eastern time. town hall with president obama, guns in america. tonight donald trump is weighing in and spoke with wolf blitzer about how he would make americans safer from gun violence. he also trained his verbal fire and considerable under his leading republican rival ted cruz with key votes in iowa and new hampshire and suggesting an opponent is a foreigner. we first learned about this yesterday by the time trump sat down with wolf blitzer it was a punch up. senator cruz told dana bash that the story jumped a shark clearly, donald trump does not share that view. >> let's talk about an issue in the news. senator ted cruz is your rival in iowa according to the polls right now. the fact he was born in canada has come up whether or not he's a natural born citizen, you know the constitution says no person

except a natural born citizen shall be eligible to the office of president. do you believe senator ted cruz is a natural born citizen? >> i don't know to be honest and i like him a lot and i don't like the issue. i don't like even bringing it up and it wasn't me that brought it up. it was "the washington post", one of the questions they asked me was this question and, you know, they went with it and i wasn't very aggressive with the answer except one thing. you can't have somebody running if the democrats are going to at some point and one of them threatened to bring a suit along time ago but how can you have a nominee running, you know, against a democrat, like whoever it may be, probably hillary clinton because she'll probably escape the e-mail problem, which is disgusting that she's able to because other people have -- are doing far less had very, very major consequences. it's been terrible. it's probably going to be hillary. how do you run against the democrat, whoever it may be and have this hanging over your head?

a lawsuit -- >> he says he's natural born citizen because his mother was u.s. born, u.s. citizen and as a result he's a natural born citizen. >> well, i hope he's right. i want to win this thing fair and square. i don't want to win on this point. what the democrats are saying, though, he had a passport. >> he says he didn't have a passport. >> canada passport. >> his aids say he didn't have a passport. he may have been eligible. >> i think that's wonderful if he didn't and never understood how he did. everyone tells me he had a joint -- >> he was born in canada. >> here is what i think, what i think i'd do. i'd go and seek a declaratory judgment if i was ted. >> what does that mean? >> go to court. >> which court? >> you go to federal court to ask for what's called a declaratory judgment. you go in seeking the decision of the court without a court case. you go right in. you go before a judge. you do it quickly. it can go quickly. declaratory judgment. it's very good. i used it on numerous occasions. i've been pretty good with it. when there is a doubt because

there is a doubt. what ted doesn't want to happen so he doesn't want to be in there. i mean, i think i'm going to win. i'm leading in every poll by a lot. but i have a lot of friends in the republican party. i have a lot of friends all over the place, all right? if ted should eke it out and i hope that doesn't happen, and he's got this cloud over his head, i don't think it's going to be possible for him to do very well. i don't think it's actually possible for the republicans to let it happen because he'll have this cloud. what you do is go in immediately like tomorrow, this afternoon, you go to federal court, you ask for declaratory judgment. that's -- you want the court to rule and once the court rules you have your decision. >> but that could take a long time for the court -- >> declaratory -- >> because the supreme court never really ruled on what is a natural born citizen. >> that's the problem. there is this doubt. people have doubt. again, this was not my suggestion. i didn't bring this up. a reporter asked me the question but the democrats have brought it up and you had somebody, a congressman say no matter what

happens, we're going to be suing on this matter. that's a tough matter for ted. again, i didn't bring it up, wolf. this is brought up and this was asked of me as a question and not the first time it's been asked but it's being asked by a lot of different people to a lot of different people that are running. >> because you know your critics are saying you're doing ted cruz what you tried to do to president obama where he was born, his birth certificate. >> who knows about obama. >> his mother was a u.s. citizen born in kansas -- >> who knows. who knows. who cares right now. we're talking about something else, okay? i have my own theory on obama. some day i'll write another book that will do successfully. look, with ted, he should ask for declare tory judgment. he have a good relationship. this would clear it up. you go into court and ask for declare tory judgment and the judge will ruleatory judgment a

judge will rule , once he rules they can't bring a lawsuit up. >> you say you will deport the undocumented immigrants in the united states, 11 million, 12 million, as many as there are but the good ones will come back to the united states. he says -- >> are you ready? >> he's not letting -- >> ted was in favor of amnesty. they have been fighting about what is weaker? now all of a sudden and i was watching ted the other day and it was very interesting. he said and we must build a wall, okay? and my wife said, darling, he just said build a wall. that's the first person that said build a wall. i've been saying it for five years and he said and we will build a wall. now he's taking my idea for the wall. i'm glad he's taken it. it's the right thing to do. i'll build the wall and a right wall and politicians don't know how to build walls or anything but i'll build a wall and have mexico pay for the wall but all of a sudden, they are trying to come over into my territory, no.

