 Welcome, everyone. We're here to hear about this new book or recent book, the NRA, the unauthorized history. To discuss it, we have its author, Frank Smyth, who is also an investigative journalist, as well as Dr. Carolyn Gowler, who is the senior associate dean at the School of International Service at American University. And also author of Onza Fault Line, Race, Class, and American Patriot Movement, which, among other things, examines the Kentucky State Militia. And with that, I turn it over to Frank to tell us a bit about the book. Sorry. Yeah, sorry, excuse me. Thank you, David. I want to thank you for preparing this event, Peter Bergen, and New America for hosting it, and Carolyn for also being here to give her insights as well. And everybody who's out there listening or watching, I'm going to talk briefly about three things. First, the three big lies that the modern NRA, or the NRA since 1977, has told about the NRA itself in the case of the first two, and about gun control in the case of the third. Then I'm going to talk about Biden's gun plan, and what about it, including gun registration is so objectionable, and to put that to at least the people on the gun rights end of the spectrum, and to put that into historical context. I'm going to talk about its prospects going forward of passage, which I think are by and large slim with the exception of background checks, and explain why the third big lie told by the modern NRA, the lie about gun control, is what's blocked gun control in this nation for decades, and is, and is likely to continue to block gun control going forward, until it's finally addressed. And then if there's time in the initial remarks, I'm going to talk about something that occurred in 1925 within the National Rifle Association that bears a direct link on the financial troubles they're facing today. And here, the NRA celebrates its 150th anniversary, which is an ironic because the NRA is now in trouble, and looks like it could conceivably not survive, at least not survive as we know it today. It was founded in Lower Manhattan in 1871 by a group of men who were nearly all veterans of the Union Army, and the Civil War, and they were also most of them were active members of the New York National Guard. They formed the NRA to improve riflery skills or marksmanship among soldiers and able-bodied men in anticipation of future wars. During the Civil War, they each had seen, especially the two co-founders, a man named William Connick Church, and a man named George Wood Wingate, the appalling lack of marksmanship on both sides in the Civil War. Since the Civil War, over the six years since that it ended until 1871 when the NRA was founded, they were closely following two wars in Europe. Each of them involving the Kingdom of Prussia, which first defeated two larger empires, first Austria and then France. And what the men of the American NRA note is that the Prussian soldiers had better rifles, rear-loading or breach-loading rifles than the Austrian and British troops, and they also had much better trained riflemen, who, with the combination of training and better rifles, were able to pick off enemy combatants along the front line of soldiers from beyond their range to fire back. I just saw this as an imperative. This was during the height of reconstruction on the eve of the Gilded Age, as America was becoming a great power. And these men were convinced that the United States would one day be drawn into future wars, most likely involving European powers, and they set up the NRA as a private initiative to start improving riflery in anticipation of these events. That brings us to big line number one. The big line number one told by the modern NRA, which is now a mantra on its website and its publications repeated by its officials and its lawyers at nearly every turn, is that the NRA is the nation's oldest civil rights organization, and the NRA has found it in support of the Second Amendment. They rolled this out, this has been bantered about for years within the NRA, but they started rolling it out in writing, and then verbally by top officials in 2013, after the second declaration of Barack Obama. And now like I said, it's commonplace. Not one word of this is true. The NRA was founded to prepare the United States in anticipation of future wars, and it was modeled upon the National Rifle Association of the United Kingdom, which was founded 12 years before and inaugurated by Queen Victoria herself. So the NRA borrowed their name verbatim, just at least without the of the United Kingdom. They borrowed they copied the gun range in Wimbledon that the British NRA had right down to the nearly solid iron targets, which the American NRA had shipped over from London across the Atlantic, so they could set up their own gun range. And they were convinced that the British NRA was the best in the world, the best system of trifle training and riflemen, and they wanted the American NRA to be as good if not better. Now, they founded the NRA at the peak of reconstruction in 1871. They lobbied Albany and the New York State to provide them with funding to train the New York National Guard to set up a gun range and train the New York National Guard. They took them two years in 1873 they opened Creedmoor range in what is now Queens. A year later, the American NRA beat the Irish rifle team at Creedmoor range to become at least nominally the rifle champions of the world because the Irish, the year before had defeated the British. They still had to compete against the British to really claim that title not unlike in boxing. So eventually the American NRA convinced the British NRA to come over and compete against them, again on Creedmoor range. And the British NRA sent not the British team, but they sent the Imperial team, meaning the breast riflemen of the British Isles to compete against the Americans, and the American NRA beat them to, to then become the undisputed rifle champions of the world. This was a Victorian era triumph and the early NRA's finest hour. And what is an incredible extraordinary story. Yet no one in today's NRA seems to know anything about this history, or these founding glorious years really of the early NRA and NRA leaders today the modern leaders since 1977, and the current CEO Wayne Lapierre who this year celebrates his 30th anniversary at the helm. He himself joined the NRA in 1978, one year after the changes in 1977. Nobody in the leadership of the NRA ever refers to this period of history, or much about the NRA history at all, because it conflicts with big line number one that they were founded in support of the second Now big line number two, which builds on big line number one, which was only this was only rolled out in 2018 at first by Candice Owens right after she joined the NRA and then finally rolled out more explicitly in 2018 and really at the last NRA meeting before the pandemic in Indianapolis. And the claim is, which was made by Alan West and NRA board director a Christian commentator, and also now the Texas chair of the GOP, the claim is that the early NRA stood with freed slaves and the way he put it in Indianapolis. You know the history, the NRA, this organization stood with freed slaves to help secure their second amendment rights. And as he put it earlier in writing this occurred allegedly during reconstruction as well. Not one word of this is true either, because the NRA was busy from the height of reconstruction when they were founded over the next six years, until the last year of reconstruction which was 1877 focusing on improving rifle re and competing against the Irish and then the imperial team. Right there was. And the NRA at the same time, one of the co founders William Conan church, who was the most influential NRA co founder, and was also a former journalist including for the New York Times, and the editor and publish of something called the army and navy journal, and he which became the nation's longest running military journal, and he also church was the most influential writer on military affairs of the era. He was also complained through editorials in the army and navy journal that okay it's great the NRA has finally shown that it is the best rifle system in the world, but it's still failing in its mission, because it's not training enough men and it hasn't gotten out of New York. So for instance that the National Rifle and use sarcasm, the National Rifle Association of Creed more has two paths before it, one to its recognition as a national institution, and the other sinking into a local club, and he went on to gain a national position is still easy if the directors meeting the board of directors of which he was one, and it also served, or would serve as an NRA president will remember for a while that New York City and Creed more range are only a part of the great rifle movement in America. As he said, as he wrote, or the editorial wrote in 1877 and another editorial a year later, after reconstruction and it complained about the same thing. So the NRA never got out of New York. When the, even though the modern leaders claim today that they were somehow traveled to the south to help arm freed slaves. There's no record either of anyone from the north or anyone at all, going to the south to help arm freed slaves against groups like the Ku Klux Klan during reconstruction. It's a wonderful story as a Quentin Tarantino kind of spin, but not one word of it is true. And Grant, in addition to being the editor and publisher of the army and navy journal, also wrote one of the first most extensive histories of the period of the Civil War and reconstruction. And in it he dealt with matters involving and the challenges facing freed slaves. Negroes had ceased to be slaves, but they had not yet become free men, and there was no guarantee that they might not be subjected to some new form of oppression. One Southern state after another, past laws designed to perpetuate the scheme of enforced labor by establishing a system of apprenticeship, more heartless and cruel than slavery had ever been, and lacking the ameliorating features of the anarchical institution. Negroes were killed in large numbers throughout the south, without even an attempt to hold anyone responsible for their murder. In the same book, which is 574 pages, Church also talked about the fact that the Union Army during the Civil War started arming freed slaves and organizing them into Union