U.S. Destroys Its Chemical Weapons, Unpacking Bidenomics, Ghost Guns
15:07 Share

No more chemical weapons.

The us. Has officially destroyed the last of its stockpot decades after.

although band chemical weapons are still used by a few room states. Sort.

am I shara sa o and this is up first from in pr news. Also, you've been hearing a lot about bad nomics, which is a slogan for president biden's economic plan reino .

ic place back in the ninety eighties.

exactly. And the president is really leaning on the label in the speeches.

Dynamic is about the future. I know it's just, by the way, saying restore the american dream.

but of the american people buying IT also filled delpy a targets the makers of kitch used to make ghost gun stay with us.

We've got the news. You need to start a weekend.

This message comes from wise, the APP for doing things in other currencies, send spender, receive money internationally, and always get the real time mid market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the wise APP today or visit wise, not D, N, C, A.

Apply hi, i'm kain mar C E O N P R, where we're guided by a bold mission to create a more informed public. Join us today by giving a donate that nvr that work.

All this year, N, P, R traveled the country hearing from voters not just about the issues, but about their hopes for the country's future.

We should be able to disagree with each other without bullying each other and dismission .

and what that means to be a part of a democracy. Invest in coverage that moves us forward together by giving today at donate T N P R, that to work.

The united states has finally destroy the last of its stockpile of chemical weapons.

and this means IT has fulfilled a promise made back in one hundred and ninety seven. That's when the senate ratified the chemical weapons convention, a treaty that was meant to get rid of all chemical weapons. Here's president bill clinton speaking at the time.

The convention requires other nations to follow our lead to eliminate their arsenals of poison gas and to give up developing, producing and acquiring such weapons in the future that IT. Turns out the us. Didn't maintain that lead.

Instead, IT ended up as the last nation to eliminated chemical weapons stock pile. And your science correspond. Jeff on field joins us now.

Jeff, thanks so much for being with this. Thank you. What do IT takes along?

What happened at the end of the cold war? The U. S.

Have more than thirty thousand tons of chemical weapons in in stockpile. This was really ny stuff like nerve agent, blur agent. And IT was a nimir to deal with.

You had deadly chemicals, explosive, sitting in bombs and artillery. They weren't designed to be taken apart. They were designed to be used.

So you had to figure out how to do that. Then disposal proved tRicky. The army's practice was to encinal ate these agents, but some sites locals resisted, fearing dangerous pollution.

So entirely new nix had to be developed, but that wasn't the whole story. David coplen is a law professor. George hen universities tract these processes over to the years. And he says the program was also plagued by underfunding in poor management.

The leadership for the program changed repeatedly, and IT was just never taking as seriously as a should have .

been as a result that dragged down for so long that the us. Was actually in violation the treaty for several years, but they finally did manage to get IT done on friday.

What which been the overall effect of the treaty.

you know, if it's been very effective in some ways, in less effective in others. So these large national stockpiles have been eliminated, but there happens some other. They continue use chemical weapons.

Most nobly, syria deployed chLorine and nerve agent in its civil war with some pretty terrible effects. Russia has also used chemicals for targeted assassination attempts. And north korea y's leader kim jung gon actually killed his half brothers with a novation.

But those are isolated cases. More broadly, vast quantities of these weapons have been disposed of by nations all over the world. I spoke to kingston reef. He's the pentagon official who's overseen this destruction process. He says, this is really something to celebrate.

These are awful weapons, and the world is a safer and more secure place without them. If I I wonder, because I think a lot of people in the world would not say that feels like a more secure planet at this point. New weapons are being developed. There are new worries of nuclear war. Um what can we learn perhaps from the chemical weapons convention?

I mean, I think the takeaway here is the arms control actually can work. Mean the treaty has eliminated the entire class of really, really awful weapons from the battlefield as possible. IT just takes political will.

And I think that started the lesson. You know, the generals, uh, fight the wars, but politicians and ultimately citizen, get to make the rules. And this is an important reminder that the world decides when a weapon is unacceptable. And I can make a change .

and pear chip fill. Thanks for you much for being with us.

Thank you.

President biden and his team have been finding out across the country in the last few weeks, touting his economic wins.

And they ve got a tagline for those achievements.

Bynes s the president seems to have taken like into that name. here. He is speaking in chicago last month, contrasting his plane to trickle down economics, which essentially favoured the wealthy.