we will get people out and the people that come back will come back legally. they will come back legally. we'll have a country again. we'll have strong borders. border patrol people are fantastic. i got to know them well. we'll have a wall. i heard just the other day, ted said he never said about wall before. all of a sudden he's talking about a wall and i don't blame him. >> he says he's not going to let any illegal immigrants come back to the united states. >> you should let them come back legally. i want people to come in. i want immigrants to come in but they have to come in legally. and i want a lot of people to come in. i want to have really smart people. really good people. really hard workers come back in but they have to come in legally. so i want people to come back in to the country. >> let's talk a little bit about the wall you want to build. how long would it take to build that wall? >> very quickly and i would get the environmental impacts the part of the reason the wall wasn't built, they couldn't get an environmental impact

improved. the statement for a wall where we're looking for -- you can almost say military purposes and that way you avoid it as an example in the south china sea, china is building islands, massive islands that are being military bases. they are taking out and dredging the sea. they are dredging the ocean. they don't go about -- >> you say mexico is going to pay for the wall. >> mexico is going to pay. >> are they going to put the money up front? how do you do that? >> they will pay in one of three or four different ways. i'll charge a terrific. i'm friendly with mexico and i employ thousands of people, mexicans are great people. they like me. i'm doing very well with the hispanics and in nevada leading in the polls because i create jobs. i'll take jobs back from china. here is the thing. mexico is making a fortune. you look at the trade deficit that we have with mexico. they are making a fortune. ford is going to build a $2.5 billion plant in mexico.

nibsco is moving their big plant. >> they say they will not pay for the wall. >> then we'll tax their goods coming into the country and they will pay. they are making a fortune. the wall is peanuts compared to the kind of money they are making. that's why they are going to pay. when i say that to politicians, they don't know what i'm talking about. i'm a really good business guy. when i say to politicians that mexico is going to pay for the wall, they all smile. they think i'm kidding. i'm not kidding. mexico is going to pay. the reason is they are making a fortune off of the united states far more than the cost of the wall. they will pay. >> one quick note, senator john mccain weighed in when asked on on a radio show, he answered quote i don't know the answer to that. when we come back, donald trump on america's role as global policeman and how he aims to change that and his thoughts on gun control and what he would do about the tens of thousands killed every year by firearms. a ride with the nypd, one of the

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before the break, we saw donald trump say ted cruz once had a canadian passport and said senator cruz should go to federal court and ask a judge to rule him american enough to be president. our senior legal analyst jeffrey toobin says that's simply not the way the federal court works and trump had controversial things to say on foreign policy. here is part two of his conversation with our wolf blitzer. >> i've heard everything you've said on foreign policy over the past several months. there seems to be and correct me if i'm wrong an emerging trump doctrine. you want china to take care of north korea and russia to take

care of syria, you want germany to take care of ukraine. basically, you want to outsource all of these sensitive issues. >> i want help. we're involved with ukraine but germany doesn't care. why are we the one that's out there and putin said very nice things about me. he understands i get it. okay? i get it. most people don't get it. but you look at what's going on in the world. we're the policemen of the world. we owe $19 trillion. we just made a ridiculous budget, the approval in about like 15 second, i never saw a budget of that size. who would ever believe a budget like that gets approved so quickly. the only thing obama negotiates well with, frankly, are the republicans. he always seems to come out on top. iran beats him. everybody beats him. we're the laughing stock all over the world but the only one he beats are republicans and republicans should be ashamed of themselves for allowing that budget to pass.

