Tuesday Morning Politics: Gun Control and Inflation

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. It's that Monday kind of Tuesday that comes after a three-day weekend, as somebody once sang. Hope your weekend was great, and also that you got to pay a little tribute, even if just briefly or silently, to people who've been killed during service in wartime, the actual purpose of Memorial Day, of course. Here we are back in the workweek but with just three days to go until Friday already. We have a really good show lined up for today. I think later this hour, WNYC's Nancy Solomon will reveal the ending of her seven-part podcast series Dead End, A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery.

The final episode dropped this morning, and it does make news. Spoiler alert and not to build up unrealistic expectations, Nancy did not figure out who did it, but stay tuned and you'll find out what the reveal in this final episode is that might get everyone closer to that answer. We also have Malcolm Gladwell on today's show. He's going to do an experiment for his podcast series, Revisionist History, and you can play a role. I'll tell you it has something to do with a classic Hollywood blockbuster.

When Malcolm comes on in about an hour, we'll see if you can guess which one, and then he'll invite you to participate and experiment having to do with that movie. Okay? Nancy Solomon and Malcolm Gladwell, both coming on with podcast reveals today. First though, you may have had the weekend off, but journalism never sleeps and neither does the President of the United States.

It's not every day that the President of the United States writes an op-ed piece, but that's just what President Biden has in the Wall Street Journal that dropped on Memorial Day. It's called My plan to Fight Inflation. The Washington Post didn't sleep this weekend. They were cranking out interesting story after interesting story on their national politics pages. One of them was called Inside Mitch McConnell's Decades-Long Effort to Block Gun Control. That one starts with a mass shooting in McConnell's home state Kentucky way back in 1989, that killed eight people, a person with an AR-15. McConnell's response was the same as you could hear across Conservative America this past week.

The McConnell quote from 1989 was, "We need to be careful about legislating in the middle of a crisis." Now, just parenthetically, McConnell certainly was not shy about legislating in the middle of a crisis after 9/11 when Congress gave President Bush basically unlimited power to fight anymore, anywhere for however long within a couple of days of the attack, but this week after the Uvalde Texas School shooting, it was the early days after a crisis or no time for politics and yet McConnell does seem to have cracked the door open to a little bit of something.

This time, we'll ask NPR's Tamara Keith in just a minute to help us figure out if it's real or if it's fake, but he was on CNN on Thursday and said he was open to some kind of bipartisan compromise if it was specifically relevant to things that would have or could have prevented Uvalde. We'll see what he means on that. With that as a prelude, with us now is NPR White House correspondent and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, Tamara Keith, who based on her output on the network definitely never sleeps. Hi, Tam. Thanks for some time today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Tamara Keith: So glad to be here with you.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk about Biden's plan to defeat inflation and what's really in his op-ed on America's top political concern right now and also about guns. Tam, I heard your piece on Friday about things Biden has done and could do on his own about guns. Before we even get to Mitch McConnell real or fake, what has the Biden administration done already regarding guns and gun violence before Uvalde without Congress?

Tamara Keith: President Biden and his administration have taken numerous executive actions on gun violence prevention going back to the spring in his first year in office, there have been something like five events, including one in New York City with Mayor Adams. The thing that is interesting about their approach to this is, as one top official told me, they didn't wait for a mass shooting to take these actions, and many of these actions wouldn't in any obvious way prevent these mass shootings that get all of the attention and all of the headlines for very good reason.

They get all of the attention and all of the headlines, but most of the deaths in the United States from guns don't happen in mass shootings. They happen from gun suicides and domestic incidents and street violence, and all of those deaths are gun deaths too. Many of-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: By the way, on that point, Tam, I see from various press reports that over 30 people were killed by gun violence over the Memorial Day weekend, I think another 30 injured, but over 30 killed. Of course, everything stops and everybody focuses on something like the mass shooting in Uvalde. Elementary school is different, but any mass shooting would get the attention if 21 people were killed, but in just a few-day period that just went by, one by one or a few by a few, 30 more people, and it doesn't make the same kind of news.

