This is the Tom Hartman program.

Welcome back, Tom Harbin here with you.

On the line with us is David Swanson, the journalist, activist, campaign director over

at rootsaction.org, the author of what I think is one of the

most thought-provoking provocative and important books that I've read in the last

20 years war is a lie. It's really an extraordinary piece of work. David, welcome back in the program.

Hi, Tom, and thanks for liking war as the lies so much.

It's just, well, as you know know I've been singing the praises of this book

uh... for what it's been eight ten years since you wrote it's something like that it's

it's just it's still remarkable we have a link to your petition over at Roots Action on our Facebook page.

And you started a petition having to do with guns that specifically references my book.

So I guess you could say that this is kind of self-serving. I wasn't thinking of it that way until just now realizing how this might sound but but I wrote this book the hidden history of guns in the Second Amendment because I'm horrified by the fact that 40,000 people died of gun violence last year and thought

that you know we needed to talk about not only the situation and how we got here

but also what we can do and you put forward a very specific petition. Tell us about that.

Well I enjoyed your book as you know and thought that your proposals were both

substantive and significant and would have a big impact but also so

incredibly reasonable and rational and moderate that nobody could possibly

object whereas my inclination since the moment I ever heard

about people being killed with guns was ban all the damn things your proposals

which we put into this petition to the governor of Virginia who had called a special session

of the General Assembly in the wake of yet another mass shooting that happened to be

in Virginia we put in there your basically your ideas to treat guns like cars that

...