 Okay, history lens. We cannot appreciate what's going on these days without looking at it through the lens of history with John David Ann, who's a history professor at Hawaii Pacific University. So the title of our show today is Gun Control. Yes. Gun Control in America. How much control is there? How much control do we have? Right. So let's look at the history of the Second Amendment, for example. John. Right. Tell us about it. Well, maybe we should start just by saying that, of course, the reason why we're doing this is because of the terrible tragedy in Florida, which happened a couple of days ago. And what's happened since then is that there have been all of these calls for more gun control. I mean, people who were involved in the tragedy are saying, look, this is nonsense. This is madness. We need to get guns off the streets. And of course, the shooter bought his gun legally. But if there was some sort of check on mental stability or questionable, it's clear that he belonged to a neo-Nazi group in Tampa. So membership in that kind of a group should be tracked. And if they're a part of a domestic terrorist group, then of course, they should get on a list and not be able to buy guns legally, because of course, nobody favors domestic terrorism, right? So... This isn't about time we stopped with the guns that we took them away. I mean, there's so many people who are dying more in this country than anywhere per capita in the world. That's correct. That's correct. You know, it's embarrassing already that we're supposed to be a civilized country and we're killing each other at an incredibly rapid rate. Yes, yes. And the solution to me seems to be really simple. I don't want to get to that right now. Right. But if the solution is to take the guns away, then nobody will shoot anybody. Yeah. It's simple. Yeah, 40% of all the guns in the world are owned by Americans. Yes. 44%. 44, pardon me. Okay, more than 40%. So let's talk about this. Yes. Okay. So if we go back in time and use our history lens to go back in time, then I think we need to look at the Second Amendment to see what that amendment was, what the purpose of it was, how it was framed, how it was formed, how it was used and interpreted and then eventually, of course, Congress and the Supreme Court got onto a different track where it started to mean something else. So if we could just bring the Second Amendment up, there's the Second Amendment and I'll read it. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It's a bit awkward in its wording and there's a reason for that because there was more verbiage in the amendment originally that made it read smoother, but it was more detail about how the militia should be constructed and the militia should and the people should be protected by the militia. So the Second Amendment starts with a debate about the national government and of course the Constitution and the First Amendments, the national government and the potential for a national army. In the Articles of Confederation, which lasted from the end of the Revolution 1783 to 1787, in the Articles of Confederation there is no executive, there's no provision for any sort of a national militia or a national army. So the new constitution actually has this provision and therefore is deemed by some of the founders to be a little bit dangerous. If you have a national army, you can impose upon the people of the country in ways that you coerce them of course with force in ways that you can't if you don't have a national army. Sort of a repetition of King George. Exactly, exactly. So there's this fear that a president with a national army could become a tyrant who would impose his will upon the states by using the national army. And the way to prevent that, at least in the argument of those who were very concerned about this, not so it basically breaks out like Jeffersonian Republicans and then Adams federalists, right, the federalists want a national army, the Jeffersonians don't want a national army, think it's dangerous. So the compromise is that you put a provision in the constitution that talks about the right to bear arms because what that means then is that citizens can form up a militia. If they have an arm, if they have a weapon, right, and they have the right to carry that weapon. Join up, create a militia within a state or a locality, and if there is an attack by the federal army or the national army then they can repel that attack or defend themselves against that attack. And that's the root of the Second Amendment. It's all about a militia. What's interesting is the way you just described it, they can, citizens, my block, your block, our neighborhood can get together and make a quote, militia. It's not even an official militia. This doesn't have the blessing of the state government or for that amount of the county. It could. It could, but maybe it doesn't have to. And I think some of those guys in the woods, right, who practice guns in the weekend, you know, wear a khaki and camouflage outfits, they think they're a militia. They're not really a militia at all. So yes, there is this illusion that people who favor this amendment somehow fancy themselves as a part of a citizen's militia. Or they could potentially form a citizen's militia. But this is nonsense because in this day and age, the National Guard essentially fulfills the role that the militia was envisioned to fulfill, to keep the peace in the states, a unit that the governor can call out in a time of crisis or disturbance. And so the Second Amendment's purpose is about a militia. And it's really because there are some militias during the American Revolution. But after the revolution, then this creates the possibility of continuing those militias. Now the other thing about this is that there are very few weapons in Revolutionary America. And so it's not like the patriots were all gun-toting, you know, revolutionaries, right? But many of them didn't actually come into the Continental Army with weapons. And so the Continental Congress had to fix this. And so they directed that an armaments factory be created. And this was the origin of the Springfield Armory, which is the first armaments