Updated
Summary
President Biden delivers a prime-time address on gun violence in America. Congressman Eric Swalwell discusses the efforts to pass gun control legislation. Should America be seeing more graphic images of gun violence?
Transcript
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would you really want father government to have the last say about what happens in schools? How about the village that sends your elementary-age child home with a comic book, including graphic displays of sexual grooming?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`m here to speak on behalf of our children. And I`m here to say that we need to reject the ideology of equity in our schools.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No mask mandates. My child, my children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on, all right? That`s not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Wow.
Well, good evening, everyone. We begin THE REIDOUT tonight with those angry moms that you hear so much about yelling and screaming about vaccines and children`s book that don`t do enough to rob the founding fathers` bellies or that dare to mention black or gay people and who, just like that last parent you heard, got so incensed, over mask-wearing to protect against COVID, some of them threatened intimidation and violence towards school officials, which brings us to one of the greatest crises we face today, violence in our schools, as well as in our hospitals, grocery stores, places of worship, and just today at a cemetery during a funeral in Racine, Wisconsin.
There is a lot of gun violence today in America, too much, more than in any rich country on Earth. And far too little being done about it, which had me thinking. Where are those angry moms now? Why aren`t they protesting or running for school board and organized gangs to protect the kids from getting shot in school massacres?
Isn`t — isn`t this a bigger child protection issue than Toni Morrison books? I mean, it`s almost like their protests were really just political theater and not about protecting the kids at all, because what could be more important when it comes to protecting children than trying, at least trying, to stop these mass shootings?
I mean, the kids are sick of it. They are marching and walking out of school. The teachers are sick of it. So bring on the angry moms, right? Where did they go?
Well, tonight, in this hour, America`s fed-up dad, President Joe Biden, will address the nation on rising gun violence in a televised address from the White House.
The call for Congress to respond, to make this time different saw the House Judiciary Committee holding a contentious debate over a package of new gun bills. The Protecting Our Kids Act raises the purchasing age for certain firearms and attempts to crack down on large-capacity magazines.
The debate, however, exposed the deep partisan standoff over guns, with one Republican lawmaker who attended the hearing via videoconference denouncing the proposed changes while brandishing various guns that he owns.
Congressman Eric Swalwell then posed this question to Republican colleagues blocking reforms in the wake of most — of the most recent school shootings.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): To my colleagues today who flew in town, came to work, got ready to argue, my question is, why did you come here for — at all? Why did you come here at all? If you`re not here for the children, why don`t you go to the funeral of the killer?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Joining me now is Congressman Eric Swalwell of California and David Hogg, co-founder of March For Our Lives and survivor of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Thank you both for being here.
I`d love to know what the answer was to your question, Congressman Swalwell.
SWALWELL: Joy and David, good evening.
It was absolute silence and, frankly, shame, because they don`t have an answer as to who they are showing up for. And my question was, if you`re not there for the kids, if you don`t want to raise to age 21 on buying an assault weapon, if you don`t want to have a Safe Storage Act, and if you don`t believe in going after ghost guns, and you don`t believe in banning high-capacity magazines, well, then you`re coming down on the side of the killer, because only the killers of our kids benefit from legislation being blocked like that.
And, instead, they go after mental health. They say it`s a family problem. They say this is really about schools being soft targets. But when we put legislation up to address mental health, when we try and feed families, teach families, give jobs to families, and when we try and fund schools, they vote against it.
It feels like it`s a carnival shell game, and that they`re really just there to make sure that we`re a country of unrestricted weaponry. So, if David Hogg can keep the faith in this fight and believe that we can see change, then the least we can do in Congress is keep making that change.
And that`s why I stay in the fight.
REID: You know, I mean, we had today, David Hogg, a gunman in Tulsa who had had back issues, had surgery get angry because he was still in pain, go back to the hospital where he was treated, actually go buy — on the way back to the hospital, go buy an AR-15, because you can just buy it on impulse, go into the hospital, shoot the doctor and three other people, then kill himself.
[19:05:15]
Like, he was able to buy the gun as he`s thinking about doing the mass shooting. That`s how easy it is to get that kind of a firearm. We had a guy today, Billy Long of Missouri, blaming abortion, abortion for school shootings. So it`s — the problem is abortion.
For you, do any of these arguments make — do they matter? Because it could be all, right? If it`s mental health, then don`t get people with mental health issues a gun. If the schools are soft targets, hell, yes, they`re soft targets. Anyone with a gun can go in there and shoot them up.
Do — does any of it get us away from talking about gun reform?
