The “Good Guy with a Gun” Myth (with Fred Guttenberg)

Hello, and welcome to the Bullericks next level Sunday interview. I’m your host Tim Miller. I’ve been trying to give you guys diversions from the punditry of the GOP primary and the general election ahead of us on these interviews. And, this week, we’re talking to Fred Gutenberg. Father of Jamie Gutenburg who was killed in the parkland shooting.

And, man, is he inspiring? It was a really valuable conversation. I think we talked about his experience, how he managing grief, but then more importantly, kind of the actions for going forward and what we can do about the gun violence problem in this country I’m gonna keep that quick and get right to Fred. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed hosting it. Despite the fact that it’s painful at times, I think it’s important.

I’m just so grateful to Fred that he took the time to do it. So up next, Fred Gudenberg, at first, my friends had asked him. Peace y’all. Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Next level Sunday interview. I’m Tim Miller.

I am here today with Fred Guttenberg, is an activist whose daughter, Jamie was killed in the parkland shooting, brother Michael, died at triage after nine eleven, he has a book find the helpers and another newer book American carnage about facts about gun safety and gun violence in America. And has an organization, orange ribbons for Jamie. A lot to talk about. And and Fred, I really appreciate you taking the time to do it.

Thanks, Tim. It’s actually Good to join you.

Actually. Thank you. Some of these aren’t that good, I guess, maybe.

As I said before we got on, I’m a big fan and And I’m actually really I am glad to be on this with you. I appreciate everything you do.

Alright. I appreciate too. And, I was listening to one of your other interviews, and, you get a little smile. You said, you have a kind of a policy about people that come up to you and wanna wanna talk to you and and kind of dump their own trauma on you at times. And you said you have a permission to be honest that you give yourself permission to be honest is is sometimes saying, yeah, this isn’t doing anything for me to talk about this right now, but I appreciate it.

So I just, I want that to be the policy here on the podcast. If I’m going somewhere and you don’t wanna do it, we can we’ve got a ton of ground to cover.

Now, listen, I I appreciate it. I started that Probably not long after the shooting where, you know, people have always come up to you and say things like, how you doing? You look like you’re doing okay. And it was sort of, like, I think they were waiting for me to make them feel better. And I got to a place where I got tired of responding to it.

Not I didn’t wanna be mean, but if you’re gonna take the time to ask me, I’m gonna take the time to give you an honest answer. And, my wife struggled with it for a really long time because sometimes you don’t wanna answer, and That’s also being honest when you say, I don’t feel like talking about it. But, yeah, I try to be as as authentic and as candid always as I possibly can. It’s what people deserve.

I really appreciate that about you. But but just for folks who aren’t familiar with your with your story, Can we just kind of back up and talk about, obviously, the parkland shooting is now six years ago. A big reason why I wanted to do this is we’re taking a break on the podcast from from doing punditry all the time because we’re we’re about to have the longest presidential election history. It’s important, but we do plenty of talking about that at the Bulwark. And and people always say this about gun violence shootings, right?

You only talk about it in the three days after something happens, and then or four days or five days, and then it goes away. And so I kind of wanted to have this conversation apropos of not a specific shooting. And so it’s been six years. Tell people about kind of what led up to that day with your brother and kind of what that what that day was like for you.

Yeah. So as a reminder, the shooting was February fourteenth Valentine’s Day. And you mentioned my brother. My brother passed away four months. Prior to the shooting.

October seventeenth, two thousand seventeen. He was a first responder, at nine eleven. He was a physician. My brother actually ran the triage for the World Trade Center. He was in the World Trade Center before the second building was hit.

And he was in there in one of the connecting buildings when it all came down. He and his team of ten physicians hid out in a big garage storage facility, pulled down the garage door, waited for the noise to stop. But they breathed in all that stuff. And while amazingly everything around them turned to rubble, the room they hid out in didn’t. And he and his team spent pretty much the next sixteen days at ground zero, treating patients.

Everything was fine until two thousand thirteen when he had pancreatic cancer. He had surgery, chemo radiation, and seemed as if he was gonna cheat death again. And in two thousand sixteen, it came back first in his lungs, then his stomach and his liver. I’m one of five kids. We’ve never dealt with loss before.

My dad is ninety one. My mom is eighty seven, and they’re probably gonna outlive me. Okay? I mean, we’ve we’ve never dealt with loss before. So It was hard.

On this Valentine’s Day, my kids who loved their uncle, my wife and I, We were in this process of moving forward from grief. People who’ve been through a brief understand, and I had this idea that I wanted to help in that process, and I really wanted to make this Valentine’s Day very special. And I was gonna introduce my kids to the romance of the day. I was gonna take my old VHS wedding tape that the kids had never seen because it’s on VHS. And digitize it that day, and we’re gonna watch it as a family that night.

