Alyssa Sanders:
I want to welcome everybody to tonight's event, Guns, Public Safety, and Resilience. You're in the right place. On behalf of the Class of 1989, I want to welcome you. My name's Alyssa Sanders, and welcome, everybody, to our event. We are going to have some structure this evening, and so Nicky and Fred will be doing most of the questions and answers with each other, sort of a fireside chat, if you will. And then, at about 7:40, 7:45, we'll ask that if you would like to ask questions, to put them in the Q&A, chat is just for introducing yourself, so put them in the Q&A. And then either I or Nicky will ask those questions of Fred, and we'll get in as many as we can, we can go about five minutes over time.
Alyssa Sanders:
So, I want to welcome you all, and I'm going to do some quick introductions because their bios were already out there, and so I don't need to talk too much, but let me introduce, first, Nicky. Nicky's going to be our questioner of the evening, Nicky Goren. She is the President and CEO of the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation. The foundation is committed to advancing racial equality in the greater Washington area. In the year of 2019, Washingtonian magazine named Nicky one of the 150 Most Powerful Women in Washington, D.C., but all you really need to know is that she's a member of class of 1989, that's all that matters. Yay.
Alyssa Sanders:
And now I'd like to introduce Fred Guttenberg to everyone. After the loss of his daughter, Jaime, in the Parkland school shooting, Fred became an advocate for gun safety. With the loss of both his daughter, and his brother, Michael, who, as many of you know, was a much beloved member of the class of '89, he's traveled the country, talking about perspective, perseverance, and resilience. And as far as the class of '89 is concerned, he is an honorary member. So, without further ado, Nicky, I leave it to you.
Nicky Goren:
Great. Thank you so much, Alyssa. I want to thank you for this invitation, for pulling this together, as you do, for Brandeis, and to the Brandeis team, Nikki and others, for pulling this together. Welcome, everyone, to this evening's fireside chat with Fred Guttenberg. We don't have a fireside, but we will have a chat. I wish we could all be in person, I really do, but I'm glad we can at least do this virtually. I want to give a special shout-out to my class of 1989 classmates. I know many of you are here and are particularly interested in hearing from our classmate, Mike's brother this evening.
Nicky Goren:
So, Fred, I want to welcome you and thank you so deeply for coming to speak with us this evening. The title, as Alyssa said, of this evening is Guns, Public Safety, and Resilience. But I've read your book, we've talked, I really see tonight as a conversation about a brother, a father, a man whose life was forever altered and now defined by not one, but two just terrible tragedies. And so I really just want to start by asking you how are you? In this unrelenting time, how are you, how's your wife, how's your family? How are you doing?
Fred Guttenberg:
Well, thanks for asking, thanks for having me. As I was telling you before we got everyone on the call, the feelings that I and my family have towards Brandeis are very mutual. The Brandeis community has been amazing to my family, and tonight is only the latest example.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, my family and I, we're doing okay. I talk about it in the book, but I'll never forget what the rabbi said at Jaime's funeral, "We don't move on, we move forward," and it's what we're doing every single day. It's what I call our journey to our new normal. We were a family physically of four, we're still a family of four, but Jaime's just not with us in any way other than spirit every day.
Fred Guttenberg:
But we go forward and we go on because we have to. I tell my son, who's now 20, all the time, and I am 55, for those of you who are wondering, I was Michael's older brother, that I plan to be around for the next 50 years to watch my son grow old and to watch him have this amazing adult life, and I intend to enjoy that. So, we're going to be okay because we have to be.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, not every day is easy. The month of February, to be candid, was a really hard month for us. You can't ever move away from what you miss and you should never try. Jaime is with us all the time. Jen and Jesse and I, we continue to do things that keep us engaged with life.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah. One of the things that really struck me in your book is how differently each of you has dealt with this situation. You're all very different personalities, there's no one way to grieve, even within a family. Can you talk about that and how you've made space for each other and honored each other's ways of grieving?
Fred Guttenberg:
No, listen, it's such a great question. And if there's one real significant lesson I can leave people with, especially as a country going through COVID right now, where it's about 520,000 families who have lost somebody, we don't grieve the same way. We do all grieve differently. And I didn't know that. There was no textbook that said, "Here's what you need to know when this happens to you."
Fred Guttenberg:
But I got lucky. The person who told me that and told me that about a month after Jaime was killed was our current president, Joe Biden, who had reached out to me a few weeks prior on a phone call and then met with me in person. And I'll never forget, he came, it was myself and another Parkland dad, and he told us, "92% of all marriages fall apart after a moment like this, after what happened to the two of you. I'm not telling you that to scare you, I'm telling you that because I want you to know so that you're prepared, so that you understand why so that it doesn't happen to you." And that's when he said to me, "We all grieve differently, and you have to be prepared to allow each other to grieve differently while finding ways to grieve together."