we're at $19 trillion plus we're going to be at $21 trillion right now. so yeah, i want other countries to get involved. >> let's talk about other tensions. as bad as the middle east is, it's getting worse, tensions between saudi arabia and iran. the execution, the rand sacking and burning of the saudi embassy in tehran. first of all, would you condemn saudi arabia for the beheadings? >> i don't like it. are they supposed to be a great ally. i don't like to see it. they executed all of these people, who knows. i mean, here in this country, if we execute like one person a year, it's like a major event. they do it like routinely. nevertheles nevertheless, saudi arabia we picked and i have friends, very good people but saudi arabia has to pay. if we're going to protect them from iran, which we made a super power, we gave them $150 billion, we essentially gave

them the right to make nukes, if they don't make them, they will buy them but will be doing -- >> saudis hated this nuclear deal with iran. >> i hated it more than them. >> i know -- >> israel hated it -- >> the uae. are you concerned saudis given this tension with iran, saudi arabia decided we'll go buy a nuclear bomb from pakistan or something like that. the issue is really serious. >> i said that that deal and i said it to cnn, i said it to anybody that would listen is going to lead to great nuclear proliferation and that's what is happening. >> because the saudi foreign minister used to be the ambassador and told me last year he wasn't ruling out the possibility that saudi arabia could go ahead and develop or maybe even buy a nuclear bomb. they have a lot of money. >> they have plenty of money, believe me. they have plenty of money. when i see yemen with that long border along saudi arabia and i saw the event the other day with

the in iran, which was caused in my opinion by the government of iran as an excuse to go in because they want to take over saudi arabia and get the oil. and the only reason they wanted yemen is because now they have a nice long border in. perfect feeder into saudi arabia. at some point, we have to be reimbursed. we actually pay rent. we pay rent. we're protecting them. why are we paying rent? they have to pay up. south korea has to pay up. germany, we protect germany. you know that, right? we protect so many different countries and get nothing. >> 40,000 u.s. troops in germany 70 years -- >> they pay us practically nothing. they make mercedes, they are a big one economically. one thing i do very early, i want to protect a lot of people but they have to help us economically. we are becoming a third world

country. we are a deader nation. $19 trillion and the new very dumb budget that was approved by everybody two weeks ago, that's going to add at least another $2 trillion. we're $21 trillion. >> you heard the president of the united states, 30,000 americans die each year from gun violence. about half suicides. what would you do to prevent that kind of slaughter? >> the first thing is protect the second amendment. i wouldn't use executive orders to do this. you got to get people. our country was founded on the basis you're supposed to negotiate back and forth with different members of different parties and you come to a conclusion through negotiation and compromise. you don't go and just keep signing orders and all he's doing is taking chunks out of the second amendment. that wouldn't happen. you know -- >> you don't want convicted felons or mentally ill people to be able to go to a gun --

anyplace -- >> anyplace. >> online and get access to a gun. >> whether you say anyplace, we have very strong laws on the books but the federal government -- >> gun shows for example. you don't want bad people having access to guns. >> when you get into the gun show that's a slippery slope. that stops a father from giving his child a -- >> what about -- >> let me go a step further. >> the background checks makes sense, right? >> we have to protect the second amendment. we have no choice. we have to do that. it's very important. >> the president believes in the second amendment too he says. >> i don't think he does and hillary is a disaster. hillary wants to take the guns away. hillary will be worse than obama. hillary, i can't imagine this. she wants to take the guns. it's interesting, in california when you had two people, these two horrible people shoot people that gave them a wedding party. these people that got killed gave them a wedding party. anyway, they went in. they shot. if a couple people in that room

had guns or if a couple of people in paris had guns, you wouldn't have had 130 people or 14 people in california laying dead with more to follow because you have so many people so badly wounded. if people in paris as an example, which is the toughest gun control place on earth they say, paris and france, now if you're a bad guy, you can't have a gun. if you're a good guy, you can. if they had guns here or here on their ankle and those guys walked in there and started shooting, it would have been a much different story. it's very interesting. so many people that believe in the gun control when we have these debates, they always lose the debate to me and i call them up the next day, how do you feel? i haven't changed my mind. i don't know what it is. we need the second amendment. if it is going to be changed, it's got to be done through a process, not through executive orders. >> wolf blitzer joins us now. i want to ask you about foreign policy in a second but so

fascinating to hear donald trump talk about ted cruz and refusing to say whether he believes cruz is a natural born citizen which in the past he had given a different answer to abc to jonathan karl saying that a lot of legal experts looked at it and he got a clean bill of health on this one. now he's saying well he's hearing a lot of people asking this question. >> right, and it's getting closer and closer to iowa and some of the more recent polls in iowa show that ted cruz is actually ahead of donald trump in iowa. so it's getting tense and you saw him even suggest that ted cruz favored amnesty, that he wasn't stronger on illegal immigration than he is. this will get i suspect less than four weeks a bit tougher between these two front runners, shall we say at least in iowa. donald trump is way ahead nationally in almost all of the polls and ahead in new hampshire but in iowa it's close. ted cruz has a solid base especially among the evangelical conservatives. a lot of people suggested to me and i'm sure to you, donald trump is a bit nervous right now that's why all of a sudden an

