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tv   Piers Morgan Live  CNN  March 28, 2013 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT

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tonight, the deadly secret from killer adam lanza. >> 6:17, >> plus the discovery that's got the nra fighting back. i talk to the newtown police chief. what will it take to stop the bloodshed? >> this is our best chance in more than a decade to take common sense steps that will save lives. >> i'll ask my all-star panel. plus, first the pope. now another unthinkable retirement. is barbara walters stepping down? and father, son and the holy ghost. billy graham's son franklin on faith in america and the plot to kill jesus. this is "piers morgan live." less than five minutes, that's how little time it took for adam lanza to slaughter 20 children and six adults at sandy hook elementary. five minutes. that's 300 seconds. imagine that.
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we're learning that and more. we're learning much, much more about the killer and his arsenal. newly released search warrants gave us a chilling look at his life at home and his collection of weapons. adam's house was testament to death. samurai swords, bayonets, rifles, pistols, 1600 rounds of ammunition, photographs of a dead body, gun manuals, certificate from the nra, self-help book from the nra, another on living with asperger's. joining me now is newtown's police chief. welcome back to you. i read the full list of things that the police found in adam lanza's lair. no other way of describing it. and it was terrifying. i couldn't understand how somebody like him who has already been treated for asperger's, perhaps autism as well, who is a loner, who we have now learned was an obsessive about violent video games, somebody who clearly should be ringing alarm bells to a large number of people, how he could have so much fire power in
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his lair. what do you make of it? >> well, we certainly wouldn't want somebody like that shooter to have that much arsenal at his disposal, and we must make changes so that we do find out these people in advance and stop that before massacres occur. >> here's the problem, chief. let me just put to you this point. here's the problem, it seems to me, with shooters like adam lanza. how do you know they're going to be shooters? i can raise alarm bells with hindsight and maybe they should have been spotted, like i said, but there must be many disturbed people out there who don't really cry out i'm going to shoot loads of people. what can america do to try and identify them? >> that's a great point. that's why we have to be cautious and we have to be very cognizant about what weapons and what type of magazines we have out there and what backgrounds
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we do. as police chiefs, we do a lot of background checks to make sure that those who we give pistol permits to or registrations for for weapons that we make sure we know who they are. i think that when we also talk about the capacity of the magazine, just having those types of magazines, having those types of weapons out there which are available to the average civilian, not law enforcement, not the military, is a problem we don't know in whose hands they're going to be. in this case if you read the documents, it showed clearly that the safe was not secured. well, that's an issue as well. when we were on the show last time i suggested that when we talk about gun locks, we need to make sure those weapons, all weapons are secured so nobody has the opportunity to get their hands on it who does not rightfully should. >> right. let's play a clip from president obama today. he was pretty direct. listen to what he had to say. >> less than 100 days ago, that happened.
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and the entire country was shocked. the entire country pledged we would do something about it and this time would be different. shame on us if we forgot. i haven't forgotten those kids. shame on us if we forgot. >> here's the problem. these are powerful words from the president, but as he's saying them, washington having already backed off trying to force through an assault weapons ban is now apparently also backing off bringing in a ban on high magazines, and so what are you left with? you're left with background checks which to me is just a bleeding obviously thing that should be done anyway, shouldn't have any loopholes. you want to buy a gun, of course there should be a background check. none of this to me, none of this to me is any concrete attempt to reduce the amount of guns in america. in fact, quite the opposite. >> well, i think we ought to keep the conversation going and
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i applaud the president for, again, making a call for action. we need to make decisions that are going to be tough for society and we need to do them sooner than later, because we know these things are going to repeat themselves. >> right. but chief, let me put this to you. this is all fine, but you are on the sharp end of this, and since sandy hook, there has been a massive escalation in the sale of the weapons like the one that adam lanza used to kill those children. not a deceleration. an acceleration. what is going to happen about that? at what point do the law makers of america say we're going to try and stop the increase in the sale of assault weapons? >> our governor put it very well when he said what more do we need to know. we know we had an individual who had severe mental illness.
