Vital Interests: Bob, thanks very much for talking with us today on the Vital Interests Forum. Gun ownership and gun violence continues to be a major societal issue. With a new administration that has articulated a progressive agenda it is an opportunity to check in on the status of firearms in America. 

You have been studying the relationship of Americans with guns for many years - your recent books are Guns Across the America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Gun Rights and the eighth edition of The Politics of Gun Control. We like to begin our conversations with some historical context. Can you tell how the prominence of gun ownership evolved in the United States?

Robert Spitzer: Obviously, gun ownership in America is as old as the country itself and that goes back to the earliest European settlers that landed on this continent. That's well known. What is less well known is the fact that gun regulations and gun laws are also as old as America. Quite literally from the very earliest colonial settlements, colonial leaders were enacting gun laws and gun restrictions.

When you look at that over the sweep of the period from the 1600s through the end of the 19th century, states, colonies before that, and localities enacted thousands of gun laws of every imaginable variety. While there certainly were court cases and questions about laws as there always are, by and large, our history is one where gun laws and gun rights pretty much existed together without any major political or other problems.

It's really only been in modern times in the last several decades where the relationship between gun laws and gun rights has been viewed as more of a seesaw or a zero-sum game where a win on one side is viewed as a loss for the other side. It is this zero-sum mentality that has fueled the intensity of the gun debate in modern times.

VI: So the intense contemporary focus on Second Amendment rights was not particularly part of the historical attitude on gun ownership?

Robert Spitzer: That's largely true. I would not say that the Second Amendment never arose in the context of gun laws, but you find virtually no invocation of the Second Amendment, certainly in courtrooms, in legal challenges, or in statutory law from the time that the Bill of Rights was enacted and approved in 1791 up until well into the 20th century. The Second Amendment existed, but it was widely and generally understood, as it was understood by the people who wrote it, that the Second Amendment had to do with citizen service in a government organized and regulated militia and the necessity of militia members to obtain their own firearms early in the country's history.

The government didn't have the means or even the inclination to provide weapons for militia members and militias were the primary means by which the country defended itself early in its history. That's why the Second Amendment refers to 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.”

The Second Amendment only begins to come up in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It's raised in a handful of court cases and the courts in every instance said that, "Well, the Second Amendment only pertains to militia service in government organized or regulated Militia." Of course, the phrase, "The right to bear arms" appears in the Second Amendment and that particular language became the rallying cry of the modern gun rights movement. Most people assumed to be true what the gun rights people said, which was that the Second Amendment protected the personal right of average citizens to own guns for various purposes.

That idea, as legal doctrine, didn't really exist until 2008, when the Supreme Court redefined the Second Amendment protection as having the meaning that it protects personal rights. Of course, anything that can be linked to a constitutional right is given a special place in the minds of Americans and that was aggressively used by the gun rights community.

VI: You are referring to the 2008 landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision where the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, unconnected with service in a militia. Didn’t the National Rifle Association (NRA), which was very much involved in supporting this case, create the rhetoric that gun ownership should be considered not just as a constitutional right but also was a fundamental civil right?

Robert Spitzer: Yes, that is right. You now have a lot of rhetoric framing the Second Amendment as a first freedom, as being a civil right, this personal right that protects all the other rights and it's sloganeering at its most effective perhaps. This idea that it is such a fundamental right that it warrants special elevation, is an argument that has a lot of traction among a new generation of extremely conservative legal scholars.

VI: Let’s look at the growth of gun ownership. Back in the day people had guns because they liked to hunt, they liked target practice - that was pretty much the major group of people that had guns, used guns and had guns in their homes. When did this attitude change from a hunting/gun club group to people wanting to have guns for protection for themselves and their families because they were worried about crime?

Robert Spitzer: The idea that you could use a gun to protect yourself is certainly not a new idea, but it gained new currency with a couple of things happening  in the mid to late 19th century. First of all, there was the proliferation of more reliable, easier to use, more durable handguns that were developed by inventors like Samuel Colt. He developed these handguns, but really there was not much of a market for them. So marketing genius that he was, Samuel Colt and later on others, emphasized and peddled guns as personal protection devices so to speak. Ironically, their main market was not the Wild West, but people living in Eastern cities.

You found handgun ownership and sometimes cheap handgun ownership rising in the cities and in other places around the country towards the end of the 19th century and lo and behold, the murder rate begins to skyrocket as well. That in turn prompted calls for the first modern federal gun laws, which took a while to happen.

