Cross posted to the MRC's NewsBusters blog
On Friday's Amanpour & Co., simulcast on both PBS and on CNN International, host Christian Amanpour devoted a segment to letting author Dominic Erdozain push the narrative that Americans are unable to deal with gun-related crime because they are "paralyzed" by a misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment. She also tried to blur the line between criminals and law-abiding citizens by claiming that many or most murders are committed by "law-abiding citizens" or "good guys."
Amanpour began the segment invoking the recent mass shooting in Kansas City:
It's the third mass shooting in America this week and at least the 48th already this year according to the Gun Violence Archive. President Joe Biden said the events "should move us, shock us , shame us into acting. How many more families need to be torn apart?" But lawmakers are paralyzed by a belief in 2nd Amendment protection for an individual's right to bear arms. In a critically acclaimed new book called One Nation Under Guns, historian Dominic Erdozain argues that America's founders never actually intended for gun rights to override every other right.
After spending time discussing the history of the 2nd Amendment's interpretation and the support prominent Republicans used to give to the idea of banning handguns, Amanpour added: "And now, 21st century, it just seems like every week, if not more, there are mass shooting events in the United States -- in schools, in many, many, many different places -- places of worship. And it's become baked into American life."
Referring to a recent speech by Donald Trump at an NRA event, the PBS host continued:
I mean, people overseas, as you know, look at it and just cannot believe it, and yet politicians still play and run on this topic. So here's Donald Trump who was at a, you know, the NRA just recently. And they, you know, as you know, many people who believe in the individual right to bear arms is it's all about the good guy having it versus the bad guy so everybody should be armed.
After a clip of Trump promising to defend gun rights as President, Amanpour took aim at the distinction between good guys and bad guys:
You know, the facts, as you state, law-abiding citizens -- I guess the good guys -- are actually responsible for much of America's murder rate. Most gun deaths are the result of altercations within known groups -- family or friends. So how is that still being, you know, totted out -- or trotted out -- as a legitimate defense?
The segment concluded after Amanpour cued up her guest to argue that gun rights are a threat to American democracy.
Transcript follows:
PBS's Amanpour & Co.
February 15, 2024
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Next to Kansas City and the aftermath of a mass shooting during the Chiefs Super Bowl victory celebration last night. One person was killed and 30 injured. It's the third mass shooting in America this week and at least the 48th already this year according to the Gun Violence Archive. President Joe Biden said the events "should move us, shock us , shame us into acting. How many more families need to be torn apart?" But lawmakers are paralyzed by a belief in 2nd Amendment protection for an individual's right to bear arms. In a critically acclaimed new book called One Nation Under Guns, historian Dominic Erdozain argues that America's founders never actually intended for gun rights to override every other right. We spoke just before this latest mass shooting.
AMANPOUR (pre-recorded): Dominic Erdozain, welcome to the program.
DOMINIC ERDOZAIN, AUTHOR: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: So your book has had amazing reviews, and I find it interesting as a, you know, as a Brit sitting in Britain, that you're a Brit in America looking at this incredible, you know, catastrophe really that we all look, at, and you're seeing it from a very different perspective than perhaps most Americans.
ERDOZAIN: Absolutely. I think that anyone traveling to the U.S. from abroad is going to be -- kind of experience some culture shock, and I think I just wasn't prepared for this this kind of rolling nightmare of gun violence and, in a sense, the fatalism and resignation that seem to surround it among liberals and conservatives alike as something kind of fixed and permanent. And I think that that was where my skepticism as an outsider came from really to understand, "Is this just America? Or is this some sort of aberration or some kind of distortion of the American political tradition?" And that's what my book was all about.
(...)
AMANPOUR: And now, 21st century, it just seems like every week, if not more, there are mass shooting events in the United States -- in schools, in many, many, many different places -- places of worship. And it's become baked into American life. I mean, people overseas, as you know, look at it and just cannot believe it, and yet politicians still play and run on this topic. So here's Donald Trump who was at a, you know, the NRA just recently. And they, you know, as you know, many people who believe in the individual right to bear arms is it's all about the good guy having it versus the bad guy so everybody should be armed. Here's their proposition.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If Joe Biden is reelected, your gun rights will be gone. They'll be totally gone. You know, the sad part of that is the bad guys aren't giving up their guns. The bad guys aren't. But the good people aren't giving up their guns either because there's never going to be anybody that's asking for your gun. And when I'm reelected, every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day.
