(exciting music) - Good evening and welcome to "Lawmakers: Beyond the Dome."

I'm Donna Lowry in Atlanta.

With this show, we are expanding "Lawmakers."

We bring you that show during the 40 day legislative session to keep you abreast of bills under consideration and the legislators who create them.

In "Lawmakers: Beyond the Dome," we're going outside of the capitol building to look at what happens after bills become laws and how they affect Georgians.

Tonight, we'll spend the hour looking at the permit-less concealed carry law, signed by Governor Brian Kemp at the end of April.

And we'll also look closer at the rise in gun related crime in Georgia.

We have an outstanding lineup of panelists to talk about those issues, but first, some background on the concealed carry law.

We start with a group in favor of it that might surprise some of you.

Saturday morning at Stoddard's Range and Guns in Atlanta's Midtown.

Gun owners are here for practice, for training, and.

- Good morning, welcome to the Bass Reeves Gun Club.

- [Donna] For a meeting of the Atlanta chapter of the National African-American Gun Association, or NAAGA.

- We are going on Facebook Live right now, and WebEx.

- [Donna] NAAGA was founded in 2015 with a mission "to expose, educate, and motivate as many African American men and women to go out and purchase a firearm for self defense and to take training on proper gun use."

- We've seen an incredible, incredible growth.

58% increase in our membership.

- [Donna] In seven years, NAAGA has grown to 45,000 members with 130 chapters in 40 states.

Most are new gun owners.

- First time gun ownership by law abiding individuals.

There are more people needing to get a carry permit.

- [Donna] Georgia NAAGA members closely followed legislation introduced during the recent Georgia legislative session that would take away the need to get a permit to conceal carry a weapon, often referred to by its supporters as the constitutional carry bill.

The new law doesn't change the requirements to purchase a new weapon, but does remove the permit fee previously required.

- When I saw concealed carry, I saw it as an opportunity for African Americans, particularly when we look at gun laws, the carry permit system that was put into place in the United States was put in place specifically to make sure that African Americans could not carry firearms on their person.

That's the history of it.

To me, looks very much like a poll tax where you have to, you know, you have to pay for something, you know, that is a right.

You have to pay money to the government to get the permission to do something that is already written into the constitution that says you as a citizen should be able to do.

So when I saw constitutional carry come up, I saw a opportunity for a historical wrong to be righted, particularly for the African American community.

- [Donna] Some NAAGA members have a slightly different opinion.

- It's one thing to right the wrong, but it's another thing to sort of put in place something that could potentially be detrimental if there are not some parameters around it.

If there were parameters, then that would be safety and education, which we wholeheartedly support.

- [Donna] Education and training for law abiding gun owners.

And considering that.

- Criminals weren't going to get permits anyway.

- [Donna] On this day at Clark Atlanta University, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat is one of a half dozen sponsors of an event aimed at helping curb criminal gun violence.

- [Man] Welcome, Washington High.

- [Donna] Other sponsors, Fulton County Solicitor General Keith Gammage and Probate Judge Kenya Johnson, trying to reach middle and high school students in Atlanta and Fulton County schools with an anti-violence message.

- Middle school and high school is where gangs are formed, established.

And the more that you do education wise, the less likely you are to be before a judge getting sentenced for a crime.

- [Donna] And while no one under 18 can legally purchase a gun in Georgia.

- The law provides less restrictions on the concealed carrying, no permit being required.

That might tempt people who wouldn't otherwise carry a illegal firearm to now carry a concealed firearm lawfully, but not so much responsibly.

- [Donna] Georgia law enforcement officials recognize the challenges concealed carry presents for them.

- We have to be even more cautious, understanding that anyone could have a weapon.

And then how do you proceed from there?

So, there's a lot of training that'll go into the upcoming year.

We are trying to see what stops look like, what interactions look like, you know, where we can do better in terms of training, technology, utilizing technology in a space that will allow us some insight as to if a person has a weapon or not.

- [Donna] On the prosecution side, there's also the issue of what to do with people already facing firearms charges.

- Presently, we have over 300 cases involving the illegal possession of a firearm.

Those cases occurred before the April signing of the new law.

And so we're examining right now whether to prosecute those cases lawfully and frankly, ethically.

I don't know that it's fair to go back and prosecute those folks.

And you know, some of those cases involve people who are illegally possession of firearm, looking in windows, and checking car doors to see if they're locked or unlocked.

And so, although there may be not be a specific additional charge to carrying that concealed weapon, it does cause some concern and some alarm.

- [Donna] All of these changes just as crime involving guns continues to rise.

The CDC reports gun homicides reached their highest level in 25 years, up 35% during 2020, the first year of the pandemic.

- From a historical perspective, we've seen this before in Atlanta, all right?

Years ago, it is how we deal with it and how we really redeploy resources.

- [Donna] But it's not just criminals that challenge law enforcement, it's the road rage, domestic violence, sudden anger, combined with available weapons.

- And that's the piece that worries us, worries me from a law enforcement perspective is that it's about choices.

And in that moment, what is that choice, right?

The thing that you'll see from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office is we remind people to think twice and save a life, all right?

We want to be in a space where your first option is not pulling a weapon to resolve a dispute.

