Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideastream public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, February 16th.

And I'm Cynthia Connolly, director of programing here, and pleased to introduce today's forum, which is a local law enforcement enforcement forum.

It is my honor to welcome our speaker today, Steven Utterback, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or the ATF.

As we all know it.

Director Darrell Bock is charged with overseeing the federal agency, charged with protecting the public by enforcing laws and regulations related to firearms.

Explosive TVs, arson and alcohol, as well as tobacco trafficking.

He was appointed to the role by President Biden in July of 2022 at a critical time in the fight against violent crime in the country.

In his second years, director Dan Auerbach has advocated for a strategy that focuses on community partnerships, citizen education and working with state, local and tribal partners to find solutions that keep Americans safe and improve public safety.

Darrell Bock is a Cleveland native and brings a wealth of experience to this position.

From 2009 to 2016, he served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, and prior to that, he began his career clerking for the Honorable Stanley Sorkin and the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

He was also detailed as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee shortly after the 911 terrorist attacks.

More recently, Darrell Bock was a partner and litigation group leader at a major national law firm of which we have an attendance today.

And he is a recipient of numerous honors and awards for his service.

Today, we will hear more from director Darrell Bock and his work with the ATF in combating gun violence here in America.

If you have a question for our speaker, you can text it to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And our city club staff will try their best to work it into the second half of the program.

Members and Friends of the City Club of Cleveland please join me in welcoming director Stephen Douglas.

Thank you.

Well, good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you very much for that kind introduction.

And thank you for having me here to the city club.

And thank you even more to everything that you do at the City Club.

I've had the deep honor to be at this podium a couple of times before in several different jobs, and each time it feels that it's truly special.

I'm not a native of Cliff.

I'm a resident of the Northeast Ohio area still.

And it's also great to have so many people who I count as friends and leaders here.

I can't name you all.

The one person I'm going to single out is my partner, my wife, Carol Bialystok, who is here rooting me on.

And then I'm sure after critiquing me, as she should.

So this speech comes on the heels of yet another day, a very hard day of senseless violence and tragedy in our country.

And we are all thinking in our hearts, go out to our fellow Americans in Kansas City.

ATF agents, of course, were there, as we are for almost every mass shooting in America, along with many of our partners.

I spoke that evening to the mayor, Kansas City, Quinton Lucas, who is an incredible leader, by the way, on violent crime issues.

And we will do everything we can, not just to keep those people in our thoughts, but to try and help them.

Now, this invitation to the city Club comes at a very unique time for me.

So I recently passed my 18 month mark as ATF director, and in this job, as you might imagine, as I've just shared with you, there are a lot of daily time sensitive and very difficult issues that come up.

But I do think that it is important from time to time to take a step back and reflect on the bigger picture in a year and a half.

Seems like a pretty good time to do that.

So today I'd like to take that chance and share with you some of my pressions that I've gotten in my first year, plus as director of ATF.

Now let me begin that by telling you a little bit about the place I had the honor of working.

Really.

One of the most important law enforcement agencies that you might not know as much as you should about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or ATF.

And by the way, unlike our Buckeyes, it is not the ATF, it's just ATF.

ATF is an agency with a long history and a unique mission.

It is the only federal law enforcement agency with the sole mission of protecting Americans from violent crime, said whether it's explosives or arson or most notably, firearms, violence, that if it booms, burns or bangs, it's ATF.

And that's a lot of ground.

ATF, law enforcement history, not surprisingly, tracks some of the most difficult and well known criminal chapters in our nation's history from illegal stills in Appalachia to the days where fellow Clevelander Eliot Ness in The Untouchables took down Al Capone from the crack fueled violence of the 1980s to the tragic loss of four ATF agents lives at Waco from catching the guy who bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building to leading the National Church Arson Task Force from finding the key piece of evidence in the first World Trade Center bombing.

And now to massacre after massacre after massacre at Columbine, Newtown, Parkland, Valle de Las Vegas Pulse.

Navy Yard.

Mother Emanuel in Charleston Tops in Buffalo.

Sutherland Springs, Houston.

Bronx Subway.

Lewiston, Maine.

Kansas City and so many more.

ATF is truly an incredible place, and the people who work there are incredibly courageous.

These are people who every single day run toward gunfire across this nation every day.

By the way, some of them are here today, and I think we should take a second and say thank you to those brave men and women.

Now, there is not a single day in America that goes without a significant incident of gun violence.

And as you know, not one, but scores and scores of them.

So to put a finer point on it, it is worth your time, our time to get past the rhetoric a little bit and understand what we at ATF and we in this country need to do to address this problem.

So about ATF in operational terms.

ATF has two broad functions, law enforcement and regulatory as law enforcers.

