223: How to Keep Guns Off Campuses

Are you worried about the presence of firearms in college classrooms, dorms, libraries, and sporting events? You're not alone. For over fifteen years, the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus has been working to push back against a concerning trend: the allowance and, in many cases, encouragement, of firearms on college campuses.

The Campaign is dedicated to educating, organizing, and promoting legislation to fight against the gun lobby's push to prohibit colleges and universities from regulating guns on campus.

In this episode, Kelly and JJ speak with Andy Pelosi, the co-founder and executive director of the Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus, about how the trend of guns on campus has developed, what people can do to push back, and why it's essential to keep guns off campus even for those who aren't connected to higher education. 

Further reading:
States Where Campus Carry Bills are Moving (Keep Guns Off Campus)
What to Know About Gun Policies on College Campuses (US News)
Lawmakers push to allow guns on US university campuses (Times Higher Education)
Should Guns Be Permitted on College Campuses? (New York Times)

Transcript

JJ Janflone: 0:08

This is the legal disclaimer where I tell you that the views, thoughts, and opinions shared on this podcast belongs solely to our guests and hosts, and not necessarily Brady or Brady's affiliates. Please note, this podcast contains discussions of violence that some people may find disturbing. It's okay. We find it disturbing. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Red, Blue, and Brady. Hi, I'm one of your hosts, JJ.

Kelly Sampson: 0:46

And I'm your other host, Kelly.

JJ Janflone: 0:48

And today, we have the profound honor of sitting down with Andy Pelosi of keep guns off campus, which I'm sure you're shocked to find this out, is an organization devoted to keeping guns off college campuses across the United States.

Kelly Sampson: 1:01

Yeah. And as I think you'll- you may be familiar with just if you happen to live in the world, there's a push to make guns more available everywhere in the United States. Even college campuses, which are full of young, impressionable adults, leaving home for the first time and going through a lot. And so it's a bad idea.

JJ Janflone: 1:21

Exactly. And so Andy is being so kind in walking us through both how this expansion of firearms into places of learning happened, where it is continuing to spread, and what we can all be doing to fight against it.

Andy Pelosi: 1:36

Hi, I'm Andy Pelosi, the executive director and co founder of the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus. Worked on the gun violence prevention issue for 26 years now.

Kelly Sampson: 1:47

And I'd love it if you could share what is the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus? And what prompted you to create it?

Unknown: 1:53

Sure, the campaign was founded in 2008. With a colleague of mine, John Johnson. John had been previous executive director of Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence. And I had just recently left, somewhat recently left, as executive director of New Yorkers against Gun Violence - violence prevention group, worked there for six years. And John and I were looking to do something a little bit different, more project based. And we were concerned after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. And then the Northern Illinois University shooting in February of 2008, that there would be this push by the gun lobby to start allowing people to carry handguns on campus. There had been at that point, one state, Utah that allowed that to happen starting around 2004. So we thought, well, you know what, let's see if we can - nobody knows us. And we'll just, you know, we'll start this little entity, and we'll see if we can get colleges to join a coalition to push back on what we think is going to be a sweep across the country of changing laws and forcingpublic colleges to allow guns on campus. So that's how our work started. In 2008 2009, we started signing up colleges, and we started to oppose bills in a few states in different parts of the country.

JJ Janflone: 3:12

As as we start to dig into this a little bit more, we've covered unfortunately, shootings on college campuses, and then kind of school campuses more broadly a lot on this podcast. I think it's kind of hard if you're in a gun violence space, not for that part of the discourse to come up. And we're gonna, I think, be returning a lot to the same talking point. So before we move forward, I think we kind of need to do a little bit of debunking and the belief that firearms on campuses, make them safer, that more guns on campuses isn- is a good thing. Is that true?