Certainly Americans didn't need a lot of prodding to feel that they were rugged individualists, but add into that, the aggressive marketing of handguns as personal protection devices. Even today, the overwhelming reason for buying a handgun is personal self protection whereas the  overwhelming reason for buying a long gun, a rifle or shotgun, is hunting, sporting, recreational activities.

VI: Isn't this - the notion that the best way to protect against violent crime and bad guys with guns is to make sure good people are armed  - one of the principle messages of groups like the NRA?

Robert Spitzer: Yes, that's exactly right. The whole idea that you can divide society up quite neatly into good guys and bad guys is itself a fiction. People are good guys until they commit a crime and then they're bad guys, but that begs the question of how you make that dividing line to begin with. There's been an enormous amount of academic research in many fields, examining the precise consequences of civilian gun ownership and carrying and use - especially handgun ownership and use.

The research increasingly supports the proposition that when you have more civilians with more guns in society, it leads to more problems, not more solutions.  Gun ownership rarely plays any role in actual legitimate instances of personal self defense and is much more likely to result in suicide, in the theft of guns, in the misuse of guns, in accidental shootings, in children getting a hold of guns and doing terrible things with them, The adverse consequences far outweigh the beneficial consequences of legitimate self defense. Partly, it not only comes from the gun community, but also from movies, TV programs, other expressions of popular culture that have long advanced this idea that a good guy with a gun can defeat the bad people and defend American families and virtue.

VI: What about the actual numbers of guns in America? We hear reports that guns are everywhere. When did the proliferation of firearm ownership really start to peak?

Robert Spitzer: Well, there's a two-part story to actual gun ownership patterns in America. One is, of course, that we have more guns than ever in general circulation in America. We have seen in the last year or two, spikes in gun sales, especially handgun sales. The estimates vary widely because there is no single uniform, reliable way to count the number of guns in America. The number that's probably most accurate is around 300 million which is, of course, a huge number in a nation with a population of 330 million.

On the flip side of this is that the percentage of homes in the U.S. that have one or more guns has been gradually declining for over 40 years - since the late 1960s, early 1970s. At that point in time, roughly one home in two had at least one gun in it. Today, it's about 30% of homes that have one or more guns in them and about 25% of Americans say that they personally own a firearm. The other factor to this is that the number of guns owned by the average gun owner has increased. In the 1960s, the average gun owner owned about 2.5 guns. Today, the average gun owner owns more than eight guns.

That helps explain this rise in gun sales while we do not see a notable rise in the percentage of households with guns. Now, there certainly are some people who are going out to buy guns for the first time, who've not owned guns before,  but as a percentage of Americans and gun owners, it's probably a pretty small number. Mostly the rise in gun sales is attributable to people who already own guns who are adding to their collection. 

VI: The statistics regarding the damage this vast number of guns does in the United States - the number of killings, the amount of injuries and suicides - are staggering. Are these increasing in number or are they at certain levels and that's what we see year after year?

Robert Spitzer: On a per capita basis gun deaths and injuries have been gradually declining but if you look at the absolute numbers, they have continued to go up and in the last year or so, we've seen just about 40,000 deaths from guns out of about 100,000 gun casualties and of that 40,000 gun deaths, the largest number of them are gun suicides. In fact, completely consistently in modern times, there have been roughly twice as many gun suicides as gun homicides annually and that fact is getting more attention,  But even now, I think, that is not as well known and understood as you would want and then there are a relatively small number of fatal gun accidents each year, as well.

When you have more guns in society, that helps explain why the gun suicide rate has continued to rise and the other part of the connection between guns and suicide is that there is no simpler, easier, more effective way to kill yourself than with a gun. That is part of the health community and medical health community's concern about the proliferation of guns and there’s a very strong connection between the prevalence of guns and gun suicide.

VI: There have been consistent efforts by people who would like more understanding of the impact of the widespread availability of guns and the violence they cause in American society. Some advocate that gun violence be declared a national health emergency and authorize the CDC to do in-depth research on the prevalence of guns and the staggering annual numbers of deaths and injuries you have cited. The NRA has blocked any such efforts and still does as far as I know. Do you think this might change during the Biden/Harris administration?

Robert Spitzer: Yes, there was a highly successful effort by the NRA and gun rights supporters in Congress in the mid 1990s to introduce into legislation a provision saying that federal research money could not be used to study gun violence. This had the effect of virtually zeroing out funding on gun related research.

