On Wednesday's program, Judith Best, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Cortland, defends the Electoral College.

NPR: Debating the Merits of the Electoral College

Those laws grow directly out of the Second Amendment ethos the NRA has championed: "the ethos of individualism, of having a gun, of individuals taking the initiative, " said Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Cortland and at Cornell University who has studied and written about the NRA for decades.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS