Appearing on Friday’s PBS NewsHour, New York Times columnist David Brooks reacted to the tragic shooting at a Louisiana movie theater last week by immediately calling for “doing all the gun control you can think of.”
The so-called “conservative” columnist found no problem jumping to the issue of gun control less than 24-hours after the tragic shooting and listed off how we need to close “the gun show loophole, the background checks, assault weapons ban. And so I’m for it.”
Brooks sounded like a liberal rather than a conservative who supports gun rights as he rattled off the need for more gun control, even though he admitted it won’t make much of a difference:
I think, if you increase the number of filters between the buyer or shooter and the weapon, you might do some good. I would be a little modest about how much good you would do. This has been studied quite lot by the CDC, by the AMA, a series of studies of all the gun control legislation that’s happened in the past. And it’s very hard to find strong effects.
There are 250 million guns in this country. And as we heard earlier in the program, where there’s a will, there’s a way. And most of the killings are done with handguns. People find a way to have guns. I’m for it. But we have seen a 50 percent reduction in homicide in this country over a generation. And a lot of other things are more effective in reducing gun violence. Let’s do it. Let’s just not expect it will have a big effect.
Liberal columnist Mark Shields echoed Brooks’ call for greater gun control as he lamented how “we have too many guns. We have too much access to them, too many people who are unstable who shouldn’t have that access.”
See relevant transcript below.
PBS NewsHour
July 24, 2015
JUDY WOODRUFF: But now to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. So let’s go back to the lead story, David, a string of shootings just in the last few weeks, including this one last night in Lafayette, Louisiana. We talked to Mark Kelly at the top of the program, Gabrielle Giffords’ husband. What -- is there anything to be done?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I’m for doing all the gun control you can think of, the gun show loophole, the background checks, assault weapons ban. And so I’m for it. I think, if you increase the number of filters between the buyer or shooter and the weapon, you might do some good. I would be a little modest about how much good you would do. This has been studied quite lot by the CDC, by the AMA, a series of studies of all the gun control legislation that’s happened in the past. And it’s very hard to find strong effects.
There are 250 million guns in this country. And as we heard earlier in the program, where there’s a will, there’s a way. And most of the killings are done with handguns. People find a way to have guns. I’m for it. But we have seen a 50 percent reduction in homicide in this country over a generation. And a lot of other things are more effective in reducing gun violence. Let’s do it. Let’s just not expect it will have a big effect.
WOODRUFF: Did you say 50 percent reduction in...
(CROSSTALK)
BROOKS: Over the last generation. We have seen this massive drop in violent crimes.
WOODRUFF: Right.
BROOKS: And that has a lot to do with treatment programs, with the police programs. There are a lot of ways I think to reduce violence that are -- produce bigger outcomes than the gun control stuff.
WOODRUFF: Mark.
MARK SHIELDS: Judy, I listened to Mark Kelly and the point he made about the public support of background checks. He’s absolutely right. I mean, 81 percent actually, by the Pew poll, favor background checks, by a 7-1 margin. And, yet, it couldn’t pass the Senate. And, you know, there’s a sense of frustration after Newtown, and Charleston, and now Lafayette. What it’s ever going to take? And the only idea that even strikes a spark with me -- and I agree with David on the measures and I wish -- we have too many guns.
We have too much access to them, too many people who are unstable who shouldn’t have that access -- was a suggestion made by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, introduced. He said we have enough guns in this country for 200 years, but we only have enough ammunition for two years -- or for four months. I’m sorry. And he said that, you know, why not tax ammunition? I mean, not .22s for target practice, but when you’re talking about ammunition for weapons of personal and mass personal destruction, you know, we have to think in those terms. There’s no question that the debate has been won right now, not permanently, but has been won by the Rifle Association people.