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we know we had an individual who had access to weapons that he should not have had and we know we had an individual who had high capacity magazines, who knew how to use them, who it's very evident now by the paperwork that was released today, he knew how to tactically reload which we talked about last week, and these individuals should not have access to weapons. but by having these types of weapons out there, we offer everybody the opportunity to get their hands on them. so we're certainly not looking to take weapons out of the hands of law-abiding citizens but we have to remember that every illegal gun at some point started out being a legal gun and those who get their hands on these types of weapons are doing so because we're allowing these types of weapons into our society, which as chief said time and time again, this society that we live in now has become significantly more violent than it was when we were growing up. >> final question for you, chief. if the only thing that comes out of all this, out of the senseless massacre of 20 young children at sandy hook, is
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background checks, doesn't that qualify for a shameful response, the type that president obama is talking about? >> i would be very, very disappointed and i think many of the families would be disappointed if that was the only thing that came out of all of this tragedy, the background checks. i can't imagine that our legislatures would leave it just at that because we have so much to do and there is so much we can do. we should do it. >> chief, it's good to talk to you again. i wish it was under better circumstances. it's always grim when i talk to you about this but it's a grim matter. thank you very much. >> thank you, piers. >> thank you. the search warrants reveal that adam lanza and his mother had nra certificates. the nra issued a statement saying the newtown killer and his mother were not members of the gun lobby group. i want to bring in richard feldman, president of the independent firearm owners association. welcome back to you. the nra were very quick today to say if anyone says these two
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were members of the nra, we will sue you for defamation. clearly pretty defensive about it all. having said that, the police have revealed they found certificates, nra certificates for both adam lanza and his mother, and they found a pistol shooting training manual produced by the nra in adam lanza's bedroom. what can we read into that? what are these likely to be? >> well, an nra certificate just means i'll assume that they either attended a class or obtained the material that's available in libraries all across the country. it means nothing that they had a certificate. even if they were members, it means nothing. >> well, except of course that the nra persists in saying that their members are law-abiding citizens. now, by that criteria, adam lanza right up to the moment that he set off for sandy hook was by all accounts, a law-abiding citizen.
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>> i think it's actually the problem when you deal with this, the most difficult of all the firearm misusage issues, the negligent misuse, the intentional criminal misuse and this, the deranged shooter misuse. just because you have a mental problem doesn't mean you're violent. if anything, probably people with mental issues are less violent than the average citizen. so let's not go on a witch hunt against people with mental illness. this is a very difficult and sensitive issue because it butts up against so many of the values in a free society between the rights of individuals and the rights merely of somebody who dresses differently, speaks funny. at what point do we get society involved? these are very difficult and complicated questions and they don't lend themselves to simple solutions. >> well, i certainly agree with
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that. what i would say to you, though, is in adam lanza's case, he wasn't classified as mentally ill. he may have been suffering from asperger's or autism. they're not mental illnesses by the raw definition of that phrase. they probably wouldn't have prohibited him from lawfully buying firearms. so you're left with somebody who is able to readily and legally go and purchase whatever he likes in america, and this comes back to my biggest concern about this. what is the problem, really, ideologically even for the nra who has lots of members obviously who like guns, what is the problem in just reducing the freedom of people like adam lanza to buy assault rifles like an ar-15? >> well, the problem is that we're using terminology very loosely and we have to be very careful when we use terminology that we're even talking about the same thing at the same time. these guns are not assault weapons. let me share with you something,
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piers. my definition of an assault weapon that doesn't parse the english language and works every time. any loaded firearm pointed at me is an assault weapon. it's really of little value to go what caliber it is, how many rounds. if i'm being shot, this isn't good. nobody wants to be shot. if we focus our attention in this country clearly and carefully on the problems, then we can actually discuss them like intelligent adults and we need to have the intelligent adult discussion on these many problems in america. what do we do? the standard for incarcerating people and putting them in a mental institution is you must be able to prove that they are a danger to themselves or others. well, we know adam lanza certainly was but we didn't know it in advance. and even if people suspected it, how do we deal with that? we really need to have the
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mental health community, the psychiatric association, help us better define those causes and those moments when we can as a society act before a tragedy occurs and not wring our hands afterwards saying gee, i knew something was wrong but no one did anything. >> here's the problem again that
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anyone else had some issues, from having access to those firearms. even if she had done that, we can't sit here and say a tragedy wouldn't have occurred. all we can be clearer on is that the tragedy wouldn't have occurred with those particular firearms. that, we can probably say. but you don't need a firearm to
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cause horrible tragedies. a gallon of gasoline can cost the lives of 100 people or more. we have seen it in brazil. we saw it in the bronx in the 1980s. the happy land fire, one gallon of gasoline, 87 people were killed. you don't need a gun if your intent is to cause mayhem. >> but you do, you think, need a situation in america where you have more gun murders a year than the next 22 of the richest countries in the world combined. >> well, we have some serious problems in this country but our politicians really don't want to address the problems and have that intelligent adult discussion. for example, the relationship in this country between our war on drugs and the criminal misuse of guns. most police that i've talked to in narcotics say half of all violent gun related misuse is directly related to control over
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the illegal market in drugs, including marijuana. why can't we have a discussion about these issues? they're related, they're interconnected, and it's time we act like the adults we want to be and talk about these issues. >> okay. i think we've just proved that you can do that. i'm grateful to you for joining me. >> thank you for having me. next, my all-star panel and the gun control battle turns personal between the nra's wayne lapierre and new york's mayor bloomberg. whoa! nobody insures more bikes than progressive.