DAVID HOGG, PARKLAND SHOOTING SURVIVOR: I think the reality is, we need to have a change in our conversation here.
For too long, this conversation has been you`re either anti-gun or pro-gun. Our country is one thing. We need to be pro-peace. Our kids need to be safe in their schools and communities. Those parents that were advocating, even though I strongly disagree with them and think many of them are completely wrong, they at least claim to care about their kids.
There were zero kids that died this year in mass readings in their schools. It`s not the word gay that`s getting kids killed. It`s people like the 19- year-old at the — at my high school that were — that waited until they were legally old enough to buy an AR-15, like the shooter in Buffalo, like the shooter in Texas as well, to go out and buy an AR-15 and shoot up their school — their school or their community or a different community.
They aren`t criminal masterminds that have deep networks to the black market. They are barely adults. And what we need as Americans isn`t just thinking of this as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans, and remember who we`re fighting for.
I met a young lady, was about 7 years old, named Eleanor the other day in front of Senator Toomey`s office. Her favorite thing to do is code. Her dad was a mailman and her mom was, I presume, a teacher. And we were protesting outside of Senator Toomey`s office with her and teachers just simply asking for meeting, not — acknowledging we don`t agree on everything, but that we need action.
All Americans agree that we need action. And we can`t let these senators move on from this. And you know what Senator Toomey said to us when we — and it was the same thing that happened with John Cornyn just now in Texas, with very similar young people that I was outside with, 10-year-olds, girls that wanted to be Marines, a young child that wanted to be the president one day.
They all said: I don`t have time to meet with you.
They don`t have time to meet with people like Eleanor. That`s who we`re fighting for here. And that`s what frustrates me so much.
REID: Yes.
HOGG: And it`s heartbreaking, because these are our kids. They are our future.
REID: Right.
And they wouldn`t have to do a whole lot to — let me play this ad. I thought about this ad today and asked my producers to get it. This is just a little piece of a Sandy Hook Promise ad that to me was the saddest thing ever, and probably the most prescient ad ever. Take a look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: These scissors really come in handy in our class.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: These colored pencils too.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: These new socks, they can be a real lifesaver.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: I finally got my own phone to stay in touch with my mom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And, Congressman Swalwell, to David`s point, I presume, whether you`re Republican or a Democrat, or you have a house full of guns, or you don`t ever — ever touched a gun, you all feel shocked and saddened by the deaths of children and by children just being scared to go to school.
This is something we all should share. And so I wonder, when you talk to Republicans about this issue, do they express that shock and sadness and a willingness to do anything, even just raise the age that — at which you can buy an AR-15? That`s a simple thing that we could do.
SWALWELL: They absolutely do, Joy, but not the Republicans in Congress.
And I have seen this issue now evolve over 10 years in Congress. I was just being sworn in right after Sandy Hook. I was single. I had no kids. I was naive and thought we would do something about this in Congress. We did nothing. We didn`t have a hearing for seven years.
Now, today, after Uvalde, I have a 5-year-old a 3-year-old and a 7-month- old. My 5-year-old is starting to ask questions. So we`re seeing a new generation of young kids wondering about their own safety.
A Moms Demand Action volunteer in my community named Alex Navarro told me last week that her 6-year-old daughter, after seeing the pictures of the 19 children in Texas, her 6-year-old daughter said: “Mom, what picture are you going to use for me?”
And that`s where kids are today, is, they`re thinking that they`re not even safe in their classroom.
And, to your question, what do Republicans think, well, this organization called 97Percent, it`s a nonpartisan organization. They just put out a poll of only gun owners; 86 percent of gun owners want background checks; 76 percent of gun owners want safe storage laws, and 67 percent want red flag laws.
[19:10:08]
So, the Republicans, they`re not even out of touch with mainstream America. They`re out of touch…
REID: Yes, out of touch with gun owners.
SWALWELL: … with the people in their own party who own guns.
REID: Yes.
I`m going to give you the last word on this, David, because my kids are your age, right, are a little older than you. And they have been doing mass shooter drills since they were in the third grade in Florida 15 minutes from Parkland. That`s where we lived, right near you. That`s why you were so relatable to me, because you`re like my kids.
So talk to the people who say, pass nothing. Any kind of law, even the most minimal law, will hurt my gun rights. What do you say to them?
HOGG: We need action. Nothing is changing this.
And if you agree with us, if you`re — I have gotten messages from Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and non-gun owners. And this time is different, I`m telling you. This is the first time that I have protested demanding a meeting with a senator in Dallas, Texas, or protested period in Dallas, Texas, and I was not counterprotested by 40 men with AR-15s.