So I came in off, is determined to change the amic direction of this country, to move from trickle down economics to with everyone in wall street. During the financial times began to call byng ics. I didn't come up with the name.

I really did. I now clam me. But there are the ones you use the first.

But what is byng ics actually in tail? And our voters taking to IT and embers vict anio joins us. Eric, thanks for being .

with .

this ice sky seems like any time anyone from administrations in front of a microphones, they work in the phrase byng ics, what is IT well.

first and foremost and probably even mostly scored red a campaign message. Bitten ins aren't making the case that the economy is strong and that he's the want to thank for that. Inflation continues to fall.

We've emerged from the pandemic. Unemployment is near historic lows. But by nomics is also a sort of bumper sticker away for the administration to talk about all of the president's economic legislation in once. So that's the trillion dollar inflation reduction act, which invested in climate jobs in american manufacturing, is also the bipartisan infrastructure plan, which, as you might guess, invest in infrastructure, roads, bridges, internet and the chips act, which is about incentivising domestic semiconductor manufacturing. So rather than take throw at that like I just did, it's much quicker and maybe more accessible to, say, byng ics.

Any sign is catching on as a phrase.

Well, admittedly, I haven't heard IT on tiktok yet, but the administration really is pushing the term. And I actually do think there is some risk here to the president. In a lot of ways, the economy is quite strong.

The U. S. Has had what might be the world's most robust recovery from covered, but people tell us they still don't feel great about the economy.

And in polls, we've heard that folks tend to trust republicans more to handle the business of running the economy. I talk to Simon rosen burger about all of this. He's a democratic strategist who's worked for the democratic national committee in plenty of other places. He told me he thinks that a lot of that weariness is more about a kind of hang over from COVID than IT is about the economy itself .

and then covered was remarkably disruptive in people's lie. People don't feel necessarily secure that we're on the other side of IT. IT was a massive disruption to everyday life here for a long time. I was a major event in the life of the country, and I think there's some evidence that people are still feeling weird and tired, worried about things and look.

Rosenberg also told me that he thinks the president has a strong case to make that the economy is good, and that is the president's job to get out on the road and spread the good news to help people end in error of bad feelings.

But eric was still long ways out from election day, a plenty of time for things to change by putting his name on the economy. Does president biden risk being blamed if problems develop closure to the twenty twenty four election.

right, so the president could embrace this spy nomics label and anything could happen. There could be a real recession. We get some new jobs numbers.

The U. S. Economy kept adding jobs, but fewer than expected. And the federal reserve is probably gone to have to raise interest rates again.

That's going to make IT more expensive to bar money for houses and cars and could slow hiring. And there's also just straight up political risk. This label could come to mean something less rosy than IT does.

Now in the eyes of the bad administration, republican presidential hopeful's like tim Scott are already out using the term byng ics to attack president biden, saying that people still think Prices are too high on the things they need to buy. And that's spite dynamics. But you know, like you said, we're still more than a year out from when folks start casting ballots, and we just don't know what the economic news will look like by then. But dynamics is the president bet that things will .

look pretty good. And thanks so much. Thank you. forgot.

If you were following the news, you already know that the four of july holiday this year was once again marred by a series of mass shootings around the country, including a horrific RAM page in philadelphy on monday night that killed five people.

The alleged shooter was arrested on the scene. Philadelphia police were troubled by the nature of his weapons chapter commissions of investigations. Frank fenor, we've confirmed to our lab, both of those weapons were privately made fire.

They don't have any markings, are not tractable. So if he would have drop that weapon and got away, we had had no way to trace that weapon. Essentially they were, whatever times refer to his ghost guns. A trend that's catching on so quickly. Philadelphy is suing over them.

joining us now to explain that lawsuit and the legal status of these dude yourself guns is in P. R. S.

Martin casti, good morning Martin. Talk to us about these lawsuits. Um if these are ghost guns, like cow is the city swing.

Well, there are two kinds of ghost guns out there. Um there sometimes also called privately made firearms. There's the truly home made kind where people might use like a three d printer er or something.

But that's not what filler lpi is suing over the city is targeting the much bigger category, which is the kinds of guns that you make from a kit. Um these are middle machine parts. Uh they're not technically quite a gun under federal rules.

This week, filled delphia sued two companies at a big business selling those kids H J S D P supply and parliament eighty. The city accuses the two companies of selling these almost guns to filled delphians in violation of state law. And they say that this, this kind of commerce has fuel violence and cost the city a lot of money.