ATF has over 2500 agents spread throughout our 25 field divisions who investigate every day and solve, by the way, numerous significant violent crime cases.

These are brave badge carrying and gun carrying agents who are out there on the street every single day and night on the regulatory side.

ATF is the chief regulator of actually two significant industries, the explosives industry and the firearms industry.

We conduct regulatory inspections.

We write and implement rules.

We work along with the industries to try and achieve compliance with the explosives and gun laws that Congress passes.

Now, the last overview thing that I'll tell you about ATF is pretty basic.

If you are truly concerned about violent crime in America.

ATF is way, way, way too small.

We're between about five and 6000 strong.

That's all in every job series and that's for the entire United States.

So a point of reference, NYPD has 36,000 sworn officers for that one city.

And if you want a point of reference in New York, I have about 30 agents there, 36,000.

So huge mission, scarce resources.

So what does that mean?

It means we have to be smart about how we can add value, how we can make an impact on violent crime.

And that truly is the goal, right?

That word impact.

Now, the two most important tools that we bring to try and make that impact are pretty simple, and they'll run throughout what I say.

First is our close partnerships with the police and not just the police, but others.

People like the Peacekeepers Alliance, the health care community partnerships.

And second expertize.

And specifically our expertize in investigating gun crime.

And we need to aggressively leverage both of those things, partnership and expertize, if we're going to move the needle at all.

And the gun crime at the levels we're seeing in this nation.

And let's start there.

The amount and intensity of violent crime and specifically gun crime in this country is wholly unacceptable.

And to say that, again, the amount and intensity of gun crime in this country is wholly unacceptable.

That simple declarative statement, I hope, is still one of the things that we can agree on in this nation.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about just some recent trend.

Actually, the most recent numbers show that 2023 saw a fairly precipitous decline in violent crime, actually down by double digits.

In fact, in many cities, not all in the United States.

Murders were down nearly 13% among 175 cities.

Homicides, for instance, down 11 and a half percent in New York, 15 and a half percent in L.A., 12.7% in Chicago.

And in Baltimore, actually down 20%.

This is progress.

But I know to many Americans it doesn't feel like nearly enough progress.

It certainly doesn't to me.

We need to do more.

And it also doesn't change that progress.

The stubborn long term realities we face.

That reality is that our nation, the United States, continues almost alone among western, economically developed countries to be the outlier and not in a good way.

We are the nation with the highest rates of gun violence in that group by a lot.

So for instance, if you compare us with the United Kingdom, where our legal roots come from, we have about the same amount of gun deaths as they have in one year in Great Britain, in one day here.

And by the way, it's a good day.

That would be a good day last year.

Even with this decline in homicides in this country, 43,042 people still died from gun violence in the United States.

That's 118 people every single day, and another 36,336 were shot and survived, many with life changing injuries.

I know that Dr. Ed Barksdale is here to tell you about the work that we do in the health care world.

And it is absolutely tragic what is going on.

And let's take a second.

Speaking of a pediatrician to talk about how this problem affects the people that we say we value the most.

Right.

That's reflects on us.

Right?

Our kids.

Firearms violence is the leading cause of death for American children.

Not cancer.

Not car crashes.

Guns are children.

And while the sheer amount of firearms violence is shocking enough, the nature of what we're facing is equally disturbing.

Among the worst examples of this is, for instance, the return of the fully automatic machine gun to our nation's streets.

Congress starting tried to deal almost 100 years ago in the days of Al Capone and the Tommy Gun, which, by the way, was a product of northeast Ohio and except basically for cops in the military.

New machine guns have been outlawed in this country for decades.

But thanks to tech innovation and I don't mean the good kind, I mean the bad kind, the misuse of 3-D printing machine guns have now compounding back to our streets like jackhammers.

And let's look at another thing.

The number of mass casualty events, so many powered by incredibly lethal weaponry is also growing.

Last year alone, for instance, mass shootings, that's more than four or more people hurt.

Not counting the shooter.

Last year, 2023, 650 mass shootings in our country.

650.

Can you remember?

I can remember when Columbine happened and it hit us all like a ton of bricks just in 1999.

Now, 25 years later, we're in danger of heading to a place where that happens, and we call it Wednesday.

We cannot accept that and we cannot be complacent about that.

Now, I spend a lot of time in my job meeting with agents and police officers, and I also spend a lot of time hearing from victims and survivors of violent crime.

And I do that for a lot of reasons.

Of course, it's the right thing to do.

But I also do it to remind myself that these are not just numbers.

Every single one of these shootings, whether it makes the news or not and many don't.

Whether it's a suicide of a kid or a drive by in the city.

