The war and gun-violence group, part of the Little Red School House eighth grade social justice program, recently went to City Hall in New York City. At City Hall we met Brian Levinson and Alex Katz, who work for Mayor Bloomberg, to discuss guns and gun laws in New York State. We came to the meeting with a list of prepared questions and left with a good understanding of some of the regulations aimed at restricting the availability of guns. These regulations include restrictions on who can buy a gun and what types of guns can be purchased. When we arrived at City Hall we walked to a reserved room and sat down. We were each given an agenda for our meeting and a schedule. We first talked about the history of gun laws. Brian told us about the start of gun restrictions in the 1970’s. The well known assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior, two major social and political figures, brought major changes in the laws governing the availability of guns in the United States. Although guns had been used to kill many innocent people before the death of Kennedy in 1963 and King in 1968, these well known assassinations created public awareness of the dangers of guns. The United States established some gun laws, but were not successful in enforcing them. Illegal guns kept resulting in more and more deaths. In 1981, James Brady, a former Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, was shot in an attempt on President Reagan’s life. Although Brady survived, he was left permanently disabled. He and his wife spent years advocating for what are known as the Brady Laws, the laws that aimed to keep illegal guns out of the hands of felons, including murderers, people with severe mental health issues, and other people who might use guns to commit violence. These laws established a system for evaluating individuals who intend to purchase guns, but this system is applied differently in different states. Despite these laws, ninety nine percent of gun applicants are cleared to purchase guns. Records show that since the Brady laws were established over one hundred million people have attempted to purchase guns and more than one million dangerous individuals have been prevented from owning guns. Though one percent may seem like an insignificant number, when that percent is translated to a real number (in this case that is one million dangerous people) it is not a small amount. During our visit we also learned how gun regulations work. According to Brian, every state submits records of people who should not be allowed to own a gun. Many states have submitted thousands of names. California has submitted almost five hundred thousand names. Other states, like New York and Texas, have submitted close to two hundred thousand records. Other states, like North Dakota, have submitted zero or one single record. Though the system is highly efficient, many people with a mental illness or other risk factors mentioned above still do not have their records in the Brady system. Another problem that Brian identified was private sellers. If a individual has guns, he or she can legally sell them without background checks because the gun restrictions only apply to businesses. These sellers appear at gun shows and sell their weapons, resulting in the availability of guns outside the restrictions system. Another issue addressed during the meeting was illegal guns, which are guns that are designated as not legally available for purchase. The types of guns legal for purchase differs per state. State gun laws usually approve or restrict guns in two categories: (1) rifles, including shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns, semi automatic rifles, and launchers; and (2) handguns, including pistols, revolvers, and any weapon made before 1994. There are also rules that can apply to which category a gun belongs in. For example, a gun which can fire more than one cartridge per trigger pull is classified as a rifle. We also discussed the ways that illegal guns were getting into New York undetected. We were given a packet that shows where in the United States illegal guns were coming from. Three hundred forty nine guns were traced back to Virginia, the biggest outside gun source to New York. Other states like Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida have numbers in the two hundreds. The next chart in the packet showed the types of firearms recovered in New York: two thousand eight hundred sixty three handguns, one thousand three hundred seven revolvers, five hundred seventeen rifles, three hundred ninety shotguns, fifty one derringers, and seven others. The majority recovered were handguns and revolvers. Finally, we talked about Concealed Carry laws. Most states have laws that state that if you are a legal citizen and you have a gun owner’s license, you can carry a handgun in your possession in public places, excluding some important buildings. Brian’s organization is working to abolish these laws. The Concealed Carry laws are dangerous because they make unplanned crimes with guns more frequent. The fieldwork was a huge success because we achieved our goal of receiving a lot of important information about gun control, and everyone in the group performed well. The fieldwork went smoothly. All of our questions were answered and we got a good start to our participation in the issue.