factory in the, it starts in 1777. So there's still colonies at that point. If we can bring up the picture of the Springfield Armory, there's the Springfield Armory. And of course, it's a museum now, it closed in the 1960s. But this was the most important armory, the first, the most important and the largest armory right up to the American. Springfield, Massachusetts. Yes, Springfield, Massachusetts, that's right, right up to the Civil War. And so in that time period, it's not a question of too many guns. It's a question of not enough guns. And so when the War of 1812 takes place in 1812, OK, you got that one. So there are very few firearms, and the Springfield Armory has to build like crazy. They build about 10,000 firearms during the course of the war, which lasts until 1814. In that course, then a lot of these kind of citizen soldiers are armed with muskets. And after the war, they take those muskets home with them. So now all of a sudden, you have the beginnings of just a tiny little bit of a gun culture. It's not a big gun culture. It's just a kind of a, just a tiny little bit of American culture in that time period. But this also has to do with what part of the country that you're from. Southerners have a lot more guns than Northerners in the period before the Civil War. Why is this? Well, we talked last time about military academies. Of course, there are all these military academies in the south. And there's only one in the north that's West Point Academy, right? And so these military academies, you have to have weapons in order to practice and get good at that. There's also the issue of slaves. And in the south, where there were sometimes you lived in an area if you were white, that there were 90% of the population was African-American slaves. And so you felt threatened. And so guns were purchased. And there were actually slave patrols with armed. Mostly these were like the sons of plantation owners who went in these slave patrols. But they wrote horse. They carried guns. So there was a greater gun culture in the south than there was in the north. And I suspect that this is still true today, that in the south the gun culture is more powerful. How much of it was associated with hunting and marksmanship? Well, this is in the beginning, of course, other than the wars, the War of 1812 and then the Civil War, then a lot of what the gun culture is comprised of is hunters. So after the Civil War, then in 1871, then the National Rifle Association is founded. And it's founded as a rifle club. Hunters, sportsmen, sharpshooters, they join this club. And it's interesting, when you look at the first presidents of the National Rifle Association, the first president is Ambrose Burnside, who was a general for the north. One of the presidents after that is General Ulysses S. Grant, who was, of course, a general from the north. And then Phil Sheridan, who was another general from the union. And so the National Rifle Association, I think part of the reason why it's founded is because there's not a gun culture in the north. And this was a problem at the outset of the Civil War. The south had all the vast majority of the soldiers and the officers in the army. And there was a gun culture there. And so the south did much better in the early parts of the Civil War than the north did. Because there were a lot of pioneers who maybe they owned a gun, but it wasn't a very good gun. They weren't very good shots. Had to kill stuff with an axe or they didn't use their gun very often. And so I think the National Rifle Association, part of it is to develop sharpshooters in the north and to build a gun culture in the north. So it sounds like there was a social aspect to that, too. Definitely. A prestige aspect. Yes. A general, for example, reminds me of the Union Club in Manhattan still exists today. Right. It's a social club, very high level social club. Right, right, right. It still dwells in the Civil War. Yes, yes. And it was established by generals after the war and it was carried forward. Same thing here. I think it's a similar kind of thing. And if we can bring up the picture of the New York NRA or the New York Rifle Club. So that rifle club, this is what the NRA is about. It's not about the proliferation of arms. It's actually about becoming skilled in shooting, becoming somebody who can do this safely and becoming somebody who knows how to handle a firearm in front of their family so that no one gets hurt. It was a competence club, a training club. It was a competence club and it was also a competition club. Yes. I mean the picture that we saw there is actually that's, they're actually a competition club. They're going off and competing nationally and I think they actually sailed across the Atlantic to Europe and they competed internationally. So it's a very different idea. So you've got two things here. You've got the second amendment which is about militias. Not about everybody owning a gun or some fear that the national government would take your gun away. And the second part of this is the NRA which starts as a rifle club and a competition club and a way to train people to make themselves safe around guns. Was the NRA popular in the South? Well, it started in the North but then it develops over time. It moves into the South. Was there an association with the Ku Klux Klan? No, I don't think so. I mean the Klan of course starts very early after the Civil War. It starts before the NRA does. So you have these two developments and so guns are really not an issue in the life of the nation, at least like they are now. It's not like we have this long history of mass shootings. Really the mass shooting starts in the 1980s. If you look from the end of the Civil War to say until the end of the Second World War, the average citizen had no interest in guns. I mean I know that in the North, I grew up in the North, but I doubt in the South either. Well, I think there was more interest in the South. There was more hunting maybe. But yes, it wasn't guns for a kind of weekend pleasure. It was a very serious approach to guns, again for hunting or for marksmanship and it was an appreciation of the dangers of guns. Guns, when I grew up in Minnesota, I had gun training. I think I was 12 years old and the local NRA chapter took us out and we learned how to handle a gun and to walk side by side so we didn't shoot one another. It was like a boy scout. Yeah, it was gun safety. It was a club for kids. That's right. So it's a very different way of conceiving of guns than we have today. All this changed. When we get back from this break, we're going to find out how that changed the place and what it meant and what the fallout was after that. And until now, we'll be right back. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate and empower and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. And we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Okay, John, David, Ann and me are talking about history today. History lens. We're talking about gun control. It's appropriate for a discussion now because of what happened in Florida. And the culmination of so many of those events, this country is rife with killing kids in school. It's like a national pastime already. So we're asking, what's going on here? How much control do we have in gun control in this country? And to understand that, we have to understand the history. I think so. So there was a major event that took place in the 70s with the NRA change. Can you talk about it? Well, before that, let me just talk for a moment about the NRA before the 70s. And if we can bring up the photo of Carl Frederick. There's Carl Frederick. Carl Frederick was the president of the NRA in 1934. And Carl Frederick was, he was a sportsman internationally recognized rifleman's sharpshooter. And he testified before Congress because in 1934, the first gun law was passed. It was a gun regulation law. He testifies it for Congress. And if we can bring up his testimony, it's really telling. So this is what Carl Frederick says before Congress. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. Okay, that's a problem today. Promiscuous. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses. I believe in regulatory methods. I think that it is desirable that any such regulations imposed should not impose undue hardships on the law-abiding citizens and that they should not obstruct him in the right of self-defense, but that they should be directed exclusively so far as possible to suppressing the criminal use or punishing the criminal use of weapons. So there's Carl Frederick endorsing the regulations, the first gun regulations. And the NRA, of course, is four square behind this. So the NRA is actually pro-gun control for most of its history. It's only in 1977 that you have this guy who's a kind of a fringe political guy, right-wing guy who runs for the presidency of the NRA and wins just a very slim victory. And then he begins to push the NRA against gun control. Where was the gun manufacturing industry on this? Well, by this time the gun manufacturing industry is against gun control. I mean, they want to see more arms sold and sell more arms, make more money. That's right. I mean, and there was, you know, so in the 1960s there was an update on this gun control law and it's pretty restrictive. What does it mean by restrictive? Well, you can't carry in public, your firearm has to be registered. So it's much more restrictive than it is today. And so the NRA responds to that. And I think that's why you see this guy winning the election and taking the NRA in a completely different direction, where now they're going to lobby very hard against gun control. And so they do. They lobby in the late 1970s, 80s, and they build their lobby and they build it until in 2008 they get the victory that really kind of almost makes the lobby of the NRA a permanent part of the American scene. In 2008 there's a Supreme Court case which invalidates the salt rifle ban that had been put in place in the 90s. It invalidates that and it says that the right to bear arms is an individual right and that it's not about a militia. And so this is the interpretation. Separate that second amendment. That's correct. It almost, it splits out the whole idea of a militia. It says this is an individual right that's inviolable. That's a cockamamie case actually. Well, it's a huge victory for the NRA. It's an apocle victory for the NRA in 2008. Now the one thing that this doesn't do, it has not led to the invalidation of state gun laws. In the vast majority of cases, about 95% of all the state laws have either stayed in place or they've been able to add. So that's actually a good, it was a caveat on the decision when Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority when he wrote this he said, but this does not mean that the state laws are invalid. And so in court cases since then the state laws have been able to stay in place. For instance, Hawaii has very strict gun laws. I mean, you have to keep your gun at home under lock and key. There's no open carry, concealed carry here. And interestingly, Alaska has the most lax gun laws. So it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition. But so that's what happens is the NRA goes after this and they do it in politics. So when we talk about the rise of today's gun culture in the United States, I think we have to understand it in that political context. That actually it's a great deal of this gun culture is actually, has actually been driven by lobbyists from the NRA and by politics. And so spend the lobbyists, spend the fortune that they spent millions and millions. What this year, $5 million lobbying and so it's created this new kind of political paradigm where those who are in favor of the NRA, they're not necessarily voters on other issues. They don't really care about other issues. They're a one issue voter. And so while 90% of Americans feel that we need more gun control, that 10%, they come out to the polls. They're going to vote on that issue and it frightens politicians. I think it was Heidi Heidekamp, who in her first run at the Senate, there was this, she did this polling. 