 Well, good evening. My name is Kim Williams, and I'm a member of the Future Forum Board. Thank all of you so much for being here tonight. Future Forum advances the conversation about what's possible through policy. In initiative of the LBJ Foundation, Future Forum offers bipartisan discussions, networking opportunities, and community events to inspire a higher level of political discourse in Austin. Our goal is to create civil, informed, and bipartisan discussions. If you're not a member, I invite you to sign up before you leave. Members enjoy the best of what Future Forum has to offer, including first access to events and happy hours, networking opportunities, and benefits at the LBJ Presidential Library. This evening, we're hosting a conversation on a difficult but important topic given the prevalence of gun violence in our society. Tonight, we want to discuss how communities can come together in the wake of tragedy. Our speakers have different perspectives on how education, advocacy, and support services and the law can lead to meaningful change. We are honored to be joined tonight by these wonderful guests. Jamal Alsifer, lead attorney, representing the families in the 2017 Sutherland Springs shooting and the 2002 Rob Elementary School shooting in Uvalde. Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gunsense, and Jill Henderson, founder and president of the Bakari Foundation. Moderating today's discussion is Tony Blahetsky, investigative reporter for the Austin American Statesman and KVU News, and winner of the Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Award for coverage of the 2022 Rob Elementary School shooting. At the end of the panel discussion, there will be time for questions. And now I'll turn it over to Tony to moderate our discussion. Thank you. Thank you so much for this invitation to be here tonight, Judge Williams, and thank you to the LBJ Library and Board. This is such an important conversation that I'm glad we're having as a community so that we can learn and hopefully do something to stop mass violence and gun violence from happening not only here but across the nation. I wanted to just start by asking each of you so that we can all get to know each other a little better. And Jamal, we can just start with you and then go to Nicole and then Jill. Can you just take a couple of moments to talk about how you came into this line of work and this form of advocacy? First, thank you for being here. Thank you everyone for coming. I'm really honored to be here and be able to speak on what I think is one of our country's most important issues. As far as how I got involved, I've been a lawyer in this community for, gosh, 24 years. Can't believe it's been that long. And my law firm, which is based in Austin, has always wanted to be involved in cases that matter, whatever those cases are, and representing individuals against the powerful industries that cause harm. And over the years, me and my wife, Laurie, who's also my law partner, have always been involved in the gun safety issue and trying to advocate for change. But when the Southern Springs church shooting happened and it's the worst mass shooting in Texas history, which is saying something, we really had enough. We just were really mad. And we sat down and figured out a way that we could get involved to help the families and file a federal lawsuit and help those families that also make some progress towards change. And that really inspired us, were able to do that. And then, of course, it got us involved in working in more of those cases. And so, it really happened, there was no real plan. It was just, we care and we're tired, we're sick and tired of this happening and we wanted to do something. And I think that's important because it's not complicated. You just have to take that step to do something and change can happen. So that's how we got involved in that space. And now, we're working on several cases, not just here in Texas, but around the country trying to make that change. What about you, Nicole? I appreciate hearing your story, Jamal. So I'm like a lot of parents and grandparents and other concerned citizens out there. I got involved after a mass shooting and that shooting was at Sandy Hook. And my kids were little at the time, really small. They're teenagers now. And I was a stay-at-home mom and I was, had been trained as a social worker, but I wasn't working. I was just, I was parenting, I was quite busy with that. And it just, it shook me to my core and there's really not words to describe like what a life-changing experience that was, but the person that I was the day before was not the person I was that day. And I never really have been the same person. Again, I've learned to live with the knowledge that these things can happen. And I've done everything I can to try to work on it. So I started as a volunteer actually with Moms and Man Action. There's a lot of Moms and Man Action volunteers here. And I started the Austin Group here when that organization was very, very new. It's now grown to be an enormous gun safety, grassroots organization. And then I worked my way kind of through being an advocate for many years and I wanted to do this work professionally. So I landed in really a dream job but a very hard job leading an organization that is a Texas-based organization, which I'm very proud to do. And so I didn't come into this work as a survivor of gun violence, but I will say I have met many survivors of gun violence, including Jill, and I have lost friends along the way. And so I don't think there's a person out there who hasn't been touched in some way by gun violence. And I just feel like while I'm on the planet, I'm gonna work on this issue as much as I can and as long as I can to move the needle in small ways, big ways, whatever it's gonna take. Thank you so much. And Jill, I know we've known each other for some years now when violence quite literally came to your doorstep. Exactly. So thank you for that question too, Tony. It's a great question. And thank you, Jamal and Nicole, for the work that you're both doing to help families like my family. So unfortunately, we were kind of thrown into the arena. As Tony said, violence came knocking on our door, not once but twice. Our oldest son was murdered in 2007 and he was shot and killed. And then 10 years later, our baby son, our youngest son, was beaten to death in Greece. And so we know that violence at the hands of another is something that must be discussed. It must be curtailed and people need to really just understand the gravity of the issue and how it impacts families and communities and people in general. So I'm glad to be a part of this conversation. Thank you, Tony. Yeah, thank you, Jill. Nicole, I wanted to ask you if you could just assess what is happening on the ground here in Texas and the seemingly obvious disconnect from what's happening at the Capitol to the reality of gun violence on the ground. Can you just talk about that and give us an assessment? Yeah, and I can appreciate you calling it a disconnect because I've said that many times when I'm speaking the news or at an event that there is a disconnect because the truth is is that the majority of Americans and the majority of Texans, regardless of their background, excuse me, support common sense gun laws, there were just recent polls that came out on the legislation to raise the age from 18 to 21 for purchase of semi-automatic rifles and 68% of Texas Republican voters support that legislation that we were not able to unfortunately move to final passage last session. So yes, there's a disconnect. There is a political divide. It's very unfortunate. The issue has become very divisive and people don't really have, I think, a voice in this issue even though they're being impacted all the time, whether that's through a shooting that occurred in their community that hit national