Army units to fight against the Confederacy, and that they made for powerful allies. He may no mention of anyone coming to the aid of freed slaves or helping to arm them or even any discussion of the matter. He may no mention of the National Rifle Association at all, even though he was still a prominent elder of the NRA and still support it. It's mission, which would prove to be validated finally with World War One, when in the final years of church's life. Now, that's a, what's the purpose of these lies? Well, the first lie, right, claims the NRA has found support the second amendment. The second lie puts the NRA, the early NRA on the earliest struggles for racial justice in the United States, which is not true, but it has a good propaganda value. And then, and then to finally the third lie attempts to flip the script on gun control itself. Now this lie was, has been around in the NRA for a while, but it reached its peak when President Trump in 2018 said it out loud after he reversed himself on background checks. You remember the weekend in the summer of 2018 of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, one of them linked to a white power creed. Trump then came out and said he was open to background checks. Ivanka was reportedly preparing a ceremony in the Rose Garden or I suggested a ceremony in the Rose Garden. But then Trump spoke to the NRA's Wayne LaPierre and reversed himself and he told reporters, they call it the slippery slope, and all of a sudden everything gets taken away. Translation, you can't have a little gun control without losing all your guns and then opening yourself up to tyranny and genocide. This is an incredibly important claim. And again, not one word of this is true. And in all three of these lies, these are not matters of historical revisionism. These are each fabulous inventions created by the modern NRA to advance their modern gun rights goals. But LaPierre himself wrote in 2015, don't believe their lies about background checks, because he said background checks won't work without gun registration, which is true. And therefore background checks will always lead to gun registration and gun registration invariably leads to disarmament. And then as LaPierre has said in other forums, including before a UN panel in 2012, and disarmament, of course, leads to genocide. Right, this is an extraordinary claim, not one word of which is true. But in 2013, again, after the second inauguration of Barack Obama, a book was released that had been whose research had been partly funded by the NRA. Again, by gun control and the Third Reich disarming the Jews and and enemies of the state. This book alleges, again, funded by Richard or written by Stephen P. Hallbrook, who is a marginal figure in the world of academia and certainly in the world of scholarship scholarship about the Holocaust, but who is a popular and we're well known in the United States litigator in 2010 and the Heller versus district District of Columbia case, the watershed case that first established an individual right to bear arms in the United States. In that case, Heller filed an amicus brief on behalf of 255 members of Congress, 55 senators, and then Vice President Dick Cheney. Who is marginal in in academic circles, but not in politics. He claims that the Nazis use prior gun control wars dating back to the Weimar Republic to then go and seize weapons from Jews, disarm them, and thereby enable the Holocaust. However, in the back of his book on page 181 of a 230 page book, a chapter penultimate graph before the penultimate chapter before the conclusion, he says he admits something, which seems to disprove his entire thesis, which for some reason he doesn't share the book, but this is a book also published by a think tank the independent Institute, which is also which is where the NRA funds have come through. So there was no real academic peer review in this book that I can see. And what he writes and back is police reports listing weapons seized from Jews have been difficult to locate. The Nazis may have been destroyed during the war, either by the Nazis themselves, or due to allied bombings. Right, it's this is simply not credible. Every other known aspect of the Holocaust have the records that survived by and large if not completely intact as we know the Nazis kept meticulous records. We're to believe that the records of these seizures which he's claiming exists which he can't find actual evidence of, so we're somehow destroyed by the Nazis or an allied bombing. Moreover, in the same book, and even in the same paragraph, he says he lists a number of cases where weapons were seized from Jews, and they predominantly read like this. For example, a report to the commander of the of the initial police and lipstick noted based on the degree regarding the surrender of weapons and possessions of Jews. Three Jews surrendered their slashing and thrusting weapons, and one Jew surrendered his hunting rifles. So that's pretty much. There's other examples of this throughout the book, but beyond hunting rifles and antique weapons. They found no large caches of weapon no sizable seizures of any weapons at all from Jews, or during the in the years prior to the Holocaust. And one thing that the book glosses over is the fact that other Holocaust scholars most most notably Ralph Hilberg in this book from 1961 the destruction of European Jews documents that there was no tradition among European Jewry of either armed resistance or gun ownership. You could argue that maybe they should have been armed but they were not. So none of this is true and again this is not historical revisionism. This is an outright fabrication a fabulous fail. The combination white washes the issue white washes the issue to claim the NRA is a racist. The NRA was and the early NRA by the way also supported grants efforts to crush the Ku Klux Klan in the south, especially church through his army and navy journal, they were in the front of it but they certainly supported it, and he was an unabashed granted Myra. So the NRA supported efforts to crush the clan, but the early NRA played no role in arming freed slaves against the clan that's not true. And by the way, Michael Moore and his film bowling for Columbine insinuated the opposite, and what was a reckless irresponsible claim that the NRA and the in the KKK were somehow linked. Completely untrue. But this part about the Holocaust, that gun control contributed to the Holocaust. That actually says, while they're claiming that gun control itself is racist is one of the, is one of the conclusions that comes out of the false claim about having armed freed slaves against the Ku Klux Klan. What this says is that gun control itself is not only racist, the part about the Holocaust, but that it's genocidal. And these are the kind of myths and I wrote about this in the New Republic, shortly before the election that continued to the kind of extremism that's been circulating during the years of President Trump, including the people that came out and the capital takeover in the groups on January 6 and we can go back to that. Now, just briefly, I'm going to talk about Biden's gun plan. Biden's gun plan is the oldest since it's the old boldest gun plan we've ever seen in the United States. And if it all its measures were to pass, which I think is unlikely, at least in the near term, they would impose the toughest gun laws on our nation's country. The gun plan gives the owners of assault weapons including myself I own a Glock 19 registered in New Jersey, the option to sell that back that gun back to the government's order register it under a prior 1934 law and pay a $200 tax. Right. In doing this, Biden is, is revising the idea of gun registration, which is commonplace it's the way guns are regulated in every other advanced nation on earth. But because the NRA has influenced how we look at this debate for so many decades, we don't even realize that it's like we're wearing blinders. The Biden's gun plan revives the gun, the issue of gun registration, which was mentioned by Curry Booker in 2019 during the last election cycle. But before that it didn't come up at all for over 50 years, since Lyndon Baines Johnson raised it in a signing ceremony in 1968. The NRA as opposed to gun registration since the early 1934s, this era, sorry, the early 1930s and 1934, and in 1934 they supported passage of the nation's first major gun control law, precisely because it did not include gun registration. The modern NRA could exhumed that part about being opposed to gun registration since the early 30s to advance their modern names, but they don't want to do that because it's tricky to lift the lid on the past without having more of it come out, including the fact that the man who led the country to support that law later in an NRA oral history that was later suppressed and never saw the light of day said that the 1934 was a sane, reasonable and effective gun control law. And the modern NRA doesn't like to concede that any gun control laws are good, and it's taken the position that all gun control laws are bad. It was the 1968 law, the nation's second major gun control law that was signed by Lyndon Baines Johnson when he made his comments about gun registration because it was an advance for gun for gun control, but it still fell short of gun registration and LBJ said that doesn't go far enough it needs gun registration. Nonetheless, it was the 68 law, which gave rise to the gun rights movement that we know of today. Today, the gun rights movement likes to claim that it has roots in the Revolutionary War, right, including the NRA, which is disproven by the fact that they were modeled upon Her Majesty's NRA, the NRA, the British NRA, when they were founded, and is also disproven by the fact that the country's gun rights group that still exists were each formed in the 1970s, not in response to things going back another over a century or few centuries, but in response to this 1968 law, first the Citizens' Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, then gun owners of America, then three years later the NRA underwent something called the Cincinnati Revolt, which changed the NRA, it led them to consolidate power and make sure that there were no compromisers in the NRA as they call them, or FUDS as they're more commonly called today, which is a smear for people like me, or hunters in particular, who own guns but don't support