Jacob Sullum discusses the Biden administration’s possible moves on gun control. Thanks to recent mass shootings, says Sullum, gun control is back in the public eye, resulting in some proposed new laws like background checks, increased “red flag” rules, an “assault weapons” ban and the reclassification of certain firearm accessories. Most of these laws, Sullum says, would do very little to reduce gun violence: most mass shooters, for instance, use common handguns—many also obtained them legally and would pass a background check. Leaving mass shootings aside, which constitute a tiny fraction of gun violence in America, almost all of these laws would inhibit responsible hobbyists while doing very little to stop potentially violent criminals from committing their crimes.

Discussed on the show:

• “Joe Biden Learns To Love Gun Control by Presidential Fiat” (Reason)
• “I Helped Lead the Gun Control Movement. It’s Asking the Wrong Questions.” (The New York Times)

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason Magazine. He is the author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use and For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health. Follow him on Twitter @jacobsullum.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG.

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Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Ph.D. tells how she witnessed Douglas Feith and his WINEP/JINSA/AEI buddies deliberately lie the people of this country into war in Iraq.

Her best articles on the subject are here, here, here, here, and here. See also this, this and this.

My previous interviews of her here.

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Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina’s 3rd district discusses his House Joint Resolution 14, which would make it clear to the President that he may not initiate a war against Iran without a Congressional declaration of war.

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Journalist Jon Basil Utley talks about the anti-Communist legacy of his mother Freda, who lost China, his post-Cold War break with the pro-empire “conservative” movement, the Armageddon Lobby and some of the possible consequences of a war against Iran.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative and Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. A former correspondent for Knight Ridder in South America, Utley has written for the Harvard Business Review on foreign nationalism and was for 17 years a commentator on the Voice of America. He is director of Americans Against World Empire.

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The Independent Institute‘s Anthony Gregory discusses the Left, Right, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, war and a State out of control.

Anthony Gregory is a research analyst at the Independent Institute, a public policy research organization that analyzes government policy and suggests nonpartisan, peaceful, free-market solutions to today’s social and political ills. He is also a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation, a guest editor for Strike the Root, and a columnist for LewRockwell.com.

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PBS Frontline producer Martin Smith explains U.S. Army’s training of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution’s Badr Corps and the problems this creates for the American mission to train a national army before withdrawal, the subject of his upcoming documentary ‘Gangs of Iraq‘ for Frontline.

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Professor of Middle East History Juan Cole explains some of what is going on in Iraq, with an emphasis on Bush’s claims about Iran’s behavior there.

Juan R. I. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively about modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Sacred Space and Holy War. His blog, Informed Comment, is a widely read source for Middle East news and commentary.

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Professor Gabriel Kolko discusses the catastrophic post World War II American Empire along the lines covered in his book The Age of War: The United States Confronts the World: the phony Cold War against the USSR, attempted domination of the third world, the Military Industrial Complex’s permanent function in the American economy, the true purpose and fate of the NATO alliance, and the coming destruction — on way or another — of America’s global position.

Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914 and Another Century of War?

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James Bovard, author of The Farm Fiasco, The Fair Trade Fraud, Shakedown: How the Government Screws You from A to Z, Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years, Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil, The Bush Betrayal and Attention Deficit Democracy, discusses the war, torture, unlimited executive power, lies, complacency, ignorance, the impending war against Iran.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy (St. Martin’s/Palgrave, 2006), and eight other books. He has written for the New York Times, War Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. His books have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean. He is a contributing editor for the American Conservative and a frequent contributor to Freedom Daily.

The War Street Journal called Bovard ‘the roving inspector general of the modern state,’ and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a ‘one-man truth squad.’ His 1994 book Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty received the Free Press Association’s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism and Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner Award for the Best Book on Liberty in 2003. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought, and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association.

His writings have been been publicly denounced by the chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.

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