headlines or a shooting that they've experienced that did not hit headlines. More than 4,000 Texans are shot and killed every year. The majority of suicide, excuse me, the majority of gun deaths are suicides. The majority of domestic violence homicides are committed with a firearm. Black and Latino men and boys are disproportionately impacted by this issue. So I could go, Texas has experienced four of the, I think, 10 deadliest mass shootings in history. So there's clearly a problem. At the Capitol, there was turnout of hundreds and hundreds of people in support of that legislation to raise the age. And we received an unprecedented committee vote in favor of that legislation. And it was a bipartisan vote. But state lawmakers, the leaders at the Capitol didn't move that bill to final passage. It never got to the house floor for a vote. I think that, and if you look at the record of who showed up in opposition to that bill, very few people. But isn't it true? It was almost regarded in some ways the hearing itself as a courtesy hearing because I know so many Uvaldi families were there, for example. Yeah, that is how it was sort of thought to be at that time. But it also resonates with many Texans. And so to background checks on all gun sales and a host of other common sense gun policies. So we do need to fix that disconnect. But I do want to really be clear that when you talk to the average Texan, whether they own a gun or regardless of how they vote, they want to see some change. Is there any sign of movement in the more immediate future? Do you see that? Can you forecast that? I absolutely think that there is, you know, the fact that we were able to get a bipartisan committee vote on that piece of legislation means we can move it further next time. We've done some really big things on safe gun storage, for example. An issue that everybody can throw themselves behind. We've gotten investments in safe gun storage education. We were able to move a policy that by which the state notifies school districts that they have to let parents know about how to store guns safely at their homes because 76% of school shooters access their firearm from home. So we've done big things that even with an uphill climb. So yes, I'm always optimistic we can do more. Jamal, I know so much of your work is based on the fact that there is what many consider an absence of laws in terms of legal protection from guns falling into the wrong hands. But I know attorneys like yourself are also using civil litigation more and more to try to bring an idea of justice to victims of gun violence and their families. Yes, I think that, like everyone agrees that we need more lawyers, right? I mean, that's always everybody. Everybody says that, but we do need a multi-factorial and multi-pronged attack on this national crisis. The work that these groups do, and I've worked with Brady, I've worked with Everytown, I've worked with Mom's Demand Action, I've worked with all of them. It's amazing what they're doing, especially in light of the fight you have in this state in particular. My clients in Uvalde were at the Capitol. They were turned away, some escorted by police out while the NRA lobbyist was allowed to mingle inside with the lawmakers. So we have a corrupt and powerful system that is being allowed to tell these lawmakers what to do. So legislatively, at least in states like Texas, it's very, very difficult. My view has always been that lawsuits in our judicial, our third branch of government needs and has to step in when our legislative and executive branch can't get it done. That's why we have the judicial branch, and that's what the court system is, and that's why trials and juries are so essential. And if you look throughout history, we're the University of Texas, sweat versus painter. One of the most significant cases in the history of the Supreme Court was this school denied a black man from getting into the law school here. That case, which he won, was a predecessor to Brown versus Board. Obergefell, the case that brought gay rights to and gay marriage to all of our gay citizens. A lot of people were saying, don't do it through the courts, do it legislatively. But that wasn't working. And so in the gun violence space, one of the reasons why we got involved in the first one, and now we're doing four or five right now, including Uvaldi, is we recognize it's time to step in, and it's time to force the issue through the courts and have, because I think the most powerful thing in the world, in our country, and I'm biased, but I think one of the most powerful things in the world is to get powerful people under oath. Because that is the thing that scares them the most, subpoenas and getting them under oath. And when you get them under oath, and you have that subpoena power, you find out the truth and there's no way to avoid it. And so in our case, in Sutherland Springs, we got a verdict. It's the first federal court verdict from a Republican judge in Texas that found that background checks work as a legal principle. It's the first time in this country's history. And that is something we are building on now for future cases, because like you said, I've another stab for you. 85% of gun owners and 89% of non-gun owners, and 75% of car-carrying NRA members think that we should do criminal background checks on all sales, all sales. If we did just that, it would make a monumental, it would have prevented the Sutherland Springs mass shooting, it would have prevented the church shooting in South Carolina, it would have prevented the Virginia Tech shooting and the main shooting that we're currently working on in the state of Maine. Not all shootings, but quite a few. And so there is this large, large base of support. We just have to find a way to aggregate that support against the one powerful gun lobby industry, because that's really the impediment. I wanna ask a follow-up to that and then ask Jill a question along these lines too. But for victims and families that have been touched or ripped apart quite literally in some instances by violence and gun violence in particular, can you just talk about your clients, the degree to which that notion of justice or reality of justice is helpful to their own process, their own healing? I think the best person to talk about that is Jill, I can tell you, I don't know and I've now represented or am representing hundreds of families who've been the victims of mass shootings and some of the most horrible circumstances, churches, their elementary schools. And I think one of the things that we don't do well generally, and I'm not blaming media, but just as a generally is we move on from the headlines because they're so terrible that it's easier just to move on from them. But when we deal with these cases, I'm with these families for years, I still talk to them, the long-term damage that is done to these families who have to live with this day to day is so difficult that it's important that they get a sense that there was meaning and justice is a way to do that and for it was not the money to my clients, the most important thing to them was they said Jamal, is that court case that found that changed the way the military in our case did their entire background check system and the finding that background checks will save lives? They said, is that gonna stand? I said, yes. And that was the most important thing to them that they took their grief and were able to make the country a little bit safer. Jill, I wanted to ask you the extent to which you are comfortable talking about what happened to your family in 2007 and then with Bakari's death because you have been the victim and your family's been the victim twice in a decade of two horrendous things. And I ask you to talk about both of those incidents and not to be intrusive, but I think it's always important that we amplify the voices of people who have