issue that could have come up a long time ago. the fact ted cruz was actually born in canada raising questions about whether or not he's a natural born citizen eligible to become president of the united states. i assumed that was going to come up awhile ago. it's coming up now less than four weeks before the iowa caucuses. >> it is interesting this notion you brought up of a trump doctrine, he's talking a lot about burden sharing specifically about the u.s. leaning on china when it comes to north korea. in an interview he talked about wanting to bomb the hell out of isis, take iraq's oil. he spoke with a lot of, you know, forcefulness, muscularity when it comes to foreign policy in the past. do you see that as a shift? >> no, because i think over the years he has really wanted to avoid u.s. entanglements. i interviewed him many times and recently in preparation for this interview went over a lot i did in 2012, 2008, 2007 for a long time he's been adamantly opposed to the u.s. involvement in iraq.

he said the united states should have never gotten into iraq. he said years ago president george w. bush was a disaster and should have been i'm peempe. he does have a robust military posture. he wants the u.s. military to be strong to get tough if necessarily but his preference clearly with north korea, syria, ukraine, let others do the work. the united states should not be the international policemen. >> yeah, wolf blitzer, fascinating interview. appreciate it. just ahead tonight, wolf asked donald trump how the u.s. should respond to north korea's claim about testing hydrogen bomb. mr. trump had an answer to the question is, does his plan make sense? details on that ahead. ♪ it's easy to love your laxative when that lax loves your body back. only miralax hydrates, eases and softens to unblock naturally, so you have peace of mind from start to finish. love your laxative. miralax.

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as we've been reporting, north korea's claim exploded, all candidates weighed in. wolf blitzer asked donald trump about it in his interview with the republican front runner. >> would you consider a preemptive strike to destroy north korea's nuclear capabilitys? >> no, because china has total control over them and we have total control over china if we had people that knew what they were doing. we have leadership. we have china because of trade. they are sucking our money out of us, they are taking our money like candy from a baby, and china can come out and frankly they will, you know, they say they don't have that much control over north korea. they have total control because without china, they wouldn't be able to eat. china has to get involved or sov solve that problem and we should

put pressure on china. >> there are almost 1 million north korean troops north of the zone, almost 1 million south korean troops south of the demilitarized zone. >> we have 28,000 soldiers right not middle and we get paid nothing. we get paid peanuts. >> would you pull them out? >> i want south korea to pay us money. i just ordered 4,000 television sets, 4,000 that come from south korea. south korea is a money machine. they pay us peanuts. i have friends from there. they buy my apartments and i do business with them but south korea should pay us and substantially for protecting them. >> you want china to handle the north korea approach? >> they can handle it so easily. they say well, they are not that easy, they are not that easy. they are taunting us and playing games with us. i do it all the time. that's the way i deal in business. it's like they are playing games with us. china should solve that problem and if they don't solve that problem, we should be very tough on them with trade.

meaning, start charging them tax or start cutting them off. you'd have china collapse in about two minutes. >> i've heard -- >> we have great power over china, we just don't know how to use it. >> today china said it firmly opposes nuclear testing. china is north kor rekorea's al it weakened since kim jong un took over as the leader. a lot to discuss. joining me is former presidential advisor david g garrigan and gloria borger. what's your reaction to trump saying that about north korea. you work in republican and democrat. does he have the temperament to deal with a country like north korea? [ laughter ] >> well, he has the strength and the muscularity that are important. you got to have a club in a closet to deal well with a north korea but, you know, he lives in a fantasy world. everything sounds so simple and so easy but when he says we can do all these things with china.