Fred Guttenberg:
And had he not said that to me, I may have thought something was wrong in my house because my wife and I, and my son and I, we are doing it differently. They've been very private, and they need their privacy. Excuse me, my allergies are kicking in a little bit. For anyone who follows me on Twitter or on media, I have been intensely public, I have been engaging in a battle to do something. It has been anything but private. And so we've had to find ways that allow us to be who we are, but also allow us to come together and be together going through this process.
Fred Guttenberg:
It is part of why my wife, when the book was done, said, "I want to write something for the book. I want people to know from my perspective because people ask all the time," and so she wrote the afterword, to talk about, again, how we grieve differently, but how we each have found our path. And I hope anyone on this call tonight who's been affected by grief, especially in the past year, a sudden, tragic, maybe related to COVID, you take that lesson home to your families because we do grieve differently.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah. It's so powerful, and the letter at the end was very powerful. And the grief was compounded by the loss of your brother, and I know there are so many people on the call tonight who knew your brother, who loved your brother, you're surrounded by love tonight. I remember him really well, as the face of Brandeis EMT, when we were students, always with a smile on his face and energy in his step. For those in the audience who did not know Michael, tell us about him, maybe even things his friends might not know about him and the legacy that he leaves.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, my brother, the most humble person you'll ever know, and maybe you needed to know him to know that, but he was so humble, he didn't care about anything but what he could do for you. How could he help you? His adult life, for me, was defined by 9/11 and what happened on 9/11.
Fred Guttenberg:
My brother and I used to battle over that because he didn't want his adult life to be defined by 9/11, he wanted his adult life to be defined by the people who he trained and mentored and taught. He didn't want it to be about him, which amazes me to this day. He did amazing things, he was heroic. If there was another 9/11, he would have been the first one running in again because it's the way he was wired, but he wouldn't have wanted any of the credit.
Fred Guttenberg:
And I don't know that people really understood just how humble Michael was, how much it meant to him to have been able to teach and train others who became first responders or doctors or nurses in their careers because of being around him. That's what he wanted his adult life to be defined by. Unfortunately, it really is bookended by 9/11, what happened on the day of and ultimately taking his life. But if Michael had a chance to write the final chapter, it would have been about what he had been able to do for others, not about him.
Nicky Goren:
Wow. That seems very reminiscent, I think, of the people who knew him, but it's really an important story to tell. So, your brother passes away after being a hero in 9/11 and dealing with the illness that he had that was not kind, as many of these illness aren't, and then, four months later, a gunman enters the school where your daughter and your son are at school, and murders your daughter, something that no parent ... I mean as a parent, I just can't even get my brain around what my response would be or how I would feel. Tell us a little bit about Jaime. I mean I've seen photos, I've read a little bit about her, but tell us who she was, what did she love. What do you think she would have done as she grew up, if her life had not been taken?
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, Jaime was my beautiful little dancer. Everyone who knows Jaime knows she was a competitive dancer. What I said at her funeral is she was also the energy in the room. Her voice is a voice that you couldn't silence. You were either laughing because of her, or sometimes yelling because of her, but you were always responding to Jaime because she was that kind of an energy. And she was just a good kid.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, I've always taught my kids, you do what's right, not what's easy. Jaime always did what's right. And Jaime had what I would call the world's greatest BS detector. I'm not going to get all political here, but she was around for the last presidential campaign, and I'll never forget her screaming to the television, saying, "People, don't you get it?" She was that kind of a kid, she cared what was happening in the world, she hated bullies. I often tell stories of how she was known, and she was a petite little thing, but she was known, if she saw someone bullying someone else, she would put herself in the middle of it and she would make the bully stop because she did what was right.
Fred Guttenberg:
Had she had the chance to grow up, she would have been a pediatric physical therapist. My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist, and Jaime fell in love with the pediatric physical therapy side of things. In fact, there's a place in Palm Beach, Florida, called the Paley Institute, that does surgeries on kids with limb deformities. Jaime actually planned to work there. That's where she assumed she was going to work, and it was her dream to help another kid walk for the very first time. That's what she planned to do. Everything about Jaime was good and decent, and the world lost a really special person. The world lost two special people inside of four months.
Nicky Goren:
Unquestionably. I just can't get my brain around it, and everything that I've read about her and seen, she just sounds like she was a shining star. You talked at the beginning about how your son and your wife have been more private. I'm really curious to hear a little bit about your son, Jesse. He survived, but he was also a victim that day. He's a little bit older, it's been three years. How has this shaped him as he has grown up over the last three years in the midst of your personal grief, what's going on in the world? There's so much.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, Jesse's 20, but he got robbed of a normal high school experience. He was at the school that day, he heard the bullets that killed his sister. He was on the phone with me, running, saying, "I hear bullets and I can't find Jaime." He wanted to turn around and go back because Jesse, they were typical siblings, but he was his sister's protector. I had to sit there and tell him, "You run, run, run." And he didn't want to. He wanted to go back and find her. But he was hearing the gunshots, and he's describing to me, and I'm like, "You better run."
Fred Guttenberg:
And so, listen, you can't go forward from that moment and not be a changed person. He's still the same decent, sympathetic, compassionate person that he always was, he has some of my brother's spirit in his desire to help people. But, listen, there's a thing called survivor guilt, and he certainly suffers from that because, in his mind, it should have been him, not her, he's supposed to protect her. And so, thankfully, he's doing okay, but that's a day that you can't go forward from and not be forever changed.
Nicky Goren:
How does he overcome that? I mean how does that overcome that?
Fred Guttenberg:
Well, you know what? That's why my book is called Find the Helpers. It's with the love and support and help of others. I describe, for him, how literally from the moment after this happened, my son is a fire cadet still to this day, he was at the time. I'll never forget going to Jaime's funeral and not expecting this. When my brother was buried, I expected all the emergency service vehicles. That, I expected. But when I got to Jaime's funeral, and I saw it there, that I didn't. And that was that whole first responder world showing up and wrapping their arms around my son and telling him, "We got you."
Fred Guttenberg:
The hockey community, my son played high school hockey, and because of the amazing Florida Panthers organization, the Florida Panthers team, his high school hockey team, and the hockey world wrapped their arms around my son, and they said, "We got you," and there were his friends. I'd love to say in the immediate aftermath it was because of me, but the truth is I was going through a lot and I just could not be more thankful for the decency and the love and the help of others who carried me, my wife, and my son at different moments in different times when we needed it, and who continue to this day.
Fred Guttenberg:
We all need our helpers, right? We all need people in our life who will be there for us in our lowest moments, but also in our highest. And we have to be there for others when they need it as well. I learned this the hardest possible way with my brother and with my daughter, I'm a changed person because of it. I don't think of our family ever really thought of life as in we get through the day with the help of others, but the truth is we do, and looking back in my life, we always have, we just never looked at it that way.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah. I was really touched by how the book was as much obviously a tribute to Jaime and to Michael, but also a real tribute to the helpers that you talked about. Why did you feel it was so important to highlight them in the way that you did?
Fred Guttenberg:
So, I didn't originally. When I originally wrote the book, at Jaime's funeral, or the day we were planning it, we were at the funeral home, and the funeral director handed me a journal and said, "Have you ever journaled before?" And I said, "No." And he says, "Take this. Just use it." And so I started, and writing became my therapy. And around April of 2018, I said to my wife, "I want to write a book. I want to tell our story," and the original intention of the book was to tell our story of being a part of two national tragedies and how the country has reacted differently to both.
Fred Guttenberg:
And I wrote this book, and I shared it with someone who I trust really deeply, and he said, "Everybody already knows your story. I'm actually more intrigued by all of these people who you describe throughout your book. I want to know more about that. You're not done writing." And I just said, "What do you mean I'm not done writing?" And he goes, "You're not done writing. Go back and tell more about that." And as I went back and I started rewriting the book, there was a moment where it hit me that this book was about all of the outsiders, and it was on 9/11.
Fred Guttenberg:
I talk about a lady who I never met, and she's always been one of the most important people of my adult life. When 9/11 was happening, my family and I, we hadn't heard from Michael. We knew where his office was, around the corner from the World Trade Center. We'd known Michael, we knew he was going to be there because that's who he was, and as the morning went on and we hadn't heard anything, we were starting to lose hope. By early afternoon, we lost hope and we were planning for the worst, and we were becoming very emotional, my siblings and I, my parents, we were just assuming the worst had happened.
Fred Guttenberg:
And this amazing lady went to where they ultimately set up the triage and said to all the first responders, "I'm sure you have loved ones. Just give me a name and a phone number." And this lady called my parents and said, "I've spoken to your loved one, he is alive. He will call you when he can." That was the first sign of life we had from my brother that day.
Fred Guttenberg:
And I was really working hard to rewrite that portion of the book and talk more about this person who's been a hero to me my whole life, even though I've never met her. And it just hit me how important she is to Michael's story, to my story. And as I started going through all these other things and thinking about the importance of other people, it really became clear to me, as much as I love to give myself credit for things that did or didn't happen, nothing happens without others. Nothing.
Fred Guttenberg:
And so as I started going further into the rewriting, I started to think back to, "What is the theme going to be here? What am I going to name the book?" And that's when the Mister Rogers quote jumped out at me, where he talks about whenever there are terrible things happening in the world, evil, bad things, as long as there are helpers, physicians, doctors, nurses, police, as long as there are helpers, there is hope. And that gave me the inspiration for the rest of the book.