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little kids. that was her goal. and she died doing it. >> that was the last i ever saw jessie alive. >> a new ad calling for gun control featuring families who lost their children at newtown. we did something special the last few days. we conducted an informal count of u.s. senators asking them whether or not they supported dianne feinstein's proposed ban on assault weapons which was never allowed to get to the senate floor. the number's not official. in some cases the answer wasn't quite as simple as yes or no. the current total, 30 senators said they would support the ban. 44 said they would oppose it. 16 had no response. 10 took no position. the 16 that haven't responded we should name them. bennett from colorado, cantwell from washington. chambliss from georgia. corker from tennessee. mccaskill from missouri. fisher from nebraska. heinrich from new mexico. johnson from south dakota. merkley from oregon. paul from kentucky. scott from south carolina.
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shaheen from new hampshire. udall from colorado. another udall from new mexico. vitter from louisiana. my message to you, senators, is shame on you. your salaries are paid by the american people. they're entitled to know whether you would or would not have voted for or against senator feinstein's ban on assault weapons, the type of weapon that killed those poor children at sandy hook. i suggest you find it in yourselves to come back with a response, yes or no. so that your constituents, the people in your states, know where you stand. let's now bring in my all-star panel. van jones, president of rebuild the dream. dana lash and grover norquist, president of americans for tax reform and an nra board member. welcome to you all. van jones, i just spoke to richard feldman who was pretty close to the nra leadership for quite awhile and the message is loud and clear from the nra as it always is. more guns and you'll deal with gun violence. what do you say to that? >> well, i just think people are
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just flabbergasted to hear this. the idea that the kind of gun, the size of gun, the kind of magazine, well, then, fine, just pass out bazookas. start selling neutron bombs on the open market and when people start using them, say it's not the owner -- i mean, it's just the bazooka owner. obviously the size of the cartridge matters. obviously the kind of weapon matters. that's why you can't buy bazookas or neutron bombs or weaponized drones because these things matter. it's very, very frustrating, the shame that i see right now is that on the one hand we're not doing enough about mental health, but then we have people who are hiding behind the fact that we're not doing one thing to stop us from doing anything else. that's wrong, too. >> marco rubio said today we's warned he will filibuster any new gun legislation. how can that be an appropriate response to what happened at sandy hook? >> well, simply because we have gun laws already on the books.
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most of the proposals are simply redundancy. why are we paying individuals to go and essentially waste taxpayer dollars to argue laws that we already have on the books. laws which either aren't enforced or criminals don't obey them simply because that's what criminals don't do. criminals are called criminals because they don't follow law. >> right. so adam lanza had two rifles, a bebe gun, a starter pistol, four more weapons he took to school including the ar-15, 1600 rounds of ammunition in his house, 12 knives, three samurai swords, a bayonet, eye protection, binoculars, paper targets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. and he went and did what he did. at what point, dana, do you say you know what, we're just going to make it tougher for people to be able to have this kind of arsenal? >> well, piers, you realize that adam lanza according to the "l.a. times," the "portland observer" he did try to purchase a firearm.
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connecticut's gun laws prohibited him from doing that. the gun laws worked in the sense they prohibited him from purchasing a firearm. now, as to whether or not his mother should have had her firearms perhaps stored a little bit better and kept away from her son, that's another topic of discussion. but again, he stole firearms, he committed a crime to obtain a firearm which he then used illegally. >> grover norquist, you're on the board of the nra. the nra it seems to me has a lot of very reasonable members, many of whom tweet me. if you're watching now, you want to tweet me, let me know if you're an nra member. they can be quite rational and they say look, we have no real problem with background checks. we don't have any problem with more investment in mental health and so on. not even much of a problem with the high capacity magazines. they're not too sure about assault weapons. they are quite rational in what they say but the leadership almost seem to me to be, particularly wayne lapierre, completely outrageous. utterly insensitive, totally uncompromising.