gun rights to buy things like AR-15. The NRA consolidated power, they also bury their own history, anything that got in the way of their new agenda. They also ended a practice of financial transparency in the NRA that had begun after the NRA's first financial scandal in 1925. Every year after, since 1920, starting in 1925, the NRA printed its actual annual financial report in the American Rifleman magazine, but that practice stopped in 1977 with the Cincinnati Revolt, and I would argue, and I've written in the New York Daily News, there is a direct link between the ending of that financial transparency in 1977 and the financial troubles that the NRA is facing today and the embezzlement charges that they're facing today. Now, the issue of gun registration remains paramount. I don't think that I think it's possible that background checks will now pass, that the Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate as well as on the House as well, along with the White House. But I think the rest of Biden's gun plan is going to take years before anything is going to pass. And what's stopping that from happening now and has stopped gun control after the New Town Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, for instance, was is the third big lie the NRA claims that gun control itself can lead to disarmament or will lead to disarmament and thereby open the door to tyranny and genocide. Not one word of this is true. This is a this is a specious theory. However, it's believed it's it seems to me today by nearly every leader in the GOP and many if not most of the 74 million who voted for Trump's re-election. So gun reformers, if they want to advance and get more than just background checks and even even so called universal background checks, they're still problematic because it's voluntary for states to participate in that system in terms of entering data about people who would be prohibited. And without complete records, it's hard to see how that can be effective. But, but I think it's even that may pass, but the rest of it is going to have to wait. And what's needed is a change in the conversation about guns. Start thinking about the fact that every other advanced nation on earth has gun control based on the licensing of gun owners and the registration of each of those weapons just like New Jersey does where I my weapon is registered just like Massachusetts does just like the different ways New York does all to a different degrees. It's been, none of those states have been challenged successfully in court for on second amendment grounds for registering weapons and licensing gun owners until we start thinking about how it's done in other nations and looking at broadening the options in the United States, we're going to have a problem and gun reform will still have to wait. Finally, the New York Attorney General lawsuit we can discuss and as as we move into the Q&A part. Leticia James said stated in her lawsuit that her goal is to dissolve the NRA. I believe the NRA is now planning to dissolve itself, but first it has to get through the New York Attorney Attorney General lawsuit, which I think will be devastating for the organization. And we can talk more about that with the Q&A so with that I'm going to turn it back over to David and move on to the to their comments and then your questions. Thanks. Well we'll now hear from Dr. Gallagher. However, in the meantime, feel free to put in questions in the Q&A box that's the bottom of your zoom. So thanks for having me here to discuss this book Frank and also David. So I just want to tell you a little bit before I get into some comments about why I like the book so much. I think it would have been really easy to write this as a kind of screen. And when I got into the book I realized I was just reading a history, you know, a deeply documented history of an organization and it was a history I didn't know anything about. So I think in many ways the fact that you did it this way that you did this deep dive of a history of the organization using documents, it actually makes it more powerful because you're, you know, you're telling the true story. And it is as you say the story that NRA doesn't want to talk about. I also think that for me what was really interesting about this is in a lot of ways the NRA is a microcosm of where we are today that the trajectory of the NRA is a microcosm of where our politics is today. And so I really appreciated the fact that you map that trajectory and if you haven't read the book in the audience. I think it's a stunning kind of shift from one kind of organization into another, but I also think as someone who has researched the militia movement in the United States on and off for a couple of decades now I really appreciated the mapping of the constellation, or the unholy trinity as I think of it between the NRA, the modern militia movement that began in the 90s and the GOP, and in particular the wing of the GOP of evangelicals. And some research that I did on the ground in the mid 90s into the early 2000s with the Kentucky State Militia when I first started doing research on this group in the mid 90s, like 1995, late 95 early 96. One of the first things that people told me in the central Kentucky militia which later was transformed into the Kentucky State Militia was the then 1996 concealed weapons permit law that Kentucky had managed to pass in the General Assembly and this was a scene as a big victory. But at the time, it wasn't see it wasn't described in the papers or anywhere else as a victory of the militia movement it was described as a victory by, by gun owning citizens and the General Assembly in Kentucky, but as I started digging into it what I found is that the founder of the militia movement, and several other people that were active in the militia movement at that point had a precursor organization, a second amendment that worked very closely with the NRA. So that you know what it said to me was, it wasn't me being crazy that there was just this one group and one state that was working with the NRA that this was really a strategy on the NRA's part. And I'll also say you know I was shocked to interview a member of the General Assembly in Kentucky at the top time Bob Dameron, who confessed to me in a taped interview when I was working on this book that he had worked with the commander of the militia, who at the time that I did the interview was the commander of the militia and he'd worked on him, and other members of the group on legislation. So there really was this kind of connection between political party, and the ideology of racism and the militia movement and the NRA. And I'll just bring this back to a kind of personal account so I remember at some point in the late 80s early 90s my dad, who was not a member of the NRA, taking me and my sister to see my uncle who was his older brother both of them were World War II vets, and taking him, taking us over there just for a visit we didn't see them very often. And he was a lovely man and I remember when we left, we pulled out and we saw his truck parked off to the side of the road and I'm a member of the NRA and I vote and I remember thinking at that point. What exactly does that mean I mean I the NRA was beginning to bubble up as sort of this, this politicized organization, but you know it really became emblematic of sort of an ideological world view, and it was being formed as early as the late 80s early 90s so I really appreciated that. And I think also and then I'll conclude here. For me the most important thing about this book is it shows you how we got to this place of there is no alternative. How did we get to a place where an organization that formed itself to basically make better prepared shooters who may have to go off to a foreign war. How did we get from that to this idea that there is no matter who is killed, elderly members in a church in Charleston, elementary kids in Sandy Hook, high school kids in Columbine and Marjorie Stoneman, how none of these bodies, none of these people are worth making even minor changes because they like to think of this as like the, the gun rights version of Margaret Thatcher's there is no alternative how we got there. The only question that remains for me, really is not how we got there but why you know what is it about modern society that thinks that we are literally on the verge of tyranny and that's a really disturbing sort of thought so thank you, thank you very much for writing this book. It was great. Thank you Caroline for your remarks, quite poignant right on. Appreciate it. Thanks. So, I'll throw out a few questions to begin and then we have some questions already coming in. So, one thing that you mentioned just now is how the book shows how the, how the NRA has changed over time. I'm going to focus in on what I took as one of the largest changes, which is the shift from a founding movement as really a pro government or almost a wing of the government and the military to today when there's almost an strain, and in particular the emergence of the concept of gun rights, not as something that trains the government but as something that could actually be wielded against the government to protect rights in a revolutionary or self defense against government agents forms. How did we get there and what has changed what is continuous across these periods. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, the NRA started out as a pro government organization so totally supportive of the government, and after by the by the start turn of the 20th century. They then switched their funding from Albany to Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt. And at that point the NRA became a quasi government agency, because the State Department was promoting the NRA overseas and diplomats were told to promote the NRA. And the NRA then for the next 60 years hosted competitions among National Guard military and other shooters. So it had this pro government agenda. In the 1960s, during the civil rights movement and the reaction to it, there are a number of white power groups that began to emerge in the 1960s, and this concern the NRA. And the NRA was concerned that these these white power groups, many of which were armed at names like the militiamen not unlike we saw in the 90s, and then again in more recent years, the NRA was concerned that this would sully the image of gun owners. So in 1964, the NRA leadership their entire leadership, including people who would later become radical gun rights supporters signed a statement against these groups saying the NRA does not support any activities by armed groups against the government or groups that advocate and insurgent or subversive ideology, which is really quite extraordinary considering today because today that's an anathema. The NRA didn't come out in favor of what happened on January 6, although NRA board director Alan West did intend Mugen is supported those kinds of actions back during the summer in Michigan. But the NRA of 1964 came out flatly against such groups where the NRA today has put it out of the ideologies Carolyn also said that promotes these groups. The change occurred in 1977 in the Cincinnati revolt. There was a time where the NRA had become as green as Sierra Club, without exaggeration supporting the polar bear decades before they were in danger of supporting wildlife conservation, advocating attacks on ammunition. At the same time, planning on moving their operations to the Rockies to make it much more of a shooting club and getting away from the politics. The designers and the NRA upset about NRA support for the gun control act of 1968, then organized a takeover at the annual meeting in Cincinnati where they fired the leadership one by one the old guard, and then they replaced them with themselves. And this also meant a shift from having former military leaders including a lot of decorated war heroes who had led the NRA over for over a century in the past, being replaced like people like Harlan Carter, who was a former chief border patrol chief himself, a convicted murderer, who later had his murder conviction overturned on appeal on grounds of self defense. And if you want to understand this shift this change, Carter came out and very strongly against government and he started doing that even before he took over the NRA. And once he took over the NRA his position, and to pick up on what Carolyn said he's the only NRA leader who's honestly put it out there. This is the price of freedom. And these people that die and these gun violence, even back then he told the Washington Post Michael Powell, Powell, around 2000. This is the price of freedom as Bill O'Reilly also said after the Las Vegas shooting. This is the view of the modern NRA but they bend over backwards than I'd say it out loud. The change meant that gun rights became paramount. For instance, the editor of the American Rifleman, the previous editor before the revolt had been recruited from the Saturday evening post the literary magazine. Now everything has was was set up under a new director of publications to make sure everything told the line. And again, they also ended that practice of financial transparency, as long as you were from 1925 as long as you are supporting gun rights, they weren't worried about what happened in the books, and that's when the entire culture and ethos of the NRA shifted from a gun club into an organization by Carter's words to taking an unyielding view of gun rights, and is LaPierre later said an And LaPierre joined the NRA a year later now to demonstrate the influence of the of the Cincinnati revolt ongoing. The NRA has a National Firearms Museum at its headquarters, which doesn't celebrate anything about the history of the NRA but the role of firearms in American society and to some degree beyond to show that they are determinant and out in and how things turn out who wins conflicts and who ends up on top. The only NRA leader over a century and a half who was honored inside that museum is a tall bronze bust of Harlan B. Carter inside the room it's the he's the only leader still still still recognized and they don't like to talk about him much because of his radical comments because of his prior murder conviction, but he is the father of the modern NRA as manifested by the fact that bronze bust is still there and the only one of any former NRA leader inside the museum. And in 2018 in the fall, after LaPierre came was accused by Oliver North of massive embezzlement, which later was the basis of the New York Attorney General Charges and supported by other whistleblowers unlikely whistleblowers if you will Ted Nugent and Alan West. When he was under fire in October of 2018 LaPierre wrote to NRA members. I learned from great leaders such as Harlan B. Carter, paying homage and brandishing his own ties to the Cincinnati revolt. So that's how the organization changed. And all these big lies they tell or at least the first two about the NRA are all designed to claim that there was no change whatsoever. The NRA does not acknowledge the Cincinnati revolt. The closest anyone came was when NRA President David Keen went to Moscow to give a speech to the right to bear arms group a very small group of very small and a very small audience, but he didn't know was being recorded by his Russian hosts that would end up on YouTube where Mother Jones found it. And he said, Well, we supported gun competitions and supported shooters and the like for 100 years. But then when it came to the time when our rights were threatened, meaning the 1968 law, we shifted our focus to gun rights. Beyond that the NRA doesn't like to admit the Cincinnati revolt ever occurred. They don't use that those terms even though everybody in the NRA leadership knows exactly what you talk about when you say that. And that's because they want to maintain the myth that they never changed at all that it's the same organization where it actually was a metamorphosis since 1977 that they still deny. Dr. Deller, do you have anything to say on. Yeah, yeah, I'll just add really briefly. I mean, what Frank says is right and, and I'll just reiterate that on the ground. It wasn't that this this was a subtle question really in many respects what the NRA was for at this point right on the ground militias always said the reason they wanted to protect guns was because they feared the government tyranny from the US government which they said, and claim was taken over by a one world government so on the ground. When the NRA was working with these activists, many who would go on to form militia groups or join other extremist groups. This was not a hidden thing it wasn't something that just recently popped up this has been on the ground and then in effect for a long time. So now I want to ask a bit about the role of race and both the NRA's history and sort of the gun rights and beyond that, Patriot movement more broadly. But I'd like to start by asking about a specific date that I think this often gets filtered through which is the 1967. And the Black Panther show up at the California State House, and there's, it's told us there's sort of a shift where suddenly there's a push for gun control. To what extent, do you understand that telling us correct. To what extent is this a back reading of the NRA is solid oppositionism to any gun rights, whereas there's prior cases like you were talking about in 64 or even going back to organize crime where they did not want to support sub state armed groups, gun rights. And what are the other examples that help us, both from that period and now understand where race fits within who gets to have a gun, and what that gun gets to mean. Yeah, that's a great question. If I may, I'm going to start earlier on now I'll go up to the 67 incident involving Black Panthers, because there's some antecedents there. The founders of the NRA Church and Wingate were unabashed imperialists they didn't use the term manifest destiny but they supported the idea. And when gay talked about how instrumental riflery was to defeat the Indians as he called them or Native Americans church also talked about whipping the Indians to keep them in line. They also used the racial stereotypes Sam Bo to refer to freed slaves after, after the Civil War talking about them as a voting block. However, church in the year by the early 1890s became the first individual on record now as a former NRA president and still NRA board member and the NRA founder, the first individual on record that I'm aware of, who wrote that the military should use of the N word within the ranks to refer to African American soldiers because he thought it was bad for morale. And he also wrote they should prohibit the N word and the D word or DAGO is for Italian Americans. I'm half Italian as well, which is really I think quite extraordinary and something the modern NRA should be proud of but since they, they buried the whole history. They're having trouble extracting bits and pieces that would come out in their favor. Now, by the 1960s, the NRA was moving toward gun control. There is a the Dodd bill by Senator Thomas Dodd and the NRA fought the first two versions of the bill. But by the third version of the bill when that was starting to come to fruition the NRA was realizing that public opinion demanded some gun control and the NRA which was not a balancing test, which is in an aftermath in the modern NRA, but a balancing test between the interest of gun owners versus the interest of public safety was moving toward gun control, because they knew that the rifle tied to the assassination of day FK had been purchased through the back pages of the American Rifleman magazine. So the third bill when end up banning interstate mail order guns and prohibiting sales to minors and others. What the NRA came to conclude were reasonable measures and and the NRA wrote to the leader at the time, the NRA does not take an ostrich attitude sticking your head in the sand we don't take an ostrich attitude towards firearms legislation. We know that modern society creates new problems would create which demand new solutions. Therefore, the NRA has come forward with a positive and specific plan for gun control, which we support the NRA now doesn't want anybody know that he ever said that and testified in Congress along the same lines. That was three weeks that testimony and that statement about you know where we don't take an ostrich attitude was three weeks before Bobby Seal led a group of black Panthers into the California State House armed with car beans and other and other and other weapons and other loaded weapons. The NRA quietly wrote the legislation for the California State House to then ban the carrying of the open carrying of these kinds of weapons inside the California. So the NRA did that, but the NRA was already there because the NRA was