There was zero, zero. That has never happened to me before in Texas. I got a message this morning that I woke up to on Twitter from somebody saying: I have an AR-15. I don`t ever want this being used against kids. And I can`t imagine — I can`t even fathom it. How do I destroy this?
REID: Yes.
HOGG: Gun owners are fed up. Republicans are fed up.
People need to March with us on June 11. And if you`re interested in marching with us as Americans united for peace, not as against guns or for guns, but for peace, march with us on June 11 in over 450 marches across the country. And join us for — not the end of the movement, but the beginning of one.
REID: Yes.
HOGG: Because this is going to take time to address. It`s (AUDIO GAP) like cigarettes.
But if you would like to join us, you text MARCH to 954-954. And once again, that is MARCH to 954-954.
REID: I hope that people will do that.
And anyone who truly respects firearms understand an 18-year-old does not have any business having an AR-15. I think every single gunner that I know anyway agrees with that.
Congressman Eric Swalwell, David Hogg, thank you both very much.
And as we await President Biden`s national address on gun violence, frustrated gun reform advocates are forced to consider what some would say is a shocking new proposal aimed at achieving more safety.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:16:26]
REID: Earlier today, the families of Eliahana Torres, Miranda Mathis, and Nevaeh Bravo said their final goodbye to their sweet little girls.
The pain those families are feeling is unfathomable. They join a federation of families coping with similar anguish.
Veronique De La Rosa, mother of Noah Pozner, the youngest child to die in Newtown, told “The New York Times” that we as a country are stuck in a state of paralysis. While lawmakers are talking about gun reform, the majority aren`t willing to take the serious steps to regulate weapons of war, because only a precious few of them actually see what happens to these innocent people after they are shot.
And they`re not alone. We talk about it in the abstract, but we`re never forced to actually see what it really looks like to be injured or to die this way.
Lately, a rising chorus of people are saying, well, maybe we should rethink that.
Dr. Amy Goldberg, a trauma surgeon from Philadelphia, who has treated thousands of gunshot wounds, believes that America wouldn`t be so numb if the public actually saw what she sees on a regular basis. And for Veronique, Noah Pozner`s mother, she led the then-governor of Connecticut to see her son`s open casket during his funeral back in 2012.
Asked by “Forward” newspaper why she did that, she simply said: “I want people to know the ugliness of it, so we don`t talk about it abstractly, like these little angels just went to heaven. No, they were butchered.”
With me now is Veronique De La Rosa, mother of Noah Pozner, and Dr. Amy Goldberg, trauma surgeon and surgeon and chief for Temple Health in Philadelphia.
Thank you both for being here.
And, Ms. De La Rosa, I do want to start with you first.
I remember — we were just talking in the break that we — no one — none of us can forget that awful, awful day, when you and so many others lost their babies. And these were times it was impossible to read a script and not cry. I was just reading little things about your baby loving tacos, which I love too. And I can barely read just that.
So I can`t imagine how hard it is for you.
But you did something that was even harder. You wanted the governor of your state to see your baby the way that he was when he was dead. Why?
VERONIQUE DE LA ROSA, MOTHER OF SHOOTING VICTIM: Well, I just felt it was important for him, as a government official, to bear witness to what had happened, to the atrocity of it.
REID: And that`s a decision that — I mean, Emmett Till`s mother made that decision. And she made it even on a very public scale. She wanted the world to see what Emmett looked like after he had been lynched, because she said, you can`t just do these things in silence. The world needs to account for this.
So, I am curious. As a mom, as somebody who`s gone through this, what do you think about that second argument, that maybe we as the public need to be forced to see what the governor saw?
DE LA ROSA: Well, I think that`s a very complex and difficult question to answer.
REID: Yes.
DE LA ROSA: I think there are ways that photographs could be sort of mishandled, therefore retraumatizing the families.
REID: Yes.
DE LA ROSA: As well as I feel, also, it`s — it is a decision that is so deeply personal…
REID: Yes.
DE LA ROSA: … because it`s a type of Pandora`s box effect.
Once you release them, you can`t — you can`t retract that.
REID: Yes.
DE LA ROSA: And it`s sort of letting loose a force that you really don`t know what the ripple effects will be of it.
[19:20:04]
REID: Yes.
Dr. Goldberg, so then — but you make the argument, the other argument, that we should see it. What is that argument?
DR. AMY GOLDBERG, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY HEALTH SYSTEM: Well, I think that the argument that I make is, this has to stop. So that`s number one.
The shootings that are going on, the mass shootings that are going on in our country has to stop. And I think we are at a loss of what it would take to get our politicians and our citizens to get it to stop. It is within our own control. And I think that`s why I think we have to educate people.