In 2019, for the first time, Congress restored some of that money, about $25 million, which is a tiny sum relatively speaking. It seems now on track to continue that funding and perhaps increase it this year. Next year, we'll see what happens, but the government is starting to re-enter the funding of gun violence research. It's very important research. Certainly private entities have been doing that research but one of the things that the government does is it funds research in all kinds of areas.

It's perfectly appropriate and it's consistent with the Constitution, in fact, and I think we will be seeing more of that in the years ahead, even though at a far lower rate than investigations into the deaths of Americans by other causes, like automobile accidents or infectious diseases.

VI: There does seem to be a need for good studies on the correlation between gun ownership and violence in American society. For example, what is the correlation of gun suicides and gun violence committed by individuals who have been in the military? Certainly being in the military is where many Americans, young Americans, get familiar with guns, learn how to operate weapons, especially military style firearms. 

Robert Spitzer: That is an extremely important and emerging concern, not only among the medical community, public health community, but also within the military, where there has been a real and significant problem with suicides among current and former military personnel.

It's been occurring for two reasons. One, of course, is because they either have ready access to guns or have knowledge of guns and you can easily get guns if you're in the military or if you're a veteran. The other problem is the trauma that soldiers have experienced. We've fought in two wars in the past 20 years in Iraq, and Afghanistan. We have thousands of soldiers that have suffered and are suffering from PTSD and obviously, when you have mental health problems and depression, which is one chief indicator or response related to PTSD, having a gun readily available just facilitates suicide.

It is a great concern. There have been studies, of course, but it's a matter of deep alarm in the military and it's certainly one where more research and more intervention is called for.

VI: This segues into a related question about the type of weapons we now see people owning. I believe that one out of five weapons sold is an assault military style long gun. The estimates are that there are 15 to 30 million assault type weapons out there in the United States. Has the composition of the type of weapons that people own also changed dramatically in recent years?

Robert Spitzer: It has and I would say in two respects. One is, you're quite right that there's been a dramatic rise in the sale and the purchase of assault type weapons and they also have been aggressively marketed by gun manufacturers because they're much more profitable; the markup is fairly significant. Also assault weapons are, as some gun people have commented, like Barbie dolls for men. There are lots of accessories that come along with them and interchangeable parts.

Companies can make a lot of money by selling accessories - the money is in the accessories really. The manufacturers are happy to market these things and we do know that assault weapons have certain specific criminal logical consequences.They have been used disproportionately to kill police. They increasingly have been weapons of choice for mass murderers. This is a major concern.

The other part of the equation of the type of weapon we now see even more commonly used in violent crimes and mass shooting are the much more powerful handguns. You can get a Glock-style handgun with magazines that hold 30 rounds or even more - that is a lot of firepower for a person to carry around.

It's very much different from the traditional six-shot revolver or five-shot revolver of the sort that police officers used to carry through the 1980s, for example, until officers felt that they needed more firepower on the job. So you have lots of these handguns as well and mass murderers use handguns even more frequently than they use assault weapons. The infusion of these two types of weapons have increased the destructive capabilities of people who wind up doing bad things with guns.

VI: There was an attempt to ban or at least control assault weapons back in the '90s - I think Senator Joe Biden was involved with the bill to limit the manufacturing, distribution and sale of assault weapons. Didn’t that law have a 10 year sunset clause that was not renewed?

Robert Spitzer: Yes, from 1994 to 2004, there was a limited federal assault weapons ban that listed 19 named types of assault weapons plus several dozen copycat models that were no longer to be available for purchase and despite the general sense that the law had no effect, there have now been several studies which demonstrated that it did have a limited but measurable, beneficial effect on their use in crimes and for other negative uses.

Part of the compromise to get the law enacted was that it had a 10 year sunset provision. So, it automatically lapsed from existence in 2004. There have been several attempts to reenact it at the federal level that have fallen short. Right now, seven states plus D.C. have assault weapons bans on the books and it continues to be a focus. It was one of the possible new gun laws that the Democratic Party and Joe Biden endorsed in the last election.

It was discussed again when President Biden announced that his administration was going to offer several new gun measures to Congress. One of the provisions discussed then was a new assault weapons ban, although Congress is now moving ahead, literally within the week or so, to introduce at least two new gun measures but that's not one of them.