already moving towards supporting gun control and was already publicly supporting gun control. So the California incident with the black Panthers made it easier to advance that agenda they did it quietly because they still had internal opposition. The shift of what happened in the black Panthers was less about the NRA at the time, because the NRA was already there already supporting gun control. There was a shift in the Republican Party in California and a shift of Governor Ronald Reagan, and I don't think you can see that through any other lens but racism. The fact that you had black Panthers carrying loaded weapons in the State House freaked out the California Republicans and Governor Reagan then that bill went through in a matter of months that now the open carry of such weapons was was illegal. There was a shift and race played a role, but it was more for the California Republicans than it was for the NRA. And I think you know and I think that's, that's important. There was after the Oklahoma City bombing right and in the 90s. Another thing to keep in mind is the NRA is very cautious or has been very cautious until Trump Trump they took a big risk, but before then they were always cautious especially and in the early 90s, La Pierre did not make any reference to the Ruby Ridge fiasco involving federal troops and white supremacist family that ended fatally with a number of people getting killed from the family as well as a federal agent. La Pierre didn't mention that incident for three years, and the NRA did not mention that incident either in the American Rifleman at all, or were other publications by then for over a year. And the reason is that white power groups were rallying around the NRA were rallying around the Ruby Ridge fiasco and the NRA didn't want to be associated with them. And that is important, even though La Pierre was meeting in the apartment of Richard Feldman, who I think is here, along with people like Larry Pratt who were from gun owners of America who were opening meeting with white power people. So he just didn't want to be publicly associated with them that was that was La Pierre's goal in 95. When La Pierre made the statement about jack booted government thugs right before the Oklahoma City bombing a month later in Phoenix members of the National Alliance the neo Nazi group that had inspired the bomber in Oklahoma City were on the floor of the convention passing out flyers. And I know because a guy gave me one. And I brought it right to the NRA lobbyist Tanya Metaxa and I said hey somebody just gave me this what do you think of this. And I said and I quoted this at the time in the village voice, people can pass out literature for the communists. That doesn't mean we're communists, which is what we call a non denial denial. The NRA denounced extremists that they knew were there from the floor of the dice at that meeting. So the NRA has tried to keep its distance and even today with what happened in January 6, the NRA by and large has kept its fingerprints off of these groups and try not to get involved directly, even though their ideology has fueled these groups, and the NRA has also tried very hard to diversify its board, and one of the people that they nominated the nominating committee which controls the board like a NRA bureau as we explain in the book. One of these people was Mark Robinson, who became famous after he gave a fiery gun rights speech in Greensboro, North Carolina was then recruited for NRA TV was a guest spoke at the NRA annual meeting in Dallas in 2016. But then in 2019 when they, they nominated him for the board, members still didn't vote him onto the board because they didn't, their members don't share the diversity goals of the leadership. So the NRA has been very careful about race, race is a complicated issue with the NRA. But finally, just to conclude, the NRA is the is wider than the Republican Party National Convention. Like there's very few there's some African Americans but not a lot, and they're even less Latinos. So they are buyer by and large white group, which is why they need to claim that the earlier NRA stood with freed slaves to get over that to try and paint a different picture which is not true. Good question. Thank you. I'm going to move into really quick just to say, the NRA is implicitly white. And this isn't talking about who does or does not want to have weapons and carry them in any particular way. But African Americans and Hispanic people do not see the organization as supporting their rights. I mean, the NRA said very little about Philando Castile and eventually when they did come out. And he said, Well, he was also breaking the law. He had a controlled substance with him so we can't support him that they'd ever use that, you know, sort of litmus test before, and also with Ferguson and I think a good example of this is. Amy, so Amy Bundy was the leader of the group that took over the Malhar National Wildlife Reserve in Harney County, Oregon. Recently he came out in the summer during the George Floyd protests and said, you know, if you if you are opposed to BLM, then you're supporting the police and the police on our friend in the militia movement and he was widely panned not only by his fellow militia members, you know, in the country at large, but also obviously the Black Lives Matter movements across the country, laughed at that. So I mean, you know, races something that I think it's implicitly white and they just they're looking for cover for that whiteness. And I can just add when Alan West made the statement about the NRA standing with freed slaves in 2019. He prefaced it beginning and Alan and Candace Owens did it similarly on Fox News a year before he prefaced it by saying they're aware of this issue. The American Black man, the history of the National Rifle Association as a special meaning for me, and I reflected upon it. When faced with the threats, coercion, intimidation and yes, violence of an organization called the Ku Klux Klan. It was the NRA that stood with and defended the rights of blacks to the Second Amendment, right. It's completely untrue. It's a total whitewash, but the fact that they chose West and West volunteered this first in his column and Christian service news and then in front of a or a NRA members shows you how delicate the issue of races and how the NRA is trying to manipulate history in order to cast the idea that the NRA isn't racist it's gun control that's really racist. Let me turn to a couple of the questions we've gotten. We have one question about the way, or whether there's a way that the statements of the gun control movement today can actually fuel or play into the big lies of the, that you put out of the NRA. Is that happening? Are there ways that certain talking points are actually confirming or building this division that's not actually based in what the organization's history is, or failing to note, when the shift occurred. That's a great question. What I see is cowardice on the part of the Democrats, and a lack of willingness to roll up their sleeves and the part of gun reformists. Joe Biden, no one in the Biden administration has addressed the details of his plan. He is not known to have ever mentioned gun registration in his throughout his 48 year career, and he hasn't addressed it now. Neither is Susan Rice, the director of domestic policy. Neither is Jen Sackie. Nobody's talking about what the details of the plan and the fact that gun registration exists. So nobody's challenging the myths. And the gun reformers, I recently asked the question of David Hogg, or actually I asked it of Senator Murphy but it ended up being given by the moderator to David Hogg on a panel with the film Us Kids by Kim Snyder who's a friend of mine, who says, can Joe Biden heal the nation and at the same time pursue his gun plan and gun control. And he sidestepped the issue David Hogg and said, Well, we have to talk about healing the nation about healing from from gun violence and things like that which I understand, but nobody has challenged the myth, right, it's BS it's a it's a canard, the notion that gun control contribute to the Holocaust, there's no, you know, no Holocaust scholar anywhere supports this notion. But it's widely it's been it's been peddled by the NRA quietly underground for years and then since 2013 it exploded with this book and then on social media. And if gun reformers want to get anywhere in this country, they have to start challenging the NRA and these myths wouldn't shouldn't be hard because they're they're quite vulnerable and they're just a few sentence of BS, which is with rely by bodies of other documents. And so far, no one has had the guts to do it and I understand because there would be risks involved of anybody taking this, you know, challenging the NRA on this, right, with terms of the extremism we see today. But until we change the conversation about guns, the conversation that the NRA has manipulated for decades, more than four decades and 77 gun control in this country will have to wait, and even background checks to get rid of the gun, the gun show loophole. That would be a small step forward but really not a big step. Right. And that's because too many people believe the big lies that the NRA has been telling for years. So we have another question. You talked a bit about the importance of international comparisons as well as the sort of production of books by interested parties, funded by the NRA that are not great historical works. Is there a book you'd recommend on what other countries are doing on gun control. I think that's a book that needs to be done. And I'm a little frustrated that people like the New York Times and even the trace right the independent news service which I think is great sometimes color updates with the New Yorker and it's an extraordinary work. But there needs to be more focus on gun control in other countries, because what the NRA points do look, they say see look at New Zealand and before that Australia, they had each had a big gun tragedy a big mass shooting, and they ended up confiscating guns which is true. Right. And that's what they're worried about, but neither New Zealand or Australia have deteriorated into a genocidal totalitarian or genocidal state. On the contrary, they get the highest marks on freedom houses, global freedom index for their political and civil liberties in fact, right, but somebody needs to look