he leaves out the fact that china is a major creditor. we're enhawked to the chinese for well over a million dollars and they can pull the plug on us for things like that. it's in china's interest and china is trying hard. the new leader of china, he's been icy cold toward north koreans but they are worried if they get pushed too hard and will topple the government and then you get chaos on china's border and then what the chinese are worried about is korea becomes one country, a u.s. ally and that's not what they want. you can understand the game they are playing, too. >> gloria, to david's point about the simplicity of what trump says, the proposed strategy north korea and the u.s. should use leverage with china and china should use leverage over north korea sounds good on paper. a lot of people said it's easier said than done. >> yeah, everything is easier said than done. russians should solve the syrian problem. look, it's kind of this over

simplified nationalism to a degree. on the one hand, we're not going to be the world's policemen anymore. let try that solve the problem with north korea and let russia solve the problem. if somebody comes at us, we'll attack back as in we're going to bomb the iraqi oil fields, right? it's this over arching, american exceptionalism and we're going to punch back but otherwise, we're going to step back, which i think appeals very much to the voters he's trying to appeal to right now. >> and david, again, to gloria's point, trump saying the u.s. is the policemen of the world and he wants other countries to get involved with foreign policy by gun as gloria pointed out, he's talked about taking the oil of iraq, unilateral action bombing the hell out of isis. >> well, exactly. anderson, you have to sort of --

this is hard to put well but in essence trump is making good points. it's just when you begin to think it through, it's more complicated. the point we have the russians doing more and the germans ought to be doing more that's called burden sharing and that idea has been around for a long time. the united states has tried to get and there have been moments when we've done it very well. take -- when we kicked saddam out of kuwait and jim maker, secretary of state went around to every country and got them to pay up, we made money out of that deal. it is possible to burden share but you have to do it with great finesse. you can't just sort of do it with blender bust. >> to his defense, donald trump's defense, because i don't want to sound like i'm being all negative here, a lot of people when they are running for office can say things in more simplistic terms than they would actually be able to say once they are in office and bear that

responsibility. >> i totally agree. in fact, barack obama accused hillary clinton of doing that when he said i think we ought to have a no fly zone in syria. he said it's easier when you're campaigning for president than when you actually become president of the united states. i think that's -- i think that's true and i don't think trump, by the way, is the only presidential candidate on the republican side who is doing it because it's in your interest to say look, i have solutions to these problems and they are pretty simple whereas barack obama did not. >> it's often said about a new president, it's not only important who a new president is, it's important who is going to come with the new president. who is going to be on the team and so far, and we -- >> that we don't know with donald trump. >> if we thought donald trump would be surrounded by really sophisticated people, i think a lot of us would be much more comfortable but so far he hasn't shown his hands at all. this is a one-man show and makes people around foreign policy very, very uncomfortable. >> gloria, you heard donald trump refusing to say whether he

believes ted cruz is a natural born citizen. all he's doing is stirring the pot, raising questions, getting people talking about it? >> sure, that's what he's doing. he is behind ted cruz in iowa. folks in iowa like cruz a lot and he's starting to raise questions about him and the subtext of this, anderson, is very much that he's starting to raise the question of whether ted cruz is different, whether he's different because he was born somewhere else and, you know, i think that if you're peeling to a certain slice of the electret, particularly when you're out there on immigration, the way donald trump is and you know he points out that maybe cruz isn't as evangelical as he says because they have to roll, you know, his parents are krcub and on and on. i think he's starting to use this as a wedge against cruz.

i'm not so sure it's going to be effective. >> david, has it effected ted cruz is trying to stay out of the fight with trump? >> i think it's wise for ted cruz not to pick a cruz over this. i don't think it's going to way down on him and at the end of the day ted cruz wants to pick up trump supporters and trump -- trump is very -- is not being very subtle about it. he is doing it in a much more gentleman way than he normally does because he wants cruz voters before this is over. >> fascinating. david garrigan, gloria borger, thanks very much. >> thank you. coming up, "guns in america" my town hall with president obama one night away. jason carroll got an unprecedented ride along next.