That was my plan. My kids that morning, as as any morning. We’re running late, blaming each other. And when I remember about the morning, it will haunt me forever. And I if if people walk away in this interview with one thing that they remember, it’s gonna be this.

I didn’t tell my kids that morning. I love them. My last words where you gotta go, you’re gonna be late. I was rushing them to go to school. My last words were not.

I love you. And I spent the past six years telling parents and children and friends and lovers to just do one thing. When you say goodbye to somebody, say I love you and look them in the eye when you do it so that you know you mean it. Because I didn’t. And It was supposed to be like any other day.

I I I ne it never should have mattered. My kids were in school. It was like any other day, the normal texting back and forth through the day until just after two PM. When my son called me and he’s a jokester, So I didn’t believe him at first. And he said, dad, there’s a shooting at my school.

Said, what do you mean? There’s a shooting at your school? And he watched after Jamie like a hawk. I mean, they were typical siblings, but boy, he protected her. And he said, no, I can’t find Jamie.

And the second he said that, I knew this was real. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you where are you? Where is Jamie? He’s like Jamie’s in the freshman building is what they called it. But I’m on the campus.

They’re making this all run. But I don’t wanna run. I gotta go find Jamie. And I’m on the phone with him begging him to run. Telling me, I’ll worry about James.

You want me to hear. Boom. And that was the shooter on the third floor killing my daughter. And if people wanna know why I am so committed to doing what I do. I live with that sound in my head.

And and, I met my son after that. The the kids ran to a Walmart. Not far from the school. And I picked him up there, and the first thing we did is find my iPhone so I could know where Jamie’s phone was. Now we knew it was still in the building.

Where the shooting happened. We hoped she dropped it, so we were waiting for her to use somebody else’s phone to call us. One by one over the next hour, hour and a half, all of Jamie’s friends who we knew she would have been with had checked in with their parents, and none of them had seen Jamie. My wife and I then proceeded to go to the hospital in separate cars. We were in two separate places.

The crazy part of the story is while I was dealing with my son and getting him to my in laws, my wife was at a preschool across the street on a lockdown, okay, because of the shooting. And The the the child, my wife’s a pediatric occupational therapist. She was doing a handwriting class. The child she was protecting was congressman Jared Moscow, Musco, it’s his son. And and it people who know my story know, I consider Jared a brother.

I love the guy. His family and I, we are deeply connected. We knew each other before the shooting, you know, just from the community.

Sure.

But look, before I did this interview, I was on the phone with him. Okay? He’s he is one of my favorite people in the world. So

You’ve been so great.

He’s he’s he’s terrific. I I could have told anybody that that’s listen. If only Palmer would have reached out to me, before you saying Smurf? Because as soon as that happened, I was like, Oh, that was a bad idea. But but, yeah, while my daughter was getting killed, My wife was protecting his son.

Wow. And so when Jen was finally able to leave that school, She and I made a decision to go in two cars to the hospital where the injured were being sent. That was our next hope, was that my daughter was gonna be on an operating table somewhere. So we went to the hospital. We were there for an hour and a half.

After an hour and a half, it was clear that not only was she not there, she was not being brought there, They checked all the other local hospitals. She wasn’t in any of them. One of my, closest friends is a Coral Springs police officer who was at seen earlier. As I’m leaving the hospital, I call him, and I tell him you need to go back. I need you to go see if you can find Jamie, and he did.

And as I’m driving home, my wife is in the car in front of me. And Scott calls me and he says, Where are you? And I told him where I was. He goes, do me a favor. They had a reunification set up at a Marriott Hotel.

He goes, meet me at the Marriott Hotel. I said, I don’t wanna go to the Marriott Hotel. I wanna go home. He goes, I know I but that’s where they’re telling us to have everybody come. I said, Scott, I wanna go home.

If you know anything, tell me now. He goes, meet me at the Marriott Hotel. He didn’t wanna tell me over the

phone. Right. No. Especially while you’re driving.

Correct. And I said, Scott, what do you know? And he broke down crying. He just said she’s gone. And now I’m getting emotional.

My wife’s in the car in front of me, and she keeps looking here over your mirror and she can see. So now she’s calling me wanting to know what’s going on. And now I sound like Scott, I’m saying Scott wants us to meet him at the Marriott Hotel. I didn’t wanna tell her. And she’s like, no, no, no, no, you know something.

I said, Jen, we’re driving. I said, let’s just meet And let’s find out everything together. She’s like, you know. You need to tell me now. I said, I’m not gonna say anything.

We need to pull over. And so we were on the highway. We pulled off at the next exit. And on the side of the road is where I had to tell my wife my daughter was dead. And that was February fourteenth.

