right now on "andrea

mitchell reports," the nashville community reeling from the covenant school mass murder but praising the courageous police officers who rushed into harm's way to end the threat. the nation learns more about how the shooter obtained so many high powered weapons. this hour, former vice president mike pence kicking the tires on a 2024 run in iowa today as he decides whether to appeal a federal judge's ruling that he has to testify before the special counsel grand jury investigaing donald trump's attempts to overturn the election and the insurrection. there are tens of thousands of apps that we know take in as much data as tiktok. howard schultz in the hot seat. accusing starbucks of breaking labor laws and opposing their

workers' rights to join unions. >> have you ever asked a worker, if you hate starbucks so much, why don't you go work somewhere else? >> i'm glad you asked that question. i read in the press that quote. that's not exactly what i said. can i tell the story? do you mind? >> i have some other questions. >> i think it's important to hear the facts. >> you will have your chance. good day. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. investigators in nashville learn more about the shooter responsible for killing six people, three of them 9-year-old children, at a private christian school in an upscale neighborhood monday. the shooter's parents them she was suffering from an emotional disorder and was under doctor's care and the parents believed she sold a gun when she had in

fact purchased seven legal guns. she had hidden them throughout the home. joining me now, nbc's kathy park in nashville and frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence. kathy, what are you hearing about the investigation and the victims in the tragedy? >> reporter: good afternoon. we are entering another difficult day here in nashville. i'm standing in front of the entrance of the covenant school. this is still a crime scene. investigators are combing through the evidence left behind by the suspect. there is a manifesto that we are aware of. right now, there's still so motive as to why this individual would target this school. authorities are saying this church, this school was targeted, however, the victims were not targeted. six of the victims, you see some of their images on your screen. this tragedy has touched all corners of the community.

in fact, the governor of tennessee even said last night that his wife was very close with two of the adult victims. katherine koonce was a good friend of the governor's wife as well as cynthia peak. she was supposed to have dinner with her monday night. there are those three young victims. the pain that hits even deeper when you hear some of the youngest victims were just 9 years old, in the third grade. we are told evelyn was a bright spirit, a bright light. i spoke with her pastor not too long ago. he is saying the family is grieving, understandably. hallie scruggs, the family is heartbroken by this tragedy.

william, adored his parents, his siblings. i can tell you there's a growing memorial outside of the school right now. six crosses have been placed at the entrance of the school to mark the lives lost, stolen. there are so many questions. everyone who comes by, you can see the raw emotions, the tears in their eyes. you have church members who are understandably shaken. then you have strangers coming here as well. one woman told me when she got to the memorial, she said there was a deep heaviness she was feeling. she was just bursting into tears. that's kind of what we are seeing as we enter another day here in nashville as the investigation presses on. >> frank, let's talk about the investigation. officials have spoken to the shooter's family. they have analyzed the writings, the crime scene.

do you think they are closer to a motive? >> i think they probably know more than we do, having read the manifesto at the police level and the announcement that the fbi is involved in exploring motive. they will do a forensic computer exam of her devices and social media postings and interviews with friends, family, co-workers. i think they are closer to it. we may not hear it publically for a while. what jumps out at me is the mental health component. when we hear the police explain that the shooter's parents implored her not to possess a gun and she essentially kind of faked it. she said, yeah, okay, i'm selling this gun i have. of course, as you said, she was secretly acquiring seven additional weapons. this raises the issue of red flag laws. that's why they are created. tennessee, the state where the shooter lived, does not yet have

a red flag law. one has been proposed in the statehouse but may not be passing through the state senate. after the monterey park, california, shooting president biden issued directives. he held a press conference. one of the directives was telling his cabinet to explore ways to pass more red flag laws and enforce existing red flag laws. i have written a column that says it's time to take the gloves off with that. it's time to use a carrot and stick approach. if you don't want to initiate existing red flag law processes, we have had sheriffs say that, elected sheriffs say, i'm not doing it, i'm not initiating that, then you shouldn't get federal grant money for your police department and sheriff's office. you should be cut off from that. if you are a state that doesn't have a red flag law, we need more carrot and stick approaches to make red flag laws happen.

