[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks for joining The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

We're 26 days into 2023, and the United States has already suffered 40 mass shootings. California, a state with some of the nation's toughest gun laws, has suffered three mass shootings in less than a week. In Monterey Park, California on Saturday, a man with a gun killed 11 people and injured nine. California Governor, Gavin Newsom, spoke at a press conference on Monday.

Gavin Newsom: Only in America, and we're better than that. We're supposed to be leading the world, not just responding to these mass crises and expressing damned prayers and condolences over and over and over again. I said this how many times? I've done so many of these-- The reason I haven't done all the damned press conferences yesterday, I was here the whole day, is I can't do those again. I can't keep doing them, saying the same thing over and over again. It's insane.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Then there were two more mass shootings in California later that day. In Half Moon Bay, a man killed seven people and injured one. In Oakland, another armed individual killed one person and injured seven people in a shooting at a gas station that night. According to the gun violence archive, so far this year, in these 26 days of January, there have been nearly 3,000 gun related deaths. That's the number that includes death by suicide, homicide, defensive, and unintentional shootings. What can we do about it? I'm joined now by Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America. Welcome to The Takeaway, Igor.

Igor Volsky: Thanks for having me, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What can we do about it?

Igor: It's not an easy problem. It's not an easy problem in a country with 400 million guns, where guns are so accessible and where you now have a Supreme Court that just last year expanded the definition of the Second Amendment to make gun violence prevention laws all that much more difficult to sustain. There are certainly things we can do, things we know that work, things that have saved so many lives and countries around the world, but the question moving forward is how many of those laws, whether they be background checks or banning assault weapons, or requiring licenses before people purchase firearms, how many of those laws will actually be sustained over the long-term?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Igor, normally, I'm a law and policy kind of girl. I'm a political scientist. I believe in hearts and minds and all that, but I'm really like, "Okay, show me the policy." I got to say, on this one, we're not talking about Chicago, which has fairly powerful gun laws, but is sitting right next to Indiana, and so those guns are coming across. We're talking about California. It's a huge state. It dominates the West Coast. Its neighbors have fairly reasonable gun laws, and it has some of the most reasonable gun laws in the country, and we're talking about three mass shootings in a week. Can law and policy actually make a difference here?

Igor Volsky: I think the answer is yes. That even though California had all of these shootings, generally, when you zoom out and look at the data, California has a very low gun violence rate. In fact, we know that states with the toughest gun laws have the lowest rates of gun violence. It still holds true, even though we're now suffering through these horrible, horrible tragedies. On this issue, even the smallest changes, even what the president signed into law last year, which were relatively modest reforms, those things will save lives. Even changes on the margins on this issue have a big impact. I'm sure, Melissa, that the strong laws in California have saved thousands, if not millions of lives over their lifetime.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is this in part because we do focus on the mass shootings, and so we go trying to legislate in ways that will stop those, but that most gun violence, I hate to use this word, is more routine and more intimate than that?

Igor Volsky: Yes, most gun violence is suicides. Most gun violence is cyclical interpersonal gun violence. Those are the rates that are lower. These mass shootings, while we do know that when there's less access to assault weapons, when there's less access to the kinds of magazines that allow you to kill as many people as quickly as possible, the mass shootings are less deadly. By the way, we know that from examples here in the United States, and we know that internationally, where so many of our peer nations have done such a good job in reducing gun deaths because they made their guns so much harder to get. As far as I'm concerned, that's the model that we should follow.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What about making guns so much harder to make or so much less profitable to make? Is there a way, instead of going at the consumer, the household, who has a Second Amendment right-- There isn't a Second Amendment right to produce guns.

Igor Volsky: Absolutely. This is where I think a lot of the policy focus should really stay. We know that over the last decade, the industry earned about $1.7 billion in revenue on the sale of assault weapons. That's just assault weapons. They can do that because they're fairly lightly regulated. The products that they produce don't undergo any kind of consumer testing. They can produce incredibly dangerous products with very few safety standards. That's a big problem.

