>> you got arrested over that one. >> it was me and many others. >> we are out of time right here. good evening i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. it's been a day of violence here in washington. a dozen people shot dead earlier today not far from the u.s. capitol. the gunman aaron alexis had served in the naval reserve. it took place at the naval facility a mile and a half away from the capitol. he used several weapons including a semiautomatic rifle. people were shot dead in minutes.

pow pow pow a witness described the gunfire. one bullet after another. it was less than two weeks ago were removed from office in a recall for backing gun safety measures. after aurora and sandy hook and the rest, another shooting. will this change what happens in the country regarding possession of firearms? will it? let's find out what we can about why and how the horror happened today. pete williams is nbc's justice correspondent. this is another story close to where we work. >> it all began at about 8:30 this morning. the suspect aaron alexis, 34, was carrying a shotgun he had when working at the navy yard as a contractor. he had been a naval reservist. he had come with a shotgun, shot some people at least two, we believe, outside.

then got inside the building, continued shooting, took the weapons from some of the law enforcement people he shot. then continued shooting. when it was all over, he had his shotgun he came with and a handgun and semiautomatic rifle. he moved to the area from fort worth, texas. he was serving in the naval reserve and then came here to be a contractor. he recently lost his position here and that may be what set him off. they're asking for public help on what his motive may have been. they posted the wanted information on a website. they're asking people for any tips at all. his recent movements, contacts, associates. anybody who knows anything at

all about him to call them at 1-800-call-fbi. his past, it's not clear how that bears on today's shooting and how he got into the building. there was confusing information today. he apparently when he was found dead, someone else's i.d. badge was found nearby. initially they thought it was that other person. that person has been questioned but they don't believe he had anything to do with the shooting. he came to the washds area from fort worth where he was well liked, lived for a time in a thai restaurant. the man who owned that restaurant said he was a peaceful man who spent a lot of time at the buddhist temple. but he does have an arrest past of at least two incidents involving guns in fort worth three years ago he was charged with shooting his weapon for a round that went into the apartment above him.

no one was hurt. he said he was cleaning his weapon when it went off accidentally but he was evicted. and then nine years ago the seattle police arrested him after he was charged with shooting out the tires of a car belonging to some workers who parked near his house. he told the police he did it in an anger-fueled blackout. so a lot not known about him precisely what his motive was, how this happened. that will all be pieced together, i'm sure, in the next couple days. >> who is the other figure police are looking for? >> well, you know, the best guess now is this is not someone involved with the shooting. most of the investigators i talked to believe this was solely the work of this aaron alexis. but surveillance video does show a couple of other people around the time of the shooting carrying weapons. one of them has already been declare -- questioned and declared nothing to do with this.

they're still saying they can't resolve what the surveillance video is showing, a second man. it could be the shooter himself. but they're not sure. until they run that completely to ground, they're still saying they're looking for a possibility or investigating a possibility of another shooter. the thought there is someone else involved is rapidly waning. >> thank you for that great report on a terrible tragedy so close to home here. craig melvin is down outside the scene of the yard where it all occurred. what can you tell us from the scene? >> reporter: you know what, chris? i can show you what we've been looking at for the past few hours. this scene has not changed a great deal. we've seen a number of buses literally dozens of buses carrying some of the 3,000 people who work at the navy yard, carrying these people about two or three blocks away where they are being allowed to meet family members who are picking them up or hop the metro home. in some cases they're also

providing other transportation home. and they're having to do that because a short time ago we found out that the navy -- they're not allowing people to take their cars home. they're saying that as part of this ongoing investigation, they may have to do some searches perhaps of vehicles. but nonetheless, no one who works there being allowed to drive home. so that's a development. we should also note here, about three miles away from where we are at the white house a short time ago, the white house at last check was also on lockdown. that's because apparently some guy threw a fire cracker over the fence and he was tackled to the ground and arrested. the white house has been shut down ever since. that obviously having no connection to this but just speaks to the crazy day it's been here in our nation's capital. >> let me ask you about if there's been an overreaction. that's easy to say as the hours go on, but the decision several hours ago to postpone the nats game.

