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here's the man who's been recognized as radio's best, the recipient of not one
but two prestigious Marconi Awards for his broadcast Episodence, the one and only Bill
cunninghadr Billy Cunningham, the grant American, of course, John Lott worked in
the Department of Justice, written many books, including More Guns, Less Crime
and Advised Against Guns and Freedom Nomics, and so much more. As an
expert when it comes to economic matters and gun rights and those kinds of things,
I also can carey and matters of that type. And John Lott,
welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And John, I read with interest
you sent me several days ago a column or something relative to what was happening
in Israel and why it was somewhat easy, which is disgusting to have these
kibbutz's, which was also very similar to a commune type living to kill so
many people. And with your permission, I like to relate to the American
people my experiences in Israel in May, and it may shed some light on
that opinion. Well, sure, thanks for having me on, John Lott.
I spent a lot of time in Israel, and Jerusalem is filled with
oozzi's and submachine guns held by the IDF. Felt as safe as in my
mother's arms. We stayed in downtown Jerusalem, went to the south to Mesade,
to spend time in Tel Aviv, three or four other Israeli cities.
And when I travel, I like to interview people, which is kind of
kind of my thing, and I some Israelis how difficult or how easy is
it for someone is an Israeli citizen to have a firearm in your home because
no one was carrying except the military, and it was very difficult. One
person told me an editor of a newspaper that less than two percent of Israeli
adults have the opportunity or right to carry a gun. There's a process involved,
and it was thought that we're safe. And so one of the reasons
I think you pointed out to me is that it was somewhat easy for these
murderers and rapists hyped up on drugs to kill so many is that many Israelis
did not have weapons in their own home, and those few kibbutzs and communal
living areas that did have them had a much better result. So can we
relate something about Israel to America and how it should have been required all along
for those who had been in the IDF, which is everyone after high school
for one to three years to be able to carry away and keep one at
home. Right. Well, Israel's had really major changes in their gun control
laws over time. Before nineteen seventy two, civilians weren't allowed to carry,
and Israel kind of learned the lesson the hard way that there were simply non
enough police that they could put or military they could put on the street to
cover all the targets that these terrorists have real tactical advantages. If you have
one officer on a bus and you have a terrorist, the terrorists can wait
for the officer to leave, where they can go and leave the bus themselves
and take another target, or they can try to take out that one officer
themselves, and once if they do successfully take them out, then they have
free reign to go after the other people on the bus. In seventy two
they changed it to they realized that they didn't have an infinite amount of money
to go and cover all the possible targets. So they started letting civilians be
able to go and carry, and in many years after that they had as
high as fourteen percent of the adult Jewish population being able to go and carry,
and it really changed the tactical advantage there that the terrorists has had.
I mean you, you know, in the United States we have over eight
percent of the adult population with a concealed carry permit. In many states it's
like ten percent or more. You go to a restaurant or a movie theater
or a grocery store and it's very likely that somebody's next to you and you
would never know. And the same thing is through with the terrorists there.
They didn't know who it was that they had to worry about it, and
it made the job even of the police safer. Unfortunately, Israel's had pretty
much the same debate over gun control that we've had here in the United States,
and in very recent years they've reduced it to only about three percent of
the adult Jewish population having a permit. Net and ya who when he formed
the government at the beginning of the year, wanted to change that. But
you know, even he ran into difficulty. And it was only the day
after they had this attack that they loosened up the rules and make it easy
again or easier again for a lot of people to carry. You know,
I'm sure they wished that they had changed it a week earlier or a month
earlier than they did. There would have been a lot fewer casualties, because
you know, the military only was able to arrive after seven or nine hours
or so after attacks were occurring in different parts of the country. You can
only imagine how that music festival could have turned out very differently if you know,
some of the people there were caring concealed hind guns were able to use
it, which surely at least would have slowed down the attack and given many
people a chance to escape. And what happened I talked to emailed with a
friend of mine in Israel that what happened is that and I sensed it when
I was in Israel in May, and that is that there was a sense
we're kind of over the hump. Every now and then there's a rocket that
comes over from Gaza, it's shot down by the Iron Dome. Not much
is happening on the northern border hesblaz under control, a lot of guns everywhere.