- The permit-less society does not mean a lawless society.

- [Donna] That's why NAAGA members stress the importance of training, not just on how to responsibly use guns, but how to prepare, for instance, when approached by law enforcement when you have a gun.

- I tell my students, I say, "Make a copy of your driver's license, make a copy of your firearm owner's identification, make a copy of your concealed carry, make a copy of your insurance, put it in your visor.

That way you're not reaching around the car, right?"

You're not reaching all over the car, escalating the situation.

- [Donna] The new law doesn't keep gun owners from voluntarily getting a permit, something they may need when they take their guns into states that have gun reciprocity laws.

But gun law advocates say that laws like these have done nothing to reduce crime or protect citizens.

- We know from research that states that have weak laws in general regarding carrying guns in public have higher rates of violent crime and handgun homicide.

- [Donna] Allison Anderman is the senior counsel and director of local policy with the Giffords Law Center, a gun law advocacy group started by former Arizona US Representative Gabby Giffords, who was shot by a gunman in 2011.

- This is a dangerous law that allows people to carry guns in public without a background check.

Every year, millions of people are denied a gun and a concealed carry permit because they have failed a background check.

- [Donna] Anderman says Georgia has the 15th highest number of gun deaths in the United States.

That's 30% higher than the national average.

- The problem with having so many armed people in public is that it allows everyday conflicts to escalate into shootouts.

- An AJC and UGA poll taken in January before the concealed carry bill was passed showed nearly seven out of 10 voters opposed the legislation.

Now that we have a reference point for our discussion, let's get right into it with our guests in the studio.

Joining me are the former police chief of the Atlanta Police Department who retired a couple of weeks ago after 34 years with APD, Rodney Bryant.

He's also Vice President of NOBLE, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement, and will become the president next year.

Next is the vice president and general counselor for GA2A, John Monroe.

GA2A, which stands for Georgia Second Amendment, was formally called GeorgiaCarry.org.

The group says it is Georgia's no compromise voice for gun owners.

Next, political activist and president of Voice of the People, Mina Turabi.

Mina became active with March for our Lives after the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and is the policy director for Atlanta City Councilman Antonio Lewis.

Also joining us is Jose Marquez-Leon, the national president and CEO of Tech-Latino, or LISTA, Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association.

He's politically active in Metro Atlanta on a number of issues.

Welcome to all of you.

And we wanna say, Trayvon Martin is when you got involved.

So quite a few years ago, you don't even seem like you're old enough to get involved.

- You never know.

- But you've been involved with several organizations.

So I apologize for that mistake on that.

- No worries.

- But let's get started with some of the issues that we heard discussed, addressed by those I interviewed earlier.

John, your organization pushed for concealed carried law in Georgia.

And I wanna know your reaction that 70% of those polled in that AJC poll said that they would still like people to get a weapons permit before carrying a concealed weapon.

- Well, what's important to realize is this wasn't really a sea change.

Before the law passed, law abiding citizens had to get a license in order to carry a weapon.

Criminals couldn't get a license, so they carried it anyway illegally.

Now that the law has passed, law abiding citizens can carry without a license and criminals still can't carry even without a license because they're prohibited under the new law as well.

So nothing's really changed in that perspective.

The only difference is people don't have to go to the trouble of paying for the license.

- Yeah, not paying for the license and not getting a fingerprint, right?

So a fingerprint check was something that existed before and they don't have to go through that anymore.

- They don't, but again, if they're not law abiding citizen, they're breaking the law if they're carrying a weapon.

- Okay, so as we prepared for this show, we asked on social media and during conversations with Georgians how they feel about this law.

And we got this on Twitter from an everyday hero is the person who's listed, who says, "I'd like to hear from law enforcement personnel and how it's made their jobs more difficult."

And so Chief Bryant, we come to you with that one.

We heard Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat talk about that a little bit.

During the legislative session, we certainly heard people talk about it.

Does the law make it harder for law enforcement to do their jobs?

- You know, I reiterate what the sheriff stated.

I think anytime that you find that we have more weapons on the street, that it makes our job just a little bit more difficult.

My concern is not the place that the law has us.

In law enforcement, our job is to address the laws that are set forth by the legislator.

And so we have to train accordingly to make sure that we manage those laws accordingly.

The difficulty I think that we'll see as this allows more people to have guns and more weaponry is, just as it was stated in your dialogue previously, is that people will find themselves carrying more weapons, and in the more minor disputes that we will have, we'll see more gun play.

- But Chief, don't you train every officer to act, to assume that every citizen he encounters is armed anyway?

- We do, we do.

But there's a potential when we actually see a gun that that situation is heightened, when we see individuals with gun.

And we get calls from citizens from that very same things.

And that also distract from police officers doing day to day duties.

And so we get calls where people are walking into grocery stores because they have the legal right to carry a weapon.

Well, the police are called and we have to go out and address that situation accordingly.

- But why do you have to respond to a call such as, I just saw somebody in Kroger with a gun, why do you have to respond to that?

- As a law enforcement officer, when people call 911, they're expecting a police response.

And that's our job is to respond to that 911 call, to investigate that situation until it's resolved.

