There's been a gap between perception and reality, the perception being that California is on the cutting edge of gun safety legislation when, in fact, there are a number of areas where we have fallen behind.
Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Part of my focus on what we need to do around smart gun safety laws is recognize we have to have more enforcement around gun dealers.
I don't have any authority to talk about the domestic policies of America. But as an outsider, I am mystified by the fact that you are encouraged to buy a gun, but if you use it for the purpose that it is expressly designed for, you get the death penalty. That aspect of America is kind of mystifying.
It was a dreamlike time for me from December 1997 to March of '98. Before that, I was basically unknown. Then, bang! The starting gun fired, and everybody just started running. It was learn-on-the-job. And there were more opportunities for work than I had time to do them.
Supporting mental wellness is crucial to any goal of decreasing gun violence in America.
Moments of crisis, like the shooting in Newtown, tend to produce brief spikes of popular interest in gun control. My research on media attention suggests these spikes are extremely short-lived, and that they may be decreasing in intensity.
I was talking on the phone in my trailer, and I looked in the mirror and I saw the badge clipped to my belt, a gun with a holster, and the suit and the tie with the jacket off, and it was just deja vu. I remember that image so clearly from growing up. My dad would come home for lunch, take off his jacket, have the gun and the badge.
The NRA has led the way in the mainstreaming of a demented gun ideology.
The fact that we're living in a country where 90 percent of the people want further gun laws - to maybe somehow put a dent in some of this insanity that's happening - and yet there's no further legislation taking place, it's very frustrating and upsetting.
As gun owners, my husband and I understand that the Second Amendment is most at risk when a criminal or deranged person commits a gun crime. These acts only embolden those who oppose gun ownership. Promoting responsible gun laws protects the Second Amendment and reduces lives lost from guns.
I believe that restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners will not prevent a deranged individual or criminal from obtaining and misusing firearms to commit violence.
There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.
Gun bans disarm victims, putting them at the mercy of murderers or terrorists who think nothing of breaking the gun laws.
When I was doing 'Generation Kill' in Africa I worked with five really super-trained Navy SEALs who taught us all these moves like how to disarm people: if there's a bar fight and someone's got a chair or there's someone with a gun behind our head, how to disable them and take them down in a swift move.
Knowing who you are and what guns you own was indeed the key to the massive gun theft by government in Australia that saw hundreds of thousands of honest, law-abiding citizens disarmed.
These zealots for disarming individual Americans choose not to recognize the basic notion that defines American freedom: the difference between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun.
Understanding the long, sordid history of gun control in America is key to understanding the dangers of disarming.
I know that one of the distinguishing things was I looked like I could hold a gun, even though I'd never held one before and I'm physically able to do the martial arts and all that stuff.
Gun rights advocates - many whom also believe that the US constitution is divinely inspired and that the rights it enumerates are God-given - face a conundrum. Their very insistence that the government not restrict guns in public spaces or limit their sales in any way also obviously inhibit other Americans' rights as covered by the US constitution.