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why is that? >> well, i think if you look at the history of gun laws, make a list of which cities and states have the most oppressive gun laws. you'll find they also have more crime and more shootings. there's actually, if you look at the science, liberals are always saying we should look at the science, yet they don't want to look at the existing science on whether gun laws make us safer or less safe. john lock did the first study of all the counties in united states and where you had concealed carry permits, more gun ownership by citizens, you actually had significantly less crime, hundreds and thousands of fewer murders, fewer rapes. what you don't have reported in the news is the fact that those states that put in concealed carry laws decades ago and have more people carrying guns are safer to live in than ones that ban it. so when you ask why don't we do something stupid, the answer is
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because we have looked at the statistics, because we have looked at the science, and flat earthers should not be passing new laws. >> how do you explain that as i said to mr. feldman earlier, america has between 11,000 and 12,000 gun murders a year, 18,000 gun suicides a year, 100,000 americans are hit by gunfire a year. and you look at someone like britain or australia or japan or i could name dozens of other countries that have pretty strict gun control laws, and just have negligible gun deaths. literally, like 40 or 50 people a year get killed. how do you explain that, grover, in any rational way that convinces me that countries that don't have guns in mass circulation have almost no gun crime? >> well, if you compare apples and apples and look at the united states, obviously brazil and south africa and other countries have a great number of gun crimes and they have very serious gun laws, so gun laws
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haven't solved the problem in other countries, and where you put in more gun laws in australia and britain you've had more crime in general. more robberies, more crime. they become less safe. in the united states, compare the states, 50 or 57, however you want to count them, they all have different gun laws and different -- >> let me get van in here. he's shaking his head vigorously. van? >> well, first of all, that's actually not true but i want to say a couple things. >> wait a minute. it is true. >> it is true. it is true. >> hold on a second. it's not true. >> you can't deny the science. you're a science denier, van. >> you going to let me talk? >> talk about gun laws and statistics. >> i'm with you. i'm for statistics. here's what's actually true. this is not a debate about concealed carry. you want to move the argument over to something that nobody's arguing about. nobody's arguing about concealed carry. people are arguing about military style weapons on the
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streets of america and whether or not that is a good thing or bad thing. >> that's a false premise. that's a false premise. >> no. it's a false premise? that's the entire debate in washington, d.c. right now. >> i'm tired of this talking point being put out there. first and foremost, let's get something straight. military style assault weapons are not out on the street. we are talking about semiautomatic weapons, weapons that are capable of select fire -- >> dana, dana -- >> no, i'm not going to let this go anymore, piers. >> you're just -- >> stop conflating. >> general stanley mcchrystal, general stanley mcchrystal used the phrase, forget us, forget van, forget me. one of the great military commanders of the last 20 years in america says these were military style weapons. so is he wrong? do you know more about these weapons than general mcchrystal does? >> general mcchrystal is also of your same ideology so i want to put that out there first and foremost. there is a deliberate effort to conflate the types of firearms.
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i do not own a military style assault weapon just because what, a firearm looks scary, you call it military assault? do you realize that one of my children has a bebe gun that looks like an ar-15? is that going to be considered a military style assault weapon? it sounds silly and -- >> adam lanza killed -- wait a minute. wait a minute. adam lanza as we now know in the space of 300 seconds, using an ar-15, killed 26 people, dana. >> he reloaded four times. >> he had a magazine for 30 bullets. are you telling me, are you telling me that -- >> anyone can reload. >> let me finish. are you telling me that doesn't qualify as an assault weapon? >> by the technical definition, no, piers. anything can be qualified as an assault weapon if you stab someone with a spoon, it can be qualified as an assault weapon. >> you're equating stabbing somebody with a spoon to shooting dead 26 people in less than five minutes? really, dana? really? talk about stabbing somebody
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with a spoon -- >> piers, you can take a speed loader and reload a revolver, 150 rounds. that means he had to reload four times. the only reason he stopped was because he heard authorities. van, this is the strategy of the people who deliberately want to disarm individuals. you guys talk about magazine -- >> hold on a second. hold on a second. >> let van have his say. >> this is the conscious strategy on the part of the pro-gun folks, to constantly bring things back around to things that don't make any sense. you're talking about people stabbing people with spoons. if that was a problem we had in america, people stabbing people with spoons, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. what we're talking about is funeral after funeral after funeral. what we're talking about are our children being gunned down and what we're talking about are common sense measures. not confiscating guns. we're not talking about that. we're talking about common sense measures that 90% of americans agree with and the majority of gun owners agree with.