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tomorrow night i'll sit down with president obama on guns in america. we'll be hearing multiple view points and a contentious top pick, an issue so politicized and polarized and goals like saving lives seem to have no simple solutions. there are police officers that risk their lives filling a tall order, getting illegal guns off the streets. jason carroll got the

opportunity to ride along. >> reporter: shots fired near a supermarket in brooklyn. more sounds of gunfire captured by another security camera on another new york city street. they are the sounds sergeant jeff hilig and michael rominlo hear every day. >> our number one goal is to make a gun arrest. >> reporter: they both are part of an elite group of officers assigned to the new york city police department's anti crime team. there are about 50 of them who work throughout the city in plain clothes and patrol in unmarked cars. their main task, get illegal guns off the streets. tall order, though, right? >> it's not easy but you have to be persistent and you have to be willing to work hard. >> reporter: this is the first time the anti crime team has allowed news cameras along for a ride. we're in the south bronx, an area police characterize as high crime, one that is also economically depressed. >> that economic depression

breeds crime and brings drugs, drugs bring guns, guns bring violence. >> reporter: how does that make your job more challenging? >> every night, looking for a criminal whose carrying a gun, they know the consequences of carrying that firearm. so they will do whatever is in their power to get away, whether it's to flee on foot, to flee in a car, to shoot it out with the police. >> we do encounter a lot of dangerous situations and at the start of your day, you don't know what you're going to encounter that night. >> reporter: what are you seeing when you recover these illegal guns on the streets? >> whatever they can get your hands on. we recovered from two shot revolvers, semiautomatic firearms held together by duck tape. >> reporter: held together by duck tape? >> yes, shotguns cut down to about a foot. anything that will fire a bullet. my first gun arrest, the gun looked like it was pulled off the titanic it was so old and

rusted. >> reporter: whatever gun is confiscated, it ends up here in queens. any idea how many guns sort of come through this lab on a daily, weekly basis? >> thousands come in each year for examination. >> reporter: according to the nypd, last year some 9,000 guns ended up in the lab, a little more than 3200 of those from gun arrests. hundreds stored in a room he called the library. racks of weapons all makes and models kept for reference such as a world war ii japanese pistol. >> it has the antique look to it. >> reporter: or the most current popular model on the streets. >> is a high point .9 that is commonly seen. >> reporter: this one? any idea why? >> at this time. i couldn't say. >> reporter: each gun goes through a multi step process to determine whether it was used in more than one crime. >> this would be step one with the examination. >> reporter: inspector emanuel walked us through it from the

gun's basic examination to the tank room. why do we call it a tank room? >> because there is a large tank filled with water. >> reporter: i see that here. >> the purpose of this tank is to that we can discharge a weapon and acquire the bullet. >> reporter: where does the bullet end up? >> the bullet will travel through the watt aerocertain distance and drop through the bottom of the tank. >> reporter: the detective is firing into the bullet recovery tank. >> reporter: once a bullet is recovered, it goes under the microscope then tested for fingerprints. >> if there was any fingerprints that were found, they would light up under the light. >> reporter: a lengthy process but one that starts here on the streets every night with a special team tasked with getting guns off the streets. >> we want to go out there, we want to do a good job and make gun arrests. we also want to go home safe and in one piece. it's not easy to balance those two things.

>> incredibly difficult job those guys have. jason obviously joins me now. how effective has the nypd been at getting guns off the streets? >> overall crime is down by 5.8% since 2014. if you look at last year, crime down by 1.7% but even so, anderson, when i spoke to some of the guys who were out there and i asked them to give me some guesstimate in terms of the legal guns they thought were out on the streets, they said that would be like counting the grains of sand on a beach and part of the reason for that is the perpetrators out there aren't just carrying guns around like they used to. for example, what some of them are doing is using a community gun. they are hiding in a gun in a certain spot and a number of people go out there to use the same gun so as nypd tactics change, so do the tactics of the suspects out there on the streets. >> i know obviously the officers don't want to give away tactics

but they were able to discuss some of how they go about this? >> right. one of the things they do is target specific areas they think they are seeing a pattern of crime and when you're out there day in and every night you're able to identify suspicious activity. one thing i found to be interesting is shot spotter technology. these are highly sophisticated cameras that are actually trained to pick up the sound of gunfire and then can relay that information directly to officers like you saw who are out there in the fields. so that way the response time is much, much faster. >> amazing technology. jason carroll, thanks. now to the legal ownership of guns in america, we want to take a closer look at who owns them and where? it's a question easier asked than answered. tom foreman joins me with stats and what they show, tom? >> anderson, it's estimated there are 300 million guns in america, enough for every man, woman and child in the country. we don't know, though, exactly who has them. we've had studies that tried to