Jamie became the first publicly identified because of it, because it quickly got out. In a matter of an hour, helicopters from media flying over my house, My phone ringing with media, media showing up at my door. Unfortunately, I’m friends with a lot of police officers, and they literally came and shut down my block to stop it, and they spent twenty four seven in front of my house for the next week. But That’s what happened that day.

Are you in doing Scott? Are you still, like, in the police force down there? I mean, how do you, is do you guys still talk? How do you deal with that?

He’s family. We are heck, again, another person who I spoke to this morning before this interview. He’s he’s family to me. His his wife as family does. His two daughters who were friends with my daughter.

We all met because all of our kids were in dance together. We used to go on dance competition trips together. And, no, we talk every single day. We get together throughout the week My wife when I deal with it a little differently, and he and his wife deal with it a little differently. Listen, I I talk about what happened freely because I can’t change that reality.

I am so thrilled and happy for all the other kids, like Scott’s kids, who are having their amazing lives, while I’m desperately sad, my wife and I don’t wear not. But I can’t avoid those conversations. Right. You know, for my wife, for mom, there was less talking about the reality of what happened, probably even less of the the a lot of the other moms, they struggle with talking about the mom things that they’re doing because they don’t want to upset my wife.

Right.

So, we’ve had to start having, like, literal conversations with friends saying, you know what? It’s time for us all to just freely discuss again.

Yeah.

We can’t change our reality, but we are happy for you. And and and so, but it’s been it’s been different, but no, Scott’s my brother. I I I love the guy. And he is still with the police force. But he was traumatized by this as law enforcement often is.

I wanna ask one more thing about that day, because I’ve heard you talk about it. And, you’d mentioned his daughters on the dance team, and I just hardest thing I’d done. Listen to your talk about was the other girls in the dance team, and and that what the name is, why the name for the foundation is what it is. If you wouldn’t mind just kinda sharing what they did that night.

Yeah. A lot of people thought the name was because Orange is the color of the gun safety movement.

Orange Drivens for Jamie.

Yeah. Orange Drivens for Jamie. That is not the reason we started a foundation called Orange Drivens for Jamie. Orange was Jamie’s favorite color. And all of her friends knew it.

She loved Orange. The night she was killed, All of the dance kids got together with the dance studio and made thousands of orange ribbons. And they they came over our house late that night, they all they gave the ribbons to my wife and I because they wanted us to make sure at her funeral everyone would have one. And then they marched up to her room, and they all just broke down up in her room. It was it was a horrific scene.

I I, and those kids, I, I, I, I, we’re still in touch with these kids. They’re they I love these kids. But they made these orange ribbons. And at Jamie’s funeral, her eulogy I talked about it, and I talked about all of the orange ribbons Ron DeSantis start of an orange ribbons movement. I didn’t know what it really meant.

But I knew something was gonna come of this. There’s another part of that eulogy that I wanna tell you about. About three weeks later, I was in a Home Depot. And again, the connection still to this day boggles my mind because of the orange side. But someone came up to me.

I was wearing the wardrobe, and I wore it every day after that. And they asked me what it was for. And I told them. And they said, did you know that’s the color of the gun safety movement? I had no idea.

That wasn’t my world. And I came home that day, and it said to my wife, I wanna start a foundation. And I wanna call it RN Drivens for Jamie. You know, I said, it’s too much of a coincidence that gun violence has a movement where this is the color, and I wanna make this the symbol of the movement. And in fact, we did you now see.

Yeah.

It helped that speaker Pelosi who I love dearly, started wearing the orange ribbon. But we gave them out to every politician, to at every event, and the orange ribbon is now the symbol of the movement. And our foundation was created to investing causes that always matter to Jamie in life, but also to educate on why her life was cut short. So that’s how we started the foundation. It’s interesting.

I’ve I’ve never talked about the eulogy in six years on any interview. Because there but there is another part to the eulogy that is very meaningful and relevant to the upcoming election.

Okay.

The morning of Jamie’s funeral. The former guy, Trump put out a tweet. And he blamed the parkland murder on the Russia investigation. I still have the tweet to this day, but he did. And he said to the that if the FBI had been spending less time on him in Russia that this would not have happened in Parkland.

Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah.

Yeah. And I went ballistic. I went crazy. Now, here I am. I’m supposed to getting ready to go to a funeral, and my wife’s trying to calm me down.

And I wouldn’t calm down till I went and I did what I started to find very therapeutic. I wrote and I rewrote the whole ending of my funeral of the of the eulogy.

Of the eulogy.

As and it was a statement to Trump. And a direct reply to his tweet. And basically making it clear, you do not have my permission to talk about how my daughter was killed, to politicize why she was killed. You only have my permission to engage if you so choose in a real approach to doing something about gun violence. And The end of the eulogy, I broke down crying.

I turned around. I hugged my wife and my rabbi, and the rabbi whispered in my ear. He just turn around. And I turn around, and we were like two thousand people at the funeral. And they’re all and that included the at the time governor, Rick Scott.