- So even with this law, you still have to investigate it, knowing that people can legally have them?

- Absolutely.

- Well, do you respond to a call of, "I just saw a guy walking down the street with his dog"?

- We do, we absolutely have to respond to those calls as well.

When someone calls in and say, "I see a suspicious person walking."

Clearly, that's some of the issues that we've had in the past where many people have called and said, "I'm seeing a suspicious person in my community."

Trayvon Martin was a suspicious person in his community.

And we had to respond.

- Yeah, I gotta ask you, I asked you earlier about the fingerprint check being gone.

The people who say that now there are no background checks.

How do you respond to that?

- Well, the background check really only filters out the criminals, and if the criminal applies for a license, doesn't get one, that doesn't mean he's not carrying.

When you're talking about somebody who's committing a crime with a gun, you're talking about really serious crimes, murder, rape, robbery, things like that, for which the maximum penalty is either execution or life in prison.

They don't care about a misdemeanor crime of whether or not they have a license.

- And the people who talk about the guns make it easier for law enforcement to track them, how do you respond to that?

Because they've been registered.

- You don't register guns in Georgia.

There never has been gun registry.

- So it won't make it any, there's no difference for you in terms of what happens with law enforcement, maybe something happens, there's a homicide.

This law didn't change anything when it comes to that, when you're checking that stuff.

- No, it didn't.

What it did do is when, as you stated earlier, when we had individuals who may be carrying a gun, concealing a weapon and did not have the right to do so, it took away the ability to charge some of them in that manner.

But no.

- That doesn't change.

- It doesn't help in our investigation.

- Okay, Jose and Mina, I haven't forgotten about you.

Jose, you're involved with the issues within the Hispanic community.

It's certainly not monolithic, but how would you frame it for people when it comes to how people you know feel about the permit-less carry?

- I worry about, you know, and my community's worried about that as well, because there's so many people out there that are carrying without a permit and the ones that are carrying with a permit, those are the ones that we know that are at least secured.

See, my biggest concern is your fingerprints tell you what you've done in New York or what you've done in California or Miami, Florida.

That's the only way that we're gonna have an idea of who's that person and why is he carrying?

I think it's extremely important.

I think that that whole law was, you know, something that the gun lobby had an opportunity to push through through a Republican president, excuse me, Republican governor who thinks that, you know, that everybody should have a gun.

I don't think everybody should have a gun because the moment you have a gun, that's the first thing that you're gonna do, you know?

When I was a kid, we used to fight, right?

We used to fight with our hands, nobody died from that.

Well, at least, you know, not that much, but if you fight with a gun, that's it, it's a terminal move.

Once you pull that gun, the next motion is pull the trigger.

And that's a big time worry for my community, you know, because our community's out there, most of the Hispanic community, the people that could carry don't understand how to carry.

So they need to get trained and they need to get educated.

So this blow is for everybody else except for the Latino community, so I totally stand against this.

- Mina, we know that a lot of young people, and I did mention Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, they became more involved in this issue.

What is your take on concealed carry in Georgia?

- I mean, when we're looking at gun laws, Georgia is special of it's kind, right?

we have law enforcement that is working to make sure that we keep crime off our streets.

And we've heard a lot about violent crime, right?

And I want to go back to the point about getting a permit, right?

So many permits are denied every year.

So we can't say they're not going to get a permit because so many were denied that permit in the first place.

When we're talking about guns and people are carrying them everywhere they go, you might leave it in your passenger seat.

And then we see more crime happening from stolen firearms, from cars, from any other places.

When you're seeing these people outside, are you scared of them if you know that they have a gun?

And I'm so glad you mentioned Trayvon Martin, Chief Bryant, because that suspicious word, right?

It comes down on black and brown communities, because now they're going to look at everyone that they have a gun, whether it is police brutality in those cases, or whether it is someone calling the police on someone saying, "Well, they have a gun," or, "I had to do this because they had a gun."

So it's more deeper than, do I have the right to carry a firearm?

I am a firearm carrier, I carry a gun.

But I also know that I have a permit for it, that I went through background checks, and I got my fingerprints done.

That's all we're asking for.

Let's get that done first and then you have the right to carry.

And we can't continue with that same narrative, that bad guys with guns stop good guys with guns, or good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns because we've seen in data, in statistics that most of mass shootings, most of the shootings that happen in public are not stopped with anyone with a gun.

It's very small, very tiny.

So it's kind of a ordeal here that we're in.

- I'm gonna gonna get your response to that.

But also we heard from the group with NAAGA, there were some people who are disappointed that the law didn't at least include mandatory training of some sort for people who have guns, rather than just getting a gun.

How do you respond to that?

- I think training's a great idea.

Everyone who carries a gun ought to get trained, but I don't think the law ought to mandate it.

What that is is a tax on poorer people who can't afford to take off of work and go to get trained, who can't afford to pay for the training in the first place.

And it's important to keep in mind, Mr. Jefferson from NAAGA mentioned that the requirement to have a license in Georgia was a Jim Crow law that was passed in 1910 after the Atlanta race riots when the Atlanta Journal ran an editorial recommending that Negros be disarmed, and that's wrong and it's time to repeal those Jim Crow laws, and we did.

