Here & Now

Why There's Support for High-Powered Guns

Frederica Freyberg:

Despite the damage they can do, the purchase and use of these weapons is still fully legal and adamantly supported by many Second Amendment defenders. We go now to one such defender. Tom Grieve is a Waukesha-based criminal defense attorney. He joins us now. Thanks for being here.

Tom Grieve:

Thanks for having me on.

Frederica Freyberg:

What was your reaction to the carnage of the Highland Park Fourth of July parade and news that the shooter came to Madison and contemplated a similar act in this state?

Tom Grieve:

Awful people and sick people do awful and sick things. My heart goes out as always to those who were affected. Evil people doing evil things.

Frederica Freyberg:

Every time there is a mass shooting with an AR-15 style rifle, there are calls to ban them. In your mind, why shouldn’t they be banned?

Tom Grieve:

Well, AR-15s and handguns both represent the pinnacle of self-defense protection. They represent in essence, pinnacle of the Second Amendment, which is more than simply self-protection, though that’s certainly at its core. The Supreme Court has codified over the last 15 years and really all the way going back to 1939 the fact that ordinary military weapons and ordinary weapons in general are guaranteed constitutional protections. When we look at not only that body of jurisprudence, which gives these protections, then simultaneously, we look at the empirical data and evidence as far as how many hundreds of thousands of uses of firearms in self-defense, regardless of which study one wants to look at in any given year or whether or not we look at what is statistically a very small subset of individuals who are impacted by AR-15 and AR-15-style weapons. It’s — it’s — it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult and when we look at how good they are as far as protecting our rights, I think that’s a very difficult case to make.

Frederica Freyberg:

A statistically small number of people who are impacted by these weapons, but when those mass shootings happen, as you expressed, it is really tragic. But what are semi-automatic assault rifles like an AR-15 used for by ordinary civilians when they were designed for military use?

Tom Grieve:

Well, they’re used just like any other weapon. They’re used for fun. They’re used for personal defense. They can be used for hunting. The AR-15 is an extra modular platform, which is the reason why there’s approximately 20 million of them today in circulation around the United States and it’s been dubbed Americas favorite rifle.

Frederica Freyberg:

And indeed. So you describe yourself as a zealous Second Amendment advocate. When we spoke to the ER physician, he said these rifles are exponentially more than dangerous than muskets that were used during the time the Second Amendment was written. So why should these be treated the same as a hunting rifle?

Tom Grieve:

The same way that broadcast television such as PBS or a private-based organization is treated the same as though you know, the rights that were guaranteed back at the time of the founding fathers. The technologies have scaled but the problems and the virtues that they address and the values that underpin them remain the same.

Frederica Freyberg:

Problems like for self-defense, you mean.

Tom Grieve:

For self-defense, yes, absolutely.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would regulating assault rifles and their high velocity ammunition like they regulate machine guns now be tantamount in your mind to kind of seizing people’s weapons or violating the Second Amendment?

Tom Grieve:

Well, we did something effectively amounting to that during the assault weapons ban, which was a 10-year span from 1994 to 2004. At the sunset of that ban, there was a study that was commissioned to figure out basically how effective was this. And the National Institute of Justice released in its study that there’s been no discernible reduction in lethality and injuriousness of gun violence as a result of the assault weapons ban and they went on to talk about the fact that it’s premature to make definitive assessments on the ban’s impact but even if it were renewed, any such moving of the needle would be so small, if it exists at all, that it’s basically — it’s too small to be measured by any reliable instrument, according to statistical studies. In other words, bottom line, they said it doesn’t change anything.

Frederica Freyberg:

What’s your position on universal background checks as have been called for?

Tom Grieve:

I don’t see them solving anything. As I would note in a 2016 survey of prison inmates, 90% of them said they didn’t purchase their firearms from any kind of retail store or background. As somebody who’s both a former state prosecutor as well as the leader here of the largest criminal defense firm in the state of Wisconsin, Ive had an opportunity to have any number of conversations with folks with some checkered histories, let’s say. They don’t care about universal background checks.

Frederica Freyberg:

Tom Grieve, thanks very much.

Tom Grieve:

Thank you.