June 14 - Today's 153rd Then 154th Mass Shootings So Far in 2017; What is Driving America's Unique Epidemic of Mass Shootings?; The Bogus Excuses For the Saudi Siege of Qatar

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the 153^rd mass shooting so far in the U.S.A. in 2017, this time with the victims being a congressman, an aide, a lobbyist and two Capitol Policemen. But later today the 154^th mass shooting took place in San Francisco at a UPS facility that left four dead. Joshua Horowitz, the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and author of “Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea”, joins us to discuss whether the unity and bipartisanship on display in the House today as well as President Trump’s call that “our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace”, will lead to an easing of the deadlock over guns rights versus gun safety, over the right to bear arms versus the right to be safe from gun violence. We assess whether any change will come from this latest tragedy that hit so close to home for lawmakers, or since the perpetrator once supported Bernie Sanders, will right wing media fan the flames as they blame the shooting on Trump-haters.

Part 2

Then we explore the broader issue of what is behind the proliferation and availability of firearms and with so much access to data, why is it we as a nation are unable to prevent people with a history of mental illness, or in the case of the gunman who shot the congressman, a history of domestic violence and the reckless discharge of a firearm, from getting hold of lethal military-style weaponry and causing multiple deaths and injuries. Tom Diaz, a former senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center and author of “The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What to do About It”, joins us to discuss what is driving America’s disproportionately-high civilian death toll from guns.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the siege of the tiny Gulf state of Qatar and speak with an Arabic-speaking expert on the Middle East, Graham Fuller, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council who is currently a professor of history at Simon Frazer University. He joins us to refute the bogus claims by Donald Trump and the Saudi rulers that they are fighting terrorism and confronting Iran when in fact it is all about the self-preservation of autocratic monarchs who can’t stand the freedom of expression on al-Jazeera and want to spread Saudi Wahhabism to dominate the Gulf.