I would not — I wouldn`t want to show pictures out of disrespect. And I wouldn`t do it without asking anybody`s permission. I just don`t know what more we need to do as a country…
REID: Yes.
GOLDBERG: … to get people to see what these military-style weapons do to our bodies.
REID: And can you — as somebody who deals with in the trauma world, how – – these wounds, I`m assuming, are significantly different than if you were shot with a normal rifle or a Glock, right?
GOLDBERG: Yes, these weapons cause destruction.
Other guns cause wounds that you can repair. And these weapons cause total destruction, irreparably. You cannot put the pieces back together, there isn`t anything that you can do. And that`s why there are so many of these – – these people that have sustained these injuries don`t even make it to the hospital, because they die on the scene.
REID: Do you think it would be helpful for politicians? Because I really respect what Ms. De La Rosa has said. This is so deeply personal, and these photos could be misused.
But do you think it would help for members of Congress who have to legislate on this, for these senators to come to a trauma hospital like yours, and that they should see it, so that they can understand what they`re legislating?
GOLDBERG: Absolutely.
I think Ms. De La Rosa had it right when she wanted the governor to see what had happened to Noah. And I think the politicians need to see the decisions and the ramifications of their decisions, or lack thereof.
REID: Yes.
I will give you the last word on this, Ms. De La Rosa.
What would you tell legislators who today are saying, I don`t want to do anything legislatively to end this?
DE LA ROSA: I would say, shame on you. This is a public health crisis.
We have come to a real saturation point. We`re stuck in this grotesque, horrifying Groundhog Day scenario, where it`s always the thoughts and prayers, our heart goes out to the families, it`s too early to politicize this. It`s anything about guns. It`s school safety. It`s mental health. Let`s not trample on Second Amendment rights. That would be government overreach. We`re not going to do anything.
And then, inevitably, it fades from the headlines, until the next time, and it seems as though they`re coming closer and closer together.
REID: Yes.
DE LA ROSA: So, there`s a metastatic effect going on…
REID: Yes. And…
DE LA ROSA: … where we don`t even seem to be able to make it a week without a school — some type of shooting.
REID: A day. A day.
DE LA ROSA: Yes.
REID: We did a mass shooting segment yesterday that was interrupted by my having to report on another mass shooting, stacked on top of each other. It is more than one a day at this point.
Veronique De La Rosa, thank you so much, and God bless you. Thank you for sharing what is a very, very painful story with all of us.
DE LA ROSA: Thank you.
REID: And, Dr. Amy Goldberg, thank you.
Really appreciate both of you.
And still ahead: Stay with us, as we wait — await the start of President Biden`s national address. You can see it there. The door will open, and he will speak on gun violence.
Lawrence O`Donnell and Michael Beschloss will join me next in the lead-in.
We will be back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:28:37]
REID: We are awaiting President Biden`s address to the nation on gun violence, a rare prime-time speech to elevate the need to fight the epidemic of mass shootings in America.
It will be the president`s most extensive public remarks on gun violence since last week`s carnage in Uvalde.
And joining me now is my friend Lawrence O`Donnell, host of “THE LAST WORD” right here on MSNBC, and NBC News presidential historian, and we like to say our personal historian on THE REIDOUT, Michael Beschloss, host of “Fireside History” on Peacock, two of my favorite people.
And thank you both for being here.
Lawrence, I`m going to start with you.
What do you — what do you expect to hear, and what should we hear from the president?
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL, HOST, “THE LAST WORD”: Well, I expect to hear a fairly careful speech, because this is a speech in search of 10 Republicans.
This is a speech in search of 10 Republicans in the United States Senate who would be willing to vote for something that President Biden can sign that would be some kind of reform, some kind of improvement over the current situation, whether that`s background checks, plus a few other things. We don`t know what that magic formula can be that gets 10 Republican senators.
And so it`s difficult for president who`s trying to get 10 senators of the other party to come out in a really powerful, strong, and accusatory speech of where the blame belongs here. And blame belongs entirely on the Republican Party, whose multidecade mission now has been to make sure that America`s mass murderers are the best-equipped mass murderers in the world.
[19:30:12]
REID: Yes, it`s difficult, Michael.
I mean, the president is putting all the prestige of the presidency behind this, which is important. He`s going to walk out from the State Dining Room, walk into the East Room. It`s this sort of sort of setting that just bespeaks power.
But, really, the power is not in his hands. The power is in the hands of 10 Republicans who must be convinced that there`s a political value in it for them to give him what they will see as giving the president a win.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, NBC NEWS PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Right.