Fred Guttenberg:
So, I went ahead and spent the next six months rewriting it to really talk more about all the helpers, and I'm very thankful that I had the additional six months because a lot of things happened in that six months, like the presidential election, which became really crucial in this book, getting removed from a State of the Union address, that all happened during the six-month period, and I got a chance to talk about it in the book.
Fred Guttenberg:
But I don't get through what happened with Michael, and especially what happened with Jaime, and my family doesn't without all these other people. And nobody gets through these kinds of moments in life without other people, hence Find the Helpers.
Nicky Goren:
That makes total sense. So, now you, too, are a helper, you've become a very prominent and visible advocate for gun safety. So, let's switch to that topic. What, in your view, is the number one gun safety priority, from your perspective?
Fred Guttenberg:
So, I think getting this country to rethink this as a public health issue. I think this issue has been discussed far too long as a Second Amendment issue, and it's not. Nobody's Second Amendment rights are going to be interfered with by taking steps to make all of us safer. Nobody's Second Amendment right. If you're a legal, lawful gun owner, your rights are intact.
Fred Guttenberg:
But gun safety is about putting up barriers to keep those who intend harm from having the ability to do so. So, really reframing this issue as what it is, which is a public health/public safety issue, and then taking steps to address that because, listen, we need to reduce the gun violence death rate. We have over 40,000 people a year dying right now from gun violence. Over half of that is suicide. That's part of reducing that number is figuring out how to deal with that number.
Fred Guttenberg:
We have over 100,000 a year who are seriously injured from gun violence. So, we need to figure out how we're going to reduce the gun violence death rate, how we're going to reduce the severity of injuries, and how we're going to reduce the instances of gun violence. We're not going to get rid of gun violence in America, there's too many guns out there. But we can do more to help get us safer.
Fred Guttenberg:
So, what do we do? Background checks, not just on weapons, but they should be on ammunition as well. Red flag laws, if somebody is a known threat to someone else or themselves, and law enforcement can prove it to a judge, weapons should be removed. Raise the age to 21. Remove a federal law, called PLCAA, which prevents people like me from being able to sue the gun manufacturer for illegal marketing practices. I can prove how the gun manufacturer was directly marketing their weapon to killers like the person who killed my daughter, but I'm not allowed to sue. I basically have taken my lawsuit and filed it with the Federal Trade Commission, so I'm still going to get my chance to ultimately get them to have to answer for their actions.
Fred Guttenberg:
But if we can open up the litigation piece of this, we can finally hold people accountable for those decisions that led us to where we are today. We need to get the public health system more directly involved, and we need to give doctors and nurses the ability to ask parents and families general questions about, "Do you have weapons in the home? Are they locked up? If not, what is your plan to lock them up? Because you have a five-year-old." Right now, that's not something that happens, but we ought to have those kinds of things happening.
Fred Guttenberg:
There is so much we can do. Banning high-capacity magazines. Listen, I believe we should ban assault weapons. I also understand the drama that that kind of a statement causes. After Jaime was killed, I did not initially believe that that was necessary, believe it or not, because I felt if we work on all the other things, we can achieve the goals of safety. But then I started seeing all these people with assault weapons showing up at peaceful rallies or government buildings, and the assault weapon was no longer for hunting or sport, it was now being used for armed intimidation, and it changed my thinking. We ought to be banning those as well. So, there's a lot we can do, but the most important thing we can do is vote because we have to have legislators who are committed to doing something.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah, totally agree. I was going to say, polling shows that Americans overwhelming support common-sense gun safety legislation, but we have a political system where a minority in the Senate can basically thwart the public's will. So, what will it take to overcome that? Just voting?
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, I often say we Americans have done a terrible job of voting, and I don't mean we have voted for the wrong people, I mean not enough of us have voted, and because of that, we've ended up with, in many cases, the wrong people who were not elected by a majority. The more we vote, the more we show up, the more we use our voice, the more we go to town halls and hold elected people accountable, the more we do what our American system allows us to do, the better off we will be.
Fred Guttenberg:
But too many people in this country really started to believe, "My voice doesn't matter. My vote doesn't count. They're just all the same." That's not true. I've had the good fortune of meeting a lot of people who have been elected in states and cities, as well as in D.C., and I got to tell you, there's a lot of really good people, and what we need is more really good people. There's a lot of really bad ones, too. But you know what? That's because not enough people showed up to vote.
Nicky Goren:
Yes. And so then I would say that one of the key things that we need to address, and it's a topic for another day, is the massive voter suppression and-
Fred Guttenberg:
100%.