Everybody was standing up, giving a standing ovation, I think maybe it had a lot to do with the entire eulogy. I know it had a lot to do with that end.

Yeah. And Rick’s got people forget this. I It’s it’s it’s crazy that we’ve gone backwards among I don’t know who we is in that sense. It’s that Republicans have gone backwards since then and what they’re willing to do on gun violence. But Rick Scott actually passed some modest gun reforms after that, you know, which you didn’t see from Abbott.

In Texas, for example, after Uvalde. So may maybe you did get into his little to his little lizard brain with that eulogy.

For a period of time, Rick Scott and I spoke very regularly. After the shooting. I mean, he and I developed a real connection, and Rick Scott promised me that he would sign legislation to address what happened in Parkland. And in fact, we did. We passed red flag law.

We passed the waiting period. We raised the age of twenty one. Real substantive stuff. Rick Scott wants the world to forget. That he oversaw that, that he was a part of that, which is why I’ve come to despise him, which is why I will do anything to see him not get reelected.

He had the chance to be a leader, not just in Florida at that time. But in the Senate now,

Yeah.

You know, nobody’s saying you have to say you’re against the second amendment. No. I won’t say you have to say you have an issue with guns. Be honest. This was gun violence.

Work with me to end gun violence, but he didn’t. The Republican Party hasn’t gone Bulwark. They’ve actually solidified in on exactly who they are. And That’s this party has has solidified in really on who it is on. Basically, our democracy and other things, there are people in that party who are not that way, who are reasonable, but they’re too weak to speak up because they were afraid.

And the only way to get them to speak up. In fact, it’s the reason why former congressman Joe Walsh and I become such close friends and why we’re gonna literally start a speaking tour across America that were kicking off in February at the Biden Center for Democracy, calling two dads for democracy because he and I both I’m gonna tell everyone to vote for Biden and vote only Democrat in twenty four. Joe, And I both believe democracy requires two functioning parties. And the only way to get the Republican party functioning again is to annihilate it in twenty four. And failure to annihilate it in twenty four is something I just can’t even fathom, but we must.

Well, there’s evidence for that in twenty. I mean, that was my case in twenty for a Joe Biden landslide is that that would prevent this fucking asshole from you know, reanimating from the dead. But one other personal question for you, just hearing you talked about that day and that eulogy and kind of, you know, imagining, like, you know, nobody can imagine but kind of envisioning like my reaction if if there’s a school shooter at my my daughter’s school, revisioning fucking president trump weighing in on it. Like, it’s just like my rage would just be so uncontainable. That I just don’t know how I could do anything, but just be filled, just become a ray, a monster of rage.

And I so I just was wondering kinda how you managed that?

Well, I always knew he was a liar, but that was the moment where I developed an absolute determination to make sure he could never ever be our president again. You know, I always tell people, my wife and son are not political. In fact, they hate that I’m in this whole environment. It’s just it’s just they don’t like But you know who did in my family? Jamie did.

And Jamie had what I used to call the greatest bullshit detector on earth. And during the campaign back then, she was the one in the house that would sit with me and watch the news.

Well, she would’ve been well, like, in seventh grade something?

Back then. Yeah. And she used to sit there and yell at the television, but but not at at at trump. She’d yell at, like, potential voters, I’d say, come on, people. Are you stupid?

Do you not see what a liar he is? I mean, Jamie had a bullshit detector. And so here’s how I keep grounded. I always think of Jamie. I always think of what happened and how it was preventable And I always think of those who clearly wanna work with decency, stability, and honesty to stop the next one, and those who don’t.

And and president Biden, at the time private citizen Biden called me during the week of the shooting.

Just I just get this, like, the timeline I I mean, like, really, really private citizen Like, he was in the run. If it’s February twenty eighteen, like, he’s not running. He hadn’t even decided he was running. He was

on his way to a Bow Biden Foundation event in New York. He called me while he was on the train. And he was not a candidate for anything. We spent about an hour on the phone. And then three weeks later, he was down in Florida for an event, and he met privately with me and Max Shachter for almost an hour.

While he had a whole room of people waiting to talk to him. But he just refused to leave us because he knew how important it was. I mean, he’s a special human being. But I’ll never forget when he said to me towards the end of the phone call. So what’s your plan?

And I said, I’m not really sure. I said, I just know, and I know I can curse on this, I, and I said this to him just like this. I just know I wanna break the fucking gun lobby. And He said, well, that’s your goal. But what’s your plan?

He goes, because now you have a mission. And when he used that word mission, and he said, I think, and he said, now you have a mission, you have a purpose. Those mission and purpose is what keeps me grounded. I always remember what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and I always remember who is in this work to do the right thing and who isn’t. And I’m I don’t I can’t let my anger and emotion cause me to do something that will be detrimental to the greater good.