Unknown: 3:41

Well, I think one thing I did want to mention if I could, JJ, just to go back a second. I did want to give a hat tip to Brady. And in particular, a former colleague, Brian Siebel. Brian did- wrote kind of a seminal piece on leave no gun behind, I believe was the title, and it was really about the guns on campus issue - did a lot of work and, and he was an early mentor to us. So I did want to... did want to mention that. But in terms of your question, one of the - I'm putting this in air quotes, researchers, John Lobb will talk about, you know, more guns, you know, less crime. And, and it's, I think, you know, it's been pretty debunked, although he gets trotted out all the time. I will say on college campuses, the crime rates are extremely, extremely low compared to their off campus counterparts. And we have done a number of kind of informal studies showing looking at Cleary Act data for different categories of crime on campus, whether it be sexual assault, larceny, arson and some other things. And then comparing that to what's happening off campus where guns are permitted. And those crime rates off-campus are always higher. They're just always higher. Do crimes happen on campus? They certainly do. But they pale - the numbers pale in comparison. And and we think that one of the reasons is that the guns are not allowed. I mean, There's hardly any homicides that we do have those, those those horrible tragedies like what we just saw at Michigan State, of course, where someone came from off campus. We saw a little bit before that, that UVA, where three students were killed on the bus by another student. But generally, homicides are rare occurrences, gun homicides on college campuses.

JJ Janflone: 5:25

And I wonder kind of on that end to Andy, why do you think or why does... why does keep guns off campuses think that the gun lobby has been pushing this particular point that, you know, say arming teachers having armed administration armed students? Why? Why take the angle, that that's what's going to make a campus safer, rather than having a firearm free zone?

Andy Pelosi: 5:47

Well, I mean, again, so then, a couple - couple responses. One is that this whole, you know, myth that, you know, people target gun free zones. Whether they be schools, or theaters, or other places, and only soft targets and things... and, and, you know, that's not true. And then when it comes to schools, in many cases, it's, it's generally a person who's had, or even workplace shootings for that matter, which we could say school, it could be a workplace shooting to in some instances - it's usually the person has a connection to. It's not because we know they know that person, and they're not going to meet resistance. And we've seen some instances, two to come right to mind right now are Columbine and Marjory Stoneman Douglas, where there were armed guards, and we saw how unfortunate how that turned out. So that's, you know, that's one thing,

Kelly Sampson: 6:39

One of the things that we wanted to address with you is intimate partner violence and in the way that it happens on campus, with college students. Because as you said, there's a mythology around well, guns are going to make you safer. And we know that when you bring guns into an intimate partner, or domestic violence situation, it really, really increases the level of danger. And so I'm wondering, how does intimate partner violence intersect with these pushes to bring guns on campus? And in your work? Even off campus

Andy Pelosi: 7:12

Right. I mean, that's a great question, Kelly. I mean, this is the data that I- that we use. The presence of a gun, in a case of domestic violence, I believe makes it five times more likely that the victim will be will be murdered, regardless who the gun. One in five women are going to be sexually assaulted while in college, and 32% of students identifying as female report, they've been abused by a dating partner. And you know, guns are the most common weapon used when these incidents occur. So, you know, those I think, are very kind of startling numbers. And so I just don't understand. So our... our opponents will say, Well, you know, this will, this will help folks protect themselves. But you know, the data just doesn't really bear that out from what we've seen. So I think it's important. So we try to stress that as much as possible. There are times when legislator will hear that, and it'll resonate. But in a number of number of cases, it doesn't resonate. Again, as we talked about at the top, where, you know, this is just about, for some legislators, it's just about pushing guns into as many... as many places. If there's a right to carry a gun, then why can't you carry on on a, you know, a public campus? You know, and they don't really care about, they don't really think about the unintended consequences. You know, and you really have to think about the unintended consequences. And, you know, when we've started to kind of, you know, highlight some of those that, you know, that have happened and will continue to happen. But I think what's really happening here is, I believe that there are some legislators that definitely care about safety, but they care more about the Second Amendment. So this is about pushing guns into as many places as possible. In our view, this is not about this is not about safety, if it was really about safety, why would they allow people to carry guns in dormitories? Why would they allow them to carry them in classrooms? Why would they allow them to bring them into faculty offices? Is it is it is it really about safety? Or is it really about you know, what my quote unquote Second Amendment right trumps everything else? So... and I don't mean to be you know, snarky, it's i- We believe this we believe that it's really about trying to push this, this... this right to carry a firearm in any place, and it's really it has nothing to do about about safety. And you know, when you talk to and we've worked with a lot of faculty and students over the last 15 years, I would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of faculty that said, You know what, I want it to be armed. In fact, I did a podcast. Well, I did a zoom the other day with a professor and you know, he talked about being threatened by a student you know, after concealed carry became a law. A student came up to said, you better give me an A, or I'm going to I'm going to shoot you. So I'm not saying that happens all the time. But you know, faculty are definitely concerned about what happens if they give a poor grade and that intimidation. So, hope that answers your question. But I can dig into it more.