90% of her constituents said we should have more gun control. But then when there was a proposal before Congress, then the phone calls were 7 to 1 against any gun control. So that's, this group is very active when it comes to the actual lobbying. It makes you question the system here. 90 versus 10 and yet we don't have adequate gun control. In fact, I mean, the gun control we have, however you cast it, whether it's a lot or a little, it's not working at all. Yeah, it's a problem. So here's some interesting way to think about it. Today, Sweden, pardon me, Switzerland has about the same percentage of families who own guns as the United States. The United States 36% of us own a weapon. In Sweden, it's about 32%. And yet Sweden, the last mass shooting in Sweden was 2001. 15 people were killed. Whereas you look at, where you look at the shootings. So when you look at a graph of the shootings in the United States, it really starts in the 1980s. Mass shootings begin in the 1980s. And it's no coincidence that the NRA is working to get rid of gun control laws and then you have more of these mass shootings. And then it's just an upward trajectory. Although when you look at 2016 and 2017, it's been a huge jump up. It's not a straight line anymore. It's this dramatic arrow that goes almost completely vertical. So in Switzerland, there's none of this. Why is this? Why do they have a gun culture that's safe and... Just take gun control. And no, it's not just... There are the more gun controls than in the United States. But here's the thing about that 32% of the Swiss who own guns, about half of them have served in the military. And when they get out of the military, because military service is required, it's a conscript army. Every male of a certain age has to serve a year in the army. So when you get out, you get to keep your weapon. And so they keep their weapons, but they're well trained in weaponry. They've been trained by the military. They know the consequences. And so there's none of this kind of shoot them up mentality. And because half of those are these former soldiers, then a much smaller percentage of those who are actually hunters or weekend sports enthusiasts or sharpshooters. So it's an interesting comparison, because on the surface it's the same, but underneath it's like, oh, okay, so maybe we need to think about this in terms of our own situation. If we don't have a populace that's well trained in how to use a gun and how to keep the safety on or whatever, for instance, one of these 18 shootings in the schools was a 10-year-old girl carrying a gun in her backpack, and it went off accidentally. No one was injured. But so that's not a safe way to carry a weapon. So we should think long and hard about better training for those who actually require training for those who actually own weapons. Also, you talk about the culture aspect of it and the fact that people don't know about guns. Let me suggest that if you turn on the television in any city of this country, everywhere in this country, and you look at the ordinary fare, both in the weekly shows and serials and the movies, you go to movie theaters, see the same thing, guns, everywhere. Yes, that's true. And the only thing is a guy gets shot, and two minutes later, he's walking around. It's a lesson. No, I know. These kids believe that somehow it isn't permanent, it isn't final, and it isn't lethal. No, it's true. I'm a little bit skeptical about the culture argument for the reasons that I just, for the argument that I just made about the NRA. It's, this is a lot of this about politics, not the law. And law. And law. But there is certainly a more promiscuous, as Carl Fredericks had a promiscuous gun-toting culture in the United States today than ever before. And so it's of grave concern, of course, the kinds of weaponry. I mean, this shooter in the Florida shooting, he was carrying an AR-15, which is a, which is a, it's basically a machine gun, but single shot. And it's a very dangerous weapon. It's so widely available. And- It's the weapon of choice, if you want to go into a schoolyard. When you look at mass shootings, it's the predominant weapon. Because you've got a very big cartridge, you can pull off a lot of shots and kill a lot of people with it. So, I guess I would ask you the, we hold a minute to close for a minute. I would ask you, does the country really need, at this point, the Second Amendment, does it really need a right of the citizen to bear arms in the 21st century? Or is this just a way to kill kids? What can we do about that? I think the Second Amendment is outdated. Okay, I'll be honest with you. I agree that the Second Amendment is simply, it was, the purpose of it was connected directly to the militia. We don't need a militia anymore. And, you know, so, yeah, I think definitely. And the other thing is, I think we really have to look carefully. And we've got to do something about the number of guns. Three to six million guns just floating around out there. And we've got to reduce the number of guns that are available to people to harm others with, yeah. One of the things that's going to happen, last question, what, you know, this is a hard one. But in the historical trend, you know, you evaluate things in the lens of history. You kind of get a feeling of where they're going to go maybe. Right, right, right. Well, I think the Republicans have boxed themselves in on this issue. I mean, they're trying very hard to distract attention away from this massacre. They're blaming the FBI. They're talking about mental illness. But the gun culture, they're not addressing at all. Because these are their constituents. This is their base. And so, but the problem is, the vast majority of Americans are outraged and they're getting more and more outraged. Yes, they are. 30 shootings in a month and a half, right? This is way over the national average. It's going to get worse and worse. It's very disruptive. I heard one woman on national public radio say, she wasn't sending her kid to school anymore. In fact, she urged all mothers not to send their kid to school. End of that. This is very disruptive for the country. It's a dangerous moment for the United States in terms of the gun culture. Can we talk about it again? Sure. Thank you, John. You're welcome. John, David, and Y Pacific University history professor. Yes. Through the lens of history.