Tamara Keith: No, it doesn't. Those deaths impact their families, impact their communities in lasting and terrible ways. Among the things that the administration has done, is to crack down on so-called ghost guns that are untraceable, weapons that are basically kit guns. They've done numerous other things. Now, gun safety groups say, "It's amazing they've done all of this," but some gun safety groups add-- They gave the White House a very long list of other potential executive actions that could be taken. That list remains largely unfinished, so that there is a lot more that the president could do through executive actions.

That said, the president himself has really been downplaying executive action, saying, "There are limits to it." Obviously, there are significant limits to it. Executive orders and actions are not enduring, like, the next president could come in and reverse those actions. A lot of these things end up getting held up in court or take 18 months, two years through a regulatory process. It's not immediate, it's not as enduring, and it's not as wide-reaching as legislation would be, but it's also not as hard to do. As we're going to talk about, legislation has proven quite elusive when it comes to guns.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to Congress, and if they're really on the path of anything different this time, some of the rhetoric is different, as I said in the intro, but we'll see if it means anything. Are there one or two top agenda items for executive action on the advocate's list-

Tamara Keith: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: -that they're most frustrated that Biden isn't taking?

Tamara Keith: Let's start with something that may actually happen, which is, President Biden has nominated now two different people because his first nominee didn't make it but to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. If that person is able to get confirmed by the Senate, which seems fairly likely, that person would have a lot of power to implement the nation's gun laws that do exist and also to conduct law enforcement operations on, say, gun dealers. The big thing that I keep hearing about from numerous gun safety advocates is the idea of defining what it means to be engaged in the business of selling guns.

Licensed gun dealers are required to get background checks on people who purchase guns. However, someone selling in the Facebook marketplace or Craigslist or at a gun show isn't required to get those background checks conducted. One thing that the president could do these advocates say is issue an executive order commanding the Justice department to, because it's murky in the law, define what it is to be engaged in the business of selling guns.

That could potentially scoop in a lot more gun sales into background checks at least, because people who would not pass a background check purchase their weapons outside of the typical gun dealer where they know that they wouldn't pass a background check.

Brian Lehrer: Exactly. Now, let's get to Congress. You heard-- Well, I'm going to read the exact Mitch McConnell quote from CNN on Thursday, at least how it was published in USA Today the other day. McConnell talked about, "Trying to get an outcome that's directly related to the problem, and so I am hopeful that we could come up with a bipartisan solution that's directly related to the facts of this awful massacre."

That's the money quote from Mitch McConnell. You could tell how he's trying to limit it already, even in theory, by saying "directly related to the Uvalde shooting in particular," but is there a "there" there? Are the Republicans actually open to things or proposing things that they haven't been open to before?

Tamara Keith: Right. Because the shooter in Texas acquired his guns legally and passed a background check, because he had no background, the idea of expanding background checks, which is something that has been discussed off and on in Congress for years and was the one thing that they settled on that they were trying to do after Sandy Hook that ultimately failed to get 60 votes, then by that McConnell standard, that would be off the table. Other things that are being discussed is potentially raising the age to buy an assault-style weapon to 21.

Both the shooters in Buffalo and in Texas and in Uvalde were 18 and acquired their guns legally but were under 21. In some places, you have to be 21 to buy a handgun but not to buy an assault-style weapon. There might be some room there. The other area is--

Brian Lehrer: Can I jump in just on that one for a minute?

Tamara Keith: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: I only learned after Buffalo of that age difference in the law. Isn't it the strangest thing? I know you're a reporter, you don't maybe want to make a comment editorially, but over the fact that the legal age for AR-15s in some places is 18 rather than 21, but it is 21 for handguns. More gun rights for these assault weapons than for handguns for people whose brains are still being formed. It's incredible.

Tamara Keith: Yes. Hate to break it to you but there's all kinds of weirdness in all kinds of our laws. I mean, you look at the differential between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. There are all kinds of quirks in the law.