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when you guys get on television, you don't talk like the people who actually are the gun owners in america. what you talk like are people who want to turn the conversation in a direction that has nothing to do -- >> by the way, the latest cbs poll shows that support for these gun control measures is tanking. this is -- let me finish my thought. >> no. >> then i want to let you answer. i'm tired of this uneducation when it comes to using terms about firearms. let's use -- >> you want it to be about terms and words. what we're talking about is funeral after funeral. [ speaking simultaneously ] >> one at a time. >> what's the difference between 30 rounds and what's the difference between seven rounds? piers morgan, let me ask you a question. >> let me explain to you the difference. let me explain the difference. let me ask you a question. the difference between 30 and seven is 23. it could save 23 lives if there was a federal ban on these magazines. >> seven deaths are okay with you, then? seven lives lost are okay? okay.
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seven lives lost to you are all right. >> better than losing 30, yes, it is. >> i'm just trying to establish where you draw the line. where do you draw the line at preventing the deaths of children, piers? >> i would love to draw the line, i would love to draw the line, i would love to draw the line, dana, at zero gun deaths in america. >> so you do believe in disarmament, then. >> zero gun deaths. >> that's the answer that i wanted. >> when did i say disarmament? wait a minute. you talk about conflating the argument. dana, when did i say disarmament? >> i'm using your logic and going down that road. if you're talking about limiting magazines, first and foremost, magazines are universal. i can make one in my garage. >> i want zero gun deaths. let me finish. we have to go to break. i said i wanted zero gun deaths. you announce that meant i wanted disarmament. that's the problem with the pro-gun debate. let's take a break.
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back with van jones, dana loesch and grover norquist. a quick tweet from steven smith who says where can you buy these deadly assault spoons? maybe dana can help him with that later. let's move on. >> really, it goes over people's heads. stabbing deaths every day. >> let's move on. it was just a little joke. let's turn to gay marriage. grover, i want to play you an astonishing piece of tape, really. yesterday we had bill o'reilly almost converting to gay marriage.
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today, rush limbaugh joined in. listen to this. >> this issue is lost. i don't care what the supreme court does. this is now inevitable and it's inevitable because we lost the language on this. we lost the issue when we started allowing the word marriage to be bastardized and redefined by simply adding words to it. >> is he right? is the gay marriage debate lost to those that oppose it? >> it's an interesting question, obviously, once you get the government into defining something, they're going to mess it up. marriage for a lot of people is a religious sacrament and any of the abrahamic faiths, yet the government should be enforcing contracts, if people want a contract with who they live with and how they want to pass on their estates, for years we worked with gay groups trying to get rid of the death tax because
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that was one of the discriminatory factors there. i think there are a number of laws that the government's got itself into that we need to extricate it. if the government was less involved in marriage and defining it and regulating it, we might be better off, everybody. >> dana, what do you think? >> i'm not quite sure whether or not it's lost. i do agree that the language has been muddled and just the two cases that are before the supreme court right now, i don't think that both of them will be tossed out but the defense of marriage act especially where it concerns insurance benefits and engaging in contracts, i think people should be able to enter into contractual agreements with each other. there shouldn't be any sort of stipulation on that. that's where at the same time, while i've told individuals who have been out there advocating for same sex marriage and wanting to bring the government in, ask someone who is a christian conservative, i don't want to bring the government in to defend my faith or to defend or define marriage. i think that's something that should be left to the people. we don't have the government involved in baptisms or taking
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of the sacrament. so i don't think that government should be involved in marriage, either. i think bringing the government in period is a bad idea. >> okay. van jones, this sort of reminds me of conversations in america in the '50s and '60s, which would go along the lines of i don't mind having thought about this quite carefully, black people using the same bus as me but i'm not really ready for them to come to the same school. is it that kind of repositioning? >> it's sad. first of all, we are on the verge of one of the great breakthroughs and achievements in human freedom, human equality. i can't tell you how proud i am to be in a country where people, where the freedom to marry is going to be available to everybody very soon. rush limbaugh is right. but the idea that suddenly now government is getting involved in marriage, government has been involved in marriage from the very beginning and nobody complained about it as long as it was for heterosexuals. i'll say something else. my marriage would have been illegal in a lot of parts of this country very recently,
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because i'm in a mixed race marriage. so what i know is that -- and the government was involved in regulating that. so what i think we've got to recognize now is that there's -- no matter what happens, this is a great thing about america, there is an expiration date on some of this bigotry that is in our laws because the next generation doesn't want to hear any of this stuff. 70%, 80% of young people in america think that if you love somebody, marry them. the people who are messing up marriage in america is the heterosexuals. they're the ones getting divorced. the people who are bringing marriage back and making marriage mean something is the gay community that's fighting for that right. now marriage means something. the kardashians are doing more to destroy traditional marriage than gay people ever did. >> a couple points really quick. i can't compare gay marriage to what black americans have gone through because in the bible, i want to point this out because this is how christians look at this. nowhere in the bible -- >> i'm a christian. >> it's not mentioned in the bible.