AMANPOUR: You know, the facts, as you state, law-abiding citizens -- I guess the good guys -- are actually responsible for much of America's murder rate. Most gun deaths are the result of altercations within known groups -- family or friends. So how is that still being, you know, totted out -- or trotted out -- as a legitimate defense?
ERDOZAIN: I think a lot of it is fear that transcends the facts and is larger in people's minds than the empirical realities of what guns do. But I think, you know, the Trump excerpt shows that this is a culture war issue. I don't know that his heart was ever really in it, you know. In his first book where he was thinking of running as an independent I think in 2000. You know, he chastised the Republican party for its slavish fidelity to the National Rifle Association, and he seemed perfectly willing at that stage to think in terms of gun control. The same after recent shootings, and then he was talked back. I feel that so much of this is confected. There was a big piece in the Washington Post on the AR-15 where conservative pundits were saying, "Well, no one really needed one, but it was a good way of, you know, turning our noses up to the left. So a lot of this is confected. And that's one of the things that gives me hope that a younger generation could see through it -- could see through the artifice of many of these arguments.
AMANPOUR: The full title of your book is One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy. How does it threaten our democracy?
ERDOZAIN: Well, this is where I try to go beyond some of the many brilliant scholars who've talked about the 2nd Amendment and individual rights is to understand democracy really as a way of life, a vision of freedom. You know, democracy is more than how we elect our leaders or try to. It's about living without fear of violence. It's about freedom to interact with one another and trust. You know, political scientists talk about social capital. One of my favorite sources in the book is Edward Kennedy, who lost two brothers to assassin's bullets, and he says it's not just the pool of death the guns have created -- it's the appalling specter of fear that guns have cast over our communities. And that is precisely the language of the founders is the language of the architect of this democratic tradition. And that is what guns are destroying on a daily basis.
AMANPOUR: Dominic Erdozain, thank you so much. Really important investigation.
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchel Reports
March 28, 2024
12:07 p.m.
ANDREA MITCHELL: And, Phil, the politics of this election is now turning to Long Island -- Massapequa, Long Island -- where there's a funeral for NYPD officer Jonathan Diller on Long Island. He was killed after approaching an illegally parked car this week, President Biden just spoke with New York mayor Adams about the tragedy today. Donald Trump's spokesman says he was invited by the officer's family to the funeral, but the political context is that Mr. Trump's claim that crime is rampant in New York City when the statistics show it's actually down. Every incident, every case is horrible of course. This murder is horrible of a police officer, but speaking to a larger issue of whether crime is a terrible problem in New York City.
PHILIP RUCKER, THE WASHINGTON POST NATIONAL EDITOR: Yeah, Andrea, we've saw this in the midterm elections last year actually where a lot of Republicans, including in New York state, were running on crime with some limited success. It was not necessarily a winning issue for Republicans then, but it has been core to Trump's political brand. It's something that he has talked about a lot. He's especially tried to link crime to the immigration issue and border security, and I think him going to this funeral today in New York is an attempt by him to try to draw attention to the killing of this police officer and try to blame that on Biden even, as you say, crime is down in New York City. It's down in a lot of cities. It's not actually down in Washington, D.C., here, but it is down in a lot of cities around the country. Nonetheless, it is a concern that we see registering in polling, especially among suburban voters and some of those voters that Trump is really going to be looking to motivate in the general election. And I think we'll probably continue to see him talk about crime and try to make the state of crime seem a lot worse than the statistics might actually show for the purposes of motivating his supporters and convincing persuadable voters out there
(...)
MSNBC's Morning Joe
March 29, 2024
6:30 a.m. Eastern
JOE SCARBOROUGH: There's an NBC article that I just now posted on my threads account, and it just shows the facts. I know the facts don't matter to Donald Trump, but crime rates keep dropping. Crime, in fact, the rate is lower now than when Donald Trump was in office -- lower than it was in 2020, even slightly lower than it was in Trump's best year as it pertains to crime in 2019. Murder rates over the past year in the big cities that he's constantly harping on, down 20 percent, rapes down 16 percent -- you can go down the list on and on. The most serious crimes way down. And, again, the overall crime rate for 2022 -- the last year recorded -- the crime rates lower again than Donald Trump's best year in 2019 -- certainly a lot lower than 2020. So he'll say what he says, Republicans will keep lying, other news outlets will keep lying about it, and people will whip themselves into a frenzy and say, "What about crime?" And you can show them the facts.