at the fact that police officers in French and the United Kingdom and Germany deal with very few armed suspects in the course of their law enforcement career, where law enforcement officers here deal with armed suspects all the time. And all of every other advanced nation has exponentially less gun violence than we do. Why because they license gun owners and regulate every weapon. And that makes it harder for criminals to access guns. That's a fact despite the misty NRA claims. One can drive to West Virginia, get a local resident to buy $20,000 worth of weapons, and then drive to Detroit or New York and sell these weapons in cities illegally at a profit. And until we deal with this, you know, the other way to look at it is that other nations wager late wholesale and retail sales of guns nationally in those in their countries, and the United States only wholesale transfers are regulated. Nationally, retail sales are up to the states and that leads to this patchwork system that which fuels gun violence in this country and also guns going south to Mexico and further south in Latin America. And Dr. Teller, what, how would you place the sort of Patriot movement and the militia focus on guns in sort of an international context? Are we, is this part of the US far right relatively unique? Do they have people they work with abroad or reference points? Well, I think we like to think that the militia movement is unique and we sort of treated as this exceptional thing off to the side, and we rarely compare it to armed insurrection and other places. One of the things I've noticed about the militia movement since I began researching it in the 90s, it's shifted from being anti-government to pro-regime in the case of Trump. And that therefore makes it much more likely to behave like a paramilitary. And if you think about how paramilitaries behave in places where they have existed, Colombia with the AUC, you know, death squads in Central America, loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, they often do the quote unquote states dirty business. And we just haven't treated it like that. We sort of treated it as well. It's just that, you know, everyone's crazy uncle that really wants to go out in the woods and shoot target practice all the time and talk about conspiracies. And we, we downplay it in the sense by caricaturing it. And it's actually much more dangerous than that. And again, the anti-state approach isn't not dangerous. I mean, what Timothy May did was obviously horrible. But the idea that these groups could then start working with the Trump administration or a Rump administration, you know, claiming that that it's actually the correct administration is, is would kick it up a scale. Yeah. So we have a question here from Richard Feldman, who you mentioned, I believe, president and firearms owners association. And he asks, how does gun registration with its huge bureaucratic cost to the 99.9% of gun owners, owners who don't misuse their guns now successfully limit or seize or prevent the one tenth of a percent of gun owners from stealing or just keeping the guns they already possess. And so that's the first question, which I'll throw to you. Well, if you had gun registration, right, if this measure binds plan where to pass national gun registration, you would and also with the part of the buyback campaign, people who own semi automatic weapons are not going to be selling them on the black market. They're going to hang on to them. And I think that, and they'd be able to keep their weapons for self defense, but registering them puts a control on that you can't just in some states, I'm going to go buy some beer and pick up a low for white bread and by the way I'm going to get some ammo and I'm going to go buy some C57 at the store, we're only at the gun store and we have to show my driver's license and that's it then I can get the gun in New Jersey, for instance, to get up to get the Glock. I had a first apply for a New Jersey firearms ID card, which was a long process I had to be fingerprinted had an interview with a police officer, a mental background check a criminal background check. I had a handgun, I had to apply for a handgun permit good for 90 days, and had to again interview with the police had to again go through another mental health check and a criminal background check and get fingerprinted. And I've had other gun owners, including at gun shows and NRA events say don't you think that's a restrictive and I said doesn't bother me at all. I'm trying to overthrow the government, I have I have the weapon for reasons of self defense. So, gun registration allows you to keep your weapons for self defense. And I think I'm not sure Biden's plan is perfect actually I think there are other ways that this could be done I'm not sure it's well thought through. I think it's a new sales to the degree that they're allowed should at least be registered to those gun owners which makes straw purchases and transfers to others, much harder to do it's still possible, but it reduced the amount of crime guns in society, the amount of charges in one state in particular, and then are found to be used in other states. The problem is, is that because of this books like this they claim the gun control and the third right that gun registration means that the socialist or the Nazis are going to come and take away your guns, and throw you in jail and then commit genocide. Right this is ridiculous, because even, even countries like Australia New Zealand have confiscated weapons have been deteriorated into tyranny, and other nations that have gone control based on registrations, haven't deteriorated either. So you can control I think the US is different we have a tradition of gun ownership that is much stronger than in any other advanced nation, and gun reformists need to understand that guns are not going to be eliminated society. Nobody's going to amend the second amendment, I don't see any of that happening. And even heller, the decision by Anthony Scalia leaves the door open for regulation of firearms. So you can have the second amendment you can have your guns, but they shouldn't be as easy as buying, you know, a six pack we have to show ID and then you can walk out the store with a weapon. So we have a couple of questions around the theme of you said you think the NRA is going to dissolve itself or has come upon substantial troubles lately. In case, why don't you think that there's hope for gun control. And does that mean that there's another driving force behind opposition that's not rooted or mainly expressed by the NRA. And what are the other groups that might be doing that or what is the alternative explanation. That's a really good question and the short answer is the NRA is going down but not going away they're going to move to Texas under a new entity and new, a new, a new federal nonprofit, and the damage the NRA has done has already done in terms of the way that they've spread. So the NRA's legacy is much bigger than the NRA itself, and they don't, the NRA isn't necessary for these, these false beliefs about gun control to continue. The NRA, what, as I mentioned the New York Attorney General lawsuit is based on the documents and the evidence originally uncovered by Oliver North and other whistleblowers not all of whom have been named. And this came from within the NRA, you know, seeing that there's massive evidence of massive embezzlement going on, and the board was completely complicit or negligent to the point of being complicit in their oversight, which the Attorney General suit has focused on the NRA filed the NRA in Dallas and federal court and also announced it's moving to Texas. Since then, right and the, and the board then, after this the New York Attorney General suit the board sealed ranks for a time. But just last week, an NRA board member named Philip Journey, a Kansas district judge, filed a petition at the Dallas bankruptcy court, asking for an independent examiner to review Lapierre's finances to deny the bankruptcy for lack of merit. Immediately after Akram and McQueen, the NRA's longtime PR partner, who was recommended to the NRA by Harlan Carter, the father of the modern NRA, then filed a petition in the same court to dismiss the bankruptcy proceeding and then Leticia James, the New York Attorney General, then the same week filed a motion for the same. So the bankruptcy proceeding is not going to go forward. It's going to be at least put on hold until the New York Attorney General lawsuit is completed. The NRA knows they're going to take a bath and there's no way out of it. The evidence is overwhelming. So their plan is to dissolve the NRA, I believe, and then set up a new corporation, a new NRA in Texas. And by doing this, the NRA is also turning its back on its whole past, which it's never been uncomfortable with. But you know, saying you support this, you were founded to support the Second Amendment, and you were actually modeled upon the British NRA, Her Majesty's NRA just doesn't wash so they want to put it all behind them. But the damage the NRA has done over the past 44 years, the propaganda they have spread will remain because they have been unchallenged, right, the Democrats have been cowards and the assault weapons ban, which I discussed in the book from 1994 to 2004, ended up being a total disaster and backfired because the Democrats didn't have the strength to just to just focus on semi-automatic weapons. They focused on cosmetic features, like whether or not an AR weapon had a pistol grip in front or a flash suppressor, something that's very sexy that sounds cool, but doesn't matter. And the other thing, by the way, another myth out there, this is the assault weapons, the Dyer's Guide to Assault Weapons from 2008. So it wasn't until Barack Obama was elected president the first time that the gun industry under pressure from the NRA stopped calling these weapons assault weapons. And as this book says inside, it was the gun industry itself when they started mass producing these semi-automatic weapons, based on the military lineage rifles like the M16, that they called them assault rifles in order to sell them because they knew that was the sexy, that was a good catchy phrase, right, these are assault weapons. So this claim that, oh, that's a misnomer, and it's been a lot of, if you believe those are assault weapons, you've been misled or you're just stupid, it's