JJ Janflone: 10:08

No, it does, because I think it will it points out a very particular view of the Second Amendment. An expansion is kind of extremist view of it. But you're right, it does introduce a sort of brinksmanship, right? Well, if my students are armed, then should I be armed as a professor and if my faculty are armed, then should I be armed as admin, and then if admin arm students... it does lead to sort of this a very strange worldview where everyone then I guess, is carrying at anytime. And that seems not not a world that I want to entertain.

Andy Pelosi: 10:35

But the gun lobby, at least they say this that they would like to see, you know, an armed society is a polite society, and, you know, these types of bumper sticker messages. And we know, they don't want everybody armed. You know, they may say that, but do they really mean that, and, you know, it's really, college campuses, a, you know, the proper place, and we just don't know how many people are carrying on campuses. Obviously, people bring guns on to college campuses illegally, you know, in a state where it's not. We understand that, but by green lighting it, you're inviting the potential for... You're increasing risk, first of all, and that's really, it's really important here. I mean, I'm not a public health professional. But from a public health standpoint, you're now increasing risk, because you are... college age students are... suicides the second leading cause of death. So you know, for them, so now you're introducing a firearm into into a place where students are, you know, they're experiencing different issues while they're in school, you know, anxiety, other things, there's alcohol and drugs that are available. Now you're just using a firearm, when you already have suicide attempts and and things happening there. So what why would you do that? So that's, that's definitely very concerning. Also, from a public health sampling,

Kelly Sampson: 11:51

There's a particular set of laws that keep guns off campus has been working against, and that's laws that would allow students and administrators and faculty to carry loaded concealed handguns on campus. And I'm wondering, why are those so prominent right now? And then what has Keep Guns Off Campus been doing to fight back against those laws?

Andy Pelosi: 12:12

Right? That's a great question. And we could spend a ton of time on it. So I'll try to be succinct and in answering. So, you know, again, going back to 2008, when we first started, we weren't seeing that many bills filed initially. And we had Utah, which was pretty, pretty liberal in terms of where you can carry, who can carry. You can be 18 years old and carry on campus now, in Utah, and you can carry pretty much anywhere except in daycare centers, and you could request not to be placed with somebody in a dormitory, who, who has a concealed weapon. Over the years, you know, we've we've fought in, I think it's over 27 states right now, we've seen bills introduced in at least 40 states to, you know, and just to kind of see the lay of the land right now. It's, you know, there's... if we we include West Virginia, this is just our count, and people do it differently, but 12 states allow guns on campus. And when I say on campus, I mean, in some buildings and places like that. Then you have, you know, nine states that forbid it by law by statute, then you have what we call the parking lot states. That's I think it's 10 now, where you can have the gun locked in your car, but not not anywhere else. A state like that example could be Missouri, most recently. And then another state, that's a whole high profile state with lots of interesting happening is Florida, is another parking lot state. And then you have about 19 states now, because West Virginia is going to move out of that column, unfortunately, in 2024, where the schools decide policies. Whether... and except for I think one or two outliers, schools do not, when they're given that opportunity, to prohibit firearms on campus. They do prohibit them, except for law enforcement. And you do have some states where if there's hunting, they will allow guns to be stored in lockers. So things were really Kelly, I'm gonna answer your question. Things were really I think, especially hot on this issue between 20... I would say 2012 to probably around 2016. There were a number of bills. I mean, we had 2526 built states filing bills during that time frame every every session. And you had states like Kansas, Idaho, Arkansas, and Tennessee, all pass legislation signed legislation, you know, but there were a number of victories too. And anytime a guns on campus bill becomes law. It's been because there's been a trifecta, Republican trifecta. I know we can't get into too deep into politics. You know, here. We're not going to be talking about elections. But I think we can we can say here. This is factual that anytime a bill has been signed into law, it's been a Republican control of the House, the Senate and the Governor's Office of that that Try factor has always been the case. But there's been wins too, in the in the states, like in Arizona, for example, and 2011 with a Republican governor who veto the bill in 2012. And Michigan, where a Republican governor vetoed the bill. I think he vetoed it because of the Sandy Hook tragedy, which happened, I think, a day or two before. And then in 2016, in Georgia, where Republican governor vetoed the bill, he unfortunately signed it the next year, it was the same bill, but he did you know, with the prior year. So what we what we try to do is engage faculty, and to a lesser extent, students. We love to engage students, but you know, we have limited capacity. So we focus more on faculty, they're less transient than students, and really kind of engage them and other stakeholders - presidents too, in opposition. And lots of times we're successful. And when I say we, it's the collective, it's not just, you know, the campaign to keep guns off campus, but it's, you know, we really believe in you know, I come out of a grassroots background. Working in New Yorkers against Gun Violence. So I truly believe in engaging folks on the ground, you know, we don't go into their state and telling them what to do we go into the state say, how can we help you? And you know, that's what we've done for the last 15 years. I think, generally a lot of success, but we've had our losses.

