Why gun violence can't be our new normal | Dan Gross

106,164 views ・ 2016-04-20

TED


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00:12
OK, so, confession:
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I've always been weirdly obsessed with advertising.
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I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons,
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paying more attention to the commercials
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than to the shows,
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trying to figure out how they were trying to get inside my head.
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Ultimately, that led me to my dream job.
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I became a partner at a big New York ad agency.
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But then, all of that suddenly changed on February 23, 1997,
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when my little brother Matt was shot in the head
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in a shooting that happened on the observation deck
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of the Empire State Building.
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Suddenly, my family was thrown into the middle of a nightmare,
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being told that my brother was going to die,
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actually being given the opportunity to say goodbye to him,
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then several emergency brain surgeries
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and now what's amounted, for Matt,
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to a lifetime spent courageously recovering from a traumatic brain injury.
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He is definitely my hero.
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But as much as (Applause) -- yeah, deserves it --
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(Applause)
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But as much as this tragedy was a nightmare for my family,
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I often think about how much worse it could have been;
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in fact, how much worse it is for the 90 families every day
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who aren't as fortunate,
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who lose loved ones -- brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, parents.
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They don't all make national headlines.
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In fact, most of them don't.
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They go largely unnoticed,
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in a nation that's kind of come to accept a disgraceful national epidemic
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as some kind of new normal.
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So I quit my job in advertising
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to try and do something about this disgraceful national epidemic,
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because I came to realize
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that the challenges to preventing gun violence
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are actually the same ones that made me love advertising,
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which is to try to figure out how to engage people.
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Only instead of doing it to sell products,
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doing it to save lives.
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And that comes down to finding common ground,
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where what I want overlaps with what you want.
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And you might be surprised to learn, when it comes to gun violence,
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just how much common ground there is.
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Let's look, for example, at people who love to hunt,
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a sport enjoyed by millions across the US.
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It's a proud tradition. Families.
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In some places,
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the first day of hunting season is actually a school holiday.
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What do hunters want?
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Well, they want to hunt. They love their guns.
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They believe deeply
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in the Second Amendment right to own those guns.
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But that doesn't mean there isn't common ground.
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In fact, there's a lot of it,
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starting with the basic idea of keeping guns out of dangerous hands.
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This isn't about taking certain guns away from all people.
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It's about keeping all guns away from certain people,
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and it's the people that, it turns out, we all agree shouldn't have guns:
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convicted violent criminals, domestic abusers,
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the dangerously mentally ill.
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We can all appreciate
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how Brady background checks have been incredibly effective
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in keeping guns out of those dangerous hands.
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In 20 years, Brady background checks at federally licensed firearm dealers
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have blocked 2.4 million gun sales
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to those people that we all agree shouldn't have guns.
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(Applause)
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And whether you love guns or hate guns, you probably also appreciate
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that there shouldn't be thousands of gun sales every day
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at guns shows or online
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without those Brady background checks,
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just like there shouldn't be two lines to get on an airplane --
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one with security and one with no security.
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And --
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(Applause)
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And the numbers show the overwhelming agreement among the American public:
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90 percent of Americans support expanding Brady background checks
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to all gun sales -- including 90 percent of Republicans,
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more than 80 percent of gun owners,
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more than 70 percent of NRA members.
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This is not a controversial idea.
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In fact, only six percent of the American public disagrees.
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That's about the percentage of the American public
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that believes the moon landing was a fake.
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(Laughter)
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And it's also about the percentage that believes the government
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is putting mind-controlling technology in our TV broadcast signals.
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That's the extent to which we agree about background checks.
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But what about the 300 million guns
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already out there in homes across America?
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Well first, it's important to realize
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that those guns are mostly in the hands and homes
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of decent, law-abiding people like you and me,
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who want what we all want -- including keeping our families safe.
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In fact, that's why more and more people are choosing to own guns.
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Ten years ago, 42 percent of the American public
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believed -- incorrectly -- that a gun makes your home safer.
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Today, that number is 63 percent.
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Why?
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I kind of hate to say it,
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because it gets to the dark underbelly of advertising,
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which is if you tell a big enough lie enough times,
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eventually that lie becomes the truth.
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And that's exactly what's happened here.
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The corporate gun lobby has spent billions of dollars
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blocking the CDC from doing research into the public health epidemic
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of gun violence;
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blocking pediatricians from talking to parents
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about the dangers of guns in the home;
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blocking smart-gun technology and other technology
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that would prevent kids from firing parents' guns
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and would save lives.
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They're desperate to hide the truth,
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because they view the truth as a threat to their bottom line.
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And every day,
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people are dying as a result.
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And a lot of those people are children.
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Every day in the US,
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nine kids are just shot unintentionally.
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900 children and teens take their own lives every year.
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And here's the thing: they're almost all with a parent's gun.
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Even two-thirds of school shootings happen with a gun taken from the home,
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including the terrible tragedy
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at Sandy Hook.
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I meet so many of these parents;
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it's the most heartbreaking part of my job.
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These are not bad people.
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They're just living with the unimaginable consequences of a very bad decision,
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made based on very bad information
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that was put into their minds by very bad people,
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who know good and well the misery that they're causing,
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but just don't care.
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And the result is a nightmare --
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not only for families like mine,
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but for, really, at the end of the day, all of us.