And this is how a president should use the bully pulpit. How the president should use the bully pulpit is for a president to remind conservatives especially that this is an issue of law and order.
This is not an issue primarily of the Second Amendment. This is saving our children`s lives in schools. And when you have a government that cannot do something that fundamental, revolution begins, because people say, what is a government for if it cannot save our children`s lives, something that basic.
REID: Yes.
BESCHLOSS: Our great friend Lawrence put it absolutely perfectly.
REID: It`s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Here`s the president. He`s walking out now. And he is going to walk forward. He`s going to speak at exactly 7:31 and 30 seconds. So, we`re going to let him walk down.
And let`s just watch and listen.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: On Memorial Day this past Monday, Jill and I visited Arlington National Cemetery.
As we entered those hallowed grounds, we saw rows and rows of crosses among the rows of headstones, with other emblems of belief, honoring those who paid the ultimate price on battlefields around the world.
The day before, we visited Uvalde — Uvalde, Texas. In front of Robb Elementary School, we stood before 21 crosses for 19 third and fourth graders and two teachers. On each cross, a name. And nearby, a photo of each victim that Jill and I reached out to touch. Innocent victims, murdered in a classroom that had been turned into a killing field.
Standing there in that small town, like so many other communities across America, I couldn`t help but think there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields, battlefields here in America.
We stood at such a place just 12 days before, across from a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, memorializing 10 fellow Americans — a spouse, a parent, a grandparent, a sibling — gone forever.
At both places, we spent hours with hundreds of family members who were broken and whose lives will never be the same. And they had one message for all of us: Do something. Just do something. For God`s sake, do something.
After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Charleston, after Orlando, after Las Vegas, after Parkland, nothing has been done.
This time, that can`t be true. This time, we must actually do something.
The issue we face is one of conscience and common sense.
For so many of you at home, I want to be very clear: This is not about taking away anyone`s guns. It`s about — not about vilifying gun owners. In fact, we believe we should be treating responsible gun owners as an example of how every gun owner should behave. I respect the culture and the tradition and the concerns of lawful gun owners.
At the same time, the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute. It was — it was Justice Scalia who wrote, and I quote, Like most rights, the right, Second Amendment — the rights granted by the Second Amendment are not unlimited. Not unlimited. It never has been.
There have always been limitations on what weapons you can own in America. For example, machine guns have been federally regulated for nearly 90 years. And this is still a free country.
This isn`t about taking away anyone`s rights. It`s about protecting children. It`s about protecting families. It`s about protecting whole communities. It`s about protecting our freedoms to go to school, to a grocery store, and to a church without being shot and killed.
[19:35:07]
According to new data just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America. The number one killer. More than car accidents. More than cancer.
Over the last two decades, more school-aged children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active-duty military combined. Think about that, more kids than on-duty cops killed by guns, more kids than soldiers killed by guns.
For God`s sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept? How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we say enough? Enough.
I know that we can`t prevent every tragedy. But here`s what I believe we have to do. Here`s what the overwhelming majority of the American people believe we must do. Here`s what the families in Buffalo and Uvalde, in Texas, told us we must do.
We need to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And if we can`t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21. Strengthen background checks. Enact safe storage laws and red-flag laws. Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability. Address the mental health crisis deepening the trauma of gun violence and as a consequence of that violence.
These are rational, commonsense measures. And here`s what it all means. It all means this: We should reinstate the assault weapons ban and high- capacity magazines that we passed in 1994 with bipartisan support in Congress and the support of law enforcement. Nine categories of semi- automatic weapons were included in that ban, like AK-47s and AR-15s.
And in the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down. But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled. Those are the facts.
A few years ago, the family of the inventor of the AR-15 said he would have been horrified to know that its design was being used to slaughter children and other innocent lives instead of being used as a military weapon on the battlefields, as it was designed — that`s what it was designed for.
Enough. Enough.
We should limit how many rounds a weapon can hold. Why in God`s name should an ordinary citizen be able to purchase an assault weapon that holds 30- round magazines that let mass shooters fire hundreds of bullets in a matter of minutes?
The damage was so devastating in Uvalde, parents had to do DNA swabs to identify the remains of their children, 9- and 10-year-old children.
Enough.
We should expand background checks to be — keep guns out of the hands of felons, fugitives, and those under restraining orders.
Stronger background checks are something that the vast majority of Americans, including the majority of gun owners, agree on.
I also believe we should have safe storage laws and personal liability for not locking up your gun.
The shooter in Sandy Hook came from a home full of guns that were too easy to access. That`s how he got the weapons — the weapon he used to kill his mother and then murder 26 people, including 20 first graders.