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:12:23].

Tamara Keith: Yes. In this case, handguns are seen as more likely to be used in street crime, for instance. That is, in all likelihood, part of the difference there. Also, these assault-style AR-15 weapons, one, they were illegal for a decade, they couldn't be purchased for a decade when the assault weapons ban was in place and have only become exceedingly popular in recent years for sport stuff.

Brian Lehrer: Or something.

Tamara Keith: Or something.

Brian Lehrer: Okay, that's one, raise the age--

Tamara Keith: Not really useful for hunting but for just shooting at targets.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I saw a quote of somebody in an article about people just loving up their AR-15s, admiring the engineering of them. How do you place that admiration against the fact that they're used so frequently in the mass shootings? Okay, we'll save that for another show. That's one possible area of compromise I hear you saying, raising the age for assault weapons from 18 to 21. What else?

Tamara Keith: Potentially, red flag laws. Some states have these laws. It essentially says that if someone is a danger to themselves or others, their family could take action to have law enforcement temporarily take their weapons away until they become more stable. It seems as though there is some support for that. It's not clear that there could be-- I think it's not possible for there to be a federal red flag law, but instead there could be incentives put in place to incentivize states to create their own red flag laws.

Some of these actions were actually taken in Florida after the Parkland shooting. Florida is this very red Republican state, and yet after that, really terrible school shooting and the rise of activism of young people who were students at that school and elsewhere, the state legislature did move to enact some of these sorts of gun laws.

Brian Lehrer: How are Democrats reacting to these limited things that the Republicans seem open to right now? Do they think it's real or do they think it's more fake or really minimalist but just so McConnell can say he's for something when he's really against almost everything but the Republicans can run for election or re-election on it as a gun control accomplishment in the fall?

Tamara Keith: Republicans are not going to run on a gun control accomplishment. That is not--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, they're not going to put it that way.

Tamara Keith: Yes. That is not something that is helpful to them in terms of their base, certainly. Senator Chris Murphy has become sort of the loudest voice of the gun safety movement within the Senate. He's from Connecticut, he had just been elected to the Senate when Newtown happened, he had previously represented Newtown in the House, and he has been trying, working, doing everything he can to get something done since then.

He's pretty clear about it. He says that he's having more conversations with more Republicans right now than he has since Sandy Hook, but he also says that he has felt like Lucy and the Football many times before, and he knows that at any point the ball could get moved on him again, but he's trying. Like, would any one of these actions prevent the next mass shooting? It's not clear, but it's one of those things where I think Murphy would take what he could get.

President Biden keeps talking about, "They need to bring back the assault weapons ban that I passed in 1994." That's not going to happen. The politics of that just aren't going to happen, but Murphy is arguing that Democrats shouldn't be afraid to support gun control, that Democrats shouldn't shy away from these gun safety measures, or that they should just actually campaign on it in the midterms, which they did in 2018, and Democrats did well in 2018. Of course, there were a lot of other political dynamics that year, too.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Yes. I guess there's a political question here for the Democrats, which connects with the "let's save lives even if just a few lives" question. Like, should they make these compromises to do something that's relatively minimal because it at least does something, or should they say, "No, we're not going to sign off on this, that's going to take the air out of the room for bigger things, and instead, we're going to run on Republicans' refusal to do the major things and try to hold it out as a bigger election issue"?

I guess you're telling us that Murphy is saying, you still have the big argument that they won't do anything on background checks, they won't do anything on assault weapons, but let's at least take what we can get, and so there's a kind of politics versus a little bit of accomplishment conflict for the Democrats, is that a right way to put it?

Tamara Keith: They'll probably be able to have the politics, and if they're extremely lucky, a little bit of accomplishment. One other thing that is being discussed, the Biden administration did take some action on this, promoting safe storage among military veterans because military suicides by gun is a significant problem, and even just talking about the fact that guns are involved is something new to this administration.