Nicky Goren:
And things that are purposely keeping Black people and immigrant people in this country from voting in many different ways, and I think we would see a very different outcome if we tackled that.
Fred Guttenberg:
Well, listen, you're 100% right. Listen, for too many years, it was just that people didn't get up and vote. Now, people want to get up and vote, and so there is certainly one political party that would like to keep it from happening, and we can't let that happen. People should have the right to vote.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah, we definitely need to work on that. So, let me ask you the controversial question, why shouldn't we just move to repeal the Second Amendment? Why is that not on the table?
Fred Guttenberg:
You're not the first person to ask that, and I guess my answer to that is it's just not going to happen. That's one of those things where it might feel good to have that fight, but I don't see that as being inevitable, and it would only prevent discussion and conversation around steps that we need to be taking now, without delay, to save lives. And there are, right now, in the past ... When Jaime was killed three years ago, there was about 300 million weapons on the streets. We're now at about 400 million, okay?
Fred Guttenberg:
Our failure to address this rapid increase in weapons on the streets and, in many states, a loosening of laws is only leading to people being less safe. If we start fighting over the Second Amendment, there's never going to be any change on the gun safety side, and the gun lobby has understood that brilliantly for years. They've loved the fight being about the Second Amendment because it freezes things in place. I don't want things to be frozen in place anymore. I want to move forward, I want to move on, I want to have a public health/public safety conversation where we can talk about how we're going to save lives.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah, that makes sense. So, the other interesting thing, as the gun safety efforts go forward, are the emerging threats around new technological advances, for lack of a better word, things like the 3D-printed guns that people can print in their homes and avoid metal detectors, and ghost guns that you can make from kits bought on the internet and they're not traceable and they don't have serial numbers. What do you see as the impact of technology on gun safety efforts as these things continue to emerge?
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, I kind of talk about this in the book. A few years ago, back in, I think, August of 2018, I was invited by Speaker Pelosi to address the House Minority Caucus. It was done, also, with Congressman Ted Deutch, and I had to deliver to them a prepared speech. And I'm sitting next to Congressman Deutch, and I leaned into him and I said, "Do you mind if I don't deliver my speech?" He said, "What'd you have in mind?" I said, "I want to let your colleagues know I think they're fallen." And he said, "Go do your thing."
Fred Guttenberg:
And I called them out on this issue. I called them out on 3D weapons because one week from that date was when the ability to publish the prints for 3D weapons online was going to happen because the Trump administration settled a lawsuit that they didn't need to settle, and nobody in Congress knew about it. All us in the gun safety movement knew about it, we had been screaming about it for months, but nobody was paying attention. And I called them out, and all of a sudden they all got worked up because I said to them, "One week from today, somebody can walk into your office with a plastic gun and you won't know." And that got their attention.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, it's a very serious problem, and we're going to have to deal with the reality of what can be purchased online. That is part of gun safety. But it's also this is the reason why I believe so strongly the way to deal with all of this is with ammunition. Nothing works without a bullet. And while you can make guns at home, nobody's yet really figured out how to make a quality bullet at home. So, what happens is people who can't pass a background check, they make their weapons at home, or they steal them, and then they walk into any store and they buy the ammunition, no problem.
Fred Guttenberg:
If you're a prohibited purchaser of weapons, you're also prohibited from buying bullets, but there's no requirement for a background check on bullets. The way to deal with this proliferation is to extend background checks to bullets. And there is actually a proposed law, it's a bill, that's been submitted in the House by Congressman Wasserman Schultz, and in the Senate by Senator Blumenthal, called Jaime's Law, which would extend background checks to ammunition. It would seriously put a dent in the ability to make those weapons work.
Nicky Goren:
Wow. That makes a lot of sense. I will point out that it turns out you're present because you didn't even need a plastic gun to walk into their offices with guns, as we saw on January 6th.
Fred Guttenberg:
I got detained faster at the State of the Union for saying, "What about victims of gun violence, like my daughter?" because I was detained and arrested that night, than any of those people did for walking in killing police officers and taking over the Capitol. It is unbelievable.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah, it really is unbelievable. That's a whole other conversation that we could have.
Fred Guttenberg:
Yeah.
Nicky Goren:
So, I want to ask a question on the topic of gun safety that actually stems from my work at the Meyer Foundation around racial justice and who has the power to change systems in this country. I will say that my teenage son and I attended the March for Our Lives in D.C., and we were really struck by how the students from Parkland intentionally made space for the voices of Black and Brown youths from Chicago, from D.C, from other places across the country, both in the March and in the debate on solutions.