If you own a weapon, you have a responsibility to secure it — every responsible gun owner agrees — to make sure no one else can have access to it, to lock it up, to have trigger locks. And if you don`t and something bad happens, you should be held responsible.
We should also have national red-flag laws so that a parent, a teacher, a counselor can flag for a court that a child, a student, a patient is exhibiting violent tendencies, threatening classmates, or experiencing suicidal thoughts that makes them a danger to themselves or to others.
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have red-flag laws. The Delaware law is named after my son, Attorney General Beau Biden.
Fort Hood, Texas, 2009, 13 dead and more than 30 injured.
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, 2018, 17 dead, 17 injured.
[19:40:06]
In both places, countless others suffering with invisible wounds.
Red-flag laws could have stopped both these shooters.
In Uvalde, the shooter was 17 when he asked his sister to buy him an assault weapon, knowing he`d be denied because he was too young to purchase one himself. She refused.
But as soon as he turned 18, he purchased two assault weapons for himself. Because in Texas, you can be 18 years old and buy an assault weapon even though you can`t buy a pistol in Texas until you`re 21.
If we can`t ban assault weapons, as we should, we must at least raise the age to be able to purchase one to 21.
Look, I know some folks will say, 18-year-olds can serve in the military and fire those weapons. But that`s with training and supervision by the best-trained experts in the world. Don`t tell me raising the age won`t make a difference.
Enough.
We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons. They`re the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity.
Imagine, imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued, where we`d be today. The gun industry`s special protections are outrageous. It must end.
And let there be no mistake about the psychological trauma that gun violence leaves behind.
Imagine being that little girl, that brave little girl in Uvalde who smeared the blood off her murdered friend`s body onto her own face to lie still among the corpses in her classroom and pretend she was dead in order to stay alive. Imagine, imagine what it would it be like for her to walk down the hallway of any school again.
Imagine what it`s like for children who experience this kind of trauma every day in school, in the streets, in communities all across America.
Imagine what it is like for so many parents to hug their children goodbye in the morning, not sure whether they`ll come back home.
Unfortunately, too many people don`t have to imagine that at all.
Even before the pandemic, young people were already hurting. There`s a serious youth mental health crisis in this country, and we have to do something about it.
That`s why mental health is at the heart of my Unity Agenda that I laid out in the State of the Union Address this year.
We must provide more school counselors, more school nurses, more mental health services for students and for teachers, more people volunteering as mentors to help young people succeed, more privacy protection and resources to keep kids safe from the harms of social media.
This Unity Agenda won`t fully heal the wounded souls, but it will help. It matters.
I just told you what I`d do. The question now is, what will the Congress do?
The House of Representatives has already passed key measures we need. Expanding background checks to cover nearly all gun sales, including at gun shows and online sales. Getting rid of the loophole that allows a gun sale to go through after three business days even if the background check has not been completed.
And the House is planning even more action next week. Safe storage requirements. The banning of high-capacity magazines. Raising the age to buy an assault weapon to 21. Federal red-flag law. Codifying my ban on ghost guns that don`t have serial numbers and can`t be traced. And tougher laws to prevent gun trafficking and straw purchases.
This time, we have to take the time to do something. And this time, it`s time for the Senate to do something.
But, as we know, in order to do any — get anything done in the Senate, we need a minimum of 10 Republican senators.
I support the bipartisan efforts that include a small group of Democrats and Republican senators trying to find a way. But my God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don`t want any of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable.
We can`t fail the American people again.
Since Uvalde, just over a week ago, there have been 20 other mass shootings in America, each with four or more people killed or injured, including yesterday at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
A shooter deliberately targeted a surgeon using an assault weapon he bought just a few hours before his rampage that left the surgeon, another doctor, a receptionist, and a patient dead, and many more injured.
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That doesn`t count the carnage we see every single day that doesn`t make the headlines.
I`ve been in this fight for a long time. I know how hard it is, but I will never give up. And if Congress fails, I believe this time a majority of the American people won`t give up either. I believe the majority of you will act to turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote.
Enough. Enough. Enough.
Over the next 17 days, the families in Uvalde will continue burying their dead.
It will take that long in part because it`s a town where everyone knows everyone, and day by day they will honor each one they lost.
Jill and I met with the owner and staff of the funeral home that is being strong — strong, strong, strong — to take care of their own.
And the people of Uvalde mourn. As they do over the next 17 days, what will we be doing as a nation?
Jill and I met with the sister of the teacher who was murdered and whose husband died of a heart attack two days later, leaving behind four beautiful, orphaned children, and all now orphaned.