- It was an interesting talking to them, that that history was a big part of that.

So, as I mentioned earlier, we talked to Georgians across the state about the law.

And here's a little of what a few of them had to say.

(logo whooshes) - You know, for every bad guy with a gun, we need a good guy with a gun.

Where are all the good guys with a gun when all of these mass shootings happen?

They're not there.

So the answer is not to make it easier to get, you know, to get people guns.

The answer is to enforce the laws that are on the books and actually put some things that are universally popular, like universal background checks, like waiting period.

Some of the things that exist, but we don't enforce.

- I think it's up to a personal choice.

It's not my choice to carry a gun.

- [Donna] But does it concern you that you may be around people you don't know that who have guns?

- Definitely, because let's say there's a criminal element that does have a gun, and there's an innocent bystander that does have a gun.

I could be in the middle, in the crosshair, so definitely that's a concern.

- As far as the people that's just out and just want to be protected, as a father of a family or something like that, I would say, yeah, it's okay with me.

But some people, it might not fit well with, but I think it's perfectly fine.

- I think it makes it more dangerous just because you're putting weapons that can lead to harm and injury in the hands of people who aren't necessarily trained to use them, whether that's just to fire them and take care of them properly, or even just to be in the situations where you would even need to use a gun.

- Makes it safer, I think, if everybody knows everybody else is carrying a gun, then guess what?

They're not gonna commit as many crimes.

I'm a second amendment carry guy.

And I think it's a great, great deal, but you gotta make sure that the people that are carrying have some sense.

- Well, it makes me feel safer, to be honest with you.

I know plenty of guys that have carry permits and carry pistols, I don't carry one myself.

I would've used it if I did and that's why I don't carry it, but I think it's a good idea.

- All right, so we heard from some people across the state.

Jose, I wanna ask you about this.

Do you see why some people feel that they will feel safer having a gun, why they want them?

- Sure, you could see, you know, there's a lot of different ways to point that where, you know, think about you're walking the street and you're seeing someone that's coming at you.

And immediately you think that that person's going to cause you harm because he might be African American or he might be Latino.

And you know, he's got a lot of tattoos and oh my God, that guy might be, and all of a sudden, the guy comes up to you and says, "Hi, how you doing?"

And you put a plug in him.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

It doesn't make anybody safer out here that everybody's carrying a gun.

I think the people that should be carrying a gun are police enforcement 'cause they're supposed to be doing that.

That's the job that they're doing.

And if we can't get there, well, then we need to figure out a better way to do it because there is no education.

And I'm gonna stress education, education and training and training every day because this law is, for me, I know my community's worried, I do.

And for me personally, and I carry a gun, I don't carry it on me.

I have a permit, but I do not take it outta the house because I know myself.

And if I'm worried about somebody, I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna stop and think.

I'm not trained that way like a police officer is.

If I'm pulling out a gun out of my house, it's because somebody broke into my house or something.

But other than that, I don't need a gun on the streets.

I don't need that.

And that's something that I don't think half of the people in Georgia need.

- Yeah, so, Mina you said you have a gun too.

Do you carry it outside of the home?

- No.

- Okay, what are your feelings about, for instance, teachers being armed in the classrooms?

- Teachers these days are made to be more than what they are trained for.

Today, they're acting as counselors, they're acting as second parents, they're acting more than what their job position is.

Their job is to teach our kids.

They're not law enforcement officials.

They are not school resource officers.

It is not in their job description to be protecting kids.

Because even if in Uvalde, even if in Parkland or Columbine or any of the hundreds of mass shootings that we've had in schools, teachers had a gun.

What gun were they keeping that was going to protect them from the shooter that had an AR-15?

Were they pull out a gun in time before the 11 kids were shot in that man's classroom?

That would not have happened.

- John, what are your feelings about guns in the classroom?

- Absolutely, I think teachers, staff, administration ought to be allowed to carry guns if they choose to.

There's no reason why they can't be trained to, that's been the law in Georgia for many years.

If you take Uvalde as an example, you had teachers locked in a room with students for over an hour with no police interaction.

If a teacher there had had some kind of gun, it might have been a different result.

- Yeah, and you, Chief Bryant?

- Well coming from a profession that I find to be overwhelmed with a response to many different of our society's social ills, I think when you layer another responsibility on a profession that is generally outside their ram, it stretch them beyond their original profession.

But again, as it was stated earlier, most weapons, when individuals purchase weapons, the likelihood of them interceding in a criminal activity and stopping that is very minimal.

In reality, they are more likely to be harmed by that very same gun that they own.

And then secondly, there's a greater likelihood that that weapon will be stolen from them and used in another crime.

Again, I don't push back on the second amendment.

I think that, one, it's my job to enforce it and make sure that people have the right to bear arms.

But I think it does come with some level of responsibility.

- Because we're talking about mass shootings, I wanna bring a question up back to you.

If one of the arguments is in favor of allowing law abiding citizens to have a gun and have it on them for safety, why haven't we seen more guns used in some of these mass shootings that we've seen where people are protecting themselves?

- Because the mass shootings tend to happen in so-called gun free zones, where there are plenty of soft targets.