It was a sense, okay, take a breath, it's peaceful.
And what happened is that there were about twenty thousand Gozins who every day went
through the checkpoints to work in Israel, which is good for both societies,
and they took a lot of money back to Gaza. And what happened sadly,
a few of those individuals kind of developed diagrams and worked with Hamas to
tell them where the important facilities were in the areas in which they were employed.
And so Israel tried to be the good neighbor, say you know,
let's let's work with them, Let's get them, get them paid. And
when you see this morning on some of the talk shows, you had the
diagrams of the terrorists, the murderers and the rapists. They knew exactly where
to go because seemingly employees of the Jewish state living in Gaza told the terrorists
what was going on, where things were located, who didn't have guns,
who had guns because that's where they worked. And I watched your testimony John
Lott on YouTube on Honor about December the fifteenth of last year, in which
Sheila Jackson Lee asked you some questions. I wish I could get the whole
back and forth, but you made the point that ninety four percent of mass
public shootings in America occur or guns are banned. Well, the bad guy
is picking that spot. And the analogy is they knew that those at the
music festival likely were unarmed. Very few Israelis have a concealed carry permit and
very few have a weapon at home. So the two issues here and there
are kind of related. Right, Look, these attackers may be crazy in
some sense, but they're not stupid. You know, if you're talking about
mass public shootings in the United States, their goal is to get media coverage,
and they know the more people they kill, the more media coverage that
they're going to get. And so if they go to a place where victims
can't defend themselves, they're going to be more successful. Well, you know,
one of the things that outrageous me is just how the media refuses to
go and cover the parts of these diaries and manifestos for these mass murders where
they talk about why they pick the targets that they do, because time after
time they explicitly talk about going to places where they know they're victims can't defend
themselves. You look at the Covenant School shooter in Nashville in March this year.
That person there in their diaries apparently according to the Nashville Police chief,
we're going to want to attack the mall, but had decided not to attack
them all because of armed secure that was there that people were allowed to carry,
and instead when after the school because they thought it was a soft target.
You look at the Buffalo mass murderer last year. He spends great detail
explaining he wanted to go after a target where he knew his victims wouldn't be
able to go and have guns for protection. You just see that time after
time. On our website at crimeresearch dot org, we have detailed discussions of
manifesto after manifesto or diaries where these killers are very explicit. And I want
somebody to explain to me why the media doesn't consider it newsworks It quote those
parts of their manifestos and diaries where they explained, don't we want to know
why these killers pick the targets that they do. Yeah, I'd like to
know, because that that is important repertorial objective data that should be published all
across America with our with our bought and paid for left wing Marxist media.
They're not going to report something that fits outside of their own political dye tribes,
which has left wingers. For example, Uh, in Israel, the
same people who refuse to believe Hamas engaged in ghoulish behavior, including the beheading
of babies, despite photographs and eyewitness testimony, immediately believed that Israel blew up
the Baptist hospital in Gaza. Whatever fits they run with. If it doesn't
fit, they ignore it. It's it's not a story. And I like
you, John Lott, I'm driven to near madness by the idea that the
safest place to be is in in out our NRA convention. The most unsafe
place to be is in the gun free zone, and uh, I see
it exhibited all over the world, but the media will not use that as
a fact. Plus you at Crimeresearch dot Org. Five hus times a year
or more, a good guy with a gun stops a vicious attack of one
type or another. None of that's ever news doesn't happen. So I mean
the media affects the debate in many different ways. My guess is the gun
controlled debate that we have right now would be dramatically different if some of the
cases where civilians use guns to stop what otherwise were would have been mass public
shootings would get news attention that the attacks that we see occur keep on occurring
in places where guns are banned, you know, the media, if they
just would mention those types of things once in a while. You know,
there's so many biases, Like given the impression that the United States is somehow
unique in terms of mass public shootings, nothing could be further from the truth.