And so I control it.

How? That would be my challenge.

How? I I will tell you.

We’ve gummies.

No. I don’t. I I should start, but I don’t. Jamie keeps me grounded. I go to the cemetery a lot.

And I always talk to Jamie about what’s going on. And about how I can’t change what happened to her, but how with me as her voice, together, we are gonna change what happens to others. And as long as I know that is my purpose, And as long as I know, I believe I have Jamie, you see her standing over my shoulder in that picture. As long as I know I have her standing over my shoulder, She keeps me grounded. I know it sounds crazy, but she and I have a purpose in this world, and and we’re not gonna stop.

I wanna talk about some of the gun policy stuff that what we were talking in the green room, something that happened this week that I found interesting is that you had congressman Clark down in in Florida, the parkland building, the school building itself. Now has been dormant, I guess, for six years. The kids go to a different school on the campus, and and they’re they’re they’re gonna tear it down. But but politicians and and policy makers and stuff come through, just kind of learn lessons about the design of the building. And, like, this should all we always just piss me off so much about the, oh, we need more door control.

I was like, the Parkland had a single entry. Parkland had a, you know, a security guard the front, right? And I, like, I think about my high school. I had a million inter, you know, I, I just, that stuff pisses me off when, when, when, like, Republicans try to make it about door control instead of about guns, but, you know, there are things we can learn. You know, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to make the schools better.

So I I just curious since you go on those tours, what are the main takeaways from on that side of things?

So there’s a lot to learn. And and you’re correct yesterday. We had rep Catherine Bulwark. Last week, we had, education secretary cardona and members of his staff, as well as members of the ATF, and the Secret Podcast threat assessment team. Over the past few months, we have hosted congressional delegations and school administrators.

We’ve invited every Democrat and every Republican. There’s been, I think, less than a handful of Republicans who have taken us up on this, and it is what it is. That’s who they are. That said, here’s what we can learn. After the tour, We always follow it with a with a a round table.

So we can talk through the learnings. That’s building is a time capsule. It has been untouched since the shooting. All the blood is still there.

Oh my god.

Any other body matter is still there?

Oh my god. So when you want you walk through it?

I did. I I didn’t do any of the walk throughs until last week, my first one was with Secretary of Education Cardona.

I did not

know. Yesterday was my second one. All the shards of glass, all of the work that kids were working on is still on the desks. It’s all there. It’s all there.

Why? Is that the standard procedure? Why?

Because the the building was under the control of the state attorney’s office from the from the time of the shooting. And knowing that they would eventually need that to potentially walk a jury through, the building was locked and left.

Holy shit.

And it is still that way. So when you walk through, I can literally point to you each spot, say, that’s the blood of this one. That’s the blood of of this one. Here’s where my daughter ran. Here’s where she died and taken to the exact spot.

And for the families, only a few family members continually do this. Like I said, I just finally started doing it. One of the reasons why I didn’t do it until last week was last year after the criminal trial. Jamie was killed in the hallway. So she’s one of the few where there’s actual video from the hallway cameras.

I watched the video last year because I just had some questions that I needed to have answered. But I was pretty traumatized for a while, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do the walk throughs earlier on in this process. But We have a member of the state attorney’s office join us on everyone. And, couple of the other parents, now with with me, and we walk them through the entire building, through the timeline, where the shooter went, when he did what, and all of the failures. And so, as I’ve always said, and this gets to the lessons, there were failures before, during, and after.

The before is all legislative. How it is that we allowed AR fifteen sales to go from two percent of all guns sold in. Two thousand three when my daughter was born to over twenty five percent of all guns sold in two thousand twenty three, only twenty years later. How it is we as a country went from two hundred million weapons in America in two thousand three, only twenty years ago, to over four hundred million weapons only twenty years later. There’s a direct Forget every it’s the reason why I wrote the book American carnage.

Everybody will give you a gazillion reasons for gun violence in America. You know, mental health, good guys versus bad guys. Only bad guys have all the bullshit. I literally just told you the only two things you need to know. It’s it’s numbers.

As I always told my children, numbers don’t lie. And I just told you everything you need to know. All the rest is bullshit. The the what the NRA did back in the nineties to divide this country into a country of good guys and bad guys. So the good guys, you better run out and buy guns because the bad guys have them.

Yeah. Okay. It was bullshit. What Wayne La Pierre did days after the Sandy Hook shooting. When he said, a line that did not exist in this country until after the Sandy Hook shooting.

He said for the very first time, The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is? A good guy with a gun. Feels like we’ve lived with that forever. It started after Sandy Hook. They turned Sandy Hook into a gun sales bonanza.