i was just out there watching them beat my phils. but it seems like everything in that part of town including downtown on 1600 pennsylvania avenue, this whole city is reacting as if someone's on the loose. not that this is behind us. >> reporter: you're exactly right. and in that news conference a short time ago, it was said this is still an active investigation. a number of streets down here remain closed. the only people who are being told to report to work tomorrow at the navy yard are folks are characterized as mission essential. so this is an area they expect to have locked down for at least several more hours. and they appear to be preparing for a longer term investigation according to the police chief here. you mentioned that nats game that was rescheduled. we've seen a number of folk who is apparently don't watch the news or don't read social media throughout the course of the day who have shown up here to see the nats take on the braves. that game has been rescheduled,

a double header tomorrow afternoon at 1:00. at last check, the game was supposed to happen then though. >> it matters to us culturally. on a happier note, the nats seem within striking distance of the wild card. there's been excitement of catching up to cincinnati. thank you for that report about our city's feeling of danger tonight. clint van zandt is a former fbi profiler and msnbc analyst. this lockdown thing, i've heard of it stretching around the neighborhood there. what's the concern that continues -- i guess if this was a one 346 man shooter who has a grievance with his employment or being removed or whatever in his personal life or his own crisis, why is there this city-wide lockdown at work here? >> you know, for a few blocks around, police and the fbi want to make sure they get every bit of physical evidence. the last thing law enforcement needs a citizens calling up saying there's no road blocks

and i happened to find this gun or magazine from a gun or something laying around here and law enforcement has to say oh, boy, we missed something. so i think part of it is to set that perimeter, make sure they conduct the search they need, gather the evidence. everything we have says one shooter. it doesn't say two or three. but i think law enforcement has to ensure itself. number one, there was only one shooter. number two, there was nobody assisting this guy at or near the scene when this tragedy took place. >> you know, back 20 years ago we always talked about people in the postal service who got angry about their work situation. that did come back, that resonated today this idea of workplace horrors where people are really, really hurt by something that happens to the point of this level of violence. you know, almost pathology of going after everybody in sight. what do we know about the gun

involvement here? he came in with one firearm and picked up those of the guards he shot? >> that's what pete williams is telling us. that he came in with the double barrelled shotgun sawed off which would have allowed him to conceal it as he was coming in. then using that weapon and as you know using a shotgun up close, that's one of the best confrontational weapons or the worst depending if you're on the receiving end you could run into. after confronting and shooting police officers, he may well have been able to take away an ar-15 assault rifle and pistol. and now he's got these three weapons at and at least one witness describes him reloading one of the weapons while he's shooting these multiple people, a dozen people that he kills and another dozen that are either injured or wounded. >> what's the pow pow pow

eyewitness tells you, does that mean semiautomatic? >> that could either be the ar-15 or a semiautomatic handgun. either one would have that same sound. if you get just a few quarters away or one or two levels the other, that weapon sounds so loud when you're next to it doesn't sound loud at all. but i learned something a little while ago. his former roommate in texas described him one way as being a man of peace but said he spent hours and days, chris, sitting in his room playing violent video games where you fire weapons and shoot people and get points for that. and he said he would lock himself in his room and play those games. chris, that's the same description we had of adam lanza, the shooter at sandy hook who did those same things. so are video games the problem or the fault? no. but those people who are

psychologically on the edge anyway, when they play those games, chris, number one, you hone your shooting skills and number two, you desensitize yourself to the value of human life. and for those few people who act out like that, that becomes a terrible training tool. >> his chances of surviving this it seems to be given all the circumstances we now know coming into a place, storming into it picking up weapons as he went, using them as he went, he had no escape route, no plan, no exit strategy for himself. did that tell you much he didn't have a plan to get away? >> yeah. it tells us that it's consistent with so many of the stories we hear of violence in a work place scenario where an individual may plan on doing it. he may accumulate the weapons or the plans or the i.d. cards or whatever it is, but he has no exit plan. because his master plan is i'm going to go in, i'm going to express my anger, frustration, and rage. i'm going to be this emotional