lived the reality. So the extent to which you are comfortable, can you share that please? Yeah, thanks, Toni. To what Jamal said about the legislation, I mean, I'm 100% behind that, but the mass shootings is what gets the attention and unfortunately you have other people that are losing their lives, like Nicole said. You know, it could be domestic violence or whether it's just crossfire. I mean, there's so many people losing their lives and so we're on the end of both types of situations when our oldest was murdered. There was no publicity, news coverage or anything. It's just our family had to figure out how are we gonna deal with it? And because of our Christian background, we thought the best way to do that was just to rally around our Christian family, our regular family members and just do like the way that we knew to do it because in the black community also, therapy was not something that was very popular. So basically the victims' compensation people, they'll give you a packet and they're like, well, here's some therapists. They're not therapists that look like us, first of all, so you're gonna have that trust issue that not necessarily want to just lay all of your burdens on someone that doesn't have many things in common with you. Then 10 years later, we're in an international murder case. I mean, so as Tony knows, I mean, the news is at your door before you can call. Thrust into a national, international news story. International news story. I mean, we didn't even know what to do. I mean, before we could call family, it was going on the news and we didn't even realize it because we're behind closed doors trying to figure out how are we processing this? How are we getting our level on home? What are we doing? So on both ends of the spectrum, there needs to be things that are done because there's communities that are broken and healing needs to take place. Like Tony said, after the fact, after the news goes away, we still have to deal with this. Families are still broken. So basically that's what made us start the foundation. The Bakari Foundation is to continue that journey with families because it's hard because again, in America, the way that we deal with grief is therapy is usually one-on-one. We found that that still isn't helping the family because the family doesn't know how to connect with each other. You don't know how to talk to each other. You don't know what your triggers are. So basically that's what we felt was the way we can make an impact. Yes, we're behind all the legislation. We're supporting families in any way we can, but we know families have to learn to heal together as well because when the family heals together, they can go out and help the community collectively. Yeah, thank you so much. Jamal, in terms of your advocacy, in the cases that you are dealing with and have dealt with, what have been some of the arguments that the courts have seemed to be compelled by that you have brought to bear in some of your cases? Well, so it depends on the case. I'll just take you through a couple real quick. The Sutherland Springs Church shooting case for these of you who don't know, it was a bad conduct discharge Air Force member who had been convicted of domestic violence and the Air Force failed to report them to the federal background check system so he's able to buy his AR and all the thousands of rounds of ammunition when he otherwise would have been subject to arrest. So in that case, it was the federal government that was Department of Justice that was fighting me on it. And their argument was Texas has guns everywhere and their laws are so permissive, how can you blame us even if we had reported them? And so we had to go through the whole sort of NRA playbook of defenses and deconstruct and bat each one of them back, which we were able to do because none of that, those arguments are really evidence-based. So what we were able to do in that case is really establish and I mean, I depose the director of the FBI that runs the national background check system. And like I said, under oath, she was one of my best witnesses because she was like, listen, I have all this data and it proves that when you use background check systems we keep millions of felons and dangerous people from getting guns. And that was our basis of our argument is if you follow these background check systems, you expand them, you're gonna catch millions of people who shouldn't have guns. You're gonna prevent those people from getting them so they can't commit violence. So that's what we had to face in that case. Uvaldi is an entirely different situation. You have one of the largest law enforcement breakdowns in the history of the United States, 380 officers who simply didn't go in while children were begging for help during a mass shooting. The third part is in all of these, there's the large looming specter of it's the gun. It's the gun. And you know, the one thing I know is true is this doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. We know how to fix this problem. We actually know this isn't mysterious. All the, when we face the opposition from the right all the reasons they give are all, they're all false reasons. And because everywhere around the world and every democracy, this problem is fixed. And even in those that allow guns, they do so much more to regulate and license them and to make sure that bad people don't get guns. And that's really what this is all about. So I think the purpose of these lawsuits is to shine a light on that. Is to, sunlight is the best disinfectant. And when these lawsuits are allowed to do is it puts all that thing in the public eye, allows reporting, which we really need to follow that evidence and shine a light on it, like you did. And what happens is it starts breaking down those myths. They're all myths. We have so many examples around the world of how to fix these problems. Both, I'm not talking about mass shootings. We have 45,000 or more deaths a year from gun violence alone. No other country in the modern democratic sphere has anything close to that. We are 20 times plus the rate. So we know what the problem is. We know how to fix it. We just have to keep pushing at it. And so that's what we're trying to do is all these variety of headline suites are designed to expose the truth, show what the actual evidence is. So it becomes harder and harder for these groups to just literally make up stuff. You all might not remember Wayne LaPierre, by the way, who just got subjected to a $5 million judgment for defrauding the NRA. And he is officially a corrupt person. We knew that unofficially, but he now is officially due to a lawsuit. You know, in 2000, he advocated for universal background checks on the record. And so this is not something that's controversial. Nicole, I wanted to ask you, while there is a lack of appetite at our own state capital, talk to us about some of the other work that can be done and what communities across our state and even our nation can do to address the violence in their own communities. Yeah, I mean, while Jamal was talking, I was thinking, you know, we say this a lot, there's not a one size fits all solution to this problem. Yes, we concentrate heavily on policy. We firmly believe we have to pass safe policies that can save lives because they've worked in other states to do that. So we know that there's evidence behind them and they must be done and we won't really give up till we get there. At the same time, there are other ways to move the needle on this issue. Education is extremely important. Things like this tonight, giving people the knowledge and the tools to understand the issue, to talk to people, sometimes one-on-one conversations about is your guns stored safely, can save somebody's life. You really don't know the ripple effect of that. Giving people tools to advocate at the capital and in their communities, talk