AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from Milwaukee, from the Republican National Convention.

Saturday’s shooting of Donald Trump is being widely viewed as the Secret Service’s biggest failure since 1981, when a gunman shot President Ronald Reagan just over two months after Reagan’s presidency began. Reagan was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. Three other people were injured, including Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head and left partially paralyzed.

Brady and his wife Sarah would go on to become prominent gun control advocates pushing for a bill that became known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Brady was also involved in a gun control organization that changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. It’s now known simply as Brady.

To talk more about Saturday’s shooting at the Trump rally, the attempted assassination of the former president and the current presidential candidate Trump, we’re going to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Kris Brown, the president of Brady.

Kris, first, your response to what happened on Saturday? You have this young 20-year-old with some AR-15-type rifle climbing this building and opening fire on the Trump rally, grazing the former president over his right ear, ultimately killing a spectator. Two are critically wounded. He was immediately shot dead by Secret Service. Kris, your response?

KRIS BROWN: Well, like John and, I’m sure, Americans across this country, my reaction is one of horror. Even though, to be honest, Amy, we know that gun violence is omnipresent, we do expect higher scrutiny and a security apparatus to ensure the safety of our candidates. But it’s not perfect. And in a nation awash in firearms, in firearms that are assault-style weapons, which the reports indicate was the kind of weapon that this shooter used, designed for the battlefield, it’s not a stretch to understand that there is that kind of potential risk that exists.

And it’s a horrific element of American life that we, as Brady, want to ensure is no longer the reality. And there are very simple, commonsense things that we can do to reduce and, indeed, virtually eliminate this kind of risk from American life. And politicians seeking office have very different perspectives about that very thing, as you covered even in the focus on the kinds of weapons that you can carry around the convention. You can’t carry a water bottle, but you can carry a firearm. There’s a deep inconsistency here in American life that needs to be tackled. Just as Jim and Sarah Brady devoted their lives to commonsense gun laws, there’s a lot more work we have to do here.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I mean, you just heard John Nichols describe the rules here in Milwaukee —

KRIS BROWN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — right outside the convention center. Hard water — 

KRIS BROWN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — bottles, no. Tennis balls, no. Guns, yes. And even when the governor attempted to modify this, the state said no.

KRIS BROWN: Yeah. Well, that’s an increasing trend across the country. And I will note, certainly, my thoughts and prayers go to former President Donald Trump, associated with this horrific shooting.

The reality, when he was president, is he tried to make what’s called concealed carry reciprocity — lots of fancy words for a basic premise that every single kind of local law about who could be permitted to carry a gun in public would have been overturned. So, the idea of local rule to protect the safety of citizens by local politicians, that would have been completely upended.

And let’s just be very clear: When Trump was president, a major focus of his presidency, largely thwarted by organizations like Brady, was guns everywhere, for anyone, at any time. We know an America awash in guns, an America where individuals are carrying firearms in public, in public places, means that it’s much more likely that those firearms are used in the subjective view of an individual to protect themselves. But the criteria for when and how that happens is up to the individual. And so, we will see in that kind of America much more violence, much more actions just like this. And that’s what’s deeply concerning to people like me, Americans across this country with children, and hopefully grandchildren, living in a world where reasonable and appropriate gun violence prevention measures save lives. And too often we’re going on the brink of stopping that America from happening, creating a much more dangerous, highly charged, politically fraught environment in which to attempt to advance democracy.

And democracy and gun violence don’t fit together. As you have noted, we have lost presidents, obviously. It’s not just that, Amy. It’s also the people who stand by and come in a democracy to participate in it — that is the quintessence of democracy — someone like Jim Brady who serves a president. So, it’s not just the individual, the candidate, who is the target of these kinds of attacks. It’s all of the innocent bystanders who are effectively essential to a participatory democracy. And we have to internalize that, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Kris, you know, I don’t know how many people realize that the press room that we watch at the White House is actually called the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, where all of — 

KRIS BROWN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — the journalists at the White House question President Biden, his press secretary, etc. Can you talk about the radically different approaches to guns of President Biden and President Trump? What are their policies? What was Trump’s when he was president? What has Biden called for in the past? What has he been prevented from doing now? I mean, essentially, isn’t he one of the people for the weapons ban that was in place in the Senate for so many years?

KRIS BROWN: So much, Amy, and it’s hard to encapsulate in a few minutes, but the easiest way to synthesize this is it’s night and day, literally.

