we are back with a second hour of chris jansing reports, and we have more on that horrible breaking news. at least four people are dead after a shooting at the abundant life christian school in madison, wisconsin, and police say the suspected gunman, a juvenile, is also dead. so a total of five. police say they found multiple gunshot wound victims after responding to an active shooter call. police never fired their weapons. here's how quickly the facts are moving. during the press conference, the police chief found out that the number of dead had changed. >> we did just get an update from our command post, five deceased at this time, five injured. a total of ten. >> again, this is a ever evolving situation. >> nbc's maura barrett is following this for us.

jim kavanaugh is back with us, and nbc's tom winter is here on set. get us up to speed, what do we know at this hour? >> this was a rapidly unfolding situation. everything from the public safety alert to police arriving on scene to then getting that update, all happening within an hour and a half. police sending out that public safety alert around 11:20 central time, 12:20 eastern time, and then we just heard that first police briefing just in the last hour around 1:15 p.m. eastern time. now, as you laid out, we know that five people in total are dead. that includes the juvenile that police believe to have been the shooter. they said that the juvenile was found dead in the school. police did not fire any of their weapons, and then we know that five more people have been transported and are being treated at a local hospital. the police chief said that their injuries range from anywhere from minor injuries to life threatening. he did note that he is devastated that this is happening in their community, just before the holidays.

he also noted that the officers train around school shootings specifically quarterly, four times a year, most recently was two weeks ago, and he said their protocols is stop the killing, stop the dieing and find out who's doing that. the officers did just that. they had the madison city police department as well as the local dane county and state police officers responding to this. one witness spoke to this police presence on the ground. i want to hear from one of the neighbors who lives nearby the school about his reaction. >> i never saw so many squad cars, i didn't know there were that many squad cars in madison. we saw a few guys with long guns. they went in the school with a dog, and then later on a little later on, i saw groups of kids coming out of the school. in groups, into the church sanctuary, probably as they were in lock down and clearing the building and slowly taking out the kids bit by bit by bit.

i would have never thought it would have happened in madison, let alone at our school here, alcs, so it's shocking. it's a strange world we live in. >> the police chief noted that they set up a reunification site for families and parents to be linked back up with their children. the police chief said they're not sharing more information about the deceased or injured until families are notified. and so they haven't shared information whether these are students or teachers or who the affected people are. the abundant life school did post an updated statement on their facebook page, asking for prayers saying they had an active shooter incident in the day. and they're in the midst of following up. they wrote please play for our challenger family. as all of this information is still being pulled together, the

police chief also said that they are going through the school and the surrounding area, the parking lot, the cars, methodically to make sure that there isn't anything that was missed. right now, they don't believe that there's anymore ongoing threat at this location or any of the surrounding public district schools as well. we do know that president biden also has been briefed on this, and is providing support as needed for the local authorities as they continue their investigation. we do anticipate another update from the madison public information officer in about the next two hours or so, chris. >> tom winter, you and i have sat at this desk a lot in situations like this. i thought because of the time of year when i went to cover the newtown school shooting that when i got off the highway i saw christmas decorations on houses and i thought, there are presents under trees that those little kids will never open, and that's what this community in

madison, wisconsin, is facing today. what more do we know? what more can you add? you have covered way too many of these? >> yeah, i mean, i think to go back to newtown, first nbc news employee that was there because it was in our new england bureau at the time, and so you're going to -- this community is going to go through exactly what you just laid out. they're going to drive by the school, not be able to drive by for a couple of days because it's a crime scene. you think about all the things kids do, particularly at a christian school, the week before christmas break, and all of those things are forever ruined, and so it's going to be terrible. it's going to be terrible for everybody involved. certainly the students, certainly their families, the teachers, staff that work there, and obviously the police officers, so they go into the school, according to the police chief, and they don't need to fire a round because the shooter, allegedly is dead and deceased. it's a juvenile. it goes to that school. and so this is kind of solved before it's even over, and