figure out who has what, where. the best one comes from the pew research center. if we bring in a map here and make darker the states where we think more people have guns or where they report more guns, you can see that some are considerably more full of guns than others might be and be region, you can see it, as well. the northeast has the smallest number, 25% down here in the southeast it goes to 42% of households owning guns. you move out to the far west, 30% and the midwest has the largest number of gun-owning households, 45%, anderson. >> do we know specifically how old the people are who are owns guns? is there an age range? >> there is. gun owners tend to be over 50 if you look for the majority. we also know something specifically about where they live. for example, if you go into cities, only about 28% of households report having guns and moves up in the suburbs but rural areas, down country side jumps up. 59% there. men are three times more likely

to own guns than women are in this country and by race, the biggest group out there to own them are whites, 46% of white families report having one or more guns in the house, black families down to 21% and hispanics 17%. if you want to look pot l-- politically. republicans tend to dominate suburban and rural areas. that's where most of the guns are. democrats are stronger. you're more likely to have guns in republican household than democratic and if you want to boil it down to what is just the most common gun owner, even though many people of all types own guns, the most common one would be a white republican rural man over the age of 50. anderson? >> tom, thanks very much. just ahead, when president obama announced new executive actions on gun control, he mentioned the gun violence that happened every day in chicago. that same day, yesterday, four people including two teenagers were shot to death in chicago and the stats just since the

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tomorrow night is my town hall with president obama on

guns in america. just yesterday the president announced gun control executive actions. >> our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from movie goers in aurora and lafayette. our unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in blacks burg and santa barbara and high schoolers at columbine and from first graders in new town. first graders. and from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun.

every time i think about those kids it gets me mad. and by the way, it happens on the streets of chicago every day. [ applause ] >> that last line resonates in chicago on the same day the president said it four more people were shot to death in the city. rosa flores has more. >> reporter: before president obama started his emotional speech tuesday against gun violence. two people had been shot in chicago, say police. >> we are the only advanced country on earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. >> soon after he was done speaking that number would jump

to three. by day's end, nine more would be shot, four fatally. two teenagers on chicago's south side. >> the teenagers were walking from a store and they were practically ambushed. >> police say the teens were on a corner when a gray ford explorer drove up and fired multiple gunshots. >> what emotions are you feeling? >> i cry. i cry for that family. i cry that you got to look it them burying your child because he was killed by violence. >> reporter: a few blocks away another teen shot in the thigh by an individual in a dark suv, say police. as night fell the number of dead would continue to go up like this shooting scene on the south side where a 25-year-old was

shot in the abdomen. >> murders have increased by 8% according to chicago police. but if you look at the first few days of the year it's a different picture. ten murders in the first five games. shootings in chicago are up 176%, with 47 shooters in the first five days of 2015 compared to 17 shootings, say police. guns are still flooding the streets of chicago. police say the weapons flow in illegally from surrounding states with more lenient gun laws that fuel organized crime and street gang violence. in the past year alone, chicago police confiscated nearly 11,000 illegal guns. >> people are dying and the constant excuses for inaction no longer do.

>> reporter: the human toll is difficult to ignore and it's weighing heavy on the president. 12 people shot, four dead in his hometown on the very day he made a national call to curb gun violence. >> rosa flores joins us now. 12 shootings in 24 hours on tuesday. what about today? >> reporter: it is considerably slowed down. as of last check with police, two shootings so far. the first, a police officer was being carjacked, police say, he fired his weapon and didn't hit the suspect. and another shooting where the victim was hit in the lower back. but hear this, anderson, in the first five days of this year, 51 illegal weapons, i'm told by police, were confiscated from chicago streets. >> and the president's former chief of staff is the mayor of chicago. has he commented on these latest

killings? >> you know, he has been in the hot seat. as you know, people have asked for him to resi because of these high profile officer-involved shootings, la quan mcdonald, ronald johnson, the u.s. doj is investigating the patterns and practices of the chicago police department. the mayor has been in the forefront making a lot of comments and holding a lot of press conferences. he has made changes in the police department. he has the head, the top cop to resign and most recently he promised to put tasers in every single police cruiser in the city. >> thanks for the reporting. tune in tomorrow night, guns in america, guns in america with president obama. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern live tomorrow night on "ac360." we'll be right back.

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that's it for us, thanks for watching, "cnn tonight" with don lemon starts now. >> who would have thought that the border donald trump is really concerned about is the border with canada. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. donald trump doubling down on his questions about whether ted cruz born in canada, can be president and his