to one another. There's also intervention programs in communities hardest hit by gun violence. I mentioned earlier, you know, black and brown communities suffering the most. Community violence intervention programs are extremely important where there are people from those communities who have experienced violence in that community or perhaps perpetrated violence who are intervening in that cycle by talking to people or working in hospitals, talking to victims so that there isn't a retaliatory act. There's evidence that those work but they need investments. They need to be prioritized by local leaders on up to federal. So there's not a one-size-fits-all solution. There's a multi-pronged approach that we can take but we do have to put it all on the table. And how can communities prepare for the inevitable that are seemingly inevitable that may come their way in terms of having the proper infrastructure in place and to be able to respond, for example. So I don't know if I'm honestly an expert on that because we really work on the prevention side at the capital and with community education and programming but I know that there are some other resources out there. I'd be happy to provide some ideas and I don't know if others have some ideas but we really work on trying to prevent those things from happening in the first place through unfettered access to firearms and other measures. Jamal and Jill, I think you both sort of spoke to the aftermath and I felt that the Department of Justice report that was recently released in the Uvalde shooting spoke so eloquently to the fact that as a society and even unfortunately in some communities where mass shootings in particular happen and Jamal, you mentioned this but the headlines can move away, the attention moves away and there's this grief and trauma and tragedy left, left in this way. Jill, how important is it that communities have some sort of infrastructure in place to address that, not just in the big mass shooting but the almost daily acts of gun violence that we see right here in Austin, for example? Yeah, it's very important, Tony because without the proper resources and tools you just compound your trauma and so things just continue to get worse and worse. People aren't dealing with their mental health in a manner which they need to. A lot of people don't know how to so it's something that needs to be addressed, something that needs to be talked about. It should not be only talked about in a therapist's office. People need to have community conversations about it. It needs to be addressed at school. Students need to be able to express themselves so that they're getting that rage out because they're holding in, you see something that happens, you see Uvalde happening in your stress because you have to go to school the next day even though it's in a different city but these students are dealing with a lot of stuff that we didn't have to deal with as adults when we were children so as adults we need to be able to provide them with extra love and Tony knows I've talked about this all the time but we just really need to be more loving, more encouraging and embrace each other where we are, not judge each other but have open conversations and be seen because like Tony said, once the cameras are gone these families are no longer seen. A lot of them go into isolation, commit suicide. I mean they just don't know how to deal so we need to be able to embrace people and not leave them after the lights are gone or the next headline comes and run toward the next headline. Those families still need the support. Yeah, Jim, do you have some thoughts on that? Absolutely right. The truth is when we don't address gun violence, mass shooting, we don't address these massive epidemics. Gun violence is now the number one killer of children in the United States of America and it used to be in this country that would marshal a ton of political, legislative and community support to help fix that problem and so what's happening now is we are, it's a reallocation of resources. If you don't address and prevent the problem then we're gonna cause strain on our mental health system. We're gonna cause strain in lawsuits. We're gonna, someone is gonna pay and so I think it's a real, real misallocation of resources because I can tell you that after every mass shooting our families are, Jill can speak, how broken they are and how there is nothing, there's no automatic system in place to send them to. Often we're doing the searches and we are not experts. I am not an expert on mental health and we, if we're gonna talk about mental health in this country then we need to actually, until we fix this problem that is a number one killer of our children or 19 and under, then we need to set up systems in place and healthcare in place where not only can we, we counsel them before but when these things happen it's available after and not for two weeks which is what we're experiencing. That's the kind of support our families are getting after these mass shootings. I'm talking in years, this is years of counseling because of the grieving process. Maybe forever even. Oh, I think it goes on their entire lives, I know it does but certainly the waves and stages in the initial two to three years are so overwhelming and crippling. I would get calls from my families, my clients who, they were suicide calls. They were, I'd have to do an emergency call to get police to go show up and I think, and they were in that, you know, in that place and so, and this would be two years after the event because you never know when that wave of grief comes. I mean, I'm speaking Jill knows this more than anybody and so if we're not gonna deal with the issue then we have to allocate resources to help. Now ideally is, we do both, you know, we do both. We make sure we have more secure mental health available for everyone but also try to prevent this kind of, because this is extraordinary and extreme violence. When you're talking about gun violence, it really is a unique and different kind of violence that affects people really in a way that is hard to compare to other kinds and so I think that there are so many different ways that we have to address and treat it and it's just, it is so inadequate is really not the right word for what is available for these families now and we have a lot of work to do in that area as well. You know, you hear it all the time from our leaders. Oh, it's a mental health issue and it's a, you know, and we need to allocate more and it's sort of an unfunded mandate. You know, they don't actually do it but that's something we can and should be doing right now and it's needed and we have the funds especially here in Texas to do it. Yeah, and that's a good transition to this idea of prevention. We've talked about the emotional aftermath of gun violence. We've talked about, you know, what's happening on the ground legislatively and legally but, and Jill, you and I have talked about this and Nicole, you as well with gun safety and making sure that the guns are properly secured but can you each just talk about from your perspective, prevention? I know that, you know, Jill, you have a deeply held belief that much of this is fueled by hate in the world and what we can do in our everyday lives to spread something that is not hate, yeah, more love. So, yeah, I mean, it's a four-letter word, love. So basically, I am a strong proponent that the more people authentically feel loved, the easier it is for them to express things that they're holding bottled up within them. And like Jamal mentioned, suicide, if you have someone that you think may even be thinking about it, just ask them because a lot of times that will prevent somebody from committing suicide just knowing that you realize that they are that far gone that they may actually want to take their life and they know now someone cares enough to even