Whether it's a massacre at a parade or a spray of bullets on a subway.

Whether it's a man who kills his own family or a student with an air shooting up his school.

Each one is a tragedy.

It takes lives and it changes lives forever.

Birthdays that don't happen.

Empty seats.

Tables over the holidays.

Children without parents.

Parents left with grief.

We can never really understand.

And I say to you, it is as Americans are patriotic duty to respond, to do something, to think of them, and to have their backs, to view this situation as a call to action.

And that is certainly what we do at ATF.

And that is why the men and women at ATF, the people there are heroes to me, because at ATF, these tragedies every single day generate a choice.

Either you're going to give up or fight to make things better.

And every single day we at ATF make that choice and the choices to fight.

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about what we are doing in that fight, about our strategy to reduce violent crime.

So let me say, any effective strategy to produce to reduce gun crime in this country, I think rests on two pillars.

First, we have to identify the trigger pullers, the small group of shooters who are literally terrorizing our communities.

Those folks are dangerous.

They belong in jail.

And in law enforcement, it's our job to put them there.

So identify those trigger pullers and put them in jail, number one.

Number two, we have to do something to cut off or at least slow down this seemingly endless and easy supply of firearms to these shooters, these dangerous people, people who we all agree in the law, says should not have these guns.

And by the way, we have to do both of those things.

Anybody who thinks we can just attack the problem by cutting off the supply of crime guns, but not punish violent people for what they do is wrong.

And so, too, are those people who say Just punish the criminals.

But don't worry about how they're getting these guns every single day.

We have to do both.

So how do we make that strategy a success?

How do we get the worst of the worst off our streets and cut off their gun supply?

I'll share some details, but to remind you, it's about those two things I identified before.

It's about partnerships and expertize.

And when I talk about expertize in this world, I'm talking about something called crime, gun intelligence.

Let's start with the first pillar, which is catching the bad guys.

So for ATF, partnerships aren't just an occasional strategy.

They are part of our DNA.

They're indispensable to our mission.

Since I started as a baby prosecutor in 1992, the biggest change I've seen in law enforcement is a geometric increase in the use of what I call the Joint Task Force, the joint Task Force is not just a bell and whistle anymore.

It is truly a way of life.

This means that ATF agents working side by side in the same rooms with local police and other federal agents and even prosecutors working the same cases, using the same computers, drinking the same stale coffee, complaining about the same crusty old boss.

Right.

That collaboration means more than just added bodies.

It means more brains and more ideas and approaches, more expertize.

And these days, as I said, one of ATF many contributions is our crime, gun intelligence or CGI.

All crime gun intelligence is it's our ability these days to use technology to squeeze every last bit of evidence from a gun that is used in a crime.

That means from the bullet that explodes out the front to the shell casing, that it's ejected out of the back.

Right from the things on the outside of the firearm.

The things on the inside of the firearm.

AC.

ATF uses that crime intelligence to develop actionable leads from every crime gun.

Give you some examples.

There's tracing if a gun is recovered in a criminal investigation.

We have the serial number.

ATF can trace that number to its first retail purchase.

And in cases like the 4th of July massacre in Highland Park, Illinois, the Brooklyn subway shooting, it can be a crucial lead in real time given to police to catch the killer, hopefully before they kill again.

We don't just do it once or twice.

Last year, at the request of our partners in law enforcement, ATF Trace 645,000 crime guns, producing hundreds of thousands of leads for cops all over the nation.

Now, in addition to tracing, there's something called Nyman.

It's an acronym.

It stands for the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network.

Niven allows ATF to compare the recovered cartridge casing to our database of millions of pieces of ballistic evidence all over the country that we get from crime scenes.

We can turn around those ballistic comparisons in our facilities in Alabama and in Kansas.

In under 48 hours, we make that and we set back concrete leads on those in under 48 hours.

Last year alone, we did it 200,000 times.

We sent back leads to homicide detectives, gang investigators, patrol officers, agents clearing real cases.

A prime example of how we use this technology was right here in Cleveland last summer's Niven Enhanced Enforcement Initiative.

In September, I stood with the U.S. attorney, Becky.

Let's go U.S.

Marshal Pete Elliott and many of our partners, the mayor, the chief, to talk about a data driven enforcement initiative that resulted in the arrest of nearly 60 people and the seizure of more than 240 crime guns right from here.

Of those 240 crime guns seized, 46 of them had been linked to 102 other shooting incidents, including 11 homicides.

Just one of those guns using this technology.

One of those guns was linked to 14 different shootings.

That work was led by our Ohio team.

Our SAC Daryl McCormack, who's here, led that effort and others around the room and working with our partners, we made a difference.

And now the newest crime, gun intelligence advance comes to us courtesy of a group of ATF scientists.