JJ Janflone: 16:10

And one of the one of the things that I would love to dig in on a little bit, a couple of things that you brought up, and I think you actually answered that question beautifully. So I think you were a little hard on yourself in your in your setup, I the first thing being with so many different variations of what different states or different campuses may allow I do, you really want to encourage your listeners to go check out your website. And by your of course, I mean, keep guns off campuses website, which lists kind of states and places and kind of a breakdown. Because if I if I were applying for college, now, I'd want to know if my campus had these policies or not. If I were parents sending my kid off to school, I would want to see if they're in a state or on a campus where this is permitted. I would want to know this. And I don't think necessarily, that's something that's listed in the brochure, typically. So I just really wanted to make sure our listeners have an opportunity to go check that out. Because I'm not sure if there's really a comprehensive place other than than what you all have put together, right, that kind of

Andy Pelosi: 17:05

Yeah, no, thank you, JJ, if I could just add to lists everything out. that, there's a... we have a sister site called armedcampuses.org, ARMED campuses.org. And that's really the... that specifically about campus gun laws, which states allow guns on campus, which you know, forbid, them, we break it out. And then you can click on the map, and you can see what's going on in individual states. So that's, that's really kind of a more definitive source. But we would love for that to be a checklist. So when you're when you're, you know, young person is applying to college, you know, you're looking at different criteria. And for some people, I think, you know, that one of the criterion, you know, could be should be, hey, other guns allowed? No, unfortunately, got to think about that. For me personally, I told my my daughters, that it really rather you go to a private college, you know, even though it's it may be more expensive in some instances, because I know that guns won't be allowed on that, on that particular campus. There's an equity issue here, too, if I could,

JJ Janflone: 18:06

Yeah, I was just about to say, because that's a huge, that's a huge part of it, too, is like, can you afford to be concerned about safety?

