Background Briefing: March 24, 2021

On By gram

 

An ER Doctor Who Treated the Aurora Victims on What Assault Rifles Do to the Human Body

We begin with an Emergency Room physician who was working at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora on the night 12 people were killed and 70 injured at the Colorado movie theater in 2012 and speak with Dr. Comilla Sasson, the Vice President for Science and Innovation at the American Heart Association who also serves as the Chair of the Partnership of Academics and Communities in Transition for the University of Colorado. She joins us to discuss how, while there were no wounded in the gun massacre at the supermarket in Boulder on Monday, the kinds of wounds from assault rifles that she has dealt with are so traumatic that there can be no possible justification for this kind of firepower designed for the battlefield to be available to be unleashed on the streets of America.  We assess why people feel the need to open-carry this kind of firepower and what is it that they are so afraid of to feel the need to dress up with body armor, tactical gear and camo in the land of the free, when clearly they are not pursuing happiness but in fact are endangering life and liberty.

 

Assessing the Chances of Bringing Back the Assault Weapons Ban

Then we get an assessment of what the Biden administration might do in response to the latest gun massacre given the president’s call to bring back the assault weapons ban. The author of Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea, Joshua Horwitz, the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, joins us to discuss the slim chances of getting anything passed in the senate while at the state level, much progress is being made even in states like Virginia, the home of the NRA.

 

Did the Former U.S. Attorney For D.C. Make it More Difficult to Prosecute the Insurrectionists?

Then finally we speak with Elie Honig, a former Assistant United States Attorney with the Southern District of New York about the referral today of Michael Sherwin to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility following the former D.C. U.S. Attorney’s unauthorized appearance on 60 Minutes. We discuss the extent to which Sherwin has made it more difficult to prosecute the rioters who stormed the Capitol and whether the Oath Keepers and Giuliani, assuming he will be held to account for inciting insurrection, can now argue the jury pool has been tainted.