These are people who I meet with in labs.

And I got to confess to you, they look depressingly young to me, but they have pioneered a way to extract DNA, not just off the crime gun, but even off the expended cartridge casing.

If I were talking to you in 2017, I would be telling you that some of the success rate for that kind of thing would have been in the low or mid-single digits.

Now, as a result of these ATF scientists, it's over 50%.

Right.

That is a real game changer.

So what do you get?

This is not some joke.

What do you get when you combine the kind of partnerships that you find in the Joint Law Enforcement Task Force with crime, gun intelligence?

What you get is what every single police chief, mayor and sheriff in this country keep asking me for.

It's an ATF crime gun intelligence center or sidekick at these are hubs where agents and cops and analysts sit together.

They all have access to this data and they all focus their efforts on catching and identifying the actual shooters.

We currently have more than 60 across the country and more in the works, by the way, including the one that Mayor Bibb and County Executive Ronayne and U.S. Attorney Lesko have been advocating for.

We hope to open that in northeast Ohio this spring.

So it's very exciting.

So that's a little bit about that first pillar, how we're trying to catch the worst of the worst.

Now let's talk about the second goal, interrupting the illegal flow of crime guns to these folks.

So, look, there is lawful commerce and firearms in this nation.

And at ATF, our goal is to identify how and where so many guns seem to move from that lawful commerce into the black market.

Where does the data tell us that crime guns are diverted from?

First, we'll give you a few examples.

Huge number of guns in this country are stolen every single day over a five year period.

We looked at this 2017 to 2021.

There were wait for it.

Over a million firearms stolen from individuals in this country.

And those are just the ones that were reported.

And you can bet this gun is stolen from your car at the mall.

It ain't being used to go hunting.

Those guns go straight to the streets and they're used to hurt our neighbors.

People one street over one county over one state over.

So one of the things we're doing is trying to conduct a national campaign about safe storage.

Right.

Because along with the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms comes a responsibility to keep and bear them safely.

Another source of black market guns comes from people who are not licensed dealers but are dealing without a license.

And that's a big problem.

Congress requires gun dealers to be licensed precisely because licensed dealers help increase public safety.

Licensed dealers have to run background checks.

Licensed dealers sell firearms with serial numbers so they can be identified.

And trace licensed dealers keep records of their sales.

And by the way, licensed dealers are required to do all this.

And by the way, they do do it no matter where or how they engage in the business of dealing firearms in their store at a gun show through online marketplaces.

If you need a license, you need a license, period.

That's why ATF is using its rulemaking authority and reviewing a proposed rule that might make it clear that the same laws apply to everyone, no matter where or through what medium they engage in the business of dealing firearms.

Another source of black market firearms is privately made.

Firearms are what we've come to call ghost guns.

These are sold by people not operating as licensed dealers, often who sell kits with all the parts you need to make a gun.

Here's something scary for people who know me.

You know, I can't even screw in a light bulb.

That's Carol.

But I was able, using one of these kits to readily convert one of these packages into a working gun in almost no time at all.

And by the way, I took it down stairs to the range at ATF and shot it, and it shot just like any traditional firearm.

So why is it called a ghost gun?

It's called the ghost gun because these kits are sold without background checks.

There are no serial numbers anywhere in the parts.

So it's a crook's dream come true.

And here's something proves that from 2017 to 2021, the number of these ghost guns recovered by police and criminal investigations went up over 1,000%.

And the trend line goes in the wrong direction.

With other 25,000 ghost guns recovered in 2022 alone.

It's parts of criminal cases.

That's why ATF recently used its rulemaking authority to clarify that the congressionally passed provisions of the gun Control Act apply to ghost guns that are readily convertible to firearms as well.

Still, there are other ways that guns get in the hands of criminals.

There are firearms trafficking networks all over the country that feed the black market.

Other things.

There are a lot of streams that we have to plug.

And to do that, ATF has to use every lawful tool that we have.

We do that.

First of all, we bring thousands of criminal cases, including, by the way, just using the new tools that Congress passed in the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, 300 cases just with those new tools.

We conduct inspections to ensure that gun dealers are following the rules, and most of them are.

And the few that are, aren't we hold accountable?

But we do more, right?

We engage with the regulated community informally.

I was at Shot Show in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago where I spoke.

We do education campaigns, as I said, we make and implement rules, then enforce statutes, because given the stakes, it is going to take an all of the above approach to make that kind of impact.

We need to save lives and we owe it to the victims and survivors of crime.

We owe it to our children in this country to try everything.

So much of this sounds like easy stuff, but why is it so hard to do?

And after a year and a half in the job, I have to tell you, I think our biggest challenge is just that we can't not seem to do anything as a nation together on this issue.