The original 1994 law imposed a restriction on new assault weapons. Those that had been manufactured and produced before the ban was enacted were still legal to obtain and own, and that was one of the limitations of the law.

Some states have moved ahead more aggressively to impose additional restrictions, New York State for one, which did not grandfather in the old weapons, but provided a mechanism whereby people could modify the weapons or turn them in or sell them some place where it was legal to own them in a long-term fashion.

VI: But there is never going to be any law in the United States that would ban a type of preexisting weapon that would require people to turn them in or authorities would come and take them away?

Robert Spitzer: No.That's the apocalyptic image that has become so much a part of gun rights rhetoric, that government jackbooted thugs would come pounding on your door in the middle of the night and sweep in and take all your guns away. That's not going to happen. That's not how things work in the United States and obviously, with 300 million guns in America, you couldn't do it no matter what you tried to do.

There are ways that the government can impose regulations that could stem the flow. They could do other things that some people might not like but we're not talking about wholesale gun confiscation or anything of the sort.

VI: So they can try to regulate things like bump stocks and the expanded magazines and things like that?

Robert Spitzer: The focus on large-capacity ammunition magazines, generally defined as those holding more than 10 rounds, is one area where criminologists and public health officials say there could be meaningful and significant reform if it were enacted because it is hard to make any sane argument for why a civilian should have a right to buy a bullet magazine that holds more than 10 rounds. It certainly has nothing to do with hunting or sport shooting.

VI: Let's examine some of the gun control laws that are on the books. As you stated there are very few national laws and these mostly focus on background checks for those seeking to purchase firearms. It is the states that are very active in gun rights and gun control. You can pretty much break this down to red states passing laws to extend gun rights and blue states trying to introduce some degree of gun control. What is the reality of state sponsored gun legislation? For example, so-called “open carry” rules are becoming widespread.

Robert Spitzer: At least one state, South Carolina, is discussing right now establishing open carry in its state. South Carolina does not have that law right now. Only a relative handful of states do not allow some kind of open carry. Those laws are old laws in some instances but they pertained specifically in the old days to people who were traveling from point A to point B or were transporting a weapon for some purpose or were a part of a military organization or police or security guards.

Open carry was done in part because they wanted to discourage concealed carry and it was widely understood in the 19th century that if you were carrying a weapon concealed on you, you were up to no good. Which is why virtually every State of the Union had laws against the concealed carry of firearms and certain other named weapons enacted in the late 1700s and 1800s. But open carry is allowable in over 40 states.

It is being questioned because, in modern society, the invariable reaction to anybody carrying a gun around just for the sake of carrying it is one of horror and fear, and even the gun rights people and organizations like the National Rifle Association recognize that it turns people off, that it serves no important or useful public purpose, aside from the fact that people do it because they say it's their right to do it.

The proponents of open carry even label it  “constitutional carry,” even though it has nothing to do with the Constitution. This is their way of trying to normalize public gun display and gun ownership generally but it really is an activity that does nothing to allay people's concerns about guns in everyday life.

VI: Haven’t we seen over this past year open carry become a political statement? You have people showing up at political rallies with AK-47s slung on their backs and Glocks strapped to their thighs. Displays of intimidating weapons have even appeared at demonstrations against COVID related shutdowns and mask wearing. 

Robert Spitzer: It is, and we've really seen an upsurge in that activity in the last year to year and a half and that's happened for several reasons. Certainly, former President Trump gave much aid and comfort to that movement, extolled their activities and when that was paired with government efforts at the federal and state, and even local level to deal with the pandemic regarding mask wearing or other restrictions, some people immediately rankled  at that, and among those who protested the pandemic restrictions  were gun owners who wanted to express their displeasure with their state government in particular by carrying guns. In some states it's even legal to carry guns in government buildings.

That was a big issue in Michigan, for example, where the Michigan state legislature actually cancelled several sessions because of the concern that people with guns were going to enter the building and come into the chamber. That is not the way to conduct democratic governance. It simply is not. Some states have moved ahead to at least say, "No you can't bring guns into government buildings or legislative sessions or other similar places."

I think it has widened the gap between some ardent gun rights people and most Americans, who understand that no good public purpose is served when people bring guns to a public demonstration or a public meeting. It simply intimidates, it polarizes, it spreads fear and does nothing to promote democratic governance or free speech.