check on me. So I mean, it's just the small things that we do, kindness, I mean, just, you know, opening the door for people, saying hello, looking in people's eyes, humanity, we just need to get back to humanity so that people can start to really re-engage because with the pandemic, people have been disengaged and it's now becoming the norm. Everything's on social media, we're on Zoom. I mean, people are no longer viewing each other as humans. So I think that's one thing that we can do. And you mentioned suicide and as difficult as a topic as that is, I am glad you mentioned it in this context because that is such an under-discussed part of gun violence. Oh yeah, and it's huge because people don't know what to do. And if you've been thrown into the limelight, you're used to all this attention and so you feel like people are loving you. They're not loving you, they're just getting the next sound bite. So then when those lights go away, those families don't know what to do and a lot of times it results in them taking their life because they don't have anything to hold onto. There's no hope to hold onto. I think this is a really good question because I think, again, our country has by far the highest rate of successful suicides and the reason for that is because guns, access to guns. And we, but we are not uniquely mentally unhealthy. Every country, modern democracy around the world has social media. Every country went through COVID. Every country is going through the same struggles and with social media and all of this isolate. Everyone is, but we have a astonishingly different and higher rate of gun suicide deaths. And suicide is transient most of the time. It's a moment that people are thrown into and so access to a lethal way of committing it is a big reason why our rates are so high. And so that's why I think that if we can address this issue of guns and it's not about, okay, let's just get rid of all guns because a lot of countries, Switzerland, Israel, they have a lot high gun ownership rates but they also have remarkably common sense regulation and licensing and storage laws and all of these other things we can do here. And their rates are dramatically lower. And so suicide is a big problem and it's directly related to the access and ease with which you can get guns. And really, one of the things that I've learned the most about being involved in these cases is that I don't want, I have a lot of hope, believe it or not, that because I look at it and go, wow, we can actually fix this. This is not impossible and this is not as difficult as those on the certain side of the aisle make it. It's actually very, very, very possible. And when you have a big problem and you know what you can do to fix it, I think that's a positive thing. And so we have great examples of around the world where, and by the way, even in this own country, we didn't have this problem for 230 years. The way we have this problem now, we didn't. So our own history is instructive of how we can really get to the prevention side and really do some amazing work. So I still am, I'm on the side of hope here. I know we can do, that's why we do what we do and our firm is, I know we can make a difference because the answers are pretty clear to me. Nicole, can you just talk about your prevention efforts as well as obviously your legislative efforts? Yeah, I mean the three pillars of our mission are, we seek to prevent gun violence through education, partnerships and policy change. So I've talked a lot about the policy change work. We have very lax gun laws in Texas. We don't require a background check on every gun sale. We don't require reporting on lost and stolen guns. We don't have an extreme risk protection order which is also known as a red flag law and a host of other things. So we work heavily on those because we know they work in other states as I mentioned but also through education, which I've talked about a little bit tonight, arming people with the tools and the knowledge, making sure that they know how to talk about safe gun storage, secure a gun safely, why they should do that and partnerships. We lead a coalition of advocates statewide. We just had a meeting this morning and we're involved in multiple coalitions as leaders because we know that this work can't be siloed that we really have to show up with other people. People with lived experience, people who have knowledge and expertise that we may not have, but we all share a commitment to pushing forward on prevention of gun violence. And so those are the pillars of our work. There's a lot of other things that we do that I think really are important. You were talking about suicide. We're working right now on some projects to expand temporary out of home storage options for people who may be in crisis and need to remove a gun from their home. So there really are a lot of ways and we're trying to work on all of them, but we certainly need everybody's support. So please get involved in some way. I'm happy to talk with you about that later, but also as Jamal's mentioning, we do need leaders who care about this issue. We need them to hear from us. We need to make sure that we are electing people who care about this issue. I did see representative Vicky Goodwin, who is a champion for gun safety at the Capitol. We need more of her. We have others, but we need more because as you said earlier, there's a disconnect. Most people support gun laws, but we're at an impasse here and it's unacceptable as people continue to die and be murdered. So anyway, I'm happy to talk more about how you can get involved, but it really will take everybody. We've got just a few more minutes before we open it up for questions. And I know that so many people are going to have questions for you, and Jamal, you spoke to this a little bit, but in our closing minutes here, I'm just wondering if each of you can give some insight into something around this conversation that is hopeful and effective at a time when there is so much deep frustration around what is seen as a lack of political movement on this topic, a reality of a lack of political movement on this topic. Jill, I'll just start with you. I would say that even though these families are dealing with this type of traumatic grief, we do rally around each other as best we can when we're able to identify each other and provide each other support. So just to give you a glimpse of hope, there are families that are now connected that would have never been connected that are just united and helping to spread awareness about different types of issues. And we've met some really good people on this awful journey. So I guess that would be just a glimpse of hope that our family has, is that we know that along this way, along this journey that we are connecting with those who have broken hearts, but we're not letting that stop us from living. We're trying to take a negative thing and turn our pain into purpose. And the majority of the people that I run into are trying to do the same thing in some kind of former fashion. So. I was thinking about how a year ago, last February, we were the second month into the legislative session. We held a Coalition-Wide Community-Wide Advocacy Day. Mom's Man Action was a major partner in that and a lot of other partners. There were 600 people at the Capitol. Representative Goodwin was there. The Uvalde survivors were there. We really gave them those that wanted to speak a stage to talk about their experience. One of them was a 10-year-old girl. There were educators, there were gun owners. There were mental health experts. There were people who, many survivors and people who work with survivors and so many other people I can't even name. That really gives me hope that there are that many people that would come to the Capitol, bust in from cities across our giant state to be there to meet and we met with every lawmaker