Very rarely.

And I don't mean law enforcement.

Actually, law enforcement is working together better than ever to tackle this problem.

I mean, our country as a whole.

My two reasons that I think we're kind of stuck in this place together.

First, I think when it comes to gun crime, the temperature in this country is way, way, way too high on all sides.

There is just so much mistrust that we can't get even the easy things done, the things of which we already have broad consensus, like universal background checks and misinformation and misimpression feeds that distrust.

People can and do have reasonable differences over the causes of gun violence, but we have to try and debate the issues and not attack each other's character.

So on one side, the notion that some people say, you know, law abiding gun owners somehow support this violence, it makes no sense and it not to be true.

But on the other hand, it also defies common sense to think that people's Second Amendment rights are in danger somehow, that anybody is going to take them away, both legally and practically.

The evidence shows that those rights have never been more secure in this country.

Never.

There are 400 million firearms in this country.

More guns and people in our almost 250 year history.

It has likely never been easier for a law abiding person to get all sorts of kinds of firearms.

But we have to acknowledge that it's also never been easier for criminals to get them illegally.

And that is a real problem and one that we cannot ignore and wish away.

So people can and should debate what policy is best.

But people who are trying to fear monger, using what John Ashcroft once called the false phantoms of liberties lost, are simply not just incorrect.

They are failing their fellow citizens and our common future.

Now, the second thing that is to me, preventing progress is sort of a basic lack of respect in a couple of different ways.

First, ironically, one thing that I think people have kind of lost respect for is the firearms themselves, their power, their lethality and the responsibility that has always come in our country with being a law abiding gun owner.

It used to be that everybody who grew up with firearms and around guns had a respect for that power and safety measures.

Adages like remember, treat every gun like it's loaded or never give a gun to a stranger.

They were a deep part of the culture of this country.

And now images of mass carnage caused by evermore lethal weapons and sometimes even things that aren't real.

Right.

Video games and TV shows are pervasive.

They're everywhere.

And the power of the weapons is greater.

And it seems that respect for that power seems in some quarters to have diminished.

The guns are kept unsecured.

They're under the car seats of folks when they run into Starbucks.

They're sold to people like other expensive items or toys, even no checking, no reflection, no personal responsibility.

They're possessed by more and more folks who don't take basic education and training measures.

That's not everybody.

But it's more and more.

And that's a problem.

That's not the only kind of respect that I think we've lost.

I refer to this.

We also seem to lack respect for other people's opinions, people who disagree with us.

Right, even sometimes for their safety.

Now, so much of how people talk about this issue starts and ends with themselves.

My views, my rights, my business.

Forget anybody else who might disagree with me.

Look, this is America.

Those things are important views and rights and people's autonomy.

But we have to work harder to remember that this great nation is not mine or yours.

It's ours.

That a shared destiny of sacrifice is what in the greatest times in this country has made us so great, has set us apart that sometimes in this country we're even willing to sacrifice for that greater good for our fellow Americans, for our children.

By the way, that's what the men and women at ATF do every single day.

Sacrifice for total strangers.

These are challenges.

But I have to tell you, I continue to be optimistic.

Why?

Because I believe in data.

And the data shows that violent crime is slowly dropping, that there strategies that work.

How can I not be optimistic when I get to go to work every day with people, ATF, who make those sacrifices to help other people?

How can I not be a little optimistic when I see ordinary citizens who I meet with lived through the worst possible loss and trauma and then not only survive, but choose to use their voices to try and help other people from going through that same pain.

Violent crime is not new.

The difference that we're seeing is that with modern, accessible firearms technology in the marketplace, that the spontaneity and lethality of that violence is more challenging to combat than ever.

But to paraphrase President Kennedy and President Biden, these problems are caused by humans, and they therefore can be resolved by humans, in this case, by Americans working together.

To do this, though, we have to be ready to discuss.

We have to be ready to listen to each other, to compromise and, yes, maybe even to sacrifice a bit for the greater good.

Like those men and women at ATF, we need to maybe take this moment where violent crime seems to be dropping, not as an occasion to high fiving, celebrate, but an opportunity to take action, a breathing space so that we can continue to address these heart issues, to do the work that Americans do, the work of discussion, the work of compromise, and the work of taking action.

We have done it before in this country.

We can do it again in the lives of our children.

Depend on it.

Thanks.

We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

I'm Cynthia Connolly, director of programing here at the City Club.

Today we are joined by Steven Utterback, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Learning about the Bureau Strategy to combat gun violence here, America.

We welcome questions from everyone City Club members, guests, students and those joining via our live stream at City Club Talk or our live radio broadcast to 89 seven Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question for our speaker, please text it to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And our city club staff will try our best to work it into the program.

