Fmr. NPR CEO: ‘I Did Change My View on Guns’ After This Trip Through America

EXCERPT:

STERN: "I started off knowing and believing we all have a confirmation bias. We all take or views from signals from others. How could I be right about everything? That was sort of an opening gambit that I had. I was going to go out and say, 'I can’t be that right and everyone else can’t be that wrong.' I did change my views on guns. It starts with the notion which I wouldn't have thought of before, which is gun homicides death in this country has gone down by more than half in the last 25 years, most extraordinary trend in modern American history. At the same time, the number of guns have gone up. Those two things are correlated but it’s clear that we know how to drive down gun murders without gun control. And the question is why are we talking about gun control when there are other things we’ve been doing for 25 years that actually have reduced murders in this country by an extraordinary amount. As you say, Willie, most of the gun control measures, I’m still fine with them, really aren’t something that are going to have a major affect. We know other things. Things like the program in Boston actually can reduce gun homicide by a lot."