The industry, as so many of your listeners know, has a liability shield around it. You can't sue it for knowingly producing and distributing those products, marketing those products to children. There are so many ways that I think we should start regulating what the industry produces, who the industry advertises to, and the kind of products it's allowed to bring to market. We really have to start at the top.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Can we talk about police for a moment? I suppose I'm always a bit surprised that law enforcement isn't the strongest lobbyists for stricter gun laws. Surely, surely, this has made the access to guns, the level of violence that can be done with them, surely this has made the job of law enforcement harder.

Igor Volsky: It has absolutely. You all the time see law enforcement outgunned. All the time you see law enforcement feel like-- at any point, because of a country that's saturated with firearms, at any point their life is at risk. Even though you do have pockets of law enforcement, particularly in more conservative areas, resist change, we see headlines all the time about different sheriffs refusing to enforce this law or that law, you do have a coalitions of law enforcement supporting these kinds of changes, particularly getting very powerful weapons off the street.

Just very recently, when we had the debate over confirming a permanent director to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the only body in the federal government that regulates the industry, you did have a lot of law enforcement voices come together and call for such a permanent director to really ensure that we're properly tracking crime guns, that we're overseeing the industry to the best of what is allowed under current law.

There are voices out there, I think a lot of them in the law enforcement community that want to see changes. It's just as is often the case on this issue, some of the loudest voices represent a small number of more conservative folks who don't want to see any changes, who believe that your right to own a firearm outweighs the need for safety for anybody else.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, quick break. We're back, and talking about the American epidemic of gun violence right after this. We're back with Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America. Congress took days to choose a leader of their own majority party. Is there any reason to think that the federal government through Congress can make change here?

Igor Volsky: Well, look, the president, who as you know, ran on one of the most robust gun violence prevention platforms we've ever seen, who's done a lot of really significant work during his first two years, really has a lot he can do. He can open, for instance, an office of Gun Violence prevention to ensure that the federal government is coordinating this work across the government in the same way that we do with climate change. There's a series of executive actions he can put forward, including banning the importation of assault weapons. I'm certainly hopeful that at the State of the Union next month, he announces a lot of these changes, announces a comprehensive plan. Melissa, given the--

Melissa Harris-Perry: Wait. I want to stop you for one second, Igor, because I hear what you did there. I was like, "Can Congress do it?" You're like, "Let me tell you about the President. See this president guy." Is that a no that we should not expect Congress to do a thing on this?

Igor Volsky: Let me tackle Congress, because, Melissa, I never say no. The way I'm able to work on this issue with so many great people in our movement is because we always say, yes, we can, and yes, we will, right? Nobody could have predicted, certainly not me, that we would've been able to make the progress we did last year, right, with what Congress passed. Of course, now the math is more difficult. What I do think is that we have a majority in the Senate that wants to see stronger gun laws.

I think there's a lot they can do to fight, to try and attach gun violence prevention laws to must-pass legislation, right? There are things, and strategies, I think, that can be pursued. The house is obviously a lot harder, but the house also has very tight margins. Maybe there's some opportunity as part of a larger compromise to get enough, more moderate, I guess, Republicans, maybe some of them from New York, with their new seats in New York, to try and see how you can move legislation, but it's going to take a lot of will, it's going to take a lot of organization, particularly from champions of gun violence prevention in Congress, who, Melissa, as you know, and so many of your listeners know, over the last couple of decades have left a lot of fight on the table.

I think the message that so many survivors across the country have is that they really have to fight every single day for this issue. Never say never. These tragedies are going to continue to happen in communities red and blue. Just like you saw, Republicans voting for bipartisan reform last year, because so many of them said, "We've had enough," particularly when it comes to our communities, I always think change is possible.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Igor Volsky, is executive director of Guns Down America. Igor, I appreciate you bringing a ray of hope for us. Thank you for joining us.

Igor Volsky: Thank you, Melissa.

[music]

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.