>> i want to talk to you about the police officers in a send. from what i understand, the red flag laws don't universally call for anyone who has -- is under treatment. you have to be court ordered for it to even come -- to qualify under the red flag law. is that correct? >> the red flag laws vary state to state. in some, the law enforcement has the authority to take the weapons temporarily and then move toward a due process situation. family member -- most red flag laws allow family members to go to the police and say, we have a concern. when we are hearing in this shooter's case her parents said, we did not want her to possess a gun, she was under mental health care, that's where we even heard the nashville police chief say, he would have tried to take her guns from her. again, he would have tried

because he doesn't have a state red flag law that says he could have done it whether she liked it or not. >> there's reporting that tennessee has very loose gun laws. in fact, there's measures there to relax them further. i wanted to mention the nashville police and the heroic policemen in contrast to what we saw in uvalde and other places. the officers we saw on the tape, they were in the building, they were there quickly. they used their training. they moved upstairs quickly. we talked to jim kavanaugh, who was 15 minutes away. neutralizing the shooter, trying to prevent any further loss of life. running into harm's way, clearly when they saw the shooter at a distance, using their skills, frank, to end the threat quickly. when you speak about a small community, jon meacham talked

about the community and the children who are in a different school. he recounted this morning, don't talk to me about what congress can and can't do. they were 9 years owed. as jon said, they kept saying, they were 9 years owed. you have a generation, frank, growing up doing these drills who are affected by it. we can't wait for them to be voters and make a difference who gets elected and who gets nra money and who pays for the gun manufacturers. >> look, first, let do what you have just done, which is laude the police officers. i'm telling, those two officers that were first in, they need to be part of training modules at every police academy in this country. this is not s.w.a.t. team. this was the first responder patrol officers who did the right thing and moved in without fear or hesitation.

it is almost textbook the way they did it. yes, it's a stark contrast, of course, to uvalde. with regard to the larger picture here, when it's kids involved, you would think it would move mountains in terms of state and federal legislation. we're not there yet. while we are working toward that and perhaps an assault weapons ban, we have to take those incremental steps and accept them. chris murphy from connecticut doing laudable work there. we need to continue those incremental steps while playing hard ball with states who aren't with the program. >> frank, thank you so much. thanks to kathy park covering a difficult story. coming up, starbucks' ceo in the hot sheet. congress takes a shot at the alleged union busting efforts. you are watching "andrea mitchell reports." this is msnbc. this is msnbc. [ horn honks, muffled talking ] -can't hear you, jerry. -sorry. uh, yeah, can we get a system

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a battle brewing on capitol hill over starbucks' labor practices. >> have you ever threatened, coerced or intimidated a worker for supporting a union? >> i have had conversations that could have been interpreted in a different way than i intended. that's up to the person who received the information that i spoke to them about. >> have you ever asked a worker, quote, if you hate starbucks so much, why don't you go work somewhere else? >> i'm glad you asked that question. i have read in the press that quote. that's not exactly what i said. >> will you commit to testifying in any trial where you personally are accused of breaking federal labor law, something that you have been accused of doing nearly 100 times since 2021? >> mr. chairman, let me say

under oath, these are allegations and starbucks has not broken the law. >> ryan nobles joins us today. ryan, this was contentious with bernie sanders, a strong labor union guy, against starbucks, with everything they have been accused of. mitt romney did weigh in. he was questioning whether sanders and his colleagues had their own political agenda. >> reporter: that's right. it was interesting to see howard schultz, who was a democratic dealing with this. romney was going to take the business point of view as it relates to this debate. listen to how he framd it.