there's just a complete feeling of helplessness for the first responder community, and the grief that will exist with the families for some time. in newtown, the connecticut state police did an unprecedented thing at the time, it's now become common place unfortunately where they sign add troop tore each one of the families of the deceased kids is a means and method providing them direct contact with law enforcement updates on the investigation, and those troopers and families actually became quite close over the years, and that's a very tight knit community, and similar type of thing as i'm sure it is in this community. there's a tree in the middle of it. there's all sort of reminders of the holiday season, whatever you personally celebrate and, so yeah, it will be very difficult. and it's particularly difficult, i think, for people not only in that community but across the country, you look at a situation like this, and sometimes in certain school shootings, uvalde, texas, comes to mind, action or inaction that occurs

that allows a focus when it comes to reporting. is there anything we can learn from this so that it doesn't happen again, and in this particular instance, if the facts is laid out currently by the police chief are accurate and i only say that because, you know, there are fluid situations and as we saw from what you played at the top of the show, this is so dynamic, he received an update in the middle of a press conference. in these situations, it can be difficult if there's nothing to get out of it. it's just simply a tragedy, and so that's something that will undoubtedly impact this community as well. i really don't have, i mean, other than the identity of the individuals who are involved, the deceased and the shooter, and who that may be. and if there are teachers, student, both, those are pieces of information we obviously want to be very careful with and want to make sure are accurate. but at this stage, there's not really a whole heck of a lot that is out there. now, juvenile, depending on the

type of weapon that was used, should they have been in possession of it lawfully, that's obviously going to be a major question for investigators. it's going to be a question going forward. i would add that, you know, the prevalence of guns in communities, whether at home or the ability for students to access them is something that definitely occurs, and so, you know, it's a difficult thing with so many guns that are available to members of the public. to be able to stop all of these from entering the school. >> i'm going to interrupt you just a second because we have some new information and it's important, and jim cavanaugh, i want to bring this to you. we played this live and we brought it back again, that in the middle of the press conference where the police chief was briefing, he was interrupted to say actually that the number of people was ten, five people deceased. that is not correct. at this time, what they know is that three people are deceased. three, nine in total were

injured. including, they're saying, the three deceased. so three deceased and six, what i would consider to be injured. but the chaos. >> tom you have something else on that? >> that matches the information we heard before going on air. that matches the information we have been told. there's no good news here today, but the fact that there's two fewer individuals that are deceased that,st that's a good thing. there was a bit of confusion at the scene and at the command post. i'm not surprised that these numbers changed. again, all of those numbers are the official numbers. that's not our reporting. that's coming from the scene. we heard initially there were two individuals that were deceased found dead in the school. they were not going to be transported to local hospitals and a shooter was not going to be transported to a local hospital because they were also found deceased. that sinks up with the initial information we heard, and i think is probably going to be where we are with that, and you know, to the point i think we're going to touch on, the only good

news out of that is there appears to be two fewer people deceased. >> jim cavanaugh, it speaks to what you know as well in the opening minutes and even hours after a situation like this occurs. it is chaotic, it is confusing, people can mishear or misread a situation, and that is, you know, i'm not exactly sure what happened here. but it is very difficult, and they do feel, in my experience, law enforcement feels that they have an obligation to the public, certainly to the people of their community. they are members of that community, to get them as much information as they possibly can. and sometimes, jim, mistakes are made. >> right. i mean, this is pretty normal, chris, the chaos of these things. we call the fog of war. it happened all the time, and i don't think i have been on one where you didn't have information flowing like that that you have to get corrected. i used to, you know, in situations like that, get a

special agent and say, i want you to go down, and i want you to count whatever it was we were going to report, the number of people injured, count the damage, count whatever we were saying, and i want you to do it, and you to come back report directly to the commanders, so we didn't have a game of telephone going on where the numbers were flying around. but it's pretty normal that that happens because everybody's, you know, just trying to get to their post and there's, you know, there's a total of nine people here that are killed or injured. so, you know, they're being rushed to the hospital. they're in the back of the ambulances and maybe police cars. firefighters, par amedics treating them and all of these agents and troopers responding. there's nothing abnormal about that. the sad fact is we've got a juvenile that arrives at the school where he is a student, according to the chief, and he's able to kill two people and himself and wound seven other people. i mean, it's pretty horrific,