One of the top priorities for former President Trump was to overturn a lot of the most basic gun violence prevention laws that had been in effect for years and years and years. So, when he first assumed the role of president after being sworn in, through an arcane law called the Congressional Review Act, he overturned an Obama rule that would have ensured a process to remove firearms temporarily from veterans who are at risk of harming themselves or others. That was his top priority. And he used a tool that had almost never been used in history to overturn that rule, that had been the subject of review and discussion and public comment in support of the rule for years before it was finalized.

He went on then to introduce two different pieces of legislation, neither of which ultimately passed, because groups like ours opposed it. So much information came out. The first was concealed carry reciprocity, which is a very fancy way to say permitting systems across this country, adopted by state and local governments, people like Tony Evers saying, “This is the kind of permitting system that we want to have, heightened scrutiny about who gets to carry guns in public. Is the person at risk or not? And we get to deny it.” There was legislation to overturn all of these laws across the country. We successfully pushed that back.

And then, another bill, dubbed the Hearing Protection Act, but that would have basically switched how the sale of silencers occurs across this country, which are subject to heightened scrutiny under the 1934 Firearms Act, it would have removed those protection and allowed the sale of firearms, basically, in your Costco or in your Walmart or other major vendors where firearms are sold. And let’s be clear: The purpose of silencers, from the 1934 time forward, was to mute the sound of gunfire, making it much harder for police to respond instantly to these kinds of horrific shootings.

So, that’s the stark reality of President Trump and his focus, fueled by one of his greatest investors for his campaign, contributing more than any other nonprofit, the National Rifle Association.

Let’s contrast that to President Biden. From day one on the campaign trail, and he is — this is consistent with his 40-year history as a public servant, he has said reduction of gun violence in America, the number one killer of our kids, is a top priority. And from day one, he has done everything he can to make that happen. He’s responsible for passage of the most bipartisan legislation in the history of the gun violence prevention movement, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. More than 15 Republicans, including John Cornyn from Texas, who was a chief co-sponsor of that legislation, passed. It called for expanded background checks across the country, incredible, unprecedented funding for community violence intervention. These programs are shown to work, to reduce things like homicide. And by the way, under President Biden, we have had record reductions in homicide in cities across this country. He offered a rule on ghost guns. He has authorized many more inspections of gun dealers across this country. And, Amy, we have more gun dealers than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.

And this president understands it’s not just about policy. Policy is important. But unless you enforce that policy well, you will never have a true reduction in gun violence. So he has someone at ATF leading ATF, Steve Dettelbach, who is laser focused on giving gun dealers — giving the ATF the tools to inspect gun dealers and shut down the few of them, relatively, that are responsible for a huge amount of crime guns that are flooding the market across the country. And he established the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, led by two survivors of gun violence. They fight night and day to have a whole-of-government approach to address this issue. The surgeon general has issued a report on gun violence as a public health epidemic. I could go on and on and on. And none of these actions —

AMY GOODMAN: Kris, we —

KRIS BROWN: None of these actions are inconsistent with a reasonable view of the Second Amendment, Amy, and I think that’s really important.

AMY GOODMAN: Kris, just before we go, and we just have a minute, I want to read a CNN report that came out right before this weekend, the attempted assassination. This is from CNN. “Vending machines selling ammunition will now be in grocery stores in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma — a move that has generated mixed feelings from officials in those states. American Rounds, the distributor of the machines, uses AI technology to scan the customers’ identification as well as facial recognition software to verify a customer’s identity, according to the company’s [website].” Again, vending machines selling ammunition will now be in grocery stores in Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. Your final comment?

KRIS BROWN: Well, I think this is a horrific trend and one that, really, the Biden administration is aware of and deeply concerned about. We think that the Department of Justice should look at this and seek action to shut this down. Look, if you’re shopping in a grocery store and you’re standing in line with your children, the idea that any person can come in and buy ammunition from a vending machine, where all it’s checking, Amy, is: Are you the person you say you are? — it’s not doing a background check. It’s doing nothing to stop the sale of that ammunition, other than to confirm you are the person you say you are. That is deeply concerning, because we, as we know, have a huge problem with gun violence in this country. And dealers, gun dealers in this country today sell firearms and ammunition. Those clerks, the individuals that most quality gun dealers — and most of them are — train to stop sales if they view a person is at risk. AI is no substitute for that. This will, make no mistake —

AMY GOODMAN: Kris Brown, we’re going to have to leave it there.

KRIS BROWN: It will — thank you. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much, president of Brady, one of the oldest gun violence prevention organizations in the United States, named for Jim Brady, who was shot in the head during an attempted assassination of former President Ronald Reagan.

When we come back, Israeli airstrikes kill at least 90 people in a massive attack on a designated safe zone in Gaza. Hundreds more are wounded. Back in 30 seconds.