The United States is way below the world average. There are many countries
in Europe that have higher per capita rates of mass public shootings than we have
here in the United States. But you know, and to some extent,
it's understandable if you have an attack in the United States that gets a lot
more news attention than an attack that occurs in another country, and I can
understand it. But then when politicians go out and say that somehow we're unique,
that other countries don't experience these things, you would think that there'd be
a fact check or something that would go and correct that. Some of the
places Mexico is unbelievable off the charts, Sweden and Norway off the charts.
I hear Democrats say all the time. You know, we seem to be
the only country in the world that has all these mass shootings. Soll number
one, we have three hundred and thirty five million people, maybe three hundred
and fifty million people. We're not in the top ten per ratic when it
comes to mass shootings, but it's not even close. But the media cannot
report that because it's against what they want to do. Now, Secondly,
you have a column up at the Federalist FEDS, which is the Department of
Justice, want the Supreme Court to let judges trip gun rights even when there's
been no crime, which is consistent with Joe Biden and Barack Obama. I
mean, Barack Obama's politics sickens me. I can still hear him saying,
how come we're the only country in the world with mass shootings when either he
knows something different, in which case he's lying, or he doesn't know and
which case he's a fool. But nonetheless, explain your article at the Federalist.
Ok, Well, there's a Supreme Court case that's going to be heard
oral arguments on November seventh and what it's called Raheemi, and what it deals
with is essentially, what standard of proof do you have to have to be
able to take away somebody's ability to have guns. So you have two possibilities.
You have a criminal case where you have to have proof beyond reasonable doubts
you're like ninety eight percent certain that the person's or you can have a civil
case where you just need the preponderance of the evidence, which is like fifty
point one percent versus forty nine point nine percent whether the person did the bad
deed or not. And there's a federal law from nineteen ninety four that allows
guns to be taken away with just a civil case, with just the preponderance
of the evidence, even without a hearing, even without the person being able
to have a lawyer to go and represent them. And there's a case involving
this guy from Texas who's a bad guy, and there's no doubt about it.
There were lots of violent crimes that he had committed. He was a
drug dealer, but he wasn't prosecuted for those crimes. There was no you
know, large bail to keep him in jail for the crimes that he was
committed. In fact, I can't see any bail at all. And yet,
rather than going and saying, you know, we should have taken away
his guns based on him committing these felonies, he ended up having a restraining
order put against them that took away the gun. But he didn't have a
lawyer to represent him. And you know, there's this old saying, you
know, bad cases make bad law, and you know the issue is,
well, you have this one bad guy here, and you know everybody would
want to take his gun away, But let's take it away by enforcing all
these criminal cases that could have been brought against him, rather than using this
civil thing, because you're going to run into situations where innocent people because of
the very low standard of evidence. So let's let's say you are facing one
of these restraining orders. It may cost you ten thousand dollars in terms of
your lawyer. If the only thing that really bad happens to you is that
your gun would be taken away, you want to keep your guns. Is
it really worth one thousand dollars to go and hire a lawyer just to make
sure that you're well represented in that case? Most people would say no,
it doesn't make sense. Well, this is this is the Department of Justice
again, and Obama is more in charge and all of his alcoholtes than Joe
Biden, who's frail and elderly. I mean the OJ's run by by Mary
Garland. It's not really run by Biden. He puts a lit on things
by eleven o'clock in the morning. Well, John Lotte, we got to
go, but love having you on today to talk about this, because armed
protected is much better than unprotected dancing at a rave where no one has a
weapon to protect themselves. And I don't mean by any way the innocent victims
are to blame, they're not. The purposeful killing of those people was disgusting,
but a couple of Kibbutz's that had guns in the homes were passed over
because the return fire. And if you had a few hundred people returning fire,
the outcome would have been terrible, but nearly as bad as a turnout
to be Crimeresearch dot Org. John Lott, once again, thank you for
coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Thank you, John, Thank you for
being there. Bill God bless. All right, let's continue align becoming If
a line becomes available eight sixty six six four seven seven three three seven,
Bill cunning and the Great American with you every Sunday night.