May we have our first question, please.

Before we ask and I'm going to take I'm going to take a prerogative here.

I've been here three or four times.

I've never gotten the chance to do this.

So sorry.

Here we go.

All right.

Okay.

It's all in the wrist.

Okay, go ahead.

Good afternoon.

We have a text question.

Given the waning power of the NRA.

Is there new opportunity to find common ground on firearms legislation?

Is there new language?

We can use less about gun control and more about the right to be safe in public spaces?

So I don't think a focus on any one particular group.

I think I shared my views.

I think we have to bring the temperature down to get things done.

And that doesn't mean that people aren't going to be passionate about this.

I'm passionate about it, as you can tell.

All the people are passionate about it.

That's that's what we that's who we are as Americans.

But in the end, we come together, right?

We look at these problems and we do maybe not everything, but we do what we can.

And so I do think there is space to do that.

I think that there is a majority of people.

I think the bipartisan Safer Communities Act passed, you know, a year and a half ago is is a real sign that we can make some progress.

You know, we just need to we just need to take that and move that that effort forward.

Right.

There are plenty of Republicans and Democrats who came together over that piece of legislation that the president signed.

And it's made a difference.

Has it made the difference?

No.

But there are.

There are.

Whether it's linguistics or just tone, the number one thing I would think I would say is, you know, when you disagree with somebody, start by listening to them and trying to understand what's driving their opinion as opposed to assuming that, you know, what they're thinking about and accusing them of something.

You know, you just want to take away my guns.

You don't care about people die.

That's not probably you know, that's not where people are coming from.

But if we can hear what's really driving them, maybe we can come up with some solutions that do both.

Right, protect people right.

And protect their public safety.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mace.

And my question to you is, what is your agency doing to prevent people with mental health issues from purchasing guns?

Hey, thanks.

That's a great question.

So.

So the policy questions about things like red flag laws, right.

Things like funding, mental health treatment options in our country, which are, by the way, way underfunded.

Those are questions that are answered not by ATF, but by policy makers, by the way, many of whom don't sit in Washington, but who sit in Columbus or nearby.

That's our federalist system.

What we at ATF do is we take those decisions that others make and we implement them as best we can working with our partners.

So so the answer is we take what's given to us and try to to make sure we address.

That's a very serious problem that you've identified.

And we we published model legislation at the Department of Justice for people to look at in and implementing red flag laws.

I hope people do look at that model legislation.

But in the end, those are state and local issues.

By the way, on the issue of local issues, at your table.

When I became U.S. attorney, I had my swearing in at Martin Luther King High School, and I asked for a ninth grader to introduce me.

And they had this incredibly stellar ninth grade who student who came and introduced me, started a relationship with that school.

And that ninth grader just took his oath to be on the city council of the city of Euclid.

Now makes me feel really old.

That Gresham.

My name's Eliza Wells.

I'm a senior at Wickliffe Upper School.

And my question is, when it comes to lobbying on the floor of Congress, how do we go about getting politicians and lawmakers to do more than just send thoughts and prayers to the victims of school shootings and mass shootings after they happen, even though that they may lose funding to their campaigns if they do support laws and petitions that go to making laws that support more regulated gun laws.

So thanks for that question.

I have to say, in terms of the lobbying part of that question, can I run a law enforcement agency now?

And and I leave that to to the many people in this room and various different with various different groups and various different views to engage in their protected First Amendment rights, to petition lawfully petition the policymakers of this country.

But, you know, I think that that your your presence here and your your willingness to raise your voices is important.

But I would just say return to the theme, you know, in your local communities also, you know, try to see if you can make those connections among people with maybe different perspectives on this.

And because I think, you know, for people who are off in DC, when they see people in local communities who have sort of got together on something and are doing something constructive instead of just yelling at each other, I think that makes a huge impression on people, but I know it's a little bit of a dodge.

It's a very, very good question.

Just to the wrong speaker.

Hi, my name is McKenzie Wagner and I'm an employee at the Help Foundation.

I have a question on what could we resolve the problem through the mass shootings in various schools throughout K-12, as well as colleges and university is?

So obviously the school shootings that you referred to are things that have become more and more frequently reported on publicly in the last years.

And so the question that you ask, there's a lot of different views on that.

Obviously, making Sure.

That we're protecting people who go to those schools is is very important.

But I think we also need to treat sort of the the broader problems.

I tried to talk in my remarks about making sure that those very few people who are most violent are addressed, and also that it's harder for people who shouldn't have firearms to get them.

But there's been a couple of questions about issues relating to mental wellness and health.

I talked about the people in the health care community.