Nicky Goren:
And so as you think about your role, you have this highly visible platform, you have access to policymakers, media, people in power, when you think about our country's history of racism and the perpetual lack of a racial equity lens on our policies and our laws and the national conversations we've been having about racism, I wondered how you think about making that space in your platform to ensure that the voices of people in the Black community, who disproportionately die by gun homicides every year, have a seat at the table, have a central voice in the policymaking, even if their views are not the same as yours on what the solutions should be?
Fred Guttenberg:
It's such a great question. It's the reason why I travel this country. And I've been to every community. Listen, I've struggled long and hard to figure out why my family? Parkland, Florida, this stuff doesn't happen in Parkland, Florida. What are the chances that it would and that it would be my kid? I've been told that, because I've dropped everything, everything I was doing professionally before, I've dropped everything. This is my life now. And most people, especially those from other communities, they can't just drop everything. But I was able to.
Fred Guttenberg:
And so my fight is for gun violence, period. It's for victims of gun violence in all communities, whether it be Black and Brown or in Parkland, it's all communities. The work I do is to make us all safer, not just to stop the next one in Parkland. And I have had the good fortune of getting to know some of the most amazing people in the world because of this work.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, you probably all know of the Waffle House shooting from a few years ago, Shaundelle Brooks, she's become a friend of mine. And I go to Chicago and I've been in those communities and I've been in the communities in New York with Erica Ford. Gun violence does not know color. If a bullet is going to hit you, it doesn't matter what color you are, you're likely to die or to be seriously injured. And while some of the factors that drive violence in different communities may be different, the reality of how easy it is in this country to access weapons and ammunition is the same, okay?
Fred Guttenberg:
And the reality that there are certain states that make it even easier is part of the issue. People always love to throw up the "Chicago example," right? Except they're nextdoor to Indiana. My friend, Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey, as part of his gun safety measures, they've started tracing where the guns that are used in violent crimes come from, all the violent crimes across New Jersey, it doesn't matter what community. And about 80% of them come from out of state.
Fred Guttenberg:
So, dealing with the reality as to why gun violence happens, why there's such easy access, that makes us safer in all communities. And that's what I would tell people. It's the reason why I work with all the gun safety groups that are out there, because my work is for all of them.
Nicky Goren:
Thank you, I appreciate that answer. I see Alyssa has appeared.
Fred Guttenberg:
Time flies when we're doing this.
Alyssa Sanders:
Well, I wanted to remind folks that now would be the time, if they do have questions, to feel free to put them in the Q&A, and I can read them aloud and provide them to Fred. But, until that happens, Nicky, there's no reason why you can't get another question in.
Nicky Goren:
Okay. Thank you.
Fred Guttenberg:
Thank you.
Nicky Goren:
I do have another question. One of the things that you talked about when we spoke and in your book is the guilt that you have felt for not having gotten involved in this issue before it touched your life directly, and I'm wondering whether you're thinking about that more broadly? Now, I mean you're obviously very steeped and you're focused on gun safety, but how are you thinking about it more broadly, particularly as we think about what we've seen over the last year, the racial injustice that has been laid bare for everybody, for example? How expansively are you thinking about what you will advocate for, and what advice would you have for the audience on how they should think about getting involved in advocacy?
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, as a dad, I always thought I was doing everything to protect my kids. I did. I was always with them, unless they were in a place like school. But I always thought I was doing everything to protect my kids. That was my job. But I didn't do everything, and I live with guilt because of that. Because I do understand the role that my voice has played in this mission for gun safety, I get it, but I wasn't using my voice on it before it was my kid. I wasn't using my voice on it when it was happening in all those other communities. I wasn't out there.
Fred Guttenberg:
And maybe if I was, I could have caused change to happen soon. Maybe red flag laws could have been the law of the land sooner. And maybe my daughter would be alive today. But I wasn't, and I'll never, ever get over that. And for the rest of my life, I will be fighting for public safety, whether it's for my kid or another person's kid because, honestly, your lives are worth it. My advice to everyone out there is to understand what happened to me could happen to you. Don't ever think for one second that it couldn't, and get involved, be engaged, be holding people accountable, and vote as if your life or the life of someone you love depends on it because it does.
Fred Guttenberg:
Don't ever, ever, ever get caught with something happening to you or someone you love and not having done everything you could before that to be a part of solving that problem. I'll never, ever get over it. It's a guilt that I'll live with forever, but doing what I do now at least fulfills me a little bit to know that I'm doing the job I need to help other families and other kids.
Nicky Goren:
Yeah, thank you for that answer, for being so candid.
Alyssa Sanders:
Thank you. So, Nicky, we're getting some questions in. Helen Goldenberg, from Tamarac, of course, right up the road from you, wants to know, "What can we do for legislation in Florida now?"