volcano that's going to heave this lava all over everybody. and then either i'll die in a confrontation with law enforcement or in some cases they take their own life because they don't want to be held responsible. they don't want to be questioned. they don't want you and i saying why did you do this terrible thing to people who you didn't even know. they don't want to answer that question. >> well, the question will still be put by the families, certainly. and it should be. thank you so much, clint van zandt, for your great expertise. more on that white house incident when we come back. in fact, here's peter williams on the phone. what did we know of the fire crackers somebody threw over the fence of the white house? >> we moved outside the white house. i'm standing on the corner of 17th and pennsylvania. basically i'm a football field away from the white house right now standing outside a u.s. secret service patrol car. inside the back seat of that car is the man the secret service tells me has been taken into

custody for throwing fireworks over the fence of the white house shortly after 6:30 this evening. secret service spokesperson tells me at this time they have no reason to believe this has any connection to what took place earlier today at the washington navy yard. it does not appear to be terrorism in any form. it appears to be someone, frankly, who didn't have his head screwed on tightly enough to be doing something like that on this location. my colleagues were inside the gate when this happened. they said he lit two fireworks and threw them over the gate. he was immediately tackled. but given the circumstances of this day, it is not something they are taking lightly. for the people who live in the d.c. area, have already witnessed a lot of police cars and sirens throughout the area. this is another crime scene they're investigating and have shut down traffic in parts of this area as well. >> fishing in troubled water.

thank you for that phone report from right outside the white house. coming up, we'll have much more on the shooting today at the washington navy yard. as i said, not that for a walk. a long walk, but a walk from the capitol. including the frustration we could hear from president obama after yet another mass shooting on his watch. this is "hardball," the place for politics. mom, dad told me that cheerios is good for your heart, is that true? says here that cheerios has whole grain oats that can help remove some cholesterol, and that's heart healthy. ♪ [ dad ] jan?

this morning president obama described the shooting at the navy yard as a cowardly act. here he is. >> we are confronting yet another mass shooting. this morning it happened on a military station in our nation's capital. it targeted our military and civilian personnel. these were men and women going to work doing their job protecting all of us. they're patriots. they know the violence of fighting abroad.

but they met the violence they wouldn't have expected at home. as this investigation moves forward, we'll try to make sure whoever carried out this cowardly act is held responsible. in the mean time we send our thoughts and prayers to all at the navy yard who have been touched by this tragedy. >> we now know the shooter was shot himself and killed. we're going to get to the political debate that comes from this and i think fairly so, about guns. these were guns again. pow pow pow. how'd they get into this guy's hands? maybe he took them off police officers at the time. the question remains how do we deal with this stuff? it just keeps going on in this country. it doesn't happen in other countries. "hardball" back after this.

and obviously we're going to be investigating thoroughly what happened as we do so many of these shootings, sadly, that

have happened. and do everything that we can to try to prevent them. >> back to "hardball." that was president obama of course speaking about this morning's shooting. it took place at the washington navy yard. 15 blocks from the u.s. capitol building. the story is developing. these scenes have become far too familiar to a country who has been routinely victimized by gun violence on a mass scale. all these senseless killings have seemingly failed to move the debate into gun legislation. dr. janis orlowski summed up the feelings of many today. >> there is something evil in our society. i may be the chief medical officer of a very large trauma center, but there's something wrong here when we have these multiple shootings, these

multiple injuries. there's something wrong. the only thing i can say is we have to work together to get rid of it. i'd like you to put my trauma center out of business. >> wow. this tragedy of course this morning came on the heels of the nra-backed recall. both senators who supported gun legislation. and a hostile right wing in the congress. so today's events offer any additional hope for tougher gun laws? big question. joining me now is sam stein and mark glaze. i want to start with you, mark, because you're out there advocating on behalf of your principal mike bloomberg and others. working to match the dollar power of others. we know semiautomatic weapons were used. we know somebody who shouldn't

have had them in his hands did it. and we known 12 people are dead. the united states has a hell of a lot of guns. it has a hell of a lot of gun owners. a hell of a lot of guns in the hands of a hell of a lot of people. the question is what makes us unique by bad in that direction. what is it about america that makes us different than old europe, new europe, asia, a good part of africa, latin america. a country where we're seeing now this regularity. you've got to tell me the answer to this. >> the reason we have gun murder rate 15 to 20 times higher in other countries is the way we don't regulate guns. people in the united kingdom are not more or less mentally ill than we are. but any year in united kingdom you have 40 or 50 firearm homicides and in the united