And it's just like -- seriously, it's just like I can show people, you know, maybe they're UNC fans where they don't want to know Alabama won last night. I think it was 79-77. But Alabama beat UNC, but they go, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, that's not the truth!" It's the fact. It's just the fact. They may not like it, but it's the fact. And that's how Trump extremists have gotten, and that's how cable news networks run. It's their business model to lie about the facts -- to twist and distort reality for viewers day in, day out, night in, night out.
And when you talk about crime, it's not as low I want it to be -- it's not as low as you want it to be. We've both said we think the bail issue in New York City is a joke. We think cops aren't allowed to do their jobs enough -- we think that's a joke. That said, if you look at the numbers, Donald Trump is lying when he says crime rates are way up. They're not -- they're down. They're lower than they were when he was President.
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MSNBC's Chris Jansing Reports
March 29, 2024
1:02 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS JANSING: Less than an hour away on Long Island, Donald Trump was in full attack mode, using the funeral of a police officer as a platform to go after Biden. He criticized the lack of law and order -- a message he repeated this morning on Fox News.
DONALD TRUMP (on Fox News): It's getting worse and worse for police because we're not -- we're not taking care of them. We're not -- we're not -- we're not allowing them to do their job properly (editing jump) because this country is going to hell. Our country is not respected anymore. We're really -- I say it in my rallies and my speeches -- we're a nation in decline.
JANSING: Well, the facts are that crime in New York City is about where it was a decade ago when it was often referred to as America's safest big city. Violent crime has actually declined all across the country. Rates of rape, robbery and aggravated assault are down even though polls show Americans believe the crime rate is going up.
(...)
I want to start with this huge issue for Joe Biden of disinformation and misinformation. President Biden suggests this is really something voters need to work out for themselves talking to each other with their neighbors, but can the Biden campaign really afford to do that? What do they need to do?
PHILIP RUCKER, WASHINGTON POST NATIONAL EDITOR: Yeah, Chris, it is a huge concern for the Biden campaign in part because Trump and his allies have been so effective the last number of years in spreading misinformation, and it's gone deep within Trump's network of supporters, millions of people getting falsehoods through email, through social media, through, you know, pro-Trump communications. And it's really, I think going to require more than just neighbor to neighbor communication, but the Biden campaign communicating their own message and communicating, you know, the counter-facts in addition to, of course, just fair and objective media coverage across the board of presenting facts as you just did about the crime in New York City. That's essential, too, but I think only relying on neighbors to talk to their neighbors to get facts straight is a risky proposition considering that so many millions of Americans who have neighbors and are neighbors are being inundated with misinformation all the time.
JANSING: Every day, Tim, it seems we have these crazy split screens. Yesterday was misinformation by Donald Trump about crime. He kept saying things are getting worse. The fact is, violent crime is down, as I said, but in New York City specifically, major felony offenses are on track to be lower than last year -- far lower now than they were back in the '90s. And yet there are many New Yorkers, including Democrats and progressives, who will say they're nervous about the subways. They don't feel safe on the streets. Is it kind of like the economy? The facts are one thing, feeling is another thing, and, in many ways, that's the harder hurdle to get over.
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CNN's Anderson Cooper 360
March 19, 2024
8:26 p.m. Eastern
ANDERSON COOPER: Now, with significant progress in a problem that voters are hearing plenty about from candidates this year, especially the former President, crime. New FBI data showing it fell significantly last year, almost across the board. Property crime mostly down -- violent crime also down -- murder down sharply. Today President Biden touted the new numbers, took a jab at the former President over his record in office, and promised to keep fighting for police funding and a ban on assault weapons. Here now to talk more about this is CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller. So, John, I mean, the Biden administration is celebrating these numbers. How substantial of a drop in crime is this?
JOHN MILLER, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, it's pretty substantial. I mean, you've got like a 13 percent decrease in murder, shootings going down. We are not yet back to pre-pandemic numbers, but we're on the way. And that's important because pre-pandemic numbers -- particularly in violent crime -- were some of the lowest ever. That doesn't mean -- and we checked the FBI stats against the major city chiefs that there aren't certain cities that are still having big challenges, particularly with shootings.
COOPER: But why -- I mean, is there a sense of why violent crime is down?