>> you are being grilled by people who have never had the opportunity to create a single job. yet, they believe that they know better how to do so. i think it's rich to not recognize the extraordinary conflict of interest we have, which is our democratic colleagues overwhelmingly get campaign funds from unions. therefore, would like to find every possible way to extend unions even if an enterprise feels it's in their best interest to pursue a different course. >> even though romney's point about job creation and the impacts that unions could have on that is probably a worthy one to bring up, it does distract about the premise of this hearing. that's whether or not starbucks violated the law by standing in the way of these efforts to organize at their stores across the country. it's almost 300 stores have unions that have attempted to be

formed in them. there were instances where schultz was pressed about some of the examples that sanders and members of the democrats on the panel had come up with. he did have to try to talk his way around some of it. whether or not this leads to any wholesale changes remains to be seen. schultz is leaving as ceo. there's a new ceo that's been installed. it's clear what we are learning from this is that democrats are willing to show potential union organizers across the country that they have allies here in washington should they attempt to take on a big corporation like starbucks in the future. >> that's clearly coming from this company. tonight, senator bernie sanders joining chris hayes to discuss this tonight at 8:00 eastern on msnbc. that's must-watch tv. court order. the judge ruling that mike pence has to testify in the election interference probe against

donald trump. pence considers a run for the white house himself. will he decide to appeal the ruling? that's next. you are watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. if you want laundry to smell fresh for weeks, make sure you have downy unstopables in-wash scent boosters. ♪ what will you do? will you make something better? create something new? our dell technologies advisors can provide you with the tools and expertise you need

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a federal judge has ruled former vice president mike pence must testify before a grand jury in the probe of the january 6 insurrection and trump's attempts to overturn the election. it's another legal win for jack smith. pence could be questioned on pressure from the former president and his allies to refuse to certify the election results. the former vice president did win one of his legal constitutional arguments that the constitution should protect him from having to testify about events that occurred at the capitol, in the chamber when he was presiding in his role as president of the senate on january 6. in iowa today, he apparently considers a run for the white house himself. he said he is deciding whether or not to appeal the decision. >> i will be in washington, d.c. later this week. i will meet with my counsel at that time. we will review the judge's decision, and we will determine

the best way forward. i have nothing to hide. i believe we did our duty under the constitution on january 6. i truly do believe that preserving the constitutional protections enshrined in the speech and debate clause was very important. again, i'm pleased that the federal judge recognized and agreed with our argument. >> joining me now, vaughn hillyard, glen kirschner. could the former vice president use this as a shield to avoidane -- avoid answering certain questions? >> he can certainly use this opinion. we haven't seen it. we heard reporting about it.

we don't know the contours precisely of what the judge rules because grand jury proceedings remain secret by law. he completely lost any claim to executive privilege that donald trump was trying to use to prevent mike pence from testifying. he lost also on the speech or debate clause front as many as mike pence tried to hold it up as a shield to avoid testifying before the grand jury at all. the judge, who is a very experienced and savvy jurist, apparently ruled that, okay, former vice president pence, you don't have to testify about what you did at the capitol on january 6. that's a hollow victory. that is not what's important to the grand jury's investigation of donald trump's pressure campaign. it seems like these days we sort

of receive historic information with almost a shrug. what we have is a federal judge ordering a former vice president to testify about and in a very real sense against the very president he served about the alleged crimes that that president committed to try to overturn the results of an election and then to finish up, can he plead the fifth? mike pence can absolutely invoke his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination if his truthful testimony would incriminate him. if he was complicit in the crimes of donald trump, i would expect his lawyer to recommend that he plead the fifth and then special counsel jack smith will have to decide how to proceed. does he immunize mike pence and compel his testimony against donald trump? if mike pence pleads the fifth, does he assess whether there's enough evidence to charge mike pence? >> it would be unlikely.