in the building. It was a heavy lift, but what an impactful day that was. We're gonna do it again next February and we're gonna do it again and again and again every legislative session. So our lawmakers can see the outpouring of support and push them and pressure them until they do this or until they're replaced with somebody who will. So I have hope, those moments give me hope and I couldn't be more proud to be a part of it. Thank you so much. And Jamal, I guess one sense of hope is that the courts have seemed open to this type of litigation, right? Yes, so first vote, vote, vote, vote. And my kids are here today, two of them are UT students. And when I look at them, I want them to look at me and be able to say, well, my parents didn't just give up. They tried to do something. And so I think all of us, I want all of us not to give in because listen, all of our biggest triumphs in terms of equal rights, civil rights, any issue that was important in this country, it took someone brave standing up against a loud opposition. Oftentimes with the threat of violence trying to do the right thing. And so we can do this, we can and we should do this. And I think this is the gun violence and where we are in this country now is one of our biggest and most important challenges. And to me, you just have to look at our history and know that you just have to step out of the computer and the comments sections and the social media pages and get in to take one little step, whether it's joining an organization, whether it's making those 10, 15 calls during the election period, whether it's doing a little bit of an uncomfortable thing to step out of our homes and step into the fight. If you will do that, that's how we get these things done. And I do think the courts are open to it because the courts historically in this country have always been open to doing the right thing if the right case is brought before them. Not all courts, not all the time, but certainly it happened in our case. I think it's gonna happen in the other ones that we're doing because I think a lot of folks in the judicial system at least, and Judge Williams can attest to this, is that we know when something's not right as lawyers, as judges, and the number one bedrock principle of a democratic judicial system is if something's not right and people are getting harmed as a result of it, then the law ought to and has to step in and fix it. And so from our firm, that's sort of the principle we follow. I mean, if it's not right, we wanna do something about it. So I think that that's what we wanna do on the court side, but on the legislative side, all of us are part of the legislative fight. And the community is what people respond to. So the thing that powerful interests hate the most, the thing they hate the most is numbers for ordinary people stepping out. That's the thing that scares them the most. That's why they wanna keep everything secret. That's why they wanna pass laws that give them immunity from lawsuits so they don't have to face the truth and be under oath. So my suggestion is that you're here. Take that one step further. I'm sure many of you here already do a lot in your community to speak up because I've seen it happen. I've seen it work miraculous change and I'm sure that we can do it again. And so we just have to be constant and vigilant. And I'm certain if we do that, that we'll make that change. And so we, I am certainly not gonna stop fighting till it's done. I know we could talk all night, but we've got about 10 minutes left for your questions. And I know many of you are eager to ask your questions. So we can start with you, sir, and the bat. Do you wanna tell us who you are? I'm Jeremy Kovsky. I'm also a gun owner and a hunter, but I 100% support red flag laws, background checks, education and licensing. The thing that frustrates me is hearing the statistics on the NRA members, Texans who agree with these laws with the, with background checks. But why do we have the same legislatures, the same people in the executive branch that are opposed to these changes? Changes are happening too slowly. We need changes. We need the lawmakers to either get with it or get out. Nicole, well, Jamal, both of you, yeah. We can start, because I know you're in. I mean, yes, I share your sentiments. It is incredibly, incredibly frustrating. And I wanna say we have a lot of doctors that we work with that are involved in the movement to end gun violence, which is tremendously important. I mean, we've been talking, Jamal's talked about this a lot. There is a powerful special interest. It's just a fact. And I've seen them with my own eyes in many hearing rooms with them. And they oppose every good bill and they carry a lot of weight with lawmakers, with lawmakers who are important at the Capitol, who have the power, you know, whole power there. And it doesn't, unfortunately matter how many people came out in support of that bill, but their word, you know, ends that bill's life. And it is tremendously frustrating. So that is a system. I don't know if anyone has completely cracked it yet, but I think we've also talked tonight about how important culture changes, right? We've been talking about court level changes. We've been talking about, you know, the outpouring of people at the Capitol. We haven't really talked about youth, but I think that's a big piece, is they're going to be, they're deeply affected by this issue, you know, the mass shooting generation. We hear from them all the time. They're gonna be our future voters. So I do think we're gonna continue to see shifts. I know it doesn't happen fast enough. So I think the pro, so you're 100% right, because I don't think this is a gun on or it's non-gun on our issue. Like I said, that statistic I told you, I think is important because you're nearing 90% agreement and then 75% for NRA members on a lot of these important things. But most people aren't one issue voters, right? So you can, you have somebody who says, yeah, I'm for all these, but if I don't vote for this person, then I'm not gonna get the person who I want to vote on, all these other social issues or whatever issues that I agree with. So I think part of the problem is that, is that if you're for these solutions, you can't find a home in a certain party where they're like, oh, okay, I'll vote for that, but because they're not allowed to, they're not allowed to. The gun lobby and the NRA were very smart in instituting what I'm not joking, they called the Mussolini rule. And that was one state, always with the state, never against the state. And that was if you are a vote against any issue or not for, we will end you as a candidate. It doesn't matter about anything else you do, if you don't support us all the time, every time we will end you. And they've done that consistently for 20 years. And so it's really a marketing problem on that side. And so how do you combat that, right? We have to be resolute in getting numbers out voting and letting them know you will not get our vote if you don't vote in this manner. And I don't think politicians hear enough when they do hear from us, especially when they hear from young people, because they hope young people do not care enough to get active. When young people stand up and their voices are heard, it scares the crap out of those politicians. It really does because they just bank on them being low numbers. So there is a concerted effort to make people scared for their political careers and to show that they can do it. There are two really, if I could just recommend two books that I think are some of the best books ever written on this issue. American Carnage, written by Tabor and Fred Guttenberg, who's one of the fathers of Parkland, is just a simple book about all the myths being thrown at us politically about gun violence and the truth about all those myths. And then the other book is called