaurants, on our streets, and in our communities.
1:02.9	Enough. We have all had enough.
1:05.7	I hope you have had enough to and use the power that the people have vested in you to do what is right.
1:10.5	For many years, maybe since the expiration of the assault rifle ban,
1:14.6	gun regulation in this country has been on the ropes.
1:18.1	We've seen one mass shooting after another.
1:20.8	You know the names, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Thousand Oaks, Las Vegas, Charleston, Parkland, Pittsburgh.
1:28.4	If I read them all, I'd be talking for an hour.
1:32.2	And through all of it, the NRA has pushed to expand gun rights.
1:37.1	They argue that the answer to so much violence is simply more guns.
1:42.1	President Trump has even suggested that teachers should be packing in classrooms
	...

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