Yeah. Feels like they did because it was a choice and then I grew up I I grew about a mile from Columbine and was in high school then. I was I went to I went to private school, but so I I lived through all that. And there was a moment, right, a combine where there was, like, a, an intra, NRA debate. We maybe should be on the side of more restrictions, you know, more, more limits, and the lapierre side won.

Right? So, like, this was a human choice by activists, gun activists in the late nineties after all.

And you can tie what happened in Parkland. And when I talk about legislative failures beforehand, I really look back to what was possible after Columbine, and the fact that the Anna Wainlop here won, and the their ability to put money into elections and to bullshit studies, to justify good guy versus bad guy, you can tie it to where we are today. Okay? You can look at the heller decision in two thousand eight which defined a phrase common use. Now a lot of the big explosion in AR fifteen sales happened in two thousand eight.

Some Will Saletan was because of the election of Obama. I believe it was because of the phrase common use because the industry immediately went into this manufacturing binge flooding the streets with these weapons and developing marketing strategies to move them. And they literally had a business strategy to put them into common use. And here we are only fifteen years later, and all the Republicans, what do they say? You can’t do anything.

They’re in common use. We lost out to a business strategy and the heller decision. So that’s one learning is how we got to where we are today because this is not who America always was. When people talk about that, hell, no. That’s that’s a bunch of shit.

In fact, the ruin decision last year and a half ago struck out a one hundred plus year old law that was keeping New Yorkers safe. It wasn’t striking down a new law that had different people arguing. It was over a hundred years old because we always passed on safety legislation in America. That is who we were. We had gun owners, but we were responsible about it.

Right.

That changed because of Wayne lapierre and the NRA. My daughter was a cost of doing business for their strategy. And so that’s one learning is, okay, let’s accept the fact that We weren’t always this way. Let’s do everything we can now to start mitigating against all the damage we’ve done. We now have over four hundred million weapons.

We still need to try hard to keep them out of the hands of people who intend harm, which is why I think red flag laws should be the law of the land. So that’s one learning. But then when you get into the campus, there’s other learnings, a, training matters. Love all day happened years after park And we saw all the same mistakes only to a higher scale, even worse. Right.

Yeah. Okay. We now have to accept the fact that as a country, gun violence is inevitable. It was preventable, but now it’s inevitable. It’s foreseeable.

And so we have to be prepared. We have to have a different standard for training, a different way of training, a different preparation. You know, when you walk through the building, as we deal with everybody, we make a point of pointing out all the fire suppression systems. All of the fire alarms that happened. The last time a student or anybody died in a school fire was back in the fifties.

So so we need to now build

our little behind on our threat assessments is what you’re saying at the school.

We now need to rethink how we build schools and other public buildings to account for the reality that there’s over four hundred million weapons in America. We lost out. We don’t have to be passive and do nothing, but that’s one of the things we need to do. And so we show how the shooter never entered any of the classrooms. He shot through the non bulletproof glass, big pane of glass in the door, and was able to just shoot through.

You never have to actually go look at anybody he was shooting. These shooters don’t wanna come face to face. They wanna they they wanna do what they’re doing, but they’re cowards. And so schools need to be built with bulletproof glass with doors that are self locking. Again, one of the learnings, the only way a teacher could lock the door in this building was from the outside.

One of the teachers died while trying to lock the door for his students. Okay? My daughter died because the teacher, when they when running one way, he he locked the door, They they went into another room. He ended up leaving his key. They were in the hallway when the shooter came back.

They got locked out of their room. So my daughter died because she was locked out of the room. That’s how she ended up in the hallway. So we need to rethink how we handle things like that. The shots we’re going through all the the walls because they’re not cement, we probably ought to start going back old school with the way we construct and using Cinderblock all the way through.

We have to rethink how we build schools and public buildings because the reality is we’ve now armed America because of a party who bought into what the NRA was selling, and we Now I have to deal with the consequence. Let’s let’s be clear. What have they said for the past twenty years? We don’t need any new gun laws.

Just need to enforce the existing gun laws. I’m on board with that. Let’s do why don’t we ever why aren’t we doing that?

But here’s the thing. While they were saying that, across the country. We were passing all sorts of new gun laws. We were passing Statational care. We were passing permitless carry.

We were passing standard ground. They were saying no new gun laws while passing new gun laws.

Yeah.

Okay. They were saying, new gun laws are the start of a slippery slope. Well, we’ve been on a slippery slope, and my daughter died because of it.

Yeah. This is the frustrating part of this conversation. I think it’s why a lot of people don’t like to have it because you were right. There we are at an inevitability point. Right, kind of.

Right? There are all these guns out there. When you have a lot of fucking guns out there, like this stuff is gonna happen. You know? And so you know, when you think about things that can be done, like the things that come to my mind now are culture stuff.

Right? Like, guns are not cool. I had Adam Brody’s an actor on this pot, on this pot a while back. And I thought it was interesting that he said. It’s like we stopped smoking in movies.

