Matt Bennett, the Senior Vice President for Public Affairs and the co-founder of Third Way, came to speak at the Maxwell School on November 14, 2013. Bennett has worked in the White House throughout the last decade and is considered an expert on gun laws. He has spoken on 60 Minutes, National Public Radio, Today, Good Morning America, and other programs on virtually every major cable network. He especially worked with the families of the victims of Sandy Hook, both helping them tell their story and advising them on how to make a difference in the months after the tragedy.
After the shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, eleven of the families went to Washington to become active participants in the gun debate. Bennett spoke with those families, helped them throughout their dive into the gun debate, and taught them about the current regulations in place pertaining to gun control. Before the 1960’s, there were virtually no federal gun regulations in place. Between 1968 and 1993, there were limits placed on who could buy a gun. Background checks were required of those purchasing from a licensed gun dealer. The laws kept more than two million unfit people from buying guns over the next five years. This, however, did not completely keep criminals from being able to buy guns. Many states still have open gun shows where people can buy guns with no questions asked, and guns are available to be bought over the internet. Technically, it is only legal to buy a gun online if it does not cross state lines. The government tried other laws, for example, the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. These had little effect, however, because guns that were already privately owned were grandfathered in. Also, there are loopholes to get around the laws.
A group called the Sandy Hook promise is working to increase gun control. One of their main concerns is guns with the ability to fire multiple rounds in a short period of time without reloading. Adam Lanza, the shooter from Sandy Hook, fired 154 rounds in 5 minutes. The parents of the victims argue that if he did not have access to a gun with the ability to fire that much, more children could have escaped. The Sandy Hook Promise realizes that they will probably not be able to tackle the entire issue, but the organization wants to make any difference that they can in order to prevent future tragedies like the one in Newtown.
There is an enormous amount of controversy and passion surrounding the gun debate in America. Conflicting political groups and people on different sides of the argument each have their own viewpoint. Bennett’s career consists largely of talking to people on both sides of the issue. He speaks to people that agree with him, people that disagree, and people that are not really educated on the topic at all. He has mastered the art of framing the issue to get his points across to each of those different groups. He uses different persuasive techniques and tells his stories and the stories of others indifferent ways depending on his audience. This was apparent even when he spoke to us. As people with different opinions asked him questions and argued against his points, he had to frame his opinions differently in order to communicate his logic to them. Storytelling and the idea of framing a story in a certain way is important in politics and the media, especially in relation to controversial topics like the politics of guns.