from what he has written in the book, from all the speeches, he was under pressure and stood up to the pressure. he would hardly be complicit in that conspiracy, if there is a conspiracy that's charged. he still has the right to appeal the fact that he has to testify. he could do that for political reasons, right? the appeals court would have to rule and then it would go to the supreme court and it would delay. >> absolutely. because of the way the judge seems to have ruled -- he took away an appeal of the speech or debate clause piece which was the most interesting and unaddressed legal issue. i think the judge has now side stepped that issue. mike pence will only have the executive privilege finding to appeal. >> which was ruled affirmatively. the supreme court rules for years that that's not a covered

privilege in a case of alleged crime. vaughn, what is mike pence saying about this today? i heard what we played about that he is deciding whether to appeal. what's the politics of it for him? does he want to be seen as standing up to the feds, to appease the maga base? what's the least risk for him? >> reporter: he said he is going to meet with his attorneys when he goes to washington, d.c. to evaluate the extent to which he would seek an appeal. of course, the part that he was seeking -- making his foundation of the case on was the speech and debate. for mike pence, i asked, if you take the constitutionality of asking you and your role to go forward under subpoena, to put that aside, would you voluntarily agree to sit down with the grand jury and provide

your testimony? he completely deflected that answer. there's a political reality that is very difficult in this moment for mike pence. some is somebody who continues to seek his own presidential candidacy. new numbers suggest that 75% of republican voters nationally believe that if donald trump were to be criminally charged, that it would not be disqualifying for him to serve as president again. there were 93% of republicans that suggested as it pertains specifically -- the manhattan district attorney -- it is shown a heavy majority of republican voters believe donald trump is the subject of prosecutorial misconduct and a so-called witch hunt. mike pence is helping those investigators but trying to not undermine the republican party that for years has made the case that all of these investigations

stem from efforts to undermine the conservative movement. >> phil, another point in that poll is what happens -- if it were to get to a general election. 55% of americans are saying that they think the new york charges, if they are charged would be serious. 55% say that it would be serious. for all of the talk that the new york case is the least important and is an old case and is something that people don't care about, 55% say it's somewhat or very serious. >> yeah. it speaks to the overall challenges that trump is going to have in a general election were he to become the republican nominee. he has never had majority support among the american electorate. it's the reason joe biden won in 2020. it would be stiff headwinds against him. while his popularity in the

republican party is broad and very strong. he is an incredibly polarizing figure to the general elector electorate. these legal challenges are a political threat for trump's 2024 candidacy, not just new york but i would be curious to see what public opinion is on january 6 and the plot to overturn the election results as well as public opinion on his handling of classified documents, both of which have more sort of national security and institutional concerns for the country than do the potential charges out of new york regarding hush money for stormy daniels. >> strong points on the politics of this. thanks so much, vaughn, glenn, phil. tiktok deadline. federal workers need to remove the app off their work phones this week. how real is that threat? intelligence committee chair senator mark warner joining me next for his push on a wider

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this week is the deadline for all federal employees to remove tiktok from their government issued devices. this comes days at a congressional hearing took aim at the social media app. as jake ward reports, the u.s. is still trying to better understand the threat that the chinese-owned platform may pose to users' privacy and political influence through its use of algorithms. >> reporter: ask an expert whether tiktok compromised national security, the answer is clear. have you seen much effort of it? >> no. to date, no. we tend to wait until after the crisis to do something about anything. >> reporter: it's what could happen that seems to be the basis of the federal employee tiktok ban taking affect. >> the right model is less of a smoking gun and more of a loaded gun. >> reporter: the threat is

twofold. the ability to feed propaganda to the american population through an app used by roughly one in three americans and the ability to monitor those 150 million people on a near daily basis. >> i think if you were an intelligence theorist and you want to build profiles on a significant population, there's no better way than by creating the fun app. >> reporter: tech experts point out it's not that different from any social media platform. >> there are tens of thousands of apps that we know take in as much data as tiktok that have less attention paid to them. >> reporter: as it almost impossible to look inside any social media company, because while the u.s. requires transparency about the financials of public companies or safety recalls in cars, it does not mandate any data transparency standards. >> so much of this is just about

anxiety about the role that these platforms are playing and not having enough data to know if anything they are telling us is true. >> reporter: chinese law requires chinese companies cooperate with intelligence services. but the ceo insists tiktok is not controlled by the chinese government. >> american data stored on american soil by an american company overseen by american personnel. >> reporter: the white house is demanding the chinese parent company either sell or face a ban. >> it's important that we view what evidence we have in the context of the totality of the circumstances of the motivations of the chinese communist party when it comes to information and communication technology platforms. the index of suspicion should be high. >> reporter: a ban would achieve geopolitical parity. china banned our social media. >> if tiktok wants to work in the united states, then china has to be open to western social media.

