Dan Gross is President of the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, a national organization dedicated to preventing gun violence with increased gun control and regulation. Before joining the Brady Campaign, Gross founded and directed the Center to Prevent Youth Violence, building it into one of the largest gun violence prevention organizations in the U.S.
Harvard Political Review: Since the tragedy in Newtown, have the politics of gun control fundamentally changed in America?
Dan Gross: Yeah, I think the politics have changed. We’ve reached an inflection point where the American public is engaged and demanding solutions like never before. That’s always, in our opinion, been the key to creating change and holding our elected leaders accountable to reflect the will of the American public that’s always been there.
HPR: If this is a turning point for gun control in America, does the country’s relationship with the NRA change as well?
DG: The NRA as an organization and what it represents to its members in terms of their belief in the Second Amendment and their desire to own guns and hunt, there’s no problem with that. The problem is with the extremist point of view and activities of their leadership. I don’t think that can survive.
If you look at the backlash that occurred after the press conference that Wayne LaPierre did, it became very clear to the American public and to NRA members just how out of step the [NRA] leadership is with our desire as a nation to live in a country where kids can go to school without fearing for their safety. I think the more it becomes clear that that is not what the leadership of the NRA is concerned about, the more that the leadership of the NRA is going to have to change or will become irrelevant.
HPR: How optimistic are you about this session of Congress policy wise?
DG: I’m very optimistic. If you look at in this day and age how quickly the biggest issues of the day can change when the American public really gets involved, you have to be very hopeful that the truth and the will of the American public will prevail.
HPR: Can you get a bill through a Republican House?
DG: I think so. I’m confident that we can. Republican Congresspeople are mothers, fathers, and law abiding citizens, and when you have private conversations they know that we’re better than this. Nobody wants to live in a country where these things happen. Unfortunately, the grip of the gun lobby has been tight enough that it has undermined the voice of the American public in Congress. And that’s what we need to change. We need to demonstrate to all elected officials that it’s in their best political interest to do right by the American people, and, if we can do that, I’m confident that this issue will transcend party politics.
HPR: If we’re thinking about gun policy in reference to Newtown, what’s the policy implication of the Newtown shooting? How far would new policies need to go to be able to have prevented Newtown specifically?
DG: I don’t think that’s the right way to look at a tragedy like Newtown. As the President has repeatedly pointed out and as we always underscore, there is no single solution that is going to remove all evil from the world or prevent every tragedy. But, that is not an excuse for inaction and doing what we can to prevent the most pain and suffering and evil that we can. That’s the prism through which we should look at any policy agenda—not what would have prevented any single mass tragedy.
There are thirty-two people murdered with guns every day in our country, ninety people are killed when you include suicides and unintentional deaths, and we need to take the passion that is aroused in the wake of a tragedy like Newtown, or Aurora, or the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin and we need to apply that to strengthening our resolve to do what we can to prevent the most possible carnage in our country. So it’s how the gun lobby wants America to look at a tragedy like Newtown, that there’s nothing we could have done to prevent that tragedy in particular so that means we shouldn’t look at policy. That’s a flawed and very damaging way of looking at that issue.
HPR: You mentioned the assault rifle ban, which seems to be a great example of this. Any time a gun control debate comes up, it seems like we have to debate not only the moral and political calculations but the evidence itself. Why are the studies that you use that indicate that guns don’t decrease crime better than the studies used by the NRA and others who argue that guns decrease crime and increase safety?
DG: It’s not even studies when it comes to the idea that more guns lead to less crime; it’s just absolutely deeply flawed logic that is underscored by some methodologically flawed studies.
For example, a study that the gun lobby likes to use that shows how many people have used guns in self defense, they claim about two million did last year, is based on an incredibly small sample size and self reporting where a respondent is motivated to respond in the positive because of the glamorized notion and probably by the fact that it’s illegal to have used the gun if they weren’t provoked to use the gun. So, according to that study, just for example, George Zimmerman, who shot Treyvon Martin, would report self-defense. When you look at the same methodology, more than twenty million people saw UFOs last year.
Then there are all of these bizarre correlations. They say there’s tight gun control in Chicago and Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S., so gun control makes a city more dangerous. I could give you twenty reasons why that’s bizarre and deeply flawed logic and why gun control in and around Chicago would dramatically decrease gun violence in Chicago and where it has.
They want us to be having this conversation, because it detracts from the very simple sensible conversation about the things we can do that the overwhelming number of Americans support that can prevent gun violence from happening. So it’s important to realize when we’re having conversations like this or when I’m on CNN just to sometimes not engage; that is not the vision of the American people, where more guns is the answer, where the answer to violence is more violence and the answer to guns more guns. So that’s what I remind myself, to not engage and remember that sensible solutions do exist and the overwhelming majority of Americans are behind those solutions.
Zak Lutz contributed to this interview.