really. and it's sad because it's going to be some of the same lessons we have learned before that have not been implemented to stop this. and everybody thinks their school is safe, but, you know, you really got to look on all fronts to make your school safe. are you watching for signs of suicide? often the signs of these things are the same signs in suicide, you know, when the person is despondent, they don't care about living anymore. they make comments about hurting themselves. they start to want to give away their stuff. who's noticing that, are you paying attention to that, school counselors, parents, friends? because when people get like that, and they get into the suicidal ideation, this is what underlies so many of these type of shootings. not all of them. some killings, the people want to get away, and they try to get away, but some of them, you know, maybe a good percentage,

the person knows they're going to die by the hands of the police. decide by cop, or they're going to die by their own hand which looks like what happened here. we got to look for those signs, and we got to be not allowing a student to come in with a firearm. they said he is a juvenile or she is a juvenile, we don't know the gender of the person killed, but killer, we know was a juvenile according to the chief. you can't buy a long gun unless you're 18, under federal law, and a handgun from a licensed dealer unless you're 21. how did you get the gun? you couldn't get a gun if someone gifts it to you like a parent or guardian. you can steal it, get it from a classmate, but often they come from home, and they're just taken from the house, and then, you know, the carnage ensues. how does the school ensure that all of its parents for all the students have locked and secured

their guns. how do they ensure that? and that's always a challenge going forward. >> let me bring in carmen best, a retired seattle police chief and msnbc law enforcement analyst and, carmen, look, because you have been a police chief, you know how this works. and talk about the role of local police. there will be other folks who come in. we know the county sheriffs came in. we heard from the police chief there that state officials or state law enforcement responded as well. and we touched on this again, before, i would imagine that one of the first orders of business, if they indeed have identified who they believe this shooter is that they are looking for his parents. they are looking to see did he have a gun, how old was he, was it his family's gun. talk to us from the local law enforcement perspective? >> yeah, chris, as you know, this is one of those situations where it is all hands on deck. multiple law enforcement responding.

they will be giving out all the information as they can as has been mentioned by tom winter and jim cavanaugh, they will be looking for motive, what happened, did this student or this juvenile exhibit any characteristics that would lead people to believe that something like this might occur? for the officers, for all of the faculty, for all of the students, it's a tragic day. as you know, again, many officers are responding. many have family and friends, cousins, other people that are of this age. it's also a very personal thing for people who are responding, and the empathy and angst to get in there, to take care of the situation. it's always very traumatic. a lot happening, as we know, some of the information changed early on. i've been there myself as a former chief. where you're getting different details coming in, you're trying to be as accurate as possible, and also as timely as possible. sometimes things can get confusing in that transition. but again, the response is going to be acute to something like

this, and again, it's just a tragedy that we're seeing once again, another school shooting where people end up dead. >> we were talking about motive as well as you noted, carmen, and i'm reminded that it was less than two weeks ago we were reporting. unfortunately, about a shooting. i think it was oroville, california, and two little kids, they were kindergartners, i think 5 and 6, were shot at a school affiliated with the 7th day adventist, and similar situation. the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but police as they were doing their investigation were looking into whether or not the motive might be tied to that religion, to what authorities believe was something to do with that denomination, in particular, the words hate crime were used. again, there's no prosecution because this person died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound,

but here we are again at another christian school, if you go on the web site, it says that the christian life school is founded, their curriculum is founded on the bible. so is that something that they would be immediately -- think to look at as whether or not it had something to do with the church, with the faith that is wrapped up in this school that is kindergarten through 12. >> absolutely, i mean, every possibility will be looked at. that's just one of the possibilities, one of many that they'll consider. they'll leave no stone unturned in figuring out what happened, including interviewing family and friends and others to figure out what happened here. it's hard to say because it's too early on, but that certainly is a possibility that will be looked at as well as any other possibility about what would drive a young person to do something like this. >> and we are in that phase, jim cavanaugh, where we are talking