I was like, maybe we should stop stop shooting in movies. And not, I don’t think movies are the reason for it, but I just mean, like, culture stuff does matter. Right? Like, we need to think about, like, guns are not fucking cool, you know, and, and let’s stop making them seem cool.

No. You’re you’re completely onto something. And so I I I don’t know if you know. I’m a senior advisor to Brady. And where on this whole campaign to show your safety and to change the culture or in the way guns are shown in television and movies?

And in fact, we just did a big event, in LA with CA Creative Arts Agency two months ago. And there was another one a month before that with one of the other big agencies. And we brought together writers, producers, actors, and actresses To talk about this. And just how much they can do with the way guns are written into storylines or not showing conflicts that aren’t resolved with a gun. Right.

If you’re gonna show a gun in a movie, you know, what happens when you see, you know, a cop or a bad guy? They get into a car and they Just they throw their gun on the seat. Right? Or they just put it in the glove box. Unlock.

Yeah. Unsecured. Okay. Show somebody getting into a car and putting it into a lock box.

Right.

There’s so many things we can do to drive a safety message.

More scenes of Cheddar Bob and M and M shooting himself in the dick. You know, more scenes about more scenes like that. See? And that guy’s doesn’t seem cool.

Listen. I’m all four. Any approach to show the stupidity of it because let’s face it. A lot of these knucklehead gun owners do end up entering themselves in sometimes, funny ways because what you just described, how actually happened.

Of course it has.

Yeah. You know, there are stories, that I’ve read where people have had their guns improperly secured in their pocket. And, they’ve they’ve suffered a consequence as a result.

I’m a politics guy, right? So I always have politics in my mind. Like, I feel like Democrats should be more unoffent on guns, particularly on some obvious things. Like, The parkland shooter was nineteen. Right?

I, like, I think that, like, the notion that a seventeen year old, eighteen year old has a gun, nineteen year old is crazy. Like, like, they, like, it should be illegal for them to carry guns, and I think this would be a winning issue for Democrats. But I think even red state parents when they start to get pictures on their TVs of what a seventeen year old looks like, what a sick they remember how young they look. You know, so I I think that is it. Another one that was the White House this week talking about gun storage and gun safety.

So I I’d be interested in your thoughts on those two or others.

No, Tim, you you you’re you’re right. Listen, before Parkman, before twenty eighteen, Democrats were petrified of this issue because they always got clobbered. As soon as they spoke, the NRA and its forces spoke more loudly and more aggressively and honestly they cause fear. You know, we’re used to kind of nastiness and and and fear in politics now and threats in politics now. It’s become a norm.

Donald Trump really implemented the model that the NRA used for a long time before Donald Trump. Okay? Cause that’s what they did. And and Democrats were petrified. They just immediately backed down.

And they also would in certain states lose elections on this issue because of how misunderstood it was. What we did after parkland the parents and the kids. We refused to shut up. We refused to back down. We started taking them on.

On social media. I want I was clear. I’m going to break the fucking NRA. One of my very first friends in the movement was governor Phil Murphy. And he and I had a very public meeting early on where he said, what do you want me to do?

I said, go after their money. And you know what? He started going after their money.

Working.

And it’s working. And so we refuse to back down. We refuse to give in to fear. We refuse to shut up and go away. And only months later in the two thousand eighteen election.

Remember all those NRA ratings that people used to like to wear. You wanted to show you an a rated NRA member. The NRA got rid of the rating system just before that election. And they stopped wearing that stuff. Okay?

And we fired members, house members that were the strongest NRA members, and we flipped the house in two thousand eighteen. And in two thousand twenty, We elected Biden, and we gave him a Senate. Now this wasn’t the only issue. A lot of it was because people just we couldn’t have Trump. This issue mattered in that election.

Yeah.

And you see now Democrats not afraid to lead and take on this issue. You see Biden who, was able to sign the Safer Communities Act much weaker than it could have been But it was bipartisan. Thirty years? Yeah. But it was bipartisan.

Yep. And so and we were able to get that done. You see all the executive actions that he is doing, and he knows he’ll be judged on it in the next election. And he believes, and he’s right. This will be a winning issue for him.

We now have the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which did organize that meeting in the White House yesterday with school principals and secretary Cardona who was there to talk about his visit to Parkland last week, as well as Connecticut Parent warrior mom, Kristen Song, who I love dearly, whose son Ethan, was killed in a friend’s home because there was an unsecured weapon. And so the White House is leaning in hard. Catherine Clark was here yesterday. Because the Democrats are leaning in hard. They’re no longer afraid of this issue, but they were.

This will be a winning issue going forward for those who wanna reduce gun violence. America now gets it. They see it, and they’re tired of it.