all part of the propaganda. And that's something else to keep in mind. They called it the America's Rifle, right? Well, it is the best-selling rifle, the AR-15. And maybe it's not America's Rifle, as if it's like your dad's hunting rifle. Right, it's not a Remington BDL deluxe like you see in The Dyer Hunter, right, which was the most popular rifle in America until sort of the modern age when the AR-15 took over. And to go back to the point, the NRA is going to change into a new organization, but this, the gun rights issue was not going away, and nobody has challenged these myths, and they need to be challenged whether or not the NRA continues as it is or in a new form. One thing you talk about in the book a little bit is the way that's the need that the NRA and its need to sort of justify a blanket opposition to gun control, as how to externalize the threat or risks from guns and gun culture, or at least particular interpretations to other things, and how that has generated the NRA as a fueler of various other positions that seem disconnected, but tend to be far right or right-wing on things like the threat of crime, how to understand mental health. Can you talk a bit about that, and how that's shaped the larger discussion? Yeah, the NRA realized early on that gun rights wasn't necessarily the most popular issue. So with the help of Ackerman McQueen, the PR firm, they started developing very shocking ads, things like, would you rather be raped, or would you rather be able to defend yourself? Things that are designed to sort of play on American spheres about crime. Remember, the NRA, the Cincinnati revolt that radicalized the NRA came in the 1970s during the period of vigilante movies, and a feeling of disillusionment with institutions that also contributed to that milieu that they were emerging from. But they focused on a crime. In the crime bill in 1994, the NRA ran ads saying Congress is going to let 10,000 drug dealers out of prison, which was a reference without saying it to first time nonviolent offenders, the safety valve for nonviolent drug offenders, including a lot of people who are incarcerated for crack cocaine as well as for LSD sales, associated with the DEA called Operation Dead End based on targeting sellers among the community of the Grateful Dead. So the NRA at the same time in the 90s began making alliances with groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, as Tanya Metox, the lobbyist said openly at the NRA annual meeting in Phoenix in 1995 in front of members. These alliances led the NRA to focus on things like, well this, this, you know, don't support this candidate because this candidate is weak on tort reform to make alliances where the NRA, along with the Christian conservatives could ingrain itself into the Christian, into the Christian movement is making gun rights part of that, that expression and also other conservatives so this way if the NRA couldn't win on guns they could still win on a conservative ticket. And this is also a shift of the NRA from being somewhat bipartisan, people like John Dingell from Michigan who had supported gun rights to ultimately becoming supporting now only Republicans. That's the thing. For all this time the NRA was never in the mainstream of the Republican Party until Trump with 2016. The NRA never spoke at either major parties National Convention, until Chris Cox the NRA lobbyist since forced out by Lapierre, because of perceived of being supporting north. Chris Cox was the first NRA representative to speak at a national convention, when he spoke at the RNC in Cleveland, the same convention that nominated Trump to be president. And earlier that year the NRA endorsed Trump one of the few a handful of endorsements, or maybe six endorsements they've made throughout their whole history, and they did it earlier in that election cycle than that ever done before. So what's happened in recent years is the NRA, which had still been somewhat on the margins of the Republican Party but always had a strong foothold. The party is now shifted where the NRA is right in the mainstream. And the myths that they tell are now accepted by seemingly most people, most people in the Republican Party. And this is something that is why even if the NRA is the NRA faces trouble and is now waiting, as I would argue. This myth, this ideology they put forth is really what is continuing to block gun control and will for years, I believe. Does that answer it, David? Yeah, we have another question about, is it just too late? Are there too many guns and circulation? But I doubt that those are these myths and the sort of ideological formation too strong that for sort of the gun control measures being discussed now to make an impact on much of what's being discussed. And I guess I'd throw into that. There's often sort of discussion of gun control through the lens of terrorism or mass shootings. In some cases where there's a question about how effective actual gun control legislation is on those particular incidents, versus more broadly crime or just the sort of suicides, domestic violence, sort of a range of impacts of guns and gun violence that isn't the flashy public violence. No, that's a good question, right? And most gun violence are not high profile shootings, right? There's 30,000 people killed from guns approximately every year and two thirds of those are suicides and the overwhelming majority of those suicides are white men, right? Not to mention, it takes a devastating toll gun violence on black and Hispanic youth especially in cities around the country. And this is something that also needs to be dealt with. I think that gun control would work, but the NRA claims is, well, enforce the laws already on the books, not mentioning that they've worked to undermine the ability to enforce those laws. And then if you try to say, well, what about gun registration? Oh, that would violate the Second Amendment. Not necessarily, it seems that the Scalia decision would allow that. But what's needed to have gun control in this country is to change the conversation, to point out that other nations have exponentially less gun violence than we do because they have robust national gun control. We have gun control for wholesale transfers, but retail sales are largely unregulated and it's up to the states. They're very strict in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, but they're not strict in places like Idaho or Arizona. And I think the argument that needs to be made is this is not the price of freedom for me. The NRA, think about what they say and what they don't say. Their real view is what Carolyn said before, what Harlan Carter told Michael Powell in 1980, and what Bill O'Reilly said after the Las Vegas shooting, which for them this is the price of freedom, including the kids at Newtown, second graders who are all massacred. But for them, this is the price of freedom. I don't care about gun violence. And that's where LaPierre came up with this statement, which was not a surprise. If you understand them, what was so surprising is he said it out loud. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with the gun, implying that the teachers of the school should have been armed, right, living in a society where everyone is armed. So if somebody pulls out a gun, as recently happened in a gun store and start shooting somebody else will shoot them. And this is, most Americans don't want to live in that kind of society. Most Americans don't see that as the price of freedom. But so far the Democrats and the gun reform movement has been cowardly, or at least, or at least timid to take on these arguments. There's some like Shannon Watts of mom's demand action have been quite good at engaging the political process, but even she hasn't started to challenge these NRA myths start challenging the notion of this isn't freedom for me. Until that happens until the Democratic Party finds some leaders that are willing to start engaging this conversation without fear to challenge the NRA on these myths. No, this level of gun violence is unacceptable. This isn't freedom. This is the tyranny of violence violence. That's the kind of argument that needs to be made and backed up by facts, and the facts exist. I wrote the book in part to put to show the history of the NRA itself and show what the NRA says that is true and what the modern NRA says which is not true. So I think it's possible to have gun control in the United States National gun control retail gun control which is really what we're talking about, but it's going to require. It's going to take years and it's going to require people standing up and challenging these myths. And so far, the right wing talks about this stuff all the time. And other people just on the other side tend to ignore it and hoping that, you know, by by having by, you know, that kumbaya kind of thing is going to somehow achieve results on its own. And so far it hasn't and I don't think it will until the conversation changes until people roll up their sleeves really and start taking on these issues. For both of you. We've talked a bit about what's changed very recently since Trump. What do you see as having changed within the sort of gun rights movement NRA and the patriot movement more broadly. That's because of Trump. It's actually a substantial shift. And what is an sort of reasonable outgrowth of Trump himself being a product of the broader trends that gave rise to these movements and more continuous rather than real change and what's happening. You want to go first Carolyn. Sure, I'll just say, I wanted to sort of say something about the movement, but police in the militia movement and Trump but also just the, I think it's important to remember the tyranny argument that Frank talks about in the book that he's mentioned here. It has always been conspiratorial. You know, I mean this was based on anti Semitic myths about the Zionist occupied government, the language was changed to one world government. Many people joined the militia movement not knowing that trajectory but it was always conspiratorial and so the, the thing that's really sort of most ironic about it that is that the greatest threat of tyranny actually came, you know, in the insurrection, with the attempt to steal an election by a president who the NRA has supported so you just really brings to mind the question of what is their actual definition of tyranny, do you know