Like schools, where generally people aren't allowed to carry guns so there's not anybody shooting back there.

Churches are another example.

That's where the mass shootings tend to occur.

They don't happen in police stations, I'll tell you that.

- Yeah, we did have the grocery store up in Buffalo, we had a grocery store here in the Atlanta area.

Wasn't mass shooting, but there was a woman who was shot.

- Can I?

- And there was a church shooting in Texas where one of the armed parishioners shot the assailant as soon as he pulled out his gun.

- [Mina] Can I respond to it?

- [Donna] Sure.

- A lot of the times when we're talking about mass shootings, we focus on schools, we focus on churches, but data shows that most mass shootings do not happen in those areas.

They actually happen in private homes, they happen in domestic abuse cases, happen in anywhere else.

You mentioned Buffalo.

You mentioned the grocery store.

In Georgia, we've seen that.

When we saw last year, when the man walked into a Asian owned salon and killed people.

It is not only happening in these gun free zones, it's happening everywhere.

And those people who have guns do not stop people.

People who are walking in to kill folks.

- And I wanna get into the federal law real quick.

I'd like to hear from all of you about that, the new federal gun safety law called the bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

It offers incentives for states to pass so-called red flag laws to legally remove weapons.

It also closes the domestic violence boyfriend loophole that only covered spouses and former spouses when it came to preventing someone convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun.

It enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21 years old and includes juvenile records in background checks, such as having been convicted of a crime where there's prison time of more than a year.

And it increases penalties for drug traffickers.

So John, I'll also add that a recent NPR-Ipsos survey found that the overwhelming majority of gun owners favor the moderate gun control addressed in the new federal law, but don't want to see bans on AR-15 style semiautomatic weapons or other barriers to gun ownership, and they doubt any of these measures would stop mass shootings.

So first, would you agree with the survey's findings and what would curb mass shootings?

Is there anything that we should be doing?

- Well, let me tackle the second one first.

Mass shootings are really not that common in the United States.

When you look at all firearm homicides, mass shootings are a tiny, tiny percentage of them.

They're the ones that get the notoriety.

They're in the media a lot, but most homicides are one or two people and they're occurring all over the place.

They tend to be in pockets in major cities, but mass shootings are really not the problem.

They're all tragic, but they're not really a major problem in the United States the way individual homicides are.

But your first question about the bill, not many provisions in that really address gun violence at all.

A lot of 'em address mental illness, which is an appropriate thing that needs to be addressed, but I'm not a mental health expert so I can't tell you about it.

But things like the so-called boyfriend loophole, I mean, the law already addressed, like, live-in partners and things like that.

But now it's created this concept of the, you know, dating relationship and we're gonna have no end of litigation over, how many dates do you have to have?

You know, what kind of relationship did you have to have?

It's just gonna be a mess.

- Yeah, do you agree, Jose, Mina on that, that it's gonna create more problems?

- No, as a woman specifically, that's scary, personally, right?

Domestic abusers, say that they are a live-in partner and you leave.

And then what happens if they find you?

What happens if they come back and look for you afterwards, right?

We have to put these barriers in place.

And actually, I agree with you when you said that this is not going to stop a lot of gun violence, but this is a good first step.

We have to do more.

There are certain provisions in that that needs to be revised, whether it's giving money to more school resource officers and putting in bulletproof glasses at schools, that is not gonna be the case.

But the truth is closing the boyfriend loophole, closing the background check loophole, the gun show loophole.

It works, its seen it, and for your comment that mass shootings are not common in America.

- [Jose] It's happening every day.

- We have to look at America and then look at the other developed countries.

We are at an all time high, every day.

Chief Bryant, I think even you can attest to this.

When police blotters come out every day and we see three, four, five people shot.

- I'm gonna let Jose say something really quick and then we're gonna have to move on.

- Real quick, I think anything that can stop someone from killing someone else, whatever laws, whatever, you say mental illness, mental illness only happens in certain communities because in my community, there would be no mental illness and whoever the police officer is, they would've shot way, way, way ahead.

This is not about mental illness.

This is about gun control.

And the moment that we have more control in our communities and that everybody is playing by the same rules, that's the only way that we're gonna be.

Mass shooting is happening every day, John, I'm sorry.

- I would love this conversation.

I appreciate hearing from all of you, but we're gonna get even further into this in terms of crime statistics coming up.

So I want to thank you all for being here.

Chief Bryant, you're gonna stick around with us.

When we come back, we're gonna bring on more panelists to talk about the rise in crime across Georgia.

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(boat horn blaring) (tense music) - Welcome back to "Lawmakers: Beyond the Dome".

We're going to spend time discussing the rise in gun related crimes in Georgia and look at solutions already in the works.

First, a look at the problem.

When it comes to firearm and suicide deaths from 2019 to 2020, the Centers for Disease Control reports during the COVID-19 pandemic, the firearm homicide rate in the United States reached its highest level since 1994, with substantial increases among several population subgroups.

When it comes to firearm and suicide deaths, the overall firearm homicide rate increased by more than 34%.

And the overall firearms suicide rate remained relatively unchanged.