about things when we don't have a lot of information, and i want to be careful about making any implication. what i want to do is talk about the facts that we touched on, the fact is that we have seen a change in america in the way people regard the children, the juvenile children of parents, the parents of juvenile children who become shooters, mass shooters, school shooters. we saw earlier this year in april that ethan crumb ley's parents both were found liable in the shooting perpetrated by their son. they both got ten to fifteen years in prison. there was a georgia high school student, a father and son were charged, indicted both the teenage boy and his father on dozens of charges at apalachee high school shooting. is that something that has definitely sort of embedded itself in the psyche now that

people have less patience or less -- i'm not exactly sure what the word i'm looking for is, they're not so likely to excuse the parent because the child did something? >> well, exactly. chris, i mean, we've all lived with this horror of school shootings now, how many years has it been, we have all lived with it in america. americans are fed up with it, and they're fed up with the things they can do about it. one of the things we could do, and we have talked here you and i have, many times, you know, if parents today in all that are the parents of school children across america would secure their firearms today, if every single parent would do that, you could reduce school shootings. because guns in half the cases of school shootings, in half, they come from the home. if those guns were secured. if every principal were able to say to every parent in your school, we don't want this to

happen here, so we want you to secure the guns. we want you to certify to us as the principal that you have secured the guns, and you have no unsecured guns in your home that a juvenile could get. we want you to certify that, and you know, tell us that in writing. and, you know, make it important that the parents have to go get a gun locker, which are cheap. get some way to secure it, trigger lock or something so it doesn't happen. and i think the american public is fed up with the irresponsibility of parents who don't to do that, and you know, that's why we see these charges of negligent homicide because the parents in the community will pressure the district attorney to do something, and of course they do have a charge often of criminally negligent homicide, and they can -- and they can charge it, so it opens up the family to all kinds of issues and they may have even lost their child in the event because the child might have

been killed by the police or committed suicide, and they still could be charged, so, you know, how does the message go out, and where are our political leaders that will stand up and get this message across stronger to parents across the country, you know, i've always said that the presidents, biden or trump, should use the bully pulpit for that. it's not gun control. get up and say and get up on one night, you know, plan it and say it from the oval office. then have every governor follow you in their state and do it. a message to america, lock your guns up safely and securely so we don't have these things. we could reduce the numbers. right now we know we could reduce those numbers by half, if people would do that. that's amazing progress. now, we can't stop them all that way. but we could reduce the numbers dramatically and save a lot of

children if people would listen to the lessons we learn and take action. principals and leaders and school boards can ask the parents to certify that they did that, and that may be a good thing to have in your pocket, that the school has and say, well, the parents certified they did it, and look, they didn't do it. you know, maybe the district attorney, then, would look on them and want to charge people that said they did it, said they secured the guns and did not. i don't know. the effort is not to charge them. the effort is to secure the guns. and that's just secure your own guns in your own home. that's not anything to do with the police or federal agents or the government or anybody making you do it. it's your own -- taking your own responsibilities in hand. could go a long way to reducing these horrible things. >> yeah, we're seeing the scene in madison, wisconsin. there was a quick response. all hands on deck response to

the shooting at a school, kindergarten through 12th grade, one week away from the children at the christian school in madison going on christmas break. joining me now, dr. kavita patel, an msnbc medical contributor. here we are again with three people dead, including the shooter. nbc keeps a count, dr. patel, of these things, and 124 people have been killed in school shootings since 2013. 181 injured. it is obviously but i think not stated enough that guns are a health policy issue. little kids going to school are being shot dead. in this case, a week from christmas break. in this case, potentially some of the kids who had basketball practice tonight as we saw on the web site. that's what they were supposed to be doing tonight, going to

basketball practice. can