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>> that's not true. that's not true. i'm a christian. i'm a christian. i'm a christian. i'm going to tell you right now -- [ speaking simultaneously ] >> the curse of hamm was used to say we are the victims -- >> are you trying to get old testament? remember, the new covenant with christ, the new covenant with god, that's why we have the new testament. >> dana, dana, dana, dana -- [ speaking simultaneously ] >> dana, dana, dana, what do you say to van's point that it wasn't so long ago he wouldn't have been able to get married without the help of the government interfering? isn't that an incredibly salient point? >> you know what, republicans all throughout, piers, i agree with that because republicans, that's why you have the republican party because they split from democrats and split from the kkk, the militant faction of that. they didn't believe they were the original abolitionists, the
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frederick douglass republicans. they thought that was horrible. that's why you had individuals fight for the civil rights act. >> unfortunately, we've got to move on. i think you made some very good points which i think are pretty inarguable. the fact you couldn't have got married 50 years ago says it all. let's talk quickly about a sad day. barbara walter is going to retire apparently in may of next year. 80 odd years old, incredible energy. one of the most remarkable television journalists really ever. what do you make of that, grover norquist? >> well, she's had a tremendous career. she's been great fun to watch and listen to and learn from, and i'm sure this is the sequester's fault. >> dana, can we reach any point of agreement on barbara walters? >> i grew up watching barbara walters. it's nice to see a strong woman with such a great -- such an accomplished career in the industry and it's sort of sad to see her go because of that. >> van?
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>> i had the honor to be on "the view" with her, watching her. she's one of the best ever. she's able to keep the empathy high but she asks the tough questions and i just think it's a moment in history. >> yeah. very sad day. it will be a great valedictory fly-by tour lasting a year. we wish her all the very best. you have been one of the great interviewers in television history. i for one will be glad you're gone because you get so many great bookings which i may now have a sniff at. thank you to my all-star panel. i really enjoyed this. we'll get you back soon. coming next, franklin graham joins me to talk same sex marriage, politics and faith in america as we head to easter weekend.
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we need to come together to pray, to pray for these families that have lost their children, their loved ones, and we need to pray that god will just put his arms around these families and comfort them.
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>> franklin graham, shortly after the shootings in newtown. he's of course one of the most influential spiritual leaders in america. he's president and ceo of the billy graham evangelical association. welcome back to you, sir. i was just noting that on the "usa today" /gallup top ten list of the most admired men in the world, for 56 consecutive years since 1955, your father has been on that list. isn't that quite extraordinary? >> it is, but you know, my father is a very humble man, and if you were to ask him about that, you know, he would just kind of say aw, shucks and want to talk about something else. >> he's 95 now. >> he will be 95 this year, next. >> nelson mandela is around the same age. he's pretty sick at the moment. do they know each other? >> i don't think they ever met. no. but my father did one of his crusades, one of his meetings, in south africa when it was under apartheid and he refused
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to go unless he could have an integrated meeting and the south african government at that time changed its law for that meeting to allow my father to have an integrated meeting which was the first of its kind in that country at that time. >> how amazing. let's turn -- the big issue i think for a lot of christians in this country in particular, gay rights and gay marriage. i want to play a clip of what you said about this recently. >> there's no way you can have a family with two females or two males. if you just think biologically how god made us, our plumbing is completely different. he made us male and he made us female. there's no room for us to consider gay marriage or same sex marriage, because that is redefining what god gave us. >> here's my theory about all this. i think it's a generational thing. the reason i say that, there's a
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recent poll, cnn/orc conducted very recently. federal government should recognize same sex marriages conducted in states that allow them. over65 years old, only 39% agree with that premise. even in states that allow them, they didn't want it to happen. but in 18 to 34 year olds, 77%, more than double. i don't meet anybody under the age of 30 that really gives a damn about the gay marriage debate. they don't get it, because to them, it's not this big taboo subject. do you think there's some merit to that argument? >> i'm sure there's some merit to the argument but you have to go back to what does god say. it's not what i say at all. it's what god says, piers. god is the one who defined marriage, not government, but it's god. it's between one man and one woman. and so to come and try to redefine what god has ordained, what god has blessed and what god has given would be a great mistake for our government and a great mistake for this nation.