The sister asked us: What could she say? What could she tell her nieces and nephews?
It was one of the most heartbreaking moments that I can remember. All I could think to say was — I told her to hold them tight. Hold them tight.
After visiting the school, we attended mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church with Father Eddie.
In the pews, families and friends held each other tightly. As Archbishop Gustavo spoke, he asked the children in attendance to come up on the altar and sit on the altar with him as he spoke.
There wasn`t enough room, so a mom and her young son sat next to Jill and me in the first pew. And as we left the church, a grandmother who had just lost her granddaughter passed me a handwritten letter.
It read, quote, Erase the invisible line that is dividing our nation. Come up with a solution and fix what`s broken and make the changes that are necessary to prevent this from happening again. End of quote.
My fellow Americans, enough. Enough. It`s time for each of us to do our part. It`s time to act.
For the children we`ve lost, for the children we can save, for the nation we love, let`s hear the call and the cry. Let`s meet the moment. Let us finally do something.
God bless the families who are hurting. God bless you all.
From a hymn based on the 91st Psalm sung in my church: May he raise you up on eagle`s wings, and bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand.
That`s my prayer for all of you. God bless you.
REID: President Joe Biden ending his prime-time speech on the gun violence in this country with a quote from perhaps the most beautiful book in the Bible, the Book of Psalms.
He spoke of sitting alongside a grandmother who had just lost her child who — in a church in Texas who said — handed him a note saying, erase the invisible line that`s keeping us from solving this.
A line from the speech that sticks with me: “Do something. For God`s sakes, do something,” a very Joe Biden line. He talked about the package of reforms that mirrors what is being debated right now in the House, banning ghost guns, a national red flag law, having insurance requirements and storage requirements for firearms, raising the purchasing age for an assault weapon to 21, and repealing the liability shield that only, only gun makers enjoy.
Let me bring back Lawrence O`Donnell and Michael Beschloss.
I`m going to start with you, Lawrence.
President Biden is a man of the Senate, though he is president now. He spoke, as you said, in a very earnest way, as he does. This is Biden at his best. The empathy was there.
But he did outline a very specific set of packages. Did you hear what sounds like a sellable set of proposals that theoretically could get 60 votes in the Senate?
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O`DONNELL: Well, background checks is the one that would be closest to 60 votes in the Senate, as of now. I`m sure it`s not there yet in these negotiations.
The other possibilities are some version of safe storage. He wants safe storage with a civil liability, so that if your gun is — if you do not safely store your gun, and your gun is then used to inflict damage on someone, those — that person has the right or their family has the right to sue you for that, which they would, by the way, in other situations where things within your control cause damages to other people.
That`s a normal concept of civil litigation. There might be a version of safe storage, maybe with a softer enforcement mechanism. The red flag laws are a possibility to be legislated in some federal form that he also identified.
The biggest ask there tonight was to reinstate the 1994 assault weapons ban that Joe Biden personally passed through the United States Senate, along with a limit on high-capacity magazines. That`s the biggest ask of this Senate. The House of Representatives could handle that. This Senate, getting 10 Republicans to handle that would be something of a legislative miracle at this point.
But this speech tonight is the speech that this subject and this legislative effort needed tonight.
REID: Yes.
And, Michael, yes, it — there`s this hurdle of having to get 60 votes.
It`s going to be very difficult…
BESCHLOSS: Right.
REID: … because, as Senator Chris Murphy said, you have to convince Republicans that there is no political cost, that they — that there won`t be a cost to them in primaries or in a general election if they defy the NRA, which is something that is very difficult to convince them of.
But there often are these — these comparisons to Lyndon Johnson…
BESCHLOSS: Right.
REID: … when you have to litigate something that is unpopular.
Johnson faced extreme opposition to the idea of passing civil rights reform.
BESCHLOSS: Certainly.
REID: Is there something to be found in that history that this president can use via persuasion?
BESCHLOSS: Sure, there is. You said it perfectly.
LBJ in 1964 and John Kennedy before him said, there`s about to be a revolution. It can either be handled with conservative methods by trying to restore justice and giving people a stake in this society, or you can try to repress it, and you`re going to have full revolution.
What`s the difference here? Our children are getting killed. And I think the best thing that Joe Biden can do, especially in terms of what Lawrence says quite rightly is the need to get those Republican senators, is to remind people, this is the most conservative issue in the world.
This is public safety.
REID: Yes.
BESCHLOSS: People talk about the Second Amendment.