Gun Fight by Ryan Busey, who is a lifelong Rock Rib Republican who was the vice president of one of the oldest and largest gun companies in America, his whole career, who turned after Sandy Hook and seeing what the gun industry was doing to profit off of violence. And he wrote a book called Gun Fight. He's now running for governor of Montana and he's a Democrat. And he wrote a book saying, and it ended his career, but it was a real brave thing he did. But it was all about what the gun industry's been doing for the last 30 years to market themselves into the power that they are. And it gives you the inside story of how this happened and answers a lot of those questions on how we can legislatively really fight back if you know what's going on in their mind. So it's starting to happen. The lawsuit against Wayne LaPierre really exposed the corruption of the NRA and now the NRA is in real trouble, okay? And that's, sorry, that's good news. And so we are making headway in this direction. Of course, there are a lot of states that have already passed a lot of good laws that are reducing gun violence. We just need to do it in this state, which has one of the worst records. I know we probably have another question. I'm gonna add one super quick thing. Someone said something like this to me today. They said they asked a lawmaker how many calls do you need to get before you start to get uncomfortable about an issue. And it was like 10. It's not that many. Maybe it's not gonna push them to vote or not vote for the thing you want, but they get like. Calls, not emails, calls. Calls, anyway, just thought I mentioned that. Other questions, yes, sir. Neuroscience here, and I was the legal chairman of a group called Gun Free UT. I don't know if you ever heard about that. But we lost, but in the course of that, I've done a lot of thinking about what should happen. And I'm dismayed at the lack of a coherent overview. And I submit that we should think about the Department of Motor Vehicles. That is a system for dealing with dangerous objects, requires registration, licensing, and insurance to compensate victims. And I don't understand why we can look at a gun as not being subject to all those structures. And we've got a system in place. You open another window at the Department of Motor Vehicles and you would change the whole scene. And all we need is for a few states to take the leadership and maybe Texas would finally get the message. So if I may, I love this analogy. I have a quick story. On the way back from a deposition in the Southern Springs case when I was in DC, sat down, I just spent all day at the Department of Justice deposing officials on these issues. I exhausted, sit down, and some guy with an AR-15 hat starts walking towards my seat on Southwest Airlines. And Vicky probably knows this when traveling to DC, you're always got senators and representatives. So I'm just like, don't sit next to me. Don't sit next to me. Don't sit next to me. He sits next to me. And it's a three and a half, three hour flight. And I'm like, how in the world did this happen? And it was intentional. And he said, I was eavesdropping on your conversation in line. And I heard you talking about ARs and guns. And I was like, oh, God, that's why he sat here. And my initial reaction was just to fight, right? Or just say shut it down. But I didn't. And I realized that person had never had a conversation with someone like me in their entire lives. And you know who that person was? He was the largest gun maker of manufacture of AR-15s in Texas. He was there to lobby DC. And I talked to him about what you just said. Because I think if we treat guns like cars, we would dramatically make a massive difference. And I said to him, I said, have you ever felt like your freedom and your constitutional rights were violated when you bought a car? And he looked at me like I was crazy. He's like, no, I said, do you have as many cars as you want? He's like, yeah, I've got a bunch of cars. All different types, right? Different speeds, different, he's like, yeah, sure. And I said, well, what do you do when you get a car? And he said, we gotta start going through that. I get a license, I have to register it. I have to show that I took a course and I had to re-register every year. We have a department of NITSA that is a federal research department that every year puts out safety guidelines. You have to wear a seatbelt. And I was like, do you think you should be able to buy an F1 racing car and ride up and down I-35? He's like, no, that's crazy. Why? Because it's so dangerous. Why? Because it's fast. It's uncontrollable. And he started saying, oh my God, you're gonna tell me that they are. So I think that when a lot of these folks don't actually have these conversations, and at the end of it, and I said insurance, can you imagine that the insurance industry, with the power they have, leveraged their authority onto the gun industry? That would be, the gun industry could not match the insurance industry. The insurance would underwrite every purchase, underwrite it, risk assessment, and go, yeah, no, we're not gonna allow that gun. No way. Cost me too much. You can't get a gun without insurance. Insurance company says, no, we're not gonna allow you to have an AR because it's too deadly. It's too risky, right? So I think those kinds of solutions would allow all of us who are gun owners, and all of us who wanna be responsible gun owners to have them responsibly and safely, but also protect the rest of us. And at the end of that flight, Mr. AR-15 was like, you know what? I don't think I have a problem with that. If I can have as many cars as I want, and guns, you know, of course, I'm like, well, I kinda think we should shut down your entire AR industry. But I think those are ways that you can approach this that are very smart and it's systematic, and I guarantee you most, by far, a vast majority of voters will agree with that, because they live with it every day already. A couple of other questions. Hi. Yes, ma'am. I'm Maggie Wofford, and y'all can squabble over who's gonna answer this question. I have no children. What do you think is the effectiveness of putting armed police officers in all of our schools? I think I might take that one, because we have, so we've talked tonight about passing good gun laws. We haven't talked about the work to block ones that we consider to be dangerous, and that's a big defensive work, is a big part of the advocacy that happens in our state. And there has been a push in that direction to arm personnel, to mandate armed presence at schools. Different people feel different ways about it. We have taken the stance that we'll look differently at armed officers versus armed personnel. We look at those pieces of legislation a little differently, but I will tell you, the research really doesn't support that armed presence on campuses prevents school shootings and gun violence at schools. So it really isn't rooted in evidence, and we know that preventative measures are going to be the things that are really gonna work. Can I just... Hello? Okay, can I just add to that? Being a person of color, if you are a personnel, there are so many incidents where people of color are already having a hard time in the school system. So you give someone that already has power over them a gun, that is a lethal situation. So I personally don't think it's a good idea. There's data on this that it doesn't work. There have been school districts in other states that have tried to enact these situations where you have armed, just armed officers. I mean, a lot of school districts in Texas have it. Let me start with Uvaldi. 383 law enforcement officers armed with every weapon known to man was on that school site, and it didn't stop it from happening. And one of the number one reasons why it didn't happen is they were scared to death, not of the 130 pound 18 year old soaking wet boy. They were afraid of the AR-15. So that alone, and these were federal, state, local school district officers. Every branch of federal law and state and local law enforcement. And there are other states. And we know that by the way, from their own real time commas that they were making. We also know some stories of mass shootings and school shootings that have happened previously where there wasn't armed presence. I mean, there's stories. Parkland. And they weren't able to stop that gunman. But we also have a lot of examples that's happened in Kansas. This happened in a lot of the red states where they enacted this, Oklahoma, where the armed folks were leaving their guns and other students were getting them. And there were deaths and shootings because of the negligence of the person being charged with having the gun at the school. So again, it's not the solution. It's actually gone the other way. In Kansas, I believe when it was in Kansas, the insurance industry in Kansas, because school districts have to get insurance to insure against harm, they refused to insure school districts that had guns on case they said the risk again is too high. It was like, we've got too many incidents where you're doing this and the folks aren't properly trained, even officers, because a lot of times at school district, the officers that are working in the local school districts are sort of in retirement or they're on the later end of the training stages of their career. It's sort of a retirement job. It's not, it's not, you know, the- It's not risk. Yes, and then Jill's point is really important as well. And so we actually have evidence that actually doesn't work. And then of course, Uvalde is the most apocryphal example of we can have literally every law enforcement agent in the entire city there, and it still doesn't work. Let's do one more question before we wrap. Hi. Hi, my name is Claudia Janes, and I'm here with my girl gang from Mom's Demand Action. First, I wanna thank Jill for the reminder that sometimes the simplest solution is the right answer, love, right? I'm a mom, and I think sometimes I forget to show extra love to my teenager who's living in this dangerous, dangerous world now, but my question, maybe to Nicole from your experience being with us at the legislature and advocating, and maybe this goes to the Mussolini rule comment that was shared earlier, but it kind of boggled my mind that one of the bills that was introduced by the chair of the Public Safety Committee, by the party in control, related to strong purchases of weapons. And I believe in the layout of the bill, they even talked about how it's really how arms get trafficked into Mexico and with all the talk of the border and violence, and it kind of boggles my mind that despite, I think it was unanimous approval out of the committee, it didn't make it out of the House floor, and I'm curious if you have any insight into why is that? That's a good question. I found that tremendously frustrating to, and just in case anybody doesn't know what a straw purchase is, if somebody for some reason can't buy a gun and they ask someone to buy it for them, that is a straw purchase, it is illegal. And so, yes, this is a Republican lawmaker who filed a bill, straw purchases. Republicans at the Texas Capitol have been saying they support preventing straw purchases. I think after the, you've all been shooting when there were some interim hearings, there was a big document written up and all the things that could be done, and one of, there weren't very many gun bills in there, but that was the one, I think. And so it's very, very frustrating, and there's probably some things I don't even know about what happened with that bill, but yes, there were bills that should have gone further that either didn't make it out of the House floor or made it to the Senate and then died there. The Senate really wasn't doing any work on gun legislation, they weren't hearing anything, they weren't passing, anything, I mean, just stuck. And so it's tremendously frustrating. I mean, I think it just shows the political divide on an issue that has so much common ground among people and that all the things we've been saying tonight is we just have to keep working on that to get the right people in office, to get everybody to show up at the Capitol, and we need to keep working with those Republican lawmakers that we can work with to push forward some bipartisan measures, and that's a sign that it's possible, yeah. So one of the, I'll tell you why it's not passing is because the gun makers, so these are the gun, not just the NRI, but the gun makers that make all these guns, they make hundreds of millions of dollars off gun running to the cartels. Okay, so there is a lot of money that Remington, Ruger, Smith and Wesson are making off of drug cartel violence. So the drug cart in Texas and Arizona are two of the biggest violators of this. The gun stores, there are certain gun stores in small towns that cannot support the number of sales that are going through those gun stores of AR-15s and other similar weapons that are selling at enormously high numbers over and over again. Those stores have relationships with the gun, the gun makers know which stores they are, and those are straw purchases for drug cartels, and this is not a small issue. Just so y'all know, there is a case right now that I'm following very closely that is the Mexico, Mexico has sued the US gun makers for this issue, and that case right now is in the first circuit, and there was just a ruling in, that's in Massachusetts, there was just a ruling recently a few weeks ago that was very interesting that the gun makers tried to say, listen, we have liability under the statute that George Bush passed, 2005, it's called Placa, by the way, Vicki knows all about this, we need to end Placa, we need to reverse that legislation, but it gives gun makers a lot of immunity. The first circuit ruled, no, actually this, gun running through straw purchases to the cartels, that is not give you immunity, so if that holds, I don't know if this Supreme Court it will, but if it holds, that could be a massive, massive important win because right now the gun makers are making tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars a year selling directly to the drug cartels, they know what's going on, and they're not stopping it because it makes them too much money. So that's an important case to follow, I mean it's happening, no doubt about it. Thank you all so much for your time, Jill, Nicole, Jamal, your time, your expertise, your insights, I think this has been for me as a working journalist covering so many of these issues, these are all really great. Thank you for the reporting he's done and of all the has been extraordinary. Keep doing it, because he got a lot of heat for exposing the truth, and it was really important. Thank you for saying that, thank you. And thank you again to this wonderful panel, thank you Jill, thank you Nicole, thank you Jamal, thank you Tony. I hope everyone here will join us for some beverages and for some food and to continue this wonderful discussion. I also want to encourage all of you to join Future Forum, we have several Future Forum members here, if you have questions, please see myself, we have Louise, we have Sarah, Eileen, there's Megan and Mark Lawrence, please visit with any of us, we'd be happy to talk to you about Future Forum, upcoming Future Forum events that we would love to see some of you come to again, we'll include a civil dialogues discussion on immigration and SB4 on March 19th, our ninth annual Easter egg roll on the lawn of the Texas Capitol on March 30th, and a discussion of the many elections happening around the world in the 2024 election, elections happening in 2024 and late April. Thanks again, I hope you will join us at the reception. Thank you.