it just seems like a fairly obvious point. >> reporter: what we know is that experts have told lawmakers for years that there's a correlation between rising rates of depression in young pep and the rise of social media. >> teens report increases in loneliness. >> reporter: perhaps that's the risk to go after first. >> the kids are not all right. one thing the united states could do is just say, social media is banned under 18. you resolve 95% of your tiktok problem that way. >> jake ward reporting for us. china's ministry of foreign affairs says its government has never and would never ask a company to collect private data in violation of laws. tiktok is not the only popular platform owned by championize

-- chinese companies. we will have more after this. chin. we will have more after this de d and saves money? i am so in. chinese companies. we will have more after this. ch. we will have more after this. chinese companies. we will have more after this. chinese companies. we will have more after this. chinese companies. we will have more after this. chinese companies. we will have more after this. ce companies. we will have more after this. c companies. we will have more after this. c companies. we will have more after this. c companies. we will have more after this. c companies. we will have more after this. c companies. we will have more after this. c companies. we will have more after this. lde

as we mentioned, this is the

deadline for federal employees to remove tiktok from their government-issued devices. joining me now is senator mark warner, chairman of the intelligence committee. you have your own legislation. we want to talk about that in a minute. the president warned of national security concerns about tiktok, banning it on government devices. should he and the white house sound the alarm about other national security concerns surrounding other apps owned by bytedance, the owner of tiktok, that are popular in the u.s.? >> that's what our legislation would do. we have had a whack-a-mole approach. we are talking about tiktok wall. we talked about a russian software company. we need authorities given to the secretary of commerce that would allow a sale of an entity, a ban of an app, that would be about any of these foreign-based technologies that come from countries like china and russia.

it would be incumbent upon us in the intelligence community to declassify information to make the case clearly. with tiktok right now, i know there's a lot of creative uses, people make money off tiktok. i believe the market will create a new entity if we end up in a ban. it could be a brazilian company, a french company. i would point out, it's not just america. canada is acting. brits have acted. eu have acted. the brits and dutch told their media, get off of tiktok. chances are, the chinese are spying on you. our friends in india-india banned it outright. this is a world concern about the surveillance tactics china has in terms of potentially getting american data but also using this tool, close to 150 million americans using it, almost on average 90 minutes a

day, as a propaganda tool. >> the white house has used tiktok itself for presidential messages to try to reach that demographic. >> absolutely. tiktok has a lot of creativity on it. we have everyone from the national security -- the director of the fbi testified, the director of national intelligence, we have had this prohibited for a couple years from american military use. i think the idea of a creative platform where influencers can make money, there are other american platforms that do that now, i think those if we do a divestiture, the secret sauce to figure out what you like before you know what you like, if that was located in the third country, it doesn't have to be america, it could be brazil, france, you name it, that an al.

the chinese don't want that secret sauce located anywhere but beijing which should be a warning signal to potential users. >> to wrap this up, you shouldn't be using tiktok? >> i'm saying, this is something that has been an evolving security concern. let me be -- there's a lot of bad stuff, particularly around mental health of kids, that goes on on american platforms. we need a domestic privacy bill. we need a kids online safety bill. we need to take a bill like mine and reform it so facebook and google don't get away with a get out of jail free card with all of the content that sometimes is having great harm, particularly for young people in this country. that's a different debate than the debate around national security. the intelligence community, military is unanimous. this is a national security threat. we need to get this legislation

passed. tiktok will get its day in court. any first amendment based communication technology, there has to be a higher standard. we have to prove that case. i do think at the end of the day, this is a concern that not only government phones should have it prohibited, but i hope parents will look at what's on their kid's phone. >> if house speaker kevin mccarthy meets with taiwan's president while she's here in the united states -- she's supposed to arrive tonight. she's going to be meeting him, we understand, in los angeles. they were objecting and threatening if he were to go to taiwan, as he originally planned. what do you think of china making these threats if they meet here in the u.s.? >> well, you know, we had speaker pelosi go to taiwan. it's very appropriate if speaker mccarthy wants to meet with the president of taiwan.