VI: For many years the major proponent of all aspects of gun rights has been the National Rifle Association. The NRA is experiencing some very real organizational challenges and scandals that are certainly impacting their operations. Are people within the political sphere just picking up the mantra of the NRA and carrying their message forward? 

Robert Spitzer: There are two things going on. One is the organizational side of this because the National Rifle Association is in deep, serious, existential trouble. Ironically, most of it is their own making. That is their incredibly prolific, wasteful, and foolish spending on personal benefits for their leaders, spending tens of millions of dollars in extremely unjustifiable expenditures on traveling to exotic resort locations and hiring out private jets, holding very lavish meetings that have nothing to do with conducting business.

There has really been nobody-- no effective financial watchdog over the NRA and many traditional NRA supporters and financial backers have said they won't give another dime to the NRA until it cleans up its act. The NRA has been the target of legal action by the New York Attorney General's office for abusing tax laws in the way they've spent their money. They will not be the same organization at the end of this that they were before. They will probably still exist in some manner but there is just no way they can come out of this with the kind of muscle that they had beforehand.

On the other hand, they're still engaging in their messaging and the most important point is that the grassroots supporters of the gun rights movement are still out in the country. They still believe in their cause. The gun rights community is still out there, it's just not quite clear who will be their leader or what form that leadership will take given the NRA's current existential organizational problems.

VI: Could the leadership of gun right groups default to the more militia-minded gun proponents - the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and other far Right movements?

Robert Spitzer: This is part of the dilemma of their leadership because for probably the last 25 to 30 years, the NRA's messaging to the gun community has been increasingly extremist, increasingly apocalyptic, increasingly dark and vitriolic, repeating about every right wing fantasy that one could imagine in terms of what they say is going to happen. They've stoked this community, fed this community and while the leadership itself, I think, realizes there's a fundamental problem with doing that, they've created this monster, if you will. They are in its thrall to a great degree, but their ability to control it, I think is limited.

There have been a few instances in the last decade or so where the NRA has quietly tried to participate in constructing some limited gun measures. When that has happened, the extreme right wing base has gone berserk and the NRA has had to retreat. That ultra extremist base exists to at least some degree because the NRA has cultivated it for many, many years. Now we have other sources of that dark apocalyptic messaging, which has really flowered during the Trump years.

It's not clear to what extent  the NRA or any other organization can straddle or attempt to straddle the far extremist wing with the more traditional gun community, many of which have been disgusted and turned off by the rightward turn of the NRA.

VI: The NRA's use of fear as a motivating tool does indeed look out of control. In 2020 some statistics indicate that 20 million more guns were sold than in 2019 - an increase of 64%. What happened last year was not only the polarizing COVID pandemic but also Black Lives Matter movement demonstrations against police violence and social injustice that took place across the nation. The reaction was often the appearance of heavily armed groups who came out to counter BLM protests purportedly to “protect property.” Doesn't this kind of development signal a trend toward violent confrontations?

Robert Spitzer: In the past year, there certainly was an escalation of fear. That climate of fear is one reason why we saw spikes in gun sales. Ironically, of hundreds of  Black Lives Matter demonstrations in hundreds of cities across the country,  they were overwhelmingly peaceful. There were some where there was disorder, where there was property destruction and a handful of cases where people were killed or injured. As the percentage of all demonstrations, it was a very small number. It was far less than 10%.

The violence of those demonstrations was wildly exaggerated to serve political purposes. That helped spread a lot of fear and then of course you did then see counter demonstrators bring guns with instances of shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin and Portland, Oregon.

That initial wave of activity seems to have subsided now that the Trump presidency has come to an end. We may see an upsurge of that kind of activity in the future, but the pandemic is starting to get under control, and we have a president who's trying to lower the rhetorical tone in the country. One would hope that those and other things will help dial down the anxiety, the fear that the public at large feels or many feel, and the more extreme expressions of violence that we've also seen.

VI: Two of the greatest motivators for gun control legislation are school shootings like at Sandy Hook and Parkland, and mass shooting events like we saw in Las Vegas. Is it always going to take horrific events to put gun control legislation back on the agenda? Is there a growing grassroots movement in the country now that can effectively push for reasonable gun control?

Robert Spitzer: Historically, and this is going back a century or more, the enactment of new gun laws has been keyed to two things. One is political assassinations and the other is crime or incidence of serious violence. That was true going back to the early 1900s. That trend, I think, continues. On the other hand, I think the other part of the story is that the gun safety movement is stronger, has reinvented itself within the last decade or so and has started to log some significant political and other victories.