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But I'm not here to talk about the nightmare of gun violence.
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I'm here to talk about our dream, and it's a dream we all share,
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which is the dream of a better, safer, future.
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For my organization, for the Brady Campaign,
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that dream is reflected in the bold goal
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to cut the number of gun deaths in the US in half by 2025.
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And I hope to leave all of you here tonight
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with a strong sense of exactly why that dream is so absolutely within reach.
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Because folks,
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for every great movement around the world,
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there's a moment where you can look back and say,
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"That's when things really started to change."
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And I'm here to say
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that for the movement to end gun violence in America,
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that moment is here.
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(Applause)
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We are so clearly at a tipping point,
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because the American public has come together by the millions
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like never before, based on that common ground,
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to say, "Enough."
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Enough of the mass shootings in malls and movie theaters
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and churches and schools.
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Enough of the daily terror of gun violence in homes and streets
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that's claimed the lives of women and young black men
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in staggering proportions.
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Enough of easy access to guns
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by the people that we all agree shouldn't have them.
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And enough of a small group of craven politicians
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putting the interests of the corporate gun lobby
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ahead of the people they have been elected to represent.
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Enough.
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(Applause)
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And the really exciting thing is, it's not just the usual suspects like me
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that are saying it anymore.
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It's so much bigger than that.
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And if you want proof,
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let's start where most conversations in the US seem to start --
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with Kim Kardashian.
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(Laughter)
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And here's the thing: it's not really a joke.
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I mean, think about when issues change.
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It's when they go from being political and advocacy issues
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to being part of pop culture,
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voices coming from everywhere, celebrities using their platforms,
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musicians, athletes.
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The NBA has come forward.
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Conservative pundits that you never would have imagined
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have come forward.
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There's real cultural change --
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I even hear there's a TED Talk about it this year.
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That's the extent to which this cultural change is happening.
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And yes, Kim Kardashian has made an unsolicited passionate appeal
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to her 35 million Twitter followers
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for expanded background checks.
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Let's look at the political elections that are heating up.
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This used to be the classic third-rail issue for Democrats.
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Couldn't run from it fast enough.
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Now candidates are running on it.
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Some are being forced to reverse very bad positions
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they defended very comfortably, until very recently.
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For somebody like me,
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watching people wave around their negative NRA ratings --
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it's almost surreal to watch.
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We're still outfunded, yes, by the corporate gun lobby,
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and ultimately that needs to change.
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But you know what?
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We're smarter and we're scrappier, and we have the truth on our side.
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And we're on offense.
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You know, they say that the Internet democratizes information.
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Social media and some of the organizing tools that plug into it
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have democratized activism.
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It's allowed us to show what 90 percent support really looks like.
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Sometimes I think of it --
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you know, we're converging and attacking instantly by the millions,
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kind of like white blood cells.
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It's enabled us to start to really close -- and this is the bottom line --
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close that disgraceful disconnect
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between what the American public wants
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and what our elected leaders are doing about it.
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Until recently,
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the narrative in Congress was that calls from the other side,
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from that six percent,
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outnumbered calls from our side 10 to one.
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We're flipping that narrative on its head.
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After that recent terrible tragedy in San Bernardino,
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we jammed Congressional switchboards.
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We put 15,000 calls into Congress in 24 hours.
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And you know what?
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We got a vote on a bill
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that nobody thought was going to see the light of day anytime soon.
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We're seeing real movement to repeal some of the most evil,
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ugly gun lobby legislation passed over the last dark decade.
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The stranglehold of the gun lobby is clearly being broken.
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We've seen President Obama's historic executive actions.
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They don't go all the way,
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but they are going to save lives,
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because they expand Brady background checks
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to thousands of gun sales that didn't have them previously.
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And we're marching across the country -- we're not just waiting
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for Congress to act; that would almost be the definition of insanity.
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We're marching across the country,
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state by state, marriage-equality style.
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And you know what? We're winning.
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Congress is almost always the last to wake up and realize
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that it's on the wrong side of history.
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And when they do, it's always because the American public shakes them.
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And that's exactly what we're doing right now,
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as we're in this tipping point.
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You know, recently I was flying cross-country to give a speech
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to a large group like this, although far less intimidating,
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and the woman sitting next to me happened to be binge-watching
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one of my all-time favorite TV shows, "Mad Men,"
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a period TV show about advertising
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in the 1960s.
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And as I was trying to think about how to end my remarks,
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I'd glance up at her screen every now and then,
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and it seemed that every time I did,
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I'd see somebody smoking in an office or around children
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or while pregnant or drinking and driving
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or driving without seat belts or sexually harassing a coworker.
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And ultimately it dawned on me:
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what tremendous inspiration
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to those of us who have this dream to end gun violence.
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I mean, think about how much the world has changed
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in a relatively short period of time,
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how all those behaviors that were once considered commonplace or normal --
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some even glamorous or sexy --
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have become stigmatized in just a generation or two,
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once they became conversations about our common ground.
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That is the magnitude of the change we have the potential to create
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around gun violence.
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And that's my dream,
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that maybe someday,
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some period TV show will depict the terrible nightmare of gun violence,
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and a future generation of children might only be able to imagine
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how terrible it must have been.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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