it's one of the reasons why we have to be successful in stopping putin in ukraine, because if putin is successful in ukraine, not only does he look to poland and potentially the baltic states, but it gives president xi in china more of a green light to try to acquire and invade or take over taiwan. president xi -- unlike most other former leaders in china, who allowed some level of status quo, he made it clear that he believes it's part of his destiny, not unlike putin with ukraine, that he has to have the prc reacquire taiwan. i think it's appropriate that american leadership meets with the taiwanese leaders. we are trying to help taiwan become more self-sufficient, particularly in defensive areas. >> vice president pence campaigning in iowa today, even

though he hasn't declared he is running, is deciding whether to appeal a federal court ruling he has to testify to jack smith's special counsel january 6 and election interference grand jury. what do you think of him fighting against appearing? >> listen, i don't agree with mike pence on a lot of his issue positions. i do agree and i think he showed great courage standing up against donald trump on that horrific day, january 6, and doing his constitutional duty. i wish he would come in and be willing to testify. remember, it was mike pence and his family who were put in harm's way. we heard the insurrectionists. i was on the floor of the senate. the shout that said, let's get mike pence. we saw the videos of people saying, kill mike pence. i would hope he would do his duty there as well. answer the subpoena. >> have you had access to the

substance of the classified documents by either -- from mar-a-lago, from biden, from pence, any of that? >> andrea, this is where the biden administration gets an absolute failing grade. their position is outrageous. you got mike pence saying yesterday as well, he would be happy to have the intelligence community -- he trusts us to look at those documents. you have this back and forth between the justice department, the attorney general publically saying yesterday, he has no problem. that was what he said in one committee. then blaming it back on the director of national intelligence. the director of national intelligence blaming it on the justice department. we don't have any evidence in looking into the mishandling of the mishandling of the documents. that is a justice department appropriate role. we have a constitutional responsibility to see those documents, the classified ones, make a judgment, whether the

intelligence community did appropriate protection and if those documents were to fall into the wrong hands, what kind of mitigation we could take. and i am done with the lack of willingness for the administration to address this, their position does not pass the smell test. we are going to put limitations on what the ic does. i'm going to encourage my colleagues to do the same on the justice department. this flipping back and forth the responsibility, senator rubio and i, bipartisan asked to see these documents in september. we got four weeks ago a hearing where we got a little bit of the covers pulled back. they said they would work closely with us. they're now four weeks later, and we've seen squat. you know, if this was the trump administration and this is not a democrat, republican thing. every democratic member of the intelligence community is outraged by this non-supportable position of the biden administration.

so i don't want to -- i'm not a guy that comes on tv and makes threats, but i'm joining with my republican colleagues and my colleagues, democrat and republican in the house. this position cannot stand, and they're dragging their feet, it's outrageous. we've got a job to do. if we can't get it through a negotiation process with them, we will use other tools. >> well, just explain what your threat is. so is there a deadline here, and what can you do against the intelligence community, that's 17 agencies, and the justice department to enforce it? >> the intelligence community in their normal course of business, sometimes say we've got to move money from one account to another for legitimate purposes. i would hate to use that tool, but the idea that they are refusing their constitutional obligations. we are the oversight committee. we are the last functioning bipartisan committee. i would argue in the congress these days. we know how to handle these