states you have around 12,000. they make it harder for people who should not have guns to get guns. and we make it easy. >> you're saying if there were no gun laws in britain like we have laxed gun laws, you'd see them drive around with the guns on the back of their trucks. like here where guns are part of life. living with guns. teaching your kids guns. would immediately become part of french life or japanese lives. >> not quite -- >> no quite so much. is it the culture or the law who makes us who we are? >> i think it's a bit of both. my dad was a gun dealer in colorado. i grew up with guns, but we had a low gun murder rate. the reason that, you know, you see -- the reason you're seeing crime with guns sort of drop in countries like australia and the united kingdom after they passed

comprehensive gun laws is it's harder to get guns. i think the same would be true here. if you were just to expand the background check system so everybody had to have a background check no matter where they bought it, that would save -- >> you say just. with all of bloomberg's money and your good effort, you get two senators blown out of office because they dared to back you. >> the nra is smart about the way it does these things. in addition, you had a bunch of people involved in those like the koch brothers who wouldn't recognize a rifle if they fell over one. if you're a democrat, the last session was your wish list. and some people were angry about a lot of other things. >> sam, you're a general political correspondent, could it be what happened is guns like abortion have joined sort of the blue plate specials of the right and left.

it's part of their argument. even if you don't own a gun, you support the gun rights people because that's part of your anti-obama, anti-government, anti-everything, the whole thing easy to do. you just vote with the right wing cause generally. is that what's going on? >> you hear this in gun rights rallies all the time that this is a slippery slope. i don't know if you've ever sat through a wayne lapierre speech, but a good chunk is devoted to the evils that will come with obama in office. it's if you let him do this, five more terrible things will come down the road. the other thing is gun rights advocates tending to single issue voters. if you go after gun rights, they will come out and try to get you out of office in the case of colorado.

or try to not elect you in the first place. they will be motivated by a singular issue. >> let me talk about this thing with mark. what about the nra and what do you think -- how many days will pass before they comment about what happened in washington today? the shooting of 12 people because they went to work that day, basically, at the navy yard. that's what they did. they went to work. some guy came to shoot people at work. what are the nra going to say about this? it's senseless beyond senseless. >> i think they will probably say that. but i don't blame them because we're doing the same thing, waiting until we know more about what happened. it's entirely possible that no law would have changed this, but that's a false argument and the nra sort of says those things and says we should have a moment of silence and that drags on into months because nobody wants to address the core issues despite the fact there's broad agreement across the country. if everybody got a background

check, far fewer of these killings would happen. the tucson shooter slipped through the background check system. tighten it up, you'll have less opportunity for folks to do this kind of thing. >> in all fairness, the average nra member probably has a low crime rate. probably a very low violence rate. yet their positions on the constitution and their strict abhorrence of any type of gun safety law allows people who are the bad people or crazy people or dangerous people to get those guns. that's a fact. >> we talked about this before, but the interesting thing about the nra is there's a big divide between what reign and the nra leadership are trying to do in washington and what the average nra member is. >> you say that. i know the politics you're expressing here, mark. good try. but if they didn't want them as their leaders, they wouldn't be paying them. sam, your thoughts about this. be objective here.

i think it requires objectivity that the average nra person is as law-abiding. my brother's a big gun guy. wouldn't kill a deer in a million years. a good buy, but he supports gun rights to the last nth. >> if you read nra members certain polling framing and say do you support a background check for any gun purchase, by and large they'll say yes. and the data backs it up a lot. the question when you get down to it is it more like what you were talking about with me earlier is do you view it as a slippery slope? i think most would say yes. and there's a huge agree graphical component here. than it is for the country, for montana for instance. so when you have a congress that where every state has two senators and the people of north dakota have just as much representation in the senate as

the people of california and new york, you're going to have paralyzed politics around this. >> i guess we blame george washington. >> yes. >> that's the way. thank you both for coming on. mark, good luck with the cause. and the doctor from the one we heard at the beginning? she will be lawrence o'donnell's guest tonight. she'll have something to say tonight at 10:00 eastern on "the last word." when we return, we'll talk about what may have motivated the gunman. what caused him to do this, kill 12 people, pow pow pow. this is "hardball" the place for politics. ♪ turn around