I think they're poised to be in a position where we may see the enactment of new gun laws, new gun measures that are not keyed specifically to a mass shooting at a public school, let's say, or an assassination. When those things happen, the public does sit up and pay attention.

VI: Michael Bloomberg has been very active supporting gun safety and gun control. He's a big funder of Everytown for Gun Safety. Does this have an impact?

Robert Spitzer: The Bloomberg group, Everytown for Gun Safety, has been a very important factor in this. Bloomberg is a billionaire. He's poured a bunch of money into his organizational efforts. They have worked to do what was not very successfully done by the gun safety groups in the past, which is to build nationwide grassroots support and enduring support, not just surging in activity briefly for a few weeks after a gun shooting.

There are other groups as well. The one formed by Mark Kelly and his wife Gabrielle Giffords, the former congresswoman who was shot in the head but survived back in 2011, formed a group which is now known as the Giffords group. They've been quite effective.

In the 2018 midterm congressional elections, the gun safety movement lodged significant successes because lots of members of Congress and other office seekers ran on the gun safety agenda and were elected. Of course, the Democrats won control of the house in 2018. The gun issue was pushed to the side in the 2020 elections because of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter and the economic crash, but in 2018, they demonstrated a new kind of traction for the gun safety movement that indicated they can be effective at the polls.

Within the next week or so from the time of this interview, a couple of gun measures are going to be coming up in Congress and they're likely to pass the House of Representatives and if the Senate either dispenses with the filibuster or finds a way around it, then they may be able to get that and other measures supported by the Biden administration through Congress.

VI: For the Republican party, any kind of gun safety, gun control effort has been a red line they were not willing to cross. Is that position likely to change?

Robert Spitzer: As a political party, Republicans define themselves as very much aligned with the NRA's agenda, but there have been and continue to be Republican members of Congress and other officeholders who do support limited gun measures. Indeed, some of them were elected to office in 2018. Some members of Congress who ran as Republicans, not a lot, but some, expressed support for some new gun laws.

The votes are there if they decide that they will stand for the issue when the time for votes arises. It's not clear that they will do that though just because of the hyper- partisanship between the parties and the push to drive the Republican Party as a whole ever further to the right. That's an open question to me.

VI: Besides enhanced background checks and closing loopholes around private gun sales, is there any major legislation that will come along out of this grassroots movement?

Robert Spitzer: There's two specific tracks. The Biden Administration announced several weeks ago its support for gun measures. One was uniform background checks for all gun sales, a new assault weapons ban or restriction, limits on large capacity ammunition magazines, and the elimination of legal immunity for the gun industry, first enacted in 2005 by Congress. 

Right now, two measures are being pushed forward by congressional supporters. One is the enactment of uniform background checks because roughly 20% of all gun sales occur without any background check. Over 90% of Americans support uniform background checks, over 80% of gun owners support uniform background checks, and the House of Representatives actually passed that measure early in 2019. So that would be a leading measure that should attract the necessary votes.

The other measure that's being promoted in particular by Congressman Jim Clyburn from South Carolina, a close ally of President Biden, is ending what's called the Charleston Loophole. That is to say, under the current federal law, you have a three business day period when you go for a background check to buy a gun. The vast majority of them clear within about five, ten minutes or so, but a small number of them don't.

If the clock runs out after three business days, that is if no check information comes back, the person is then allowed to buy a guy even though they haven't actually cleared the system. That's been referred to as the Charleston Loophole because of a shooter from 2015 who fell into this category and it turns out that a large number of people for whom information is not kicked back within the 72 hour period are people who in fact should not be allowed to get guns. That is another measure that I think should find wide support.

VI: We have reached the end of our time. Thank you for an informative conversation covering the breadth and depth of gun issues in the United States. It appears we can look forward to efforts of the Biden/Harris Administrations to enact some realistic legislation on firearm safety and gun control.

Robert Spitzer: Good to talk to you.

ROBERT J. SPITZER (Ph.D. Cornell, 1980) is Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Cortland. He is the author of 15 books, including five on gun policy and four on the presidency, and over 700 articles, papers, and op-eds on American politics subjects. His recent books include The Politics of Gun Control (8th ed. 2021, Routledge) and Guns across America (2015, Oxford University Press).