Do we know how many of these guns are out there?

Well, we can't really say the number of circulation by the very nature of these. These are, the manufacturers consider them unregulated parts, so they don't have serial numbers. The buyers don't do background checks.

These are the things we Normally used to try to count guns. But the police can count guns that they recover from crimes. And the count of those is going up. The A, T, F says the number of privately made firearms using crimes jumped from almost none six years ago to about twenty thousand a national years ago in twenty twenty one. Um and you see that kind of a jump in philadelphy where they say now that almost ten percent of all the guns they recovered from crimes are privately made firearms.

So the civil announcers lawsuit t on wednesday was IT because of the two ghost guns recovered from the monday shooting no.

the city was already preparing these lawsuits with the help of the giffords law centre, the gun control group. Before that happened, fill'd office is the latest um in a series of democratic run jurisdictions have tried this lawsuit route. We seen similar actions from new york, new jersey, california, dc.

In some of those cases of the losses are pending. In other cases, the manufacturer have agreed to stop selling kits in those jurisdictions that even pay out some money. Phildee fi's mayor jim Kenny says he was so frustrated with congress and state government for not raining in these gun kit sellers. That's why he decided to try the road of suing.

Or we're just looking for sanity. Um we're looking for them to a bed by state law. Expense of any state law is weak one on the weakness in the nation. To start with, these guys go around even that. So what we're looking there was a change behavior .

besides the lawsuits by these cities and states, what's happening on this question at the federal level.

So the bite administration made a priority to clamp down on the gun kits, and they did that by having the A, T, F, Brown, some of the technical definitions of which kinds of parts actually count as a firearm under federal law for purposes of requiring a serial number of background check when you buy at that kind of thing. But as you might imagine, uh, this redefinition h was intently chAllenged in court by gun rights groups.

I talked to adam crowd. He's the executive director of the second amendment foundation. Ah they are involved in a lawsuit over this in a federal court in texas.

The rate of self manufactured arms is something that you know there is no historical basis either in uh law or tradition to restrict people from doing and you know .

he says the administration overstepped its bounds. When IT basically rewrote the federal definition of what a gun is to address this issue, he says that something that should be left to congress that federal court in texas, by the way, seems to agree IT just vacated the by demining strain's new definitions of what a gun is because of this situation. And the assumption, of course, as the government will probably appeal. But for now, people who track this commerce say the gun kids are still being widely sold across the country.

S M P R S Martin, costly. Thank you so much for joining us.

And that's a first for saturday, july eight, twenty and twenty three. I'm Scott Simon .

and I my character. Today's podcast was edited by Roberta rampton, a mekka, a rita deal out shell, Matthew sherman man and deeper vas .

IT was produced by danny pencil and directed by Michael rat Cliff with engineering support .

from panagia A E, V. Stone is our senior supervising editor. Our executive producer is sala Oliver, and our deputy managing editor is jm k.

And there's a sunday up first two, come tomorrow, what you've got in store.

So I talk to report her honesta harjo about social media influence. Our parents, who sheed the details of their children's daily lives online. A lot of details, and a growing number of children are starting to object to having their privacy violated for clicks and sponsorship. Are.

do I tell you the story about her? Oh, never mind. And for more news, interviews, books and music, you can also find this unweakened addition.

Prevent P R new, find your M P R station at stations that in P R that or continue every saturday on sunday morning.

Please, please, please.

please. We need to work.

This message comes from Better help this holiday season, do something for a special person in your life, you give yourself the gift of Better mental health. Better help. Online therapy connects you with a qualified therapies to be a phone, video or live chat is convenient and affordable, and can be done from the comfort of your own home.

Having someone to talk to is truly a gift, especially during the holidays. Visit Better helps out com slash N P R to get ten percent off your first month. This message comes from M P R sponsor, the M P R one club, a place to explore the exciting moral of wine, including lines inspired by popular N P R shows like weekend addition CBA. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, all purchases help support N P R programing and fund quality reporting develop to connect people to their communities and the world they live in. More at N V R one club, dorg slash podcast must be twenty one or older to purchase.

Hi, i'm rm tina ada li. From through line, electricity, internet, cell service, all the things we rely on every day can be unreliable or inaccessible in emergency. But through any storm ore crisis, radio is a lifeline. Support the resource that's here for you, no matter what, give today and donate that N, P, R, that org.