Andy Pelosi: 18:12

Exactly. There's, there's an equity issue here, I I love the way that you all are shedding light on so many think, and it's something that we're trying to tease out more and talk more about, but, you know, for the most part - except Wisconsin's the outlier - and I'm not, and we worked on this, and I'm not quite sure why this, how this happened. But in Wisconsin, you know, guns are allowed on campus, but they can be prohibited in buildings, fortunately, as long as signage is put up, so that limits were there, they can legally be carried, but that applies to private colleges also, but around the rest of the country. You know, these types of laws legislation are aimed at public colleges and universities and you have more people of color, you have a maybe attending the public versus the private, you might have people what from not, in any case, not in all cases, but in some cases, from a lower socioeconomic class, that may be attending a public versus a private when it comes to community colleges, which a lot of times get forgotten here. But the community colleges are also impacted by this type of legislation. And you have a whole host of folks attending community colleges, and, you know, can be veterans, the older folks can be, you know, again, people from, you know, poor backgrounds and such. So, you know, this is definitely impacting a lot of different folks here, these types of bills, and it doesn't really get nuances this you. You talked about, for example, the myth talked about but something that we're trying to, you know, shed some more light on. that having a gun is the way for students who identify as female to protect themselves against sexual assault. We've also talked about the myth or not the myth but just the fact that there is an equity issue if private colleges are allowed to do their policy. Some way public colleges aren't. And I'm wondering what other sort of myths or myths, truths or distortions around firearms on campuses or schools have come up in your work that you would like listeners to know about? Oh, Kelly, I think the, you know, the... the kind of the, the area around, you know, having a gun will make you safe or, you know, if you're someone who identifies as female, that you're going to be safer from sexual assault, when the the data just shows that it's not true. That you're going to actually be more at risk, you know, if more guns are permitted. Again, you know, as I mentioned earlier, the, you know, partner, you're arming the perpetrator in many cases, you know, this way. And, and folks are, you know, are definitely concerned about that, you know, and also the, you know, we have to be really think cognizant about, you know, the firearm suicide issue. You know, I mean, we know that, maybe not all the listeners know, but that approximately two thirds of firearm deaths are firearm suicide, you know, it's a big deal. And there's been many public service announcements and... you know, by Brady and by other organizations, you know, especially about this particular problem. And I think it's, you know, firearm suicide is... has been with us for a long time. And I think it's only in the last maybe 10 years, in my view, that we've really tried to put more shine more of a light on it and try to come up with strategies to reduce that. So I think, again, it's really is about reducing risk, I think, and introducing firearms into these types of environments is only increasing risk, I think. Especially for students, but for staff and faculty too. And the other point that I wanted to bring up because you'll hear from folks on the other side of this issue that, you know, well, since guns and camps become law in, you know, in Tennessee or Texas or, you know, wherever. nothing's happened! There's, there's no, there's no instance. Well, it's just not true. And we've documented. And this is, you know, we're working on a much larger project, but we've documented just through newspaper accounts, which does not capture what's really happening over five or six pages, and it's on our website of incidents that have happened in states where guns on campus are permitted, whether it's the, you know, a gun homicide, which has been extremely rare. But there's been a couple of those unintentional shootings, either a professor or student guns being left in bathrooms, you know, guns being left in dormitories, guns being left in, in classrooms, in different places like that. So, you know, these incidents, you know, they do occur. And you would expect them to occur, I think. And so we're actually under undergoing a larger study of open records requests to kind of see what's really happening out there and a number of those states. But I did want to mention that the the incidents do occur, we don't know how many people are carrying, because it's not, you don't have to register, except for Tennessee, Tennessee. Faculty right now are allowed to carry, they have to register with campus police.

JJ Janflone: 23:11

It's so strange that that's you can't have mean can't have a car on most campuses without registering it. But that, but I do love that there that you're doing that research into what is actually happening on campuses? Because I think that brings me to one of the questions I keep coming back to in my head and I think our listeners will have as well, is that what is the response that keep guns off campus gets from like faculty or administration or students, when you are doing that initial reach out of saying, hey, there's a bill coming up in your state, or, hey, you've always had good protections in the state, but we're concerned they're going away. What is the general response from the folks who are actually, you know, on the ground? There?

Andy Pelosi: 23:48

That's a good question. I think it's, for the most part fairly uniform, that's been our experience. One, it's given the way we try to approach things is to be a partner, and be a partner and be a resource for for them and the faculty that we've connected with in a number of states across the country, and also with students are extremely savvy. I've always been very impressed with their, with their knowledge with their ability to, to want to fight these types of bills. And you know what, I'll say that it's extremely important that you know, that they take that position, they want to fight back, because if they don't do it, who's going to do it? So they're, you know, I've always found them to be very receptive to assistance, but again, we understand that it's their state, and they're gonna, they may have connections with legislators and in some instances, which really helps because they know they already know, you know. Delegate so and so or Senator so and so and, you know, and they can maybe go and talk with them with their staff, and that's important. But I can't stress enough how important is for set up for college presidents, and even in higher levels - Boards of Regents - to also be pushing back. But then there's the there's the rub. And there's sometimes there's a reluctance by college presidents and boards of regents to push back because they're concerned about retaliation cuts in funding. And we saw this happen in Georgia. We saw this happen, you know, in our view in 2017, with a Board of Regents was, was all on board with fighting guns on campus in 2016. And we had been successful there for six years in a row. But then they changed their tune, they really kind of became more neutral in 2017. And I do think that was part of the reason why that Bill became law.