I think in many ways this is also a public health crisis, not just a public safety crisis.

So making sure we fund and respect, empower those people to do that work, I think is very important.

You know, and at the local level, the most local level, we have the peacekeepers here.

Right.

If you see something, say something.

Right.

It's uncomfortable.

People don't want to be invasive into other people's space.

But that's what part of what being an American and a good neighbor, maybe a better neighbor is about.

When you see something that doesn't feel right, you know, you go to somebody and you talk to them, whether it's a teacher or a counselor or a parent, it might turn out to be nothing.

And maybe somebody gets a little mad at you for doing it.

But think of the other side of that.

What I think, how people feel when they they know something and they see something ahead of time and they they figure, oh, I'm just not going to say anything.

I don't want to get involved and something horrible happens.

So I think there's also just a role for individual activity to try and help on this.

I'm bothered by how often I read about a violent crime and the the perpetrator is somebody who has recently left court.

Let out of prison, sometimes multiple times previous to this violent crime.

And I don't understand why why they're let out so frequently and so early to go out in the street and just do it again.

I don't know what ATF can do about that or what your opinion is.

So to me, when we talk about violent crime, when I was U.S. attorney and I know your attorney, Lesko, also talks about this is there's a three pronged approach, I think holistically.

I've talked about ATF.

But to take a step back even from ATF, I think there's sort of a three pronged approach.

I would call it a three legged stool we deal with and we talk about violence, number one.

And the three legs are enforcement, prevention and reentry.

Right.

By the way, I see U.S. attorney run down here as well.

And I know she talked a lot about this as well.

And you can't ignore any of the three legs of the stool.

So people who want to pretend that we don't have to do enforcement, I think that's what you were referring to in your question.

They're wrong.

They're dangerous, bad people out there.

They need to be taken away from the community for an extended period of time.

Right.

People who say that that's all we can do is just lock everybody up.

They're wrong, too.

Right.

And the fact we have tried that for many years and we still have the problems we have.

So what we're trying to do at ATF is to better identify exactly who those people are that you're talking about in your question.

And most of the evidence shows that there are, you know, what we call trigger pullers, right?

There's a there's a huge number of people who may commit crimes, but a much smaller group is actually pulling the trigger and shooting people.

And by identifying those people, by using our data sets, our crime, gang intelligence, our partnerships to identify those folks and focus on them, we do a couple of things.

First, we have very scarce law enforcement resources, so we focus on the right folks.

Right.

Second, we we don't alienate huge swaths of law abiding people by going into their communities and treating them all like they're the trigger poles.

And third, we don't just punish them, but I think your question is actually right.

We prevent future crime, because all the research shows that that small group of people who are trigger pullers will do it again and again and again if they're not stopped.

Daryl McCormack is one of the great experts.

I hope you have a chance to hear him talk about this.

So what's it called?

The shooting cycle.

And there's research on how quickly the shooting cycle moves and the need to interrupt it.

And we focus in I think people like Zach McCormack would tell you we literally feel like we're in a race against the clock sometimes in these investigations where we know that X number of days would be 50, 40 days, depending on what shooting it is, somebody is going to do this again and we have to do something to try to get them out of the community before that happens again and again.

And as you said, and keep them out there really shooting people and killing people, you know, they need to be removed, you know, for a good long time.

Thank you very much for your remarks today.

I don't know a lot about gun manufacturing, but my sense is or my guess is that gun manufacturers are eager to provide every possible gun that they can to the public.

Is there anything that can be done by the ATF?

Certainly there are things that can be done by Congress.

But is there anything that can be done by the ATF, by ATF, to manage what's coming out on the manufacturing end?

Well, so the answer is only within the rules and laws that Congress provides, the statutes that Congress provides so, so and you know, the other thing I've learned as director is that the the the industry is not really monolithic.

Right.

They're the sort of larger manufacturer and concerns that have been around for hundreds of years.

And then there are sort of newer, more sometimes more edgy people who are producing what I would call more like niche or edgy products.

And so you can't lump them all together.

But we we go and meet and engage with them.

I go on tours and meet with leadership manufacturers, all the time.

And when we think that somebody's stepped over the line and is actually violating a new product is designed in a way that really is not lawful.

We will do rulemaking, we'll do education first and try to dialog and we'll do rulemaking.

Recently we did that with respect to short barreled rifles where people were short barreled rifles have been regulated at a higher level by by Congress since 1934.

And a few years ago, people decided that what they were going to do was that they were going to to make these short barreled rifles, which Congress says how long they can be and how short they can be.

They're easily they're more easily concealable than long weapons.

But you can shoulder them so you can fire them with better accuracy.

Congress said, you know, you can't you have to register if you have one of those.