The largest increases occurred among black males 10 to 44 years old and American Indian or Alaska Native males in the 25 to 44 age group, lots of information.

And we have guests to give us a Georgia focus on all of it.

We're happy to still have with us the former police chief of the City of Atlanta Police Department, Rodney Bryant.

Next via zoom is Georgia State University criminologist Volkan Topalli.

Volkan is the professor of criminal justice at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at GSU.

He also holds faculty associate status with the Partnership of Urban Health Research at GSU and the Center for Injury Control at Emory University.

Next, police chief for the city of LaGrange, Lou Dekmar.

Chief Dekmar's law enforcement career spans 41 years in Wyoming and Georgia as a police officer, a detective, division commander before becoming LaGrange Police Chief in 1995.

Also with us is the Mayor of Union City, Vince Williams.

Mayor Williams took office in 2013 and is the immediate past president of the Georgia Municipal Association.

He recently attended an event at the White House on the passage of the bipartisan gun control bill.

In this picture, are other Georgia mayors, Mayor Van Johnson of Savannah and Mayor Hardie Davis of Augusta.

I wanna thank you all for being here today.

So Chief Bryant, we're gonna start with you on the increase in crime rates we're seeing nationwide.

As the largest city in the state, Atlanta is seeing the highest numbers, of course, and here are the Atlanta Police Department numbers on homicides by zones as of the week ending July 2nd.

The most recent numbers released.

These are both this year and during the same period a year ago.

We see overall that the total number is up more than 16 homicides this year over the same period a year ago.

And we wanna note Buckhead in particular, which is zone two, because those who favored Buckhead cityhood cited violent crime as the reason, the number of homicides is actually down from last year.

I also want to point out that we know all crime is a concern and that includes rapes, aggravated assaults, and property crimes, but homicides garner the most attention.

So Chief Bryant, with all of that, what can you tell us beyond those numbers in terms of what's happened in the city of Atlanta in the last year or so?

- Well, in all actuality, homicides in the city of Atlanta has been a very significant challenge over the past two years.

One of the things that we've seen is the cause of these disputes and what they generally stir from, the most significant issue was regular disputes, people having conflict resolution skills and those issues turning into fights and someone getting killed or some innocent bystander getting killed as a result of it.

And then there are other underlying factors that we take a look at, what other issues may be for these homicides that we are seeing.

Are they drug related, gang related?

And so those are the areas that law enforcement can actually have some impact on.

And so in the city of Atlanta, one of the things that we began to do is strategize with our federal, state, and local partners to address those very same things, the gangs and the nightlife activities that we were seeing, the drugs.

And so when we recognized that we can have an impact in those areas, we could see where we can challenge some of the issues as it relates to gun violence and homicides.

But when you have a situation with two people get into conflict, that is the most challenging thing to resolve.

- Yeah, well, we talked about that a little bit in the earlier segment, I wanna get to Volkan, you've looked at the Atlanta numbers and those nationwide.

So what's behind what we're seeing with the rising crime.

We've heard it's an outgrowth of the pandemic, but isn't there more to it than that?

- Yeah, there's definitely more to it than that.

It's unlike most things we'd like to have in life being simple, I think this is a much more complex issue.

So the pandemic certainly had a huge impact, but the pandemic was taking the place at the same time as the Black Lives Matter police accountability movement, the protest movement, there were economic conditions that were involved at the same time.

So it's really a group of things taking place all at the same time, which made it very difficult to predict when and where crime was going to take place.

All of which was occurring against the backdrop of gun availability.

So if you look at, for example, and the chief will, I think, understand this.

If you look at, for example, the protest movement, those protests weren't a one day protest or a two day protest, they were going on for weeks and weeks, even though they weren't in the news.

And the fact that people were now at home rather than being out on the streets, or that they were out on the streets protesting rather than being out on the streets doing other things presents a huge challenge to law enforcement because law enforcement is used to doing policing based on predictable factors.

So you're now pulling officers off of duties that they might have around the city to manage protests.

You have individuals who used to be out and about, and now who are at home.

So we saw, for example, that the burglary rate went down because people are at home and homes can't be burglarized.

But the pandemic also, you know, I think it affected social ties and the routine activities that people are engaged in, a lot of what the chief is talking about, these sort of individual level conflicts between folks.

You know, people have been in a pressure cooker over the last two or three years because of the pandemic and it's caused there to be some conflicts.

And those conflicts are much, much more difficult for the police to handle than, say, gang related violence or drug related violence, where you can do some investigation to figure out what's going on.

- Okay, so we've heard from you, our criminologist, and we had the big city chief.

So we have you, Chief Dekmar, you have the small city, LaGrange, about 31,000 in population.

Tell us what you're experiencing when it comes to crime.

- Well, likewise, it's not unlike any other areas, it's violent crime, but I think some factors that have not been considered are the individuals that are committing these crimes.

We had 10 homicides in 2020, and we did a deep dive.

We found that 70% of our suspects had anywhere from 15 to 38 arrests, as high as 19 convictions.

Our victims, 80% of those, similarly situated as it relates to criminal history.

Also 70% were out on bond, on probation, or parole at the time that they committed the offense.