♪ every now and then i get a little bit hungry ♪ ♪ and there's nothing good around ♪ ♪ turn around barry ♪ i finally found the right snack ♪ ♪ i ended up on the backside of our building in an alley way. evacuated a bunch of people, pushed them in the right direction to get them out. then there was an individual that came from the building behind us, was talking to me basically saying there's a shooter in your building. then i heard two more shots.

one of them hit him, he went down in front of me. then i took off from there. >> the guy you were with? >> the guy i was talking to. >> got shot. >> correct. >> and that was his situation afterward? did you try to assess it? >> he was shot in the head. did not look like he made it so i ran from there. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was a witness to today's navy yard shooting. the victim was gunned down right in front of him, you heard that. joining me now is negotiator jim cavanaugh and back with us is former fbi profiler clint van zandt. jim, thanks for joining us. you come at the worst times. this is another one of those worst times. i guess the question -- let's talk about security. we haven't talked about it before. this is the united states naval base in d.c. this is a historic place. it's the oldest military base in the country. it goes way, way back. and of course you'd expect it to be well guarded. apparently they don't use state

of the art metal detection. things like that are not available, apparently. >> these bases i've seen over the course of four decades don't seem to have the security they used to have. maybe the military commanders will look at that all around. i think they really need to tighten up. businesses do too. schools do too. if you have a facility somebody can walk in with a long gun, your facility is not secure. so you've got to start from that premise. and you need to have a double deadlock which is person comes in a door, has to go through another door before they can get in. so if they're seen coming with a long gun, they can be ice latsed in the doors. many security things. if someone can walk in your facility with a long gun, it's not a secured facility. and the military in this era we live in now not only with this being a workplace shooting but even what's going on around the world, you've got to tighten up that security. >> when you go through the white house you've got to put your i.d. in and all that, it's

redundant. they mic sure you don't get in there if you're in the wrong person. i guess the navy doesn't do that yet. >> you learned from reports from pete williams, the secret service were the only people in washington not spinning up security. and the reason is it's all spun up. they always have that level, that high level of security to deal with any kind of a threat like that. the capitol police, they went to long guns. good call by the capitol police chief. go right to the long gun. you don't know what else could be going on around the city. could be multiple shooters. i saw your piece with -- i'm sorry. >> go ahead. >> i was going to say that the history of american gun laws is american tragedy, murder, assassination. in the '30s the dillinger days to the '60s of dr. king and robert kennedy, and john kennedy. then the brady bill, the assault

weapons ban after schoolyard shootings in california. it's a history of murder, tragedy, assassination. and we don't get any lost past -- laws past until those things. >> it was a long time ago. what do police officers have now guarding our facilities? what should they have? and they're vulnerable to having their weapons taken from them like this guy. >> if you engage a police officer with a handgun or rifle, you're already losing. key security points need to have long guns. mps, there's got to be somebody with a long gun. when they show up, they're going to have a long gun. i'm talking about on a secured facility. yes, we can't just -- it's a

different era. i started with a .38 revolver when i started too. but you need the shotgun or rifle and need to pull that out. it's disgusting to watch these things happen. >> i know the secret service with the president always has an adequate supply of long guns. just look in the car. let me go to clint van zandt on this profiling question. give me your sense of this thing what we can tell from the fact he went to a place, he was a naval reservist. he had gotten a job there. it's not clear yet. but going into a work place with the same, you know, brand name of where he worked before as a uniformed service person. and here he goes into a naval place in the morning, 8:00 in the morning and starts shooting people there. obviously he's shooting an organization. he's not shooting individuals. although he's killing them. but he's shooting at an organization, the navy. >> yeah.