What they were doing was they said, well, we'll make it in two pieces, right?

We'll sell you the pistol and then we'll sell you the brace that you'll attach onto the pistol.

And it looks just like the product two aisles over that is sold in one piece, except according to them, you know, you don't have this kind of really a short barreled rifle.

And so we passed a rule on this.

We're in litigation now about that about that rule.

And actually, at one court, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has enjoined that rule.

And we're continuing to litigate that case.

So we try to identify things that people are doing that step over the lines that Congress has drawn.

But in the end, Congress draws those lines, not us.

Good afternoon.

My name is Vince Evans, and I am a violence interrupters slash outreach worker for Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance.

I don't we don't like the term peacekeepers.

Sorry, keepers.

I think I was I think I think honestly, I might have watched a couple versions of a movie over the last weekend.

So I do apply and I guess we have a long relationship with the Peacemakers Alliance, so I apologize for that.

That's on me.

That's okay.

But what I wanted to ask you was this.

You speak about what did you call them, trigger pullers.

So what we do in a city last year, I believe we had 155 homicides roughly.

And we deal with the trigger pullers.

We are out there to prevent the next trigger pull.

As she said, when people go to jail, we dealing with them to try to make sure that when they come back they live productive lives and don't commit recidivism related crimes or whatever.

But my question is this What advice do you have to other speakers?

These trigger pullers view them.

Sales is, like you say, criminals and bad people, but we know that nothing is purely bad, that they have good in them.

What advice do you have for us who are dealing with them every day?

How can we convince them that they are not all bad, that they have good in them?

Well, I think it's a very hard job.

I think it's a very hard job.

And of course, you know, it needs to be said that every every individual case, every individual person is different.

You have to look at each person, each case on their own.

My personal view is that there are certain actions that people take that are very hard to to revoke.

They're sort of irrevocable when you shoot and kill another human being intentionally.

And you're, you know, there's there's not self-defense or other extenuating circumstances.

That's a that's one of the that's that's sort of a, you know, more than sort of that's that's a that's a real issue.

And I don't know.

Number one, if you can get to that kind of a person, no matter you say maybe down deep, there is some something that got them to that place.

But once they cross that lines very hard, very hard, you have a very hard job, a very hard challenge to do that.

And from a law enforcement standpoint, you know, those are individuals that that we that's our job.

We hold them accountable because there's that other person who's shot and gone and, you know, they they had rights, too.

And maybe, you know, so so to me, those are hard questions.

To me, I think the most important thing we can do is try to get to people earlier, right before they've taken these irrevocable actions when they're thinking about it.

And, you know, that's why, you know, with violence interruption.

I remember when I was U.S. attorney, one of the things that that the peacemakers did, which I thought was great, was, you know, they they established a presence in emergency rooms in trauma one centers across the city.

And back then it was MetroHealth that was others also right where they can you age but you know to get that person who's in a moment of anger right and who's going to take the law into their own hands and do something that's irrevocable and to be able to talk to them before it happens.

You know, I think these are tough questions.

So I don't pretend that I that I can tell you how to do your job better.

You have a very, very hard job.

Thank you so much to director Dan Auerbach for joining us with the City Club today.

Forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City Club dot org.

Today's forum is the LoJack Law Enforcement Forum made possible by a generous grant from the Katherine and Edward a LoJack Foundation.

Mr. Edward Lucic was born and raised in Cleveland and served as chairman of the Board of Suede Wage Company based in Solon, Ohio.

He was a philanthropist, leader and staunch supporter of law enforcement.

Mr. LoJack founded Crime Stoppers of Cuyahoga County after serving as Cuyahoga County Grand jury foreman in the early 1980s.

We are grateful to the Hlozek family for their continued support of the City Club.

We would also like to welcome students from the BRIC program at Daniel Morgan Middle School and M.C.

Squared STEM High School and Wickliffe High School.

Thank you students for being here today and also once again for your powerful questions.

We would also like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by Macaulay and Company and Baker and Hostetler LLP.

Thank you all for being here today.

And up next, at the City Club on Tuesday, February 20th, we will hear from two CEOs of our region's top hospitals.

Dr. Tom Mihajlovic with the Cleveland Clinic and Dr. Cliff McGarry with the University Hospitals will discuss their continued partnership to improve the well-being in our communities.

Tickets are still on sale for that forum.

You want to get them today if you want to grab them for Tuesday and you can learn about these forums and others at City Club Dawg, including Friday, February 23rd.

We're hearing about the tree canopy, a very awesome conversation about sustainability here in Cleveland.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again to director Dan Auerbach.

And thank you, members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Cynthia Connolly.

And if you will do us the official honors director, our form is now adjourned.

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