JJ Janflone: 25:37

I wonder if there's a space to for like, alumni of colleges to get involved as well. Like, I'm not donating any more, I wouldn't have gone here. If this were the case, I'm like just disavowing... My, my, no more merch shall be purchased.

Andy Pelosi: 25:51

Definitely. Yeah, that's a really good point. And that's something that, you know, tried to, to do that on a small scale. But if we could get alumni to kind of change their their giving pattern, again, it goes back to the economic lever. You know, that definitely could, could make it, you know, make a difference, you know, down the road. And we certainly don't want to see more states, changing their laws, and allowing, you know, forcing guns on campus. We just can't afford to, to see that happen. I want to see it start to swing back, back the other way, but the economic lever, you know, will make a difference in the public colleges, universities, especially our... they're being held hostage here. Because if they fight, they, they, you know, they're gonna they're receiving more money than their private school counterparts. So they run a risk of potentially losing. And I see, and I think that's what happened in Georgia. And I actually think, I can't prove this, but I think it happened in West Virginia too this time around. But, but, the stakeholders fighting, when I say, the stakeholders, the faculty, the students, you know, and presidents is, it can make all the difference, I think, not always successful, but most of the time they are successful.

Kelly Sampson: 27:03

I mean, that's really encouraging. Especially, you know, it can feel like sometimes there's a there's a juggernaut. So it's great to hear that for people who have a stake in this at whatever level that their voices matter.

Andy Pelosi: 27:17

There's, there's, you know, I'm not a security expert, but I have a couple on my advisory board, and you talk to folks, and you know. And what they say, to me and to others is that, you know, there are other steps that we can be taking to protect, whether it's our K through 12 buildings, and our college campuses or on the college campus is very different and unique, because in many instances, well, in a number of instances, they will you have urban campuses. Like you have Michigan State, for example, and lots of other places, it's easy to get, you know, to get in to campus, you know, to get into, you know, maybe two buildings. So, so, can we make the campus perfectly safe? Probably not. But we can, but that doesn't mean we don't try to do certain things. And I, you know, in whether it's, you know, better security for, you know, you know, entering buildings entering the campus itself. I mean, there's definitely steps, you know, that can be taken that are... that don't involve letting students carry firearms and be responsible for for the protection of themselves and others. Does it mean, you know, arming more campus police? Not a huge fan of that. But maybe that's, you know, that it's at least something you might you might consider, but but I don't think the answer is arming everyone, you know, on the campus.

Kelly Sampson: 28:41

So you mentioned how powerful the voices of faculty and staff and students are in this fight. And I'm wondering, why should everyone care? Even if you don't have a stake in a campus at all colleges, you know, decades behind you, or you don't have any connection to it? Why is it important that everyone be concerned about the push to bring guns on campus?

Andy Pelosi: 29:06

That's a great question. And I'm glad you mentioned about, you know, why should others we definitely will work with, you know, in our database, we have folks that are, you know, that are not college professors or college students. They're their parents, or they can just be folks that are concerned, you know, about the gun issue in general. I think that everybody should be concerned about this. It's a again, it's a it's an opportunity that's being kind of exploited by the gun lobby with because of recent Supreme Court decisions. Well, going back to, you know, Heller 2008 and McDonald 2010. But then we're through and the most recent two, again, normalize the carrying of firearms in public and other places. And so I think everybody should be concerned about that. And I think people should we be concerned about what's happening on college campuses, because you probably know somebody. Even if it's if it's not a loved one that's attending college, you know, you probably, you know, you know, have friends, you know who their kids are attending. So you're definitely impacted. But again, I am really concerned, we're really concerned about this normalization that's taking place. So culturally, and I think that's where a lot of change has to happen. We, we strongly support, you know, strong gun laws, we know that strong, strong states with strong gun laws have low, low incidence of gun violence, deaths and injuries, no, no doubt. But something has to change culturally, in this country, so that this whole normalization, of carrying guns is not what you know, what we stand for, and what we want to live with.