The victims, 80% out on bond, on probation, or out on parole at the time they committed the offense.

So I think there's been a swing.

We saw in the nineties, through 2010, 2012, increase in incarceration levels.

And those increases in incarceration levels kept people in prison for longer periods of time.

That pendulum started swinging back and individuals were released and I think some prematurely.

And as a result, it's not uncommon for those that are involved in these violent crimes to be first offenders, these are individuals that have been involved in criminal activity for some time.

Frequently, violent crime.

On top of that, you've got federal legislation that's rarely enforced.

And I think it was 2014, 44,000 individuals that were convicted felons tried to buy a gun.

That captures a significant segment of the criminal population.

Yet of those 44,000, which results in a criminal offense, less than two dozen were prosecuted.

In 2018, 100,000 attempted to purchase a firearm, 12 were prosecuted.

So we can pass all the laws we want, but until there's a serious approach in prosecution, there's the resources dedicated as it relates to either incarceration or significant probation monitoring, then you're gonna see the same kind of scenes play out over and over because these are not first offenders.

- Wow, it's interesting to hear you talk about that.

I wanna get to you, Mayor Williams and Union City.

What are you seeing?

- Well, I tell you, I'm listening to the conversation and certainly one of the things that I do know we need to focus on is when we are prosecuting and when these cases are prosecuted and the judges are looking at the sentencing and also whether or not they're gonna release these individuals, you know, back into our communities, we see that, time and time again, where individuals have been, you know, charged and convicted of multiple crimes and they're being re-released into the communities until they commit a much more egregious crime such as murder.

So those are the things that are very concerning, not only to Union City, but across this nation.

- Yeah, go ahead.

- You know, it's also something I think that we should talk about as it relates to it, and clearly when one says that the pandemic was the cause, it's more than just the pandemic in itself.

What happened during that time is criminal justice systems and other issues in society shut down.

And so what we found ourself, and chief Dekmar and I talked several times during that time, so big cities were talking to little cities and we were seeing the exact same thing.

But absolutely, when your criminal justice system cannot move, get people that shouldn't be in society outta society quick enough, and those cases are deferred into a later time, those issues continue to pile up.

Those people continue to reoffend.

And so we were seeing a lot of that as well in major cities.

For our kids, one of the things that we were seeing, was big in the city of Atlanta, was kids selling waters on the corner and some of those kids had weapons.

Well, there was no Boys and Girls Club for them to go to.

There was no PAL for them to go to.

There was no other outlet.

So we found that everyone was just inside the city finding something to do, and if it was of a criminal element and of a violent element, that's what they did.

- And you, I'm sorry.

- Yeah, go ahead, and I wanna get our criminologist in it too.

- You indicated earlier that the homicide rates rival 1994.

In 1994, 1995, the US population was somewhere around 270 million.

And we had roughly 25,000 homicides.

Fast forward, 2010, we're about 300 million.

We had 14,000 homicides.

We had 10,000 less homicides despite having 30, 40 million more people, why?

Because the right people were locked up.

And as the chief indicated, the criminal justice system was working.

We've got murder trials now that are three years old.

And you know, the victims are wondering when it's gonna come to court.

There's frustrations at all levels so I think that's a key point.

- Yeah, we hadn't talked a lot about what's going on within the court system and I'm glad you guys brought it up.

Volkan, talk a little bit about it from your perspective.

- Well, I think the idea that incarceration is a way to reduce crime, it's not a new idea obviously.

Recent article that came out a couple months ago listed something like 25 different things that could reduce the amount of crime taking place on the streets.

Incarceration is certainly one of them, but as with all solutions, it has a limited effect.

And if you look at the numbers that, you know, that the Chief was talking about, 2010 numbers, 2020 numbers, 2022 numbers, incarceration doesn't seem to be having quite the effect that we saw.

We do have though, and I do agree with him, is that we do have a slowdown in the criminal justice system that essentially was hampered by the pandemic itself.

So it's true that cases are not flowing through the court system as fast as they should.

They're triaging cases.

My experience has been, though, that the way that they're triaging cases, that they are retaining the most, most serious cases, obviously, that they can.

If you look at the numbers that we're experiencing right now in Georgia and in city of Atlanta, our rates are showing a definite spike in the last two or three years, but we're still far lower than we were back in 1998, 1999, 2000.

So 1998 Atlanta would love to trade places with 2021, 2020 Atlanta.

Of course, that doesn't mean a lot to folks who will say, well, that was 20 years ago, I care about what's going on right now and things feel different now than they did a year or two ago, but I think it's important to keep it in perspective.

- Yeah, so everybody's in the moment, everybody's shaking their heads here, but everybody, of course, talks in the moment.

And in recent weeks, GPB, we talked to people across the state and asked if they think crime has increased in recent years.

And if so, how has it affected their lives?

And here's what some of them had to say.

- I walk a lot, long walks during the day and whenever I feel a car slow down, I literally think, is this it?

Like, is this gonna be my moment?

And to think that I have to walk around town with that background noise of concerned about crime.

I generally feel safe.

It doesn't stop me from doing whatever I wanna do, but there's always that background chatter.

- It does concern me as a parent personally.