This is an offense against our children`s right to life sitting in their schools. There shouldn`t be anything more conservative than that. And the liberals and progressives, moderates have let right-wing people in this country run away with that. It has to be restored.
REID: Yes.
BESCHLOSS: LBJ, just as you`re talking about, in 1968 wanted a gun safety bill. And he got a very diluted one.
And he did it because, in February of 1963, there was a magazine, then, as now, published and owned by the NRA called “American Rifleman,” had an ad for a mail-order Italian carbine from Chicago.
Young 23-year-old man named Lee Harvey Oswald read the magazine, wrote in for the carbine, ordered it. He shot it in Dallas on the 22nd of November. But at least in those days, the vice president of the NRA said, we`re not going to be so stupid and so insane as to stand in the way of control of a weapon that killed the president of the United States.
We have not been living in such a crazy world for 60 years, but we have in recent years. The president has to remind people, we all have a right to life. This is an issue of law and order. Last I heard, those are conservative principles. Let him tell that to those 10 senators.
REID: Right.
And I mean, Lawrence, it is not as if there are not already regulations on firearms. There`s a reason why we no longer see the situation that we saw in places like Chicago in the 1930s, where people were gunning each other down in the mob with machine guns.
O`DONNELL: Right.
REID: Machine guns are heavily regulated by the federal government…
O`DONNELL: Right.
REID: … under the tax code. But you have to have a certain, specific kind of license to own one.
It is difficult — it`s so difficult that a person who, I don`t know, got treatment that they didn`t like at the doctor`s office couldn`t just go to the store, buy a machine gun, and come back and kill people with that. But you can with a AR-15. Federal — the federal government has a role to play here.
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And it already does it with other kinds of firearms. Is that an argument that could work on Republicans, who make it sound like there are no regulations? Because there are.
O`DONNELL: Well, Joy, you made it sounds like there`s — or, I should say, Senator Murphy minutes sounds like there`s no argument that can work.
REID: Yes.
O`DONNELL: Because what Senator Murphy is suggesting is that Republican senators need to see that there is absolutely no political price to be paid by them, by them, by voting for any of this legislation.
BESCHLOSS: Right.
O`DONNELL: And their definition of that would be, we must not lose a single vote in our reelection campaigns.
Now, let`s just think for a second about the utter moral bankruptcy of that. So, you`re saying that you will take no action to save the lives of schoolchildren at their desks in America if it costs you anything in your reelection.
I don`t care if it costs you your entire political career. You`re supposed to cast that vote.
BESCHLOSS: Right.
O`DONNELL: That — and these people suggesting that it`s reasonable, it`s reasonable for us to oppose this because it might hurt us in our reelections, they are simply using a world of moral bankruptcy that has descended on Washington as a standard operating procedure.
REID: It is putting power, not even party, but power before children.
BESCHLOSS: Totally.
REID: Michael, between depending on your poll, expanded background checks have an 80 to 90 percent popularity rate.
BESCHLOSS: Right. Right.
REID: This is an overwhelmingly…
BESCHLOSS: This should be easy.
REID: Right.
And I think having children be alive when you pick them up from school, I`m going to guess has 100 percent popularity rate.
BESCHLOSS: I totally agree with you.
REID: So, there is no moral argument.
Is there an historical argument against protecting children from being slaughtered in school?
BESCHLOSS: No, there`s not.
And it`s the most — as I say again and again, this is the most conservative thing on earth is keeping our children alive, restoring public safety. Who ever thought that these — this radical idea that people could run wild with assault weapons had anything to do with conservatism?
It`s exactly the opposite. So you add that to what you and Lawrence are quite rightly saying, which is overwhelming majorities for a lot of gun safety measures that the Senate and the House have stood against in recent years.
REID: Yes.
BESCHLOSS: It reminds me of what Everett Dirksen said in `64 about civil rights…
REID: Yes.
BESCHLOSS: … an idea whose time has come.
REID: Yes.
BESCHLOSS: It had come 200 years earlier, but better late than never.
REID: Better late than never.
And, by the way, police agree with it. Note that they were…
BESCHLOSS: Totally.
REID: … reluctant to run in when one man had an AR-15. They weren`t going to face it. Police agree with this.
BESCHLOSS: Totally. Totally.
REID: Lawrence O`Donnell, Michael Beschloss, could not have thought of two better people to talk to on this tonight.
Thank you both very much.
We will be right back.
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REID: What a world in which we will regulate machine guns to keep mobsters from slaughtering each other, but cannot legislate to keep our children alive when we pick them up from school at the end of the day, that they`re still breathing.
What a world.
That is tonight`s REIDOUT.
“ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES” starts now.