Rough transcript:

I desperately want to do something to stop the horrific violence that Representative Lee and the other witnesses have so movingly described this morning, but I want to do something that actually matters. Unfortunately many of the proposals won’t help or will actually make matters worse. Take background checks on the private transfers of guns known as universal background checks there isn’t one Mass public shooting this Century that would have been stopped if such a law had been in effect and had been perfectly enforced worse no one is talking about the massive errors in the background check system and how it overwhelmingly discriminates against Black and Hispanic males being able to go and defend themselves and their families we hear calls for bands of so-called assault weapons but the vast majority of firearms in the United States including these assault weapons are semi-automatic guns that function I are functionally identical even the influential Associated Press style book acknowledged earlier this year that terms such as assault weapon and weapons of war convey quote little meaning end quote are highly politicized end quote the AP makes it clear that these Firearms are not used by any militaries around the world despite the references a couple times they are not automatic weapons President Biden has frequently said you only need an AR-15 to hunt deer if the deer have Kevlar vests but an AR-15 functions exactly the same as any small caliber hunting rifle firing the same bullets with the same rapidity and doing the exact same damage banning guns based on them looking like military weapons you know the key phrases often military style makes no sense of course banning all semi-automatic guns as President Biden has repeatedly called for over the years would mainly affect law-abiding citizens well I guess at least is logically more consistent than Banning military style weapons it would make it much more difficult for Americans to use guns defensively if you want to ban all semi-automatic rifles what’s the alternative a manually loaded gun where you have to physically put another round in the chamber after you fire each shot if you fire if you face multiple attackers or you fire and miss or you fire in wound but don’t incapacitate the attacker someone may not have the luxury of time of manually reloading the gun to be able to go and protect themselves claims about these laws having overwhelming support are based on surveys that simplify and mischaracterize what these laws do surveys show that when Americans are actually accurately informed about what these laws change with strong support changes to strong opposition there’s four facts I’d like to try to get across one over 92 percent of violent crime in America has nothing to do with firearms that percent has remained fairly constant for the last couple decades the vast majority of violent crime has nothing to do with with firearms the second point is while the U.S media doesn’t give much attention if any to coverage of Mass public shootings in other countries Mass public shootings per capita are relatively low in the United States compared to a number of countries in Europe as well as the rest of the world over the 20 years from 1998 to 2017 the United States had 1.1 percent of the world’s share of Mass public Shooters and 1.8 percent of the mass public shooting murders both are significantly less than the US’s 4.6 share of the world population people don’t take into account that the United States says over 330 million people you can’t compare it to a country with 5 million or even Germany with 80 million without adjusting for the different sizes in population many of these countries with much higher Mass public shooting rates and deaths have very strict gun control laws third fact is 94 of the mass public shootings occur in places where civilians are banned from having firearms we’ve heard many times today about the Buffalo mass murder earlier this year if you read as Manifesto he spends a great deal of time like many of these killers do explaining why he picked the Target that he did I’ll read it to you and his Manifesto says quote attacking in a weapon restricted area May decrease the chance of Civilian back backlash schools courts or other areas where concealed carry are outlawed or prohibited maybe good areas of attack areas with strict gun control laws are also great places for attack I can give you quotes from one Manifesto after another from one diary after another and they’re on our website at crimereesearch.org where these killers time after time tell you but the media ignores the fact never reports this part of what’s in their manifestos the fourth fact I’d like to get across is the most vulnerable people in our society benefit the most from owning guns if my research convinces Me of anything there are two groups of people who benefit the most from being able to go and protect themselves one are the people who are most likely victims of violent crime that’s overwhelmingly poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas police anybody who’s read my academic research knows that I think police are extremely important but police understand themselves that they virtually always arrive on the crime scene after the crimes occurred and that raises the question of how people should act when they’re having to confront a Criminal by themselves and the research shows overwhelmingly that by far the safest course of action for people to take is to have a gun and that’s particularly true for people who are relatively weak or physically women in the elderly you’re almost always talking about a male criminal doing the attack and when man is attacking a woman there’s a much larger larger strength difference that exists there than when a man’s attacking another man we’ve heard a lot about different attacks that occurred this year are you can can you finish will you be yeah okay thank you sorry but if you go through the list the Rob Elementary School in Uvalde Texas was a gun-free zone the Tulsa Oklahoma a hospital shooting was a gun-free zone the Walmart mass murder in Virginia was a gun-free zone I could go through others but our research shows that overwhelmingly when you see these attacks they occur in schools where teachers and staff are not allowed to carry it’s not by accident thank you very much.