I mean because it's been conspiratorial all along and I think we need to say that that's a part of the myth that Frank's talking about we really need to to to recognize that. Look, the stage is set for an epic battle, although it's going to play out over years, the gun reform movement, largely due to the Parkland students the alumni of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, right the surviving students that have become activists, not to mention parents and others of Newtown and Aurora and other shootings have finally gotten to the point where the gun reform movement is stronger than it has ever been in this country. And at the same time the movement for gun rights is also stronger than it's ever been in this country, and it's been energized by a number of factors number one the pandemic. As you saw, once the pandemic began, gun sales spiked throughout the country. Number two by the Black Lives Matter protest as gun sales started spiking the week after the death and police custody of George Floyd and spiked throughout the summer, and almost every month through over the past year, and then they spiked again after the January 6 takeover and then they spiked again after first CNN and Fox News on that Saturday, declare that Biden Harris and one elect enough electoral college to win the presidency and vice presidency. So the gun movement is is is fuels on fear it rides on fear. And in that sense, the gun movement is stronger than ever and the fear that that people need their guns has never been has never been as strong as it is now the sense of Trump has contributed to the fact that it seems now every national leader of the Republican Party from Mitch McConnell to Ted Cruz from the gamers, those willing as Timothy Snyder put it to manipulate the system to suppress the vote to the people like Cruz and Holly who would out like steal along with Trump, they're all united around against gun control. And I think even mansion will only go so far and even people like my Mitt Romney would only go so far in terms of gun control because guns are perceived as being so important to so many people. So I think the government is stronger than ever and I think this is this is why this is going to take so long, and why we finally need an honest conversation and conversation says, Yes, you can keep your guns, but you're going to have to register them with new sales. By once the ban all new semi automatic sales I don't really see that happening, but the possibility that all new sales would have to be registered. Right on a national level is something that might be more plausible, but the shadow hanging over all of this is the new Roberts Court. Right and the fact that you have a new new conservative majority that does not seem to be friendly to the notion of gun reform. This is going to be a long, long struggle, but no one should discount the gun movement strength right now, because the fear of the past year. And the other thing is, is that for the first time I believe since perhaps World War two, there's been a national shortage of ammunition in the United States by this plan he didn't mention it when he when he made his remarks on the third anniversary of Parkland. Biden's plan includes banning online ammo sales in other words terminating commerce and the gun industry's fastest growing sector, which seems like that would be a stretch, right and there's now an ammo shortage there's been a lot of people flying off the shelves over the past year, but in the past few months it's reached the point that the trade press and the NRA have both been writing about it. That's an indication of how strong the depth is for guns in this society, and now just on not part of the of the GOP but nearly all of it. And the gun reform movement is going to has its work cut out for it because both sides are stronger than ever, but I don't right now I see the impasse largely continuing with a possible exception of background checks maybe. Well, we're pretty much at the end of our time let me give you both some time to make any last comments or things we missed and also tell us what you see as the mid range future of the NRA gun rights and gun control and their respective movements and the patron movement and say, five years, seven years from today. What will it look like. Like a first Carolyn. Sure. First of all, let me just say great book Frank I'm really glad you wrote it I hope people buy it. If they haven't already read it. I think that Frank made a really good point these conspiracies about government tyranny. And just in general that all government is bad which is sort of part of the larger thing that swirls around these conspiracies has seeped into so many parts of American life and culture. They're, they're now fully conspiratized to through cases of Q and on. So just because the NRA goes away does not mean this anxiety of government goes away I mean it's going to take a long time to rebuild a discourse which doesn't see all forms of government as enemy, but I do think that gun control groups I prefer the term gun regulation because we regulate cars and seatbelts and don't call it car control. But that that's possible and we should, you know, people should be taking advantage of this and doing what they can. In terms of the, the far right the extremists right I mean this is going to be really the thing that we need to focus on and we should have been focusing on this a long time ago I mean this is not a new thing I mean the Department of Homeland Security. Under Obama they put out a report about the danger of extremists and it was, it was quashed and part because the NRA complained the, the, the, the American Legion complained. This threat is not going away and we have to address it head on. All good points, Carolyn. I think that gun, the issue of gun control versus gun rights is going to become a frontline issue if not if it's not not already so in the years to come. One of the things that Trump could jump on now that he seems to be remaining in the political sphere would be opposition to gun control that's because that's the one thing that would unite conservatives, as well as the radical right. And this is something that, you know, it's very easy to do. I think people like Senators Holly and Cruz will do it as well. And Cruz has already taken some steps in that direction. It's not going to take years before we're going to see any real change, but now at least the pieces are in place for the gun movement to start to challenge some of these myths and start to challenge some of these concerns and make a public safety arguments to the American public and one of those would be the the fact that we regulate as Carolyn said we regulate things like seatbelts and cars we regulate amusement rides, we regulate food we regulate drugs nationally regulate all these things hazardous chemicals. There are a number of things that are that are regulated by the federal government, two things that aren't regulated by the federal government or our, our wildlife, our fish exotic fish aren't regulated, which leads to invasive species being dumped into waterways, repeat somebody gets some exotic fish and then they just dump them in a river or dump them down the toilet and they end up getting into a river, as well as wildlife right with the tiger king is the best example of that they're not regulated and with, and with unfortunate results in both cases. The United States has no national regulation of firearms we have wholesale regulations of firearms set up by the 1934 law. And here's another secret of the NRA, they're comfortable with the 1934 law. They're largely comfortable with the way we the way the United States regulates wholesale transfers of firearms in 86, they passed the law to weaken some of the criminal provisions for fire for federal firearms dealers. Right but by and large the NRA is happy with the current regulatory system for wholesale transfers they don't want to admit that they want to admit that any gun control is good. That would be something to focus on, but one way to explain this to the public is we have national regulations for all these dangerous things like explosives and hazardous chemicals and amusement rides, right because they cross state lines. We need the same kind of regulations that like every other advanced nation has national regulations for firearm retail sales. And I think the gun reform movement has to think more has to really start digging into these issues and start doing things like the Lincoln project did running ads running campaigns that are challenging this propaganda that are challenging these myths that are, you're not going to convince the people that were participated in the January 6 takeover of anything because they've already drunk the Kool-Aid and the whatever percentage of people that seem to lean toward the QAnon conspiracies. You're never going to convince them, but among those 74 million people who voted for Trump's reelection. I know a number of them. Right personally, and these are not people who see themselves as extremists or see themselves as racist. They're just for whatever reasons they gravitate towards towards Trump. These are the kind of people that the gun reformists need to start working to win over. And so far that really has not happened. And by talking about public safety, we need safer schools and having armed guards and having teachers packing weapons while they're teaching algebra is not a future that we that we want, and it's not a future that we need, because if the NRA keeps going if the gun rights movement keeps going will be like the Wild West where everybody is packing. And everybody is ready to open fire on somebody else with disastrous results. Right. Their belief, which is, you know, quite simplistic, but they maintain it more guns, less genocide, more guns, less violence, when the opposite is true. And so far, they have been spinning this propaganda for so long and putting out these, these myths without being challenged by anybody, especially by Democratic elected leaders. And that's going to have to change and that's going to take years. In the meantime, this is going to remain a flash point issue, and gun violence will continue in the United States I'm sorry to say. Well, thank you both and thank you to our audience for number of good questions. I definitely recommend picking up the book or give again a read. And we'll see you at our next event.