I do feel okay, but it does make me second guess and think about, you know, where I'm going alone.

And if my children are safe to go out alone or together or at all.

- I think I'm definitely seeing that.

And I think there's a lot of concern about that throughout the community, for sure.

I don't know, my principle always is to address these issues at the source though.

So I don't support, like, overpolicing, more policing.

I support addressing issues that are happening in our communities to prevent crime in the first place.

- [Donna] Like what?

- So I think just investing more in our communities, making sure people have resources that they need to prevent issues like homelessness and other major issues that I think could lead to issues like crime.

- Since we have the governor who is releasing that people are able to get guns without background checks, you're gonna have nothing but more crime to happen.

- It's high, the crime rate is high.

I live downtown and I haven't been affected, but I know several people that have.

- [Interviewer] What do we do about that?

- Wow, that's a good question.

You know, step up security as much as we can.

I understand it's hard to get policemen to work these days for the Macon Police Department.

Just make sure, you know, you're always on camera, everybody has to realize that, so you're not gonna get away with much.

- I think it can't just be up to the police.

It has to be a little bit more broad than that.

I think beyond just general policing and crime management, et cetera, from that angle, it's up to not just the people who live in the city and making sure that like, you know, you're being safe and you're being careful and protected.

- You have to change the lifestyle, your lifestyle because of crime.

You have to watch how you move or you go, what other folks see or where you live or just putting your info out there.

Like, just recently, when you asked me to say my name and spell it, I thought twice about it, but I was like, oh, he don't mean no harm.

So that's one example.

But yes, you have to think about the crime that's going around, the area that you're going to be in.

- So people are making lifestyle changes.

I do wanna ask you, Volkan, how does Georgia's crime rate compare to others in the country?

Can you tell us that briefly?

- We're about at pace with other places in the country, which demonstrates that most of what's driving crime in Georgia and Atlanta is the same, are the same factors that are driving crime in the rest of the country.

And I, you know, I listed some of these things, the pandemic, availability of guns, things like that.

So I think, you know, the big challenge right now is that we've gone through this sea change in how government works and how we've been responding to the pandemic.

It's important not to see police departments as the only solution to public safety issues, obviously.

And I'm hoping that this will encourage some more sort of advanced thinking in terms of community based responses to crime control.

- Yeah, and you're certainly getting head shakes here upon that.

So I wanna show an illustration from the FBI, the rate of violent crime offenses by population.

The United States is pink, Georgia is blue.

There's a blue spike higher than the rest of the country that starts at the end of 2012, it ends about mid 2015.

Then a downward trend for several years, until a 2019 low, then a steep climb in 2020 that reaches the same level as national crime offenses.

And I think that's probably in line with the research you've seen.

Would you guys both agree that that's probably what you've seen with this?

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

- And I would agree with the professor, when you look at crime stats compared 20 years ago or 30 years ago, what you're not factoring in is the increase in population.

I know our violent crime is 50% less than it was in 1995, but because of the way that crime is covered and social media, people feel overwhelmed by it.

And they're making life choices based on overwhelmed information regarding crime as opposed to actual crime itself.

- Okay, I wanna talk to both.

- [Volkan] That's an important point.

- Okay, go ahead.

- I was gonna say, he just brought up a really important point, which is perception is driving a lot of how people are perceiving this issue.

And you know, if you're getting all of your information about crime from the Next Door app and Instagram and Facebook and, you know, nightly news, your perception of crime is going to be really out of whack with the reality.

Most people live in areas that are perfectly safe, but if what you're paying attention to is what you're seeing in those social media platforms, you're definitely going to be much more sort of heightened fear about crime than you would normally be.

- Would you guys agree with that?

- That's great point.

I just had something on social media, on Next Door, yesterday in Union City, someone got on and stated that five cars were stolen and broken into in Union City.

Well, that was not true.

You know, the truth was there was a car stolen.

The owner of the vehicle left the keys in the car.

So there's an onus on us that we've got to, you know, be responsible, but also we cannot live our lives by social media, you know, when it comes to crime.

- [Donna] But it does make your job more difficult.

- Much more difficult.

- Oh, much, yes.

Yes, indeed, we had a situation in Atlanta where one misidentified what the crime was.

And uniquely enough, they were saying that they thought that they were being robbed.

The story got in the media saying that it was other people tagging and saying, yeah, we felt like we were getting ready to be robbed.

We were too going to be robbed.

After investigating it, it was some kids who were trying to get money for a football team that were walking up on cars throughout the parking lot.

- [Lou] Oh wow.

- Nobody ever got robbed.

The original call was an individual who radio got stolen outta they car.

- This has been a great conversation.

Unfortunately, we've run out of time.

We'll have to have you guys back.

I wanted to thank you all, all the guests, for coming on this inaugural "Lawmakers: Beyond the Dome" show.

We'd love to hear from you so email us at BeyondtheDome@GPB.org.

As always, join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter at GPB News and using the hashtag GPBLawmakers.

Also, don't forget to tune in each weekday at 9:00 am and 2:00 pm for "Political Rewind" hosted by Bill Nigut, and that's on your GPB radio station.

And keep up with all Georgia news across the state at GPB.org.

Have a good evening.

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