Another thing that is being discussed congressionally and through executive action would be to further promote, incentivize safe storage, secure storage of weapons at home, making sure that gun dealers, for instance, are required to sell compatible storage, safe storage devices along with the weapons that they sell. That sounds totally minuscule, but safely storing weapons can save lives, not in a big headline-grabbing way, in sort of a counterfactual way that you can't prove, but safe storage saves lives.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I don't know all the statistics on this, but it would probably save children's lives in at least a few cases. I saw a stat over the weekend. I don't know if you have it precisely. It was something about how being shot is if not the leading cause of death, a leading cause of death among children in this country, and for the most part, people are not doing what the shooter in Uvalde did, going after children on purpose. A lot of those are accidents that in at least some cases I would imagine would be prevented by proper storage.

Tamara Keith: Right. Yes, the number one killer of children in the United States is not car accidents, is not other accidents, is not COVID, it's guns.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Here's a little pushback though on I think assault weapons ban from Peter in the Bronx. Peter, you're on WNYC. Our guest is NPR White House correspondent, Tamara Keith, if you didn't hear the intro. Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I have to say two of my favorite reporters. I am calling specifically because I can't believe, this is an AR-15, this is an assault weapon, it's created for the military to do incredible damage and defend our country. Why is it that I can buy this as a regular resident? If I can buy this, can I buy a bazooka? Can I buy an RPG or can I buy a tank? I mean, where is the line? I am serious. Can I buy those things?

Brian Lehrer: That's great. I thought you were going to go a different direction, Peter, but thank you for going where you went, and that's a really interesting question, Tam. If people say you can buy weapons of war because you don't want to be outgunned by the bad guys, even in your own home, can you buy a bazooka? Can you buy a tank? Can you buy a personal tactical nuclear weapon under that philosophy?

Tamara Keith: No. It turns out there still are limits. Also, you can't buy a machine gun, like, you cannot buy an automatic weapon, though I believe you can still buy a bump stock that would functionally make your AR-15 into an automatic weapon. This is something that the president has talked about as recently as yesterday that the Second Amendment was written at a time when weapons took a very long time to reload and you couldn't buy a cannon. You were not allowed to buy a cannon. It's--

Brian Lehrer: What are the gun rights people say? I think one of the things they say is these are not actually military weapons, these are civilian versions of military weapons. For example, they're not fully automatic. You do have to pull the trigger each time.

Tamara Keith: Yes, they're semiautomatic. They are not fully automatic. It depends on which gun rights person you're talking to, but the more absolutist gun organizations are pretty absolutist about it that there shouldn't be limits, that their right to have these weapons should not be impinged upon and that so what if what they want to do with this weapon is go out in a field and shoot up a hay bale or something, they should be allowed to do that, they should be allowed to have these weapons to collect. People who own an AR-15 usually don't own just one. They collect them like I collect guitars.

Brian Lehrer: You collect guitars?

Tamara Keith: Well, mostly my husband does, but you know. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: One more call on this, then we're going to pivot to Biden on inflation, and it's Eric in Cresskill, New Jersey. Hi, Eric. You're on WNYC.

Eric: Yes. Thanks for taking my call. After 9/11 in New York City, if I tried to enter a power generation facility in New York City, I had to be checked out by the National Guard, the New York City Police, and Plant Security before they let me enter. Then I had to pay $135 for a background check by Homeland Security to enter a power generation facility anywhere in the United States just to do my work.

Brian Lehrer: Just to do your work as an electrical engineer, and you don't have to have a background check to buy an AR-15. I wonder if people might reply to you by saying there's no constitutional right to be an electrical engineer, there is to own guns, but Eric, it's a great contrast. Tam.

Tamara Keith: Yes. Some of the gun safety advocates would say, "People should have to buy insurance if they're going to have a dangerous weapon like this," just like they have to buy insurance to drive a vehicle on the road.

Brian Lehrer: Or get a license to show that you're trained to use it properly and store it properly, et cetera like you have to before getting a driver's license.

Tamara Keith: Right, and these are all ideas that are out there and seem highly unlikely to be passed and into law by the current Congress. I will say that gun safety advocates have sort of the long view here that this sort of change won't happen overnight, won't happen quickly, won't happen-- Like, this mass shooting or that mass shooting is not going to be the one that is the tipping point necessarily, but that over time, their side is building more political power and playing the game in politics the way that the gun rights folks have been doing for years.

The gun laws are the way they are because there are gun rights groups that have incredible political power and the gun safety side of things is still building and has only been at this for less than a generation.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, the long view can be frustrating, but I have heard Chris Murphy make exactly that point, saying at the time of Newtown, there was no Moms Against Gun Violence or whatever the Connecticut group was that broke out after Newtown.

Tamara Keith: Moms Demand Action.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. There was no Students Against Gun Violence, maybe you know the exact name of that one too, like, broke out after Parkland and has continued. There's more grassroots activity on that side than there was a decade ago when Newtown happened, but yes, it will take time. Just before we go on to inflation, do you know who showed up at the NRA Convention in Texas this weekend? That was such bizarre timing. Of course, it was prescheduled, but it put Republicans at least in an awkward position. The NRA Convention over the weekend, I know you're a White House correspondent, so you may not have followed this exactly, but some-- Greg Abbott. Go ahead. [crosstalk]

Tamara Keith: I didn't follow it too closely. I do know that the former guy that I used to cover was there.

Brian Lehrer: Oh yes, that guy, 45, who used to be the President of the United States pretty recently. Yes.

Tamara Keith: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: He talked about arming teachers. We know that's a non-starter in a lot of places, but also hardening schools as targets, right?

Tamara Keith: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: There was a Trump clip I saw, where he said something like the schools should be the hardest targets in the country. Never mind the comparison with military bases that you could make there, but still, do Democrats reject that?

Tamara Keith: They do. Part of it is just that sure, on the East Coast, a lot of schools are one building, but out west, it's basically an outdoor campus with a series of corridors that hardening schools is not practical in many cases and in the ways that people might imagine. Democrats absolutely do reject the idea that the only thing that can be done is to arm teachers and harden schools.

They believe that more can be done to prevent weapons from getting into the hands of people who would seek to do this and also, although Republicans talk about mental health a lot, Democrats also talk about mental health and helping people who are isolated and lost, find outlets that are not online extremism or murdering children.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue with White House correspondent for NPR, Tamara Keith, she also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast, in just a minute, and we're going to talk about a very unusual spectacle I guess you could call it of the President of the United States having an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. It was about inflation. What is Biden going to do about the nation's number one political concern right now? Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. A few more minutes with NPR White House correspondent and NPR Politics Podcast co-host Tamara Keith. Let's get to Joe Biden's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, very directly titled, My Plan to Fight Inflation, but to my eye, Tam, if somebody was reading, "Okay, let's start in and see what's your plan to fight inflation." There was a very long wind-up in this op-ed.

The whole first part of it is about things that are going well in the economy other than the inflation including very low unemployment, which is true, and a lot of business investment and that the US is weathering the economic stresses of COVID and the supply chain and Ukraine better than almost any other country and even bringing down the federal deficit despite all the COVID spending, does he have a fair point?

Tamara Keith: Yes. That doesn't change inflation. It doesn't change that inflation is the number one concern facing voters. I sat in on some focus groups last week put on by the AARP, with women over the age of 50, Republican women, undecided women, Democratic women, Latino women, all of them extremely uneasy about the state of the economy and in particular about inflation. This was the kickoff of the summer driving season, if you will, this past weekend.

Now, not adjusted for inflation, but in today's dollars, the AAA, average price for a regular gallon of gas hit an all-time record. Now, not adjusted for inflation over the course of many, many years, but still a shockingly high number of a very expensive gallon of gas, and people feel it. People feel it every day, they see it every day, and that means that even though employment is going gangbusters, even though the economy is by all definitions strong and recovering from the pandemic, labor shortages and supply chain problems aside, it just doesn't change that people are in a funk about the economy because of inflation.

Brian Lehrer: On what he can do next, he highlights several things. One is clean energy tax credits. That was interesting to me because the Republicans and the Right in general criticize him, like, every day on Fox and elsewhere for slowing fossil fuels production in the name of the climate just when short fossil fuel supplies are driving up gasoline and other oil and gas prices. How does clean energy help with that according to the president?

Tamara Keith: It would according to the president bring down the average family's average utility bill by $500 a year. Certainly, renewable energy, especially given the increasingly rising costs of non-renewable energy in part because of what's happening in Ukraine and other global issues, renewable energy is not affected by those same forces. That's the idea there.

I will say that if you look at the president's list of actions that he wants to take, he doesn't use the phrase Build Back Better, which is the name of the big ambitious piece of legislation that he has not been able to get over the finish line in Congress, but these are all elements of Build Back Better. These are all elements of what he has proposed. The idea here is that he believes that the best thing that can be done for inflation right now is to try to lower the prices on things that the federal government can have some say over or some control over, which is to do things like invest in renewable energy or try to help expand the availability of housing or lower prescription drug prices by requiring negotiations.

Brian Lehrer: Drug companies to negotiate with Medicare.

Tamara Keith: Though it's still not clear to me how that would actually lower the price that people are paying themselves except when they're in that donut hole, because Medicare generally covers prescription drugs except for that big chunk in the middle.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That might save the federal government only, but it wouldn't save families that much money. Let me ask you, since you mentioned Build Back Better, I only read through the op-ed once, you've probably read it six times, but--

Tamara Keith: Every speech President Biden gives is very similar to this op-ed, I will say. He probably was not up late perfecting it.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned Build Back Better. I didn't see in my one reading of it, so just correct me if I missed it, references to the cost of childcare or eldercare. Those are such stressors on so many families, and they were the heart of Build Back Better and would reduce costs for families, but it wasn't in there.

Tamara Keith: You're right. The other thing that isn't in here is Democrats are looking with concern toward the fall when subsidies on the Affordable Care Act insurance that were part of the pandemic relief funds, those subsidies are going to go away and come October people are going to go look at Obamacare plans and get sticker shock because the subsidies will be gone.

That's another thing on the list of stuff that the administration and Democrats in Congress are worrying about that would be part of some sort of Build Back Better type bill. I will say in the op-ed, the line that stands out to me is first, the Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation. That's the reality. President Biden is meeting today with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

Brian Lehrer: That's just where I was going to go with you last. I think, in fairness to policymakers on either side of the aisle, a lot of this is market forces not created or fixed by government policy, supply chain, things have to work themselves out after COVID and things like that. People will argue how much any politically driven policy can do, but yes, the Federal Reserve Board which sets interest rates has a primary responsibility on inflation. As you say, the president is going to meet with Fed Chairman Powell today. What are they going to do, Tam? Are they negotiating interest rates or what would happen at a meeting like that?

Tamara Keith: Maybe they're just going to have some tea and chat. The way President Biden insists he is handling things with the Fed is that he is taking a hands-off approach, that he is not telling Powell or anyone else on the Fed Board what to do or how to do it, that he is leaving that to them, meant to be a contrast with his predecessor [crosstalk] and leaders in other countries who have put--

Brian Lehrer: The Fed is supposed to be independent, right?

Tamara Keith: Yes, the Fed is in fact supposed to be independent, and President Biden is insisting that he is maintaining and supporting that independence. The one thing I would say is that in the schedule that the White House sent out today, to me what was telling is that they are described as discussing economic conditions in the United States and the globe, sort of an emphasis on the fact that this is not an American inflation problem. It is an American inflation problem, but many, many other countries are also having the same problem or worse.

Brian Lehrer: Tamara Keith, covers the White House for NPR and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast. Thanks for waking up, wiping the sleep from your eyes and starting your post-Memorial Day week with us. Great job as always. Thank you so much, Tam.

Tamara Keith: Thanks so much. Good to be with you.

 

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