Are there any other specific policies. I read Fly. We talked about age limits, safety, you know, any anything else that jumps to mind for you.

Listen, I tell everybody I look at things in terms of three goals. I wanna reduce the gun violence death rate. I wanna reduce the instances of gun violence. And I wanna reduce the severity of gun violence when it happens. And so within those three goals, my hope is I can talk to any politician in any party about ways to do it.

That’s not an anti gun set of goals. It’s an anti gun violence set of goals. How do we do it? Red flag laws, they should be the law of the land. And any politician who tells you they disagree with that, they should be fired.

Okay. Most of those on the right will say, oh, due process due process. It’s built into the Florida law. And then the Florida law has now been used over twelve thousand times. And the dirty little secret about Florida, if you dig into the numbers, it’s being used mostly by the Red County Sheriff, not the Blue County Sheriff’s.

Okay? Because they know they want because they don’t wanna they’re gun guys, but they do wanna stop the random gun violence. It’s working. Race the age of twenty one. Let’s

Four twenty five.

Four twenty five.

We’ll we’ll start with twenty one. Listen. I was I was a dumbass at twenty three. I wouldn’t want myself with a gun twenty three, but yeah, sure. Twenty one.

We’ll start there.

Back round checks should have no loopholes. Okay? Whether you’re buying it in a store or buying it in a show or buying it from somebody who’s managed to call themselves a who’s managed to get a firearms license, but they say, oh, we don’t make a profit. There should be no loopholes. Anyone who’s spending money on a gun?

She have to pass a background check, but I will go one step further. There is a law currently sitting in Congress that will never get a hearing in this session. But it will when, we have speaker Jefferies, and it’s called Jamie’s Law. And Jamie’s Law seeks to do nothing more than extend background checks to ammunition. We now have to deal with the reality that there’s four hundred million weapons in America.

In this country, If you are a prohibited purchaser of a firearm, you’re also prohibited from buying bullets, but there’s no requirement for a background check on bullets and ammunition. And so you could have gotten your gun illegally. You could have gotten your gun without a background check. And then you can walk into any store and buy the ammunition, and nobody will check. If we pass Jamie’s Law, we save lives immediately.

I’m on board for Jamie’s hot, and that relates to my last one on this is high capacity mags. This is another one for me. It’s like, okay. Alright. Is that I don’t think that that’s in this doesn’t feel like a second amendment issue to me.

Alright? That that you can, you know, kill fifteen people without having to reload.

It’s one of the lessons of the walker from the school. Every opportunity people had to run for safety during the shooting was when the killer had to stop and reload.

Don’t tell me you need it for self defense. You need to be able to fire off fifteen fucking bullets at one time before reloading. Okay? You’re you’re fucked if you need that for so long.

It’s one of the bullshit arguments. Again, it’s one of those things, which is why we wrote the book American Cornage.

Yeah. You

know, is to take on all the lies and all the myths. Nobody’s saying we wanna take away the guns of good guys or any of that nonsense But we can do a lot to save lives, and we ought to agree on that.

Yeah. If you need the fifteen bullets to shoot a deer, Maybe you should start looking into a different hobby.

A different hobby. Okay.

Besides hunting. Alright. You’re not you’re not very good if you if you need to reload. Now many times, Fred, I really appreciate this man and and back to the permission to be honest. You don’t have to do this one if you don’t want, but I just I keep staring at Jamie over your shoulder.

And I just I’m wondering if you have any memories of her as a dancer you’d like to share because I just I’m just looking I’ve just been looking at it the whole interview.

Well, and that is a a, painting from a real photo. Jamie, was a competitive dancer, but everyone in the dance world knew her for these incredible flying leaps that she it. And there was just this one photo that very quickly, became iconic after the shooting that somebody had posted of one of her flying leaps, and an artist painted that for us off of that photo. But I will tell you My daughter, what sticks me most, was her commitment and her dedication when she danced, that she had a quote. She didn’t make up the quote, but she found it, and it just motivated everything she did.

Dreams and dedication are a powerful combination. And that quote guides me now. I have a dream of ending gun violence in America, and I am dedicating my life to it.

Fred you inspire me if there’s ever anything I can do, call me off the sidelines. Door is open. Thank you so much for doing this interview. And, Hopefully, we can beat this orange fucker’s ass in November and, get rid of him once and for all. How about that?

We we we have to beat him, and we will. I’m I I am I’m I refuse to even think of this as being, a choice or an option. So we just have to, and we will. But we all better work our asses off for it.

We will. I am into that Fred Gottenberg author of Find The Helpers American Caritage, he runs orange ribbons for Jamie. We didn’t get into Pause of Love. It’s cute. Pause love is cute.

So go check that out. Go to Orang Evans for Jamie. Check it out something that Fred’s wife is working on. Thank you so much, my friend.

Thanks, Tim.