what you find many times is an individual -- you know, we all have challenges, frustrations, situations. but there are certain people in the world who look for somebody to blame. they never take it on themselves. it's always somebody else's fault. somebody's responsibility. in this case, i've heard suggestions that as a contractor, he said he wasn't being paid fast enough based upon the work he was doing. well, this is -- i mean, you know, try to be a private contractor and get paid on time by everybody. it doesn't work that way. but other issues he had in life, i think he did what you're suggesting. he focused in and became this narrow focus and now it's the navy, it's the facility, it's what it stands for. and again this guy likes so many workplace shooters realizes he's going to be perhaps one of the few armed people within that facility. and if he encounters armed

officers, he has the advantage because he knows he's going in there to kill armed officers don't realize what they have until perhaps they've been shot. >> you know, if you work on capitol hill as i did for all those years, you know when you come across -- and these are sane people, good people. they may have been turned down for a disability claim 20, 30 years ago. so they write letters to everybody they can think of. people in the media or politics. they accumulate piles and piles of the letters and staple them together of people saying i agree with you. i sympathize with you. you've got a good case. and they build this and build this. they'll show it to anybody they can show it to. their whole life is to win back that chance they had for basically a coverage for the rest of their life for a disability. then these are healthy people who have pain. i understand the pain they go through. but you get a person with a problem with their mind and emotions and they take something like that and do something really bad with it. that may be what we're seeing in occasions like this. who knows. we'll find out more tomorrow.

jim cavanaugh, clint van zandt, thank you. our coverage of the mass shooting today at the washington navy yard continues after this. i'm only in my 60's... i've got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn't pay all my medical expenses, i looked at my options. then i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. [ male announcer ] if you're eligible for medicare, you may know it only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. call now and find out about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement plans, it helps pick up some of what medicare doesn't pay. and could save you thousands in out-of-pocket costs. to me, relationships matter. i've been with my doctor for 12 years. now i know i'll be able to stick with him.

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we're back. let's go back to the scene of the crime today. kasey hunt is outside the mass shooting. give us a recap on what happened today. a lot of people tuning in right now. >> reporter: absolutely. we started the day here pretty early on, not that long after we first got those initial reports that a shooting was occurring. when i first arrived shortly before 9:00 in the morning it was still a chaotic scene. i had police officers pushing me back off of the perimeter because they said there was physical danger from the snipers who were on the roofs trying to track down the shooter. just before i came inside here where police have been doing press conferences to update us about what's happening, there were still buses taking people out of the navy yard down to national stadium.

the stadium has been repurposed since it was supposed to host a nationals/braves game tonight. there were a few fans who were uninformed about the news, didn't realize what had been going on and were sort of trickling down to the stadium. so all in all, just a very sort of tragic day here outside the naval yard. we also spoke with the secretary of the navy who said that this was just a really difficult day for the navy family especially considering that we're now learning that the shooter was, in fact, in the navy reserves. >> is there any concern about this second person of interest they talk about? there's something still at large -- someone's still at large here. >> reporter: there was a lot of confusion about that late this afternoon especially after that first mention of a potentially at that point we thought two potential suspects. they later said one is no longer a person of interest. there are those among us that were waiting on the sidewalks, the residents nearby wondering was it a place of danger and how

much concern did there need to be about whether it was a safe situation. but at this point, the activity outside has sort of dissipated to the point where people aren't necessarily concerned about it. and reporters are still asking questions. officials still are saying they're not 100% certain. the reports are so far unconfirmed. it was a cause for concern throughout the afternoon. >> thank you so much for that report from the navy yard. michael isikoff has new information on the gunman himself. aaron alexis. michael? >> reporter: yeah. a couple of new details in the last couple minutes. just got a statement from hewlett-packard, the firm confirming that aaron alexis was an employee of a company called the experts, a subcontractor to a service contract to refresh equipment used on the navy marine corps intranet network. and hp is cooperating fully with

the investigation. that gives us some insight that confirms he was, in fact, employed. he was working for a subcontractor. does give some idea of how he had access to the base. apparently he was employed and authorized to be there. number two, spoke to a federal law enforcement official not long ago who confirmed investigators believe the ar-15 that alexis is believed to have used in this shooting was purchased just recently within the last few weeks, i was told, at a gun shop in virginia. now, as you know, this is in d.c., there are not gun shops. you cannot purchase ar-15s, but there has been for years a practice of people going across state lines into virginia and buying the guns there where you can legally do so. we do not know what alexis'