Fred Guttenberg:
So, it's a great question. Listen, Florida is a unique state, it is not what you would call a "gun safety" state, it's a conservative state, and yet, three weeks after Parkland happened, we did pass gun safety in Florida. We passed red flag laws, we raised the age to 21, we strengthened the background check systems and we put in place a waiting period. You know what? And it's saving lives. Florida is a safer state because of the work that was done. You wouldn't normally think of Florida as a state where those things could pass, but it did, under a Republican governor, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate.
Fred Guttenberg:
That said, in any other time, I'm not sure we could have gotten that work done. And there are those in the state right now who are trying to undo some of the work that was done. There are some that are trying to undo red flag laws, there are some that are trying to undo the increase of the age to 21, and you need to be paying attention to what's happening in the state, and you need to be making it clear to this governor and to all of the legislators that you have a chance to vote for, that you demand that they protect the law.
Fred Guttenberg:
Dan Daley, who may well be your state rep, since you're in Tamarac, has also introduced Jaime's Law into state house. We're going to try to pass it in the state of Florida. Because it's Florida, it's going to be a tough, tough hill to climb, but we're going to try. But the most important thing you can do? Show up at your town halls, hold people accountable, and vote.
Alyssa Sanders:
Thank you. We're getting another question from Erica Papier. Erica, I hope I'm saying your last name correctly. She thanks you, first, for sharing your story and for the important work that you're doing, and she wants to know that, "On a local level, what can parents do to support that work?"
Fred Guttenberg:
So, where did you say Erica was at?
Alyssa Sanders:
Erica doesn't say where she's from.
Fred Guttenberg:
Okay. I would say to support the work that I'm doing, certainly follow me if you're on Twitter because that's where I do most of my advocacy, follow me on Twitter. But we also have an Orange Ribbons page on Twitter, Orange Ribbons for Jaime, it's actually @Ribbons4Jaime, J-A-I-M-E, on Twitter. We have an Orange Ribbons for Jaime website that you can follow. And between Twitter, Facebook, and the website, everything that we're doing is being covered.
Alyssa Sanders:
Great.
Fred Guttenberg:
Thank you.
Alyssa Sanders:
Michael Kline wants to know, "What can be done to overturn the Heller decision?"
Fred Guttenberg:
We need some help on the Supreme Court. I would say, listen, with the current makeup of the Supreme Court, it's not going to be overturned, but we'll see what happens in this current administration and the chances that they have to appoint some other justices. My fear right now is the current makeup of the Supreme Court actually could roll back the ability to tackle some gun safety measures.
Fred Guttenberg:
So, I'll say it again, things like the Heller decision, it does get to the Supreme Court, it gets back to voting. You have to vote. It has consequences. What happened in the past four years with the Supreme Court and those seats that flipped, it is a consequence of voting, and we just have to show up and vote.
Alyssa Sanders:
Yeah. Melissa Hafter, Missy, wants to know, from Colorado, "If you go about regulating ammunition, do you go about it at the state level instead of the federal then?" She's trying to get a picture of how it would work.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, background checks on ammunition, there are actually regulations that make it hard to do at a state level. Now, a big state, like California, actually built their own background check system, and they are doing it at a state level. States like Connecticut, where they have ID cards to buy weapons, you have to present that to buy ammunition also. But, in general, it is really hard to do this at a state level in a lot of the different states. It would be much easier to have a national plan. But there are many states that are working on trying to do it in the failure of leadership from Washington on this previously.
Alyssa Sanders:
Yeah. David Binman, or Bineman, I'm sorry, David, asks an interesting question, "Do you ever contemplate the issue of our nation as a gun culture nation? For example, violent television shows often advertise during pro-sporting events." He's asking, "Does this lead to our gun public health issues?"
Fred Guttenberg:
I don't know. I'll say you can look at other countries that have violent symbolism, that have the same shows, but they don't have the gun violence problem. So, I would say America is somewhat unique because you take all that violent symbolism and you combine it with the easy access to weapons and ammunition, I think that is more the issue. And then you have a gun lobby here which seeks to take advantage of that, which actually uses their marketing clout to build their weapons into those games, into the shows, targeting at kids who then want to go out and buy weapons that are really easy for them to buy. So, I think it's much deeper than just a culture, but we certainly do have a culture, combined with easy access, that is a problem.
Alyssa Sanders:
Yeah.
Nicky Goren:
I would add on that that there is the issue of race overlaid that because a lot of what the NRA has done is fueled this race war and stoked fear around those issues in order to-
Fred Guttenberg:
100%.
Nicky Goren:
Promote gun sales.
Fred Guttenberg:
Listen, 100%. And the financing and the escalation of this white supremacy movement very much is at the doorstep of the NRA. There's no question about it.
Alyssa Sanders:
Yeah. Paul Freedman asks about, and you probably have heard it, but the pilot programs they've got for police officer, where they pair them with behavior health specialists on certain calls. Do you think that these pairings should be supported to make red flag interventions go better? Do you think that that would be ...
