anything more timely especially since in the first thing this morning in the new york times is a major story of how rifles were changed and designed so that more killings could go on i have with me  my guest young woman here named delores phillips who is the legislative director of cease fire new jersey and she's been involved with public policy public health for many many here as she won an e quality award from and she was a member of the princeton health commission for six years next to her is our friend reverend reverend bob baur who is  executive director of peace action your jersey and who has done a lot of work in creating peace and in trying to create peace and i think one of the board things about our conversation today is that perhaps we'll come away knowing that all is not lost that we have hope and these are the people who help to bring us the hope so what do you say we've got this problem with guns we're trying to do something to stop all this violence all these murders of children of people what's the problem well it's certainly tempting to succumb to cynicism because they just keep happening over and over and depending on how you count them you know it's either or a major mass shooting every year a month and a half or if you count a mass shooting of four more people kill shot rather at the same time minutes one a day or one a day of though this is in the us yes in the u s and so it's it's easy to sort of you know say this is so awful and throw up your hands and nothing seems to be able to be done to stop be able to stop it but in fact we i think there are signs of hope and let me start with one that was actually related to the article you referenced above assault weapons so assault weapons of course were designed for the battlefield to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible so they were never intended to be on the streets of civilian communities of our communities here and yet they are but new jersey actually has taken some good steps to try to make our state safer and one of those was when former governor florio took the lead on passing the second in the nation assault weapons  ban that was in one nine hundred ninety one but the n r a didn't like it and so they said we're going to pump a lot of money into the new jersey legislative elections and then they which they did in one nine hundred ninety three and then we're going to override governor florio on that and rescind it a and in march of one thousand nine hundred ninety three they did vote with more than two thirds that were needed in the assembly which is our house of representatives in the middle of the night literally so it was not even a close vote vast majority in our way had pumped a lot of money into those elections but three weeks later when the new jersey senate was going to vote  in the meantime we were barnstorming the state clergy faith community leaders governor florio himself and so on and we were generating calls from the grassroots to our new jersey state senators forty of them and it was expected to be a close vote was in the audience that day we had done a rally with governor flow right before it was actually a fairly heavy snow day  i remember but the miracle and this is the closest single political miracle i have ever witnessed a legislative miracle not a single new jersey senator voted to override to rescind that assault weapons ban so it's been preserved and it's still the strongest band in the country because there's no grandfather clause so if you already own one you had to turn then you couldn't hang on to it and so i'm proud of that leadership and joan when you look around at water's the sort of phenomenological evidence for what works and what doesn't the states like new jersey we hear probably the third strongest gun violence prevention laws in the country right now and because of that in my judgment we have the fifth lowest perhaps at a rate of gun violence and so there is i was going to ask you even though the n r a has succeeded in blocking money for scientific studies there are still these observational things that you can come up with and one o that the states with the strongest gun violence prevention was like new jersey tend to enjoy the lowest rate of gun i would have would have been the question see what evidence show he has some value and also what do you think local state senator here in mercer county who was an n r a member of the local press said why did you vote that way what did you vote against overwriting the governor and he said because i got two thousand phone calls and that's unheard of for a state senator and he said ninety percent i'm said keep the basin so i had to do with my constituents want me to go hit it once where do you think worry i've seen votes change from a little as three from calls and  that is because so few people have really taken advantage of the opportunities they have to meet their state legislators they  have one state senator they have to say this somebody persons there are available to meet with them any constituent any citizen new jersey can come down to the statehouse it's an eye opener to see how it works you're welcome to come down it's very easy to find information these days because it is online th wasn't that many years ago where you had to walk down to the state house to get a bill and wait for to be taken out of a rotary file and now it's printed on you know you can print it at home find legislation printed at home inform yourself and that's why really there's there's hope around this and with so the mass shootings that we've seen that has affected everybody and i think everybody's affected by it everybody gets horrified about it their love for five they're laughing about it so it's one or the other they're affected by it but there  you know the president has come on personal bomber numerous times you know to ask for some major initiatives to occur or tried to do what he could through the secular borders  and yet on the federal level we still are at an impasse however on the state level as well reverend moore has discussed we have made great  inroads even as we're talking today there is a bill on governor christie's desk that he has to make a decision to either accept the bill or veto the bill he can also change some of the wording in the bill it's called conditional veto this bill is monumental with this bill does is it it has been long essential a for ten person or somebody in their house that wants to have protection there's a way to lock it so that small children cannot be killed we call a child proof handgun as well in new jersey has the play near in that where the first state and so far the only state to have such legislation so it sounds like state by state is the way to deal with the problem not a national can only do so much there's an interesting article i clipped it out about this woman in maine writing in iowa who rushed ront she has a restaurant and she has decided she doesn't want people customers coming in with a r fifteen rifles can you imagine going to even a restaurant when people are coming in carrying their rifles i mean is there anything more chilling than that i wouldn't be able to keep my food down i when we were already food because i say oh give me the rifle with the tomato sauce and i would  thought you know so he decided she was going to allow any customers then well some people praised for it some people were him very much against her and said it would ruin her business partner it hasn't ruined her business other people have been coming in to kill and who were designed why they're so popular to be simple enough that almost anyone can make them work you know they were were they they were simplified so that people would not have trouble making them work and you know and i think that another thing is  i don't think we should totally give up hope for the national level there isn't it a change that scene merging now and we have been at a gridlock for quite a while now and it was a shame after newtown you know that we could not get sixty senators to vote for universal background checks because that was a threshold that needed to be reached and we were for short of that so there was some bipartisan support but not enough but now if you look at the presidential campaigns that are now underway the democratic party candidates and i'm saying that plural both the presidential hillary clinton and senator kaine the vice presidential candidate are both speaking out strongly for gun violence prevention this is new ever since al gore lost the democratic party sort of lost its spine said look this is maybe a losing issue electorally for us well that is not the case and so i think they're sensing and i think they this fall's election will help  show if this is correct they're sensing that the electorate is ready for some more significant sensible gun violence prevention measures again nobody is trying to rescind the second amendment or take anybody second amendment rights away that is a ruling by the supreme court said you're entitled to have a gun in your home for self defense that does not mean you're entitled to have an a k forty seven on the street you know even the supreme court scalia the former supreme court justice who does not own go the most conservative member easily and he said absolutely in issuing that ruling there can be reasonable restrictions there can be reasonable restrictions that are consistent with the second amendment and you know i also wanted to point out that i have had numerous discussions with gun owners and my you know my my father was a bull war two veteran you know that that fought in world war two and both bob and i were raised in military families and around lots of guns and in artillery for that matter but i think you know if you read closely what that says and you know it can you know you have to look at that and look at the time period and then look at what's been happening you know here and i don't think that the designers of the constitution had in mind and they make a forty seven or it's you know subsequent renditions that are actually built not only because they're easier to use but to maximize killing it's a machine gun on a rope and that's what we've done and so now and  ironic because the the revolutionary war as you know and the two subsequent wars after that the most combat was actually done with you know hand to hand combat where you had to re it and i know bob as a minister looks at it and we look at the hate involved in the wage involved and what is this you know huge fear we're all trying to figure that out but in the meantime what we can do is make it harder for those who perhaps should not have those guns get those guns right and just to kind of build on that i mean you know you look at the underlying dynamics as the laura said of hatred and of prejudice and so on and obviously the charleston shooting was a hate crime you know of all white supremacy sed who just wanted to kill black people and that was all that's really what it was about and he went into a black church to do it and it was just horrifying and so you know look i'm in favor of working on those issues i think we have a lot of work to do in this country but if you say you do that instead of sensible because in fact that shooter should not have been allowed to get the guns he bought except it was a little it was a weakness in the system where right now if the people doing the background check cannot find evidence of a previous criminal history within three days then it by default the gun sale goes through that was wrong because this guy had bought and was in the drug business he had a drug conviction he should not have been allowed to buy a gun and yet it went through because they couldn't find it was a mix up on which town it happened in and she couldn't get in touch with the law enforcement the person doing the checks and so the gun sale went through and it shouldn't have been look nine people are dead as a result of that you know we need the taking the system up you know when it's not an either or six it isn't  should why are people so alienated and violent and this is not just in this country and also why do we enable them what do we do that enables them to be more destructive we have to stop that as well exactly yeah you know fact i found it some other particular place where they were writing about terrorism that they say we don't have to worry about supplying the americans with guns they have plenty of correct correct but i was just a story today as well from a german person in jail for terrorism and he said oh well all of the terrorist leaders are saying go to the united states of you're in there do it so easy to do a terrorist act because guns are so easy to buy this is this sense shone through me yes and we should not be that kind of country they were against terrorism we're doing everything we can in the middle of october but then we enable it by making guns that easy to get and especially this kind of gun i mean just to pick up on what you were saying about the history of it the battlefield has become actually much more deadly than it used to be it's a horror war otoh it's been horrible but it's way more deadly because with an assault weapon a single soldier a single fighter can really do he really huge have havoc and stop a large number of people and kill a large number of people and so in a way