MILLER: Yeah, so, I mean, if you look at kind of the graphics of the whole thing, you have 2018, 2019, crime is very low in the United States -- low as it's been in, you know, many, many years. But, then in 2020, you've got the pandemic -- you've got courts being shut down -- you've got Brianna Taylor and George Floyd -- you've got demonstrations and disorder -- you have police stopping making arrests in certain cases -- you've got "defund the police" -- you have a lot of things coming together and almost a perfect storm that we saw a surge in crime in those two years. Then, when you look at 2022, 2023, you see some of those cities have refunded police, rehired officers, the court backlogs are now kind of back to normal. You see some of the laws that were sweeping have been adjusted and fixed so that the criminal justice system works smoother. And you see that crime goes flat, and now we're starting to see it go down again.
COOPER: Why do you think there is such a discrepancy between the way people feel -- or the way it's being portrayed -- and, I mean, these numbers? Because there's plenty of people, I mean, I look around New York and think, "Wow ... (inaudible)"
MILLER: It's a real discrepancy. If you look at the surveys that are done either by Pew Research and the Gallup polls, you know, they'll tell you consistently that if you ask people, "Is gun crime, gun violence, violent crime better now or worse than it was 20 years ago?" they'll say, "No, it's gotten much worse" -- 30 years ago. You know, we know 30 years ago there were 24,000 murders across the United States. You know, that's down between 15 and 18 depending on what year you're looking at. But the perception is, "It's worse," partly because of us. Now, we have almost instantaneous access to very dramatic video from people's cell phones.
COOPER: You see it more even though it may not be as --
MILLER: We talk about the active shooters and, of course, the politics of it as, you know, some politicians -- and we were just talking about that reinforced the idea as ever rising crime when, in fact, it's way down from where it used to be, and it's starting to get back to where it was at its lowest.
(...)
MSNBC's Alex Wagner Tonight
March 20, 2024
9:33 a.m. Eastern
ALI VELSHI: If you were to randomly flip on Fox News, there are pretty decent odds you will find yourself watching a segment about how Biden's America is rampant with crime. "America is in a crime crisis." And it's not just Fox -- Trump is also obsessed with crime, but a very specific kind of crime.
DONALD TRUMP CLIP #1: It's a new kind of crime -- I don't know if you've heard this -- but I came up with this one -- "migrant crime." There's crime, there's violent crime, there's migrant crime. We have a new category of crime -- it's called "migrant crime."
TRUMP CLIP #2: The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime. It's the new form of vicious violation to our country. It's migrant crime. We call it "Biden migrant crime."
VELSHI: There's a problem with that because what Trump and Fox are pushing lack facts. Fox and Trump are pushing lack facts. Across the country, the crime rate is down, and it's continuing to drop. We got new FBI crime data yesterday that shows that, no matter how you slice it, America is getting safer. Property crime is down, violent crime is down, the murder rate saw the sharpest annual decline every recorded. And that supposed wave of migrant crime that Trump is obsessed with, Fox News ran 400 segments on it in the first 10 weeks of this year. But the facts are not on Trump or Fox's side on that either. Statistically speaking, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens are, but you don't hear that on Fox News.
Now, none of this is to say that many communities across the country aren't still grappling with very real incidents of crime or that we should turn away from efforts to reduce crime. But the narrative being pushed here that crime is on a precipitous rise under Biden's Democratic administration is simply false. What facts -- Fox News lacks in facts, it makes up, though, in vibes.
DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Democrats will say, "Well, but crime is down. It's not how people feel."
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: We all know communities don't feel safer.
MICHELE TAFOYA, FORMER NFL SIDELINE REPORTER (on Fox News Channel): You do see crime on the rise, and I, you know, President Biden held that whole presser about how crime is down in America. I don't know. Again, it's -- do you believe your lying eyes? Or do you believe the President of the United States?
He just at the White House a few moments ago was just touting a drop in crime statistics. That is not what we're all feeling and seeing.
VELSHI: Don't believe your lying eyes. The reality is that crime in America started spiking in 2020 during the pandemic when Donald Trump was President. But Fox News is taking advantage of a gap between perception and reality here. Polling shows us that almost every year for the past few decades, Americans have felt like the country was getting more dangerous even when it wasn't. And those feelings now have a partisan split to them. Last year, Gallup found that 92 percent of Republicans believe crime rose from the year before compared to 58 percent of Democrats. I wonder why.
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CNN News Central
8:55 a.m. Eastern
JOHN BERMAN: So, this morning, new FBI data is showing violent crime in the United States down six percent -- down 11 percent in cities with one million people or more. Property crime is down four percent. CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller is here with us now. I just want to put these numbers, in and of themselves, in perspective. Because they've been out there, and I think they pass people by. Historically speaking, how much is crime dropping right now?