Kelly Sampson: 30:47

Thanks for kind of laying all that out. And I don't know, one thing I'm taking from talking to you, is that when you're talking about guns on campus, and when we're talking about states, people's voices make a difference. And there's... this is not a foregone conclusion. There's things that we can do. And so I'm wondering, for people who want to get engaged and sort of join in what keep guns off campus is doing, what can they do, and where should they go?

Andy Pelosi: 31:12

That's a great question. Thank you. Oh, I do think that, that, you know, we can talk about all the policy arguments, you know... and we think that we, you know, we have really good policy arguments, why gun shouldn't be allowed on campus. And in some instances, legislators hear that. And other times, they just don't like in West Virginia, they just didn't listen. I mean, it was just give a quick example, they had a public hearing on the bill. And 42 people testified. 42 people testified, 40 of them testified against the bill... two them, you know, I think part of it was because of optics, they probably told gun lobby, hey, don't, you know, don't not too many of you should show up, because it might not look that good. And that's just my you know, my opinion. I could be wrong. But I again, I think that one thing that people can, one of the first things I think people do is educate themselves, if they've got young people going to college, find out what's going on, you know, you know, they're interested in you know, this university in this particular state, find out what the laws are, when it comes to guns on campus in that particular state, you know, they can go to our site armedcampuses.org, and they can learn more you know, about that it's one place to go. The economic lever, I think here is going to be important. If peoplewill not send their kids to schools, where guns are permitted, that's going to make a difference. You know, I know that I know, we've seen a drop in international students coming to the US. I can't say for certain - part of it's obvious it was was because of COVID - on the wall admit that, but I think another reason was because of this gun issue. And there was a lot of concern, because it's just not happening in a lot of these countries that the students are from. So I think one is the is just really being aware of what the laws are, and thinking about maybe sending your your kid to, you know, a different school. That's something you know, so educating yourself about that, I think, is really important. And, you know, from an economic standpoint, we might be able to see some movement, you know, in a positive way there. The other thing would be just to, to get involved in gun issue. You know, really, I've been doing this a long time. Now, I've seen kind of a major shift in terms of involvement. You know, there are more groups, obviously, than there used to be. Brady's been around forever. And, you know, other groups have joined. But I remember a time when anyone in the mid 90s, mid to late 90s, when you knew pretty much everybody who worked on the gun issue, you know, for the most part, you know, at least the on the state level, and the National, obviously, there were people working in communities that you might not know all of those folks. And that's changed. And that and I think that's great. I think the fact that we have, you know, maybe it's several million people now belong to different organizations, there's greater awareness, I think that's really important. So I say getting getting involved with a group, find a group or groups and, and support them, write the letters make the phone calls, those things do make a difference.

JJ Janflone: 34:10

Folks are listening to this. And you're like, Okay, absolutely. I need to be engaged with this directly. Where Where can they find you? Where can they find Keep Guns off Campus?

Andy Pelosi: 34:18

I would say, on the web, keepgunsoffcampus.org. And our sister site if you want to really know about what's happening in each state, in terms of campus gun laws, armedcampuses.org. Those are our two main sites. We're on Twitter, keep guns off camp, Instagram, Facebook. So we're, you know, on all the different channels, working on tik tok, but you know, we're not there yet. But you know, you can find us in those different places and can sign up. We'd love to have more folks, join us for sure. We need all the help that we can get in this fight.

JJ Janflone: 34:53

Thank you so much. And I will link to all of those in the description of this episode as well. So if folks are listening to this, like I do when they're on the elliptical, they're like, well I don't have a pen, they can definitely click through and check this all out. Hey, want to share with the podcast, listeners can now get in touch with us here at Red, Blue, and Brady via phone or text message. Simply call or text us at 480-744-3452 with your thoughts, questions, concerns, ideas, cat pictures, whatever.

Kelly Sampson: 35:22

Thanks for listening. As always, Brady's life saving work in Congress, the courts, and communities across the country is made possible thanks to you. For more information on Brady, or how to get involved in the fight against gun violence. Please like and subscribe to the podcast. Get in touch with us at Bradyunited.org or on social@Bradybuzz. Be brave and remember, take action not sides.