these wars that have been going on mostly in the third world mostly in the poorer parts of the world are having much higher rates of fatality and wounded and that's that's really also disheartening and so we i don't know what how much we can do about that there as the u n has a small arms treaty but it hasn't had much effect yet but we do know that here in america we could make our communities much much safer from this kind of violence if we just did the same thing the jersey's already done have a national assault weapons ban we had it before we could do it again we had a from one nine hundred ninety five to two thousand and five we could do that again what happened in two thousand and five did it just run out of time or you know what it had a sunset that wasn't by the way i got one year off it was ninety four to two thousand forces me to fight so i just want to be accurate on that so basically a pass when bill clinton was president and then george w bush was president and he said not to try to read renew it it needed to be renewed after ten years or it automatically expired so it's even when you have something good it has to continue in that case because they it was a compromise really to get enough votes it was a close vote to get it passed and so you kind of have to do log rolling and compromise to get it passed but it did pass and it did help for those ten years and especially the limit on the ammunition clips definitely help if you if you have unlimited numbers a bullets as we've seen it aurora colorado that shooter had over six thousand now they had thousands of gallons the shooters that shouldn't be allowed to happen and they're buying it online yeah and so this and they're not going out hunting to kill a little fear but you know this nonsense about where we're just doing this to go hunting you know you don't need that to kill right here correct these are birders weapons and we're not against sporting purposes of gowns that somebody w to be one hundred that you don't need an assault weapon as you just said and you don't need a handgun either you're going to use a handgun so those are the two things that are killing human beings by far so that's an argument to the n r a gives about you know the hunters it has no validity it  doesn't because i've seen you know why the hiker for many years like the appalachian mountain club and be up in the mountains during hunting season young men you would see the hunters with you know their rifles but they didn't have those kind of well you know  case you wonder so yeah but it's true we need you know you give people the means to kill you need you know you need responsible people in the late reliable people and you need a system that protects the rest of the world rest the society yet and the same thing really in some way sustain a mic with mental illness the n r a is always bringing that up and it's a very serious problem and right but there is really not a larger percentage of mentally ill that kill or that do damage then after each people so it's really scapegoating so it's not so yes if somebody has been involuntarily committed they shouldn't be able to buy a gun that's that seems to make sense but the problem was the virginia tech shooter should have been able to buy the gun they didn't have the information in the system so there were some corrections that have come in now new jersey has shared its list of people who have been in voluntarily committed and so on but then in new jersey in dolores can probably finish the story for me so this was an example another example of empowerment and success so that in new jersey they said but if you were if you were disqualified from getting a gun you can get your rate reestablished by petitioning to buy a gun again only thing was the state police weren't even allowed to have any put on that this is crazy and so we wri tell them the lord last fall we put in a bill we worked hard on it and we overhauled governor christie's veto in the new jersey senate we didn't get it in the assembly but we did succeed in overwriting it by the more than two thirds in the senate that's district on the shore and the you know it was it was really a shame because i believe that there were many more republican senators because this has been a republican democratic divide who would have voted for this but it was simply because they had a president they had a governor that time that was running for president he was up in new hampshire they're actually making a statement to the n r a that he felt that new jersey's laws were too strong and he would veto any gun bill that came to his desk well now we have this bill his she's the one who sponsored the domestic violence bill we just spoke about and the governor has if people want to do something this is a personalized handgun bill just to  store that sells handguns must now allow at least one of the handguns to be personalized have this locks technology on it that might be bio metrics  you might need to touch it first before you fire it and that nobody else can touch that gun so somebody couldn't take it from a policeman and shoot it that's for a very important w governor christie do now will he still take that n r a position of no changes to strengthen laws and that partly depends on what we the people do i was just thinking letters are needed  d and asked to speak to somebody about a bill on the governor's desk the bill numbers is as a sixteen and just in case your listeners sort of are trying to put just the sound right piece coalition down or just go to peace coalitions that organize a cease fire in new jersey i can click on that and all the information that dolores just gave is right there and all the background on it and a link to the bill if you want to read it c he was just quoted as saying if we have nuclear weapons why can't we use them so you want to talk about recklessness this guy is looking for ways to use nuclear weapons this is an extremely relevant issue we've got a everybody you're human beings are going to find a way to use them again yes we can rely on there and we have two candidates that have two very very different positions on these issues of guns and on the issues of nuclear warfare  didn't virginia after the virginia tech shootings and we make it easier for your listeners so they can come to our peace coalition that org web site and click on our piece of voter icon and see that kind of head to head compar you're doing amazing work well we should be so grateful to you that you're there you're doing what you're doing and it isn't like you he started yesterday you've been doing it for more than twenty years you've been working in such brilliant ways thank you can't tell you