kinds of documents. we've got to make sure if they were improperly dealt with what the community did to mitigate that threat and the outrage is we got total access to documents the raw intelligence, when our committee did the russia investigation under donald trump, and the fact that this administration is not even meeting the kind of transparency standards of donald trump is -- you hear what i'm saying, andrea. this will not and cannot stand. >> i hear you. i know you were very plain speaking but very calm moderate democrat, thank you very much senator mark warner. appreciate it. president biden has repeatedly called on congress to do something about guns by banning assault weapons used in the deadliest shootings, but the folks just aren't there. in the senate 60 votes are needed. the senate chaplain called out

after the latest shooting in nashville. >> lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers. lord, deliver our senators from the paralysis of analysis that waits for the miraculous. >> and house speaker kevin mccarthy has avoided commenting at all on the nashville shooting. no statements, no tweets, no continuing to ignore questions from reporters. >> is there anything that congress can do to respond to the shootings in nashville? mr. mccarthy, why haven't you made a comment. >> at the press conference tomorrow ask your question. >> joining us now, ashley parker

and co-author of a story today on the ar-15s, how it increased profits for the gun makers. brandon, let's talk about speaker mccarthy, why hasn't he said anything? >> yeah, because i don't think he has a whole lot of answers. this is an issue that republicans have shown very little interest in taking on. look, there's a reality or at least an argument that a lot of republicans will make that there's not a lot that they can do. they've resigned themselves that no law changes are going to make a big difference. that does feel a little bit like a political excuse. let's remember, the senate did lead on gun control reforms last congress after the tragedy in uvalde. they were able to pass something. the senators sort of powered through and got something done, but that is actually having some political blowback now. i was talking with somebody in the senate earlier today and said that that vote, it still hangs out there as trouble for a lot of senators, john cornyn,

senator from texas led on that, someone who hopes to be a leader of the senate republican conference, and that's probably going to be hung around his neck when he tries to do that. because it divides republicans. it's a very unpopular vote with the base. and as we have talked at great length on this show about in the past, republicans care much more about the base than they do about winning general elections and they are quite content to ignore the middle that would like to see a lot of action on this. >> ashley, they can't seem to get it across the finish line. certainly they won't be able to in the house. >> that's right. and again, i just want to briefly go back to when i covered congress and when brendan worked for speaker boehner when the newtown massacre at sandy hook elementary school happened and 20 first graders were killed with an ar-15-style weapon. and even then when there was a ton of moral outrage and it seemed like it should be political will, no one could get any sort of major legislation

across the finish line. and that was sort of the moment in my head for my reporting, i said this is going to be an issue that is almost always intractable in congress, and that's just what we're seeing now. >> and ashley, is it the money from the nra? because they've lost a lot of clout in the last couple of years. is it the gun manufacturers? what is driving this? the voter's in a completely different place. >> the voters are. what's driving this is -- and the nra has lost a ton of clout. what's driving this is what brendan said, which is among the republican base -- i would just urge everyone, "the washington post" has this incredible series out this week on the ar-15 is and how it has become an american icon, incredibly divisive, but also incredibly interwoven into the fabric of our nation. and among the base some of these votes are just -- they are political nonstarters, and that's what republicans fear most of all.

>> and brendan, you pointed out john cornyn led the way last time, but assault weapon ban. the assault weapon ban has some popularity even with gun owners. >> yeah, but not with republican base voters and not with the loudest voters. that's one of the issues of politics. you could probably find a poll that says republicans, your generic republican voter would be okay with something like this, but it's the ones who mobilize, make their voice heard, run campaigns against members of congress. look, i think the nra being the boogeyman has always been overstated. it is republican base voters, people who care about this issue who make a lot of noise that scare off members all the time. certainly the nra has contributed to it, but it's mostly voters themselves. >> brendan buck, ashley parker, thank you both so much. that does it, thanks for being with us for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." "chris jansing reports" starts

right after these messages. right after these messages

good day, i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city, and we've got new context to an old question. can we stop mass shootings like the one we saw in nashville? because right now across america, roughly one in 20 adults owns at least one ar-15 rifle.