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>> but van jones was saying to me earlier there were times in the earlier part of last century when he as a black man in america, would have not had the same marital rights as you or i. and the government had to step in and change that. change all sorts of race laws in america. and quite rightly. aren't we in the same position here? >> and we have many problems today. but marriage is defined between a man and a woman. and, of course, during the race issues, it was a black man and a white woman or vice versa could they get married. and that was the debate that we had and decided, yes. but, still, that is a marriage between a man and a woman. and we're not two men and not two women. again, i don't make god's laws. god is the one who makes the laws. these are his standards. i bereave there's 190 stations and there is 1 that have improved in the last 10, 12 years, gay marriage.
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this would be a big mistake if our nation went down this road. >> let's take a short break. there's a pletty explosive book coming out called "killing jesus zap technology. arrival. with hertz gold plus rewards, you skip the counters, the lines, and the paperwork. zap. it's our fastest and easiest way to get you into your car. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz.
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back now, our special guest, franklin graham. the book "killing jesus" hasn't come out yet. but i'm interviewing the author tomorrow, on good friday. and i suppose the main point that it makes is the murder of jesus christ wasn't so much a religious thing as a krupt, political assassination, really, of somebody who was threatening the political powers that be. >> you know, this is good. i'm glad you asked that because i know a little bit about this subject. god, the bible tells us that god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that who so ever believed in him shouldn't perish but ever lasting life. the problem that we have, and you've been talking about the gun issue tonight. you can stack all the gun laws on this table and not one gun can change the human heart. not one gun law can change the human heart. only god can change that heart. the bible says that we have sinned. and our sins separate us from
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god. but god sent his son, jesus christ and jesus christ willingingly gave his life and he went to the cross. and tomorrow, we remember, good friday, where he took our sins to the cross. he was nailed to the cross. he died to shed his blood on the cross. but easter is coming. and on the third day, god raised his son to life. jesus christ is not dead. he's not still in the tomb. he's not still hanging on the cross. he's alive. and he can come into every person's heart that is willing to accept him by faith and he can change that heart. and america has a heart problem. and we have turned our hearts against god and against his laws and against his stay chuts. we need to come back to god and we need to come back to him through faith and his son jesus christ so our hearts can heal. the killing of jesus, he gave his life freely. willingingly. yes, there were religious leaders behind it, all of the above. but it was all part of god's
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plan to save you and to save me. i'm a sinner. >> i suspect we're all on different levels of sinning. >> oh, no. we're all sinners. and jesus christ died for you and me. isn't that great? and that's worth a high five. >> totally. >> i'm going to try to be with him on sunday, yes. >> what message would he have to people on easter, do you think? >> that jesus christ has risen. and he's a live and he can come into your heart and he can forgive your sins. but you've got to be willing to invite him. there's no other way. you have to come to him by faith. the bible says by grace are you -- say through faith, it's not a work salvation. but it's through faith. simply believing god and accepting by faith that jesus christ is god's son who died through your sins. and if you're willing to believe that and accept it, god will forgive our sins. but he'll heal our hearts and that's what america needs today. we need to have our hearts
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feeled. >> franklin graham, happy easter to you. good to see you. >> good to see you, too. i'm up next, but now i'm singing the heartburn blues. hold on, prilosec isn't for fast relief. cue up alka-seltzer. it stops heartburn fast. ♪ oh what a relief it is!
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