exact residence has been in the last few weeks. so some new details, but a lot of people have focused on his work. he'd been in the naval reserves. he enlisted in 2007. was discharged in january 2011 just a few months after he was arrested on that misdemeanor charge for accidental discharge of a weapon. we still don't have hard confirmation that was the reason for his discharge. but it would not have been a bar for him to purchase that weapon. >> we don't know if it was for him being fired from his job as a contractor. >> reporter: well, the statement from hp was he was an employee for the experts. it doesn't say the dates of employment. but the implication was it was current. >> thank you, michael isikoff. when we return, the mood in

washington today after today's shooting. tonight no baseball game, a lot of lockdown. this is "hardball," the place for politics. we've completely redone the house. it's hard to find contractors with the passion and the skill, and that's why we use angie's list. online or on the phone, we help you hire right the first time with honest reviews on over 720 local services. i want it done right. i don't want to have to worry about it or have to come back and redo it. with angie's list, i was able to turn my home into the home of my dreams. for over 18 years, we've helped people take care of the things that matter most. join today.

we'll be back with more on the information as it continues into the mass shooting here in washington. "hardball" returns in a minute.

we're back. washington is stunned tonight by the shooting at the navy yard here today. i'm joined right now by two washington colleagues of mine. the "washington post" pulitzer prize winning columnist eugene robinson and "the huffington post's" howard fryman. howard, i want to start with you. you've been out there all day getting your head around this thing. what's it tell us about our city, we're so used to this, the navy yard that's always been there, doesn't make any noise, so near us, along the marine barracks, along the river, near the stadium now, and all of a sudden, 12 people dead today? >> well, chris, i left washington early this afternoon to come up to new york, and it actually was, for the purposes of understanding this, gave me some useful distance. we don't realize often that we

live among the actual, literal institutions of our lives, of our government in d.c., that we're surrounded by big institutions that we don't even recognize or realize. i mean, i agree with you, the navy yard down by the anacostia is a famous, historic place where important work is still going on, command and control facilities and acquisition facilities for the navy, a place that's 200 years rich in history and actually battled over and fought for in the past. we walk by it unaware often, or go to the ball game a few blocks away, unaware of its history and its importance in the fact that it's a sort of magnet for important people, for important decisions and for the very vulnerabilities that we face in modern society around us. and, you know, i go back to a day in washington, chris, where there was really very little

security, where people walked almost unattended in and out of every building in town. and there are times in recent years where i've kind of complained out loud or to myself about the security state that we live in in washington, but the fact is, we're not nearly secure enough. and this is the latest demonstration of that, i think. i think what you can expect in washington is more review, more security, more long guns and more awareness of the importance of the people and institutions around us. >> well said. gene, you live here. >> yeah. >> we live with the tiger teeth and the metal detectors and the can't drive by the white house anymore and all the things that have changed in the last several years. >> yeah. i thought today, actually, not so much of the security involved in living among those institutions but the binality of these workplace shootings, if, indeed, this is what this shooting turns out to be, and how, you know, it happens in tucson, it happens in newtown,

it happens elsewhere. for it to happen here, i think, where we talk about it in terms of policy, where we have the fights over gun control and over, you know, whether we even have background checks or whatever, it brings it home in a powerful way. >> it sure does. thank you, gene robinson, thanks for waiting. howard, thank you for joining us from new york. we'll be right back after this. [ woman ] ring. ring. progresso.

i just served my mother-in-law your chicken noodle soup but she loved it so much... i told her it was homemade. everyone tells a little white lie now and then. but now she wants my recipe [ clears his throat ] [ softly ] she's right behind me isn't she? [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup.

that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us on a sobering day here in washington, where we learned that all of our problems are not inferior from anywhere else far from home. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. and tonight, the country reels from another mass shooting, the worst since newtown, connecticut, in december. it happened in our nation's capital. the washington navy yard, a complex of buildings a short distance from the u.s. capitol. tonight, at least 13 people are dead, including the gunman. police say another dozen are injured. questions remain surrounding the alleged shooter's motive, who reportedly had a grudge against the navy. when the news first broke this morning, no one knew what this was. confusion and chaos bringing the city to an absolute standstill. here's what that looked like.