Fred Guttenberg:
So, I know of some communities that are doing this pilot program. Listen, I'm going to answer it this way, I think anything that allows a potentially hostile situation to become less hostile is worth trying. I think we live in a society now where there's 400 million weapons on the street, they're not all in the hands of the people who intend harm, and some of them are way more lethal than anything that you could ever imagine in the past.
Fred Guttenberg:
I mean only last month, we had two FBI agents, right here, in Sunrise, Florida, attempting to serve a warrant, and they were being watched on a Ring doorbell setup while they were at the door. They got ambushed and two FBI agents were killed. My concern is I like the idea of the pilot programs, I do. I worry about the safety and more things that could potentially go wrong. So, I'm not adverse to it, but they really need to be well thought-out and executed because the more people you add to a mix, the more that could go wrong.
Alyssa Sanders:
Yeah. I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, and we are training police officers in behavior health issues and, in fact, when you have a behavior health issue when you call the police, we are to let them know that this is a mental health issue as well, giving the police officers a heads-up, and they will send those particular folks who've been trained to come out and handle it.
Fred Guttenberg:
And I think that's the right approach. Listen, many years ago, as a much younger guy, I used to work in the world of mental health, on the pharmaceutical side, I worked for Johnson & Johnson, when you still had things like a lot of state hospitals. And I'll never forget, when we went through this transition to closing down state hospitals, and then the mentally ill were put into community mental health centers, but there was funding that followed. And then, over the years, all the funding got cut. And we have a mental health system in this country right now that is broken. And police officers have been called upon to be the mental health workers in many cases without the training to do so. And so I think it is, it's a really important conversation because we need to better equip them to do that.
Alyssa Sanders:
Well, it's 8:01, and I want to be-
Fred Guttenberg:
Oh, wow.
Alyssa Sanders:
It went by so fast, didn't it?
Nicky Goren:
Yeah.
Alyssa Sanders:
Nicky, do you have any last questions or anything?
Nicky Goren:
I just want to say thank you for the candid conversation, for all that you're doing. I regret that you have to be here with us under these circumstances and the circumstances that led you to this moment, but we really appreciate your coming here and talking about your brother and talking Jaime and talking about gun safety, and we are with you.
Fred Guttenberg:
Well, I thank you for having me and for giving me the chance to talk about Michael, who those of you who knew him, I know you loved him, and for talking about my daughter, who if you would have known her, you would have loved her as well. It's been quite a few years. And I want to just go back to what I said at the very beginning, and thinking in terms of the title of the book, Find the Helpers. The Brandeis community, so early on, I mean, Alyssa, I remember some of those early calls, stepped up for my brother, for my family, and supported us and continue to do so. And those are moments and things that you just don't forget, and so thank you.
Alyssa Sanders:
And thank you for being here. Thank you so much for being here today, and I appreciate both of you very, very much, I hope you know that. And Brante is asking about Find the Helpers. It's on Amazon, Brante. You can't miss it. Is it?
Fred Guttenberg:
Do you want me to quickly pull up-
Alyssa Sanders:
Could you put it in the chat?
Fred Guttenberg:
Let me just pull up my link. Bear with me one second.
Alyssa Sanders:
Yes. You can do it.
Fred Guttenberg:
All right, hang on, I'm still here.
Alyssa Sanders:
Right now, I've got your book right over there, it's right by me.
Nicky Goren:
I read it on Kindle.
Fred Guttenberg:
All right, I'm putting it in the chat right now.
Alyssa Sanders:
Thank you so much. There it is.
Fred Guttenberg:
There it is. We got it.
Nicky Goren:
Missy, you mean where I work?
Alyssa Sanders:
We'll do that. It's 8:03 and I need to be thoughtful, but I do want ... That'll be another thing. Nicky, we can share a lot about where you work, it's a great organization and we should talk about that. We should have a little get-together with some non-profit folks at some point and do something.
Nicky Goren:
Happy to do that.
Alyssa Sanders:
Yeah. Again-
Fred Guttenberg:
I'll come back on any time, this went fast.
Alyssa Sanders:
Okay, Fred. We'll make it happen. And the next time you're in D.C., Nicky and I, socially-distanced, we'll go out for drinks outside.
Fred Guttenberg:
I had my second COVID shot yesterday, so I'm going to be getting back on the road soon.
Alyssa Sanders:
Excellent. Great. Well, thank you both so much. Thank you, class of '89, and everybody else who came to be with us tonight. I learned so much, I appreciate you all, and have a good night.
Nicky Goren:
Thank you.
Fred Guttenberg:
Good night, everybody.
Nicky Goren:
Bye.
Fred Guttenberg:
Thank you.