JOHN MILLER: So crime is dropping precipitously, but this is also in the context of, in 2020 and 2021, we had a perfect storm in this country. We had "defund the police," we had departments getting smaller, we had district attorneys changing policy, we had pandemic which shut down the courts and stopped trials, so crime went up a lot. So are we down to pre-pandemic numbers in terms of crime? No, we're not. But we are headed back towards normalization, which is a good thing.
BERMAN: Why? Is there a sense of why crime is dropping as much as it is?
MILLER: So some of those things have been reversed. A number of the places that defunded the police found that they had to refund the police because of citizens' concerns about crime. A number of places that changed the laws dramatically have gone to revisit those laws and adjusted them. So you're seeing that. But also there are the very practical things. The courts are back in business, trials are being held, but there are still challenges.
BERMAN: There are still challenges, but what I'm trying to figure out is, crime is moving down, yet Americans' concerns about crime are moving up -- like Gallup has it 63 percent saying it's a big deal which is the highest number ever. So why that disconnect?
MILLER: So that is really interesting, John, because even in the 1990s when crime was at an all-time high -- you had 24,000 murders -- you know, you go up to the mid-2000s when crime is at all-time lows and do surveys -- there was a Pew Research survey, the Allup survey. When crime is up, people say crime is up, and when crime is down, people still say crime is up because what they're seeing is not necessarily the violent crime but take San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, places where you have a severe homeless problem, mental health issues. They see the chaos around them, and it makes them feel unsafe. And then there's us and social media which is now with every cell phone recording everything live. You know, we're showing those crimes from security camera, social media videos, so it creates this aura that it's always getting worse. Right now, it's getting better.
Right now, it is getting better. I mean, there are entire cable networks that are devoted to making it seem like crime is going up. Look, I'm not saying it isn't a concern to people, but the data is showing that it is moving in the right direction.
So we're having the largest decline in homicides -- 13 percent down -- that we've probably seen -- that's what we're on track to have if it continues in this direction that we've seen in -- in probably recorded history. but it still doesn't bring us back to where we were before. So much work left to be done.
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MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
March 21, 2024
8:44 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS HAYES: If you happen to be a frequent viewer of this program, you might be familiar with this chart. The picture paints about as clear as it gets. There was a record spike in violent crime under Donald Trump in 2020 -- it shoots up to the left there. There's been a consistent decline since President Joe Biden took office. The thing about crime data, it takes a long time to aggregate. It's actually gotten worse over time. The chart is based on preliminary information because it takes a while for the full picture to come into focus. These stats trickle out before the FBI drops its final report for the year before, but there's the thing. The Bureau just released some more data -- new data from 2023 -- indicating that, yes, there was a massive drop in crime last year. According to one crime data analyst who spoke to NBC News, when all is said and done, 2023, quote, "We will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded." It is indisputable the country is getting both safer and more prosperous in the last four years under President Biden. It doesn't seem like that message is getting through, at least not for now. I think it's true for a lot of reasons -- generally related to media consumption.
Local news has a number of mostly financial incentives to hyperfixate on crime, and they do. It's especially true for violent crime, often in a way that's disproportionate to actual statistics. And, of course, right-wing cable news has an obvious political incentive to portray life in President Biden's America as negatively as possible. (montage of 10 different people on Fox News Channel stating that "crime is out of control") I think the media focus is one reason why this message is not getting through, but some of the responsibility also falls on the Biden administration itself which, until recently, hasn't done a great job of articulating the real tangible successes on this front. Which is why it is very interesting to me when earlier this week, the Biden-Harris White House released this statement touting the new data from the FBI and taking credit for making Americans safer. Quote, "Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which every Republican in Congress voted against, we made the largest ever federal investment at fighting and preventing crime at any time in our history. This record investment in crime reduction is delivering results."
The Biden White House isn't just touting the decline in crime, but they're actually taking credit. They're pointing to legislation investments as the cause. It's a pretty darn good message in an election year.
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CNN's Anderson Cooper 360
ANDERSON COOPER: Now, with significant progress in a problem that voters are hearing plenty about from candidates this year, especially former President, crime. New FBI data showing it fell significantly last year, almost across the board. Property crime mostly down -- violent crime also down -- murder down sharply. Today President Biden touted the new numbers, took a jab at the former President over his record in office, and promised to keep fighting for police funding and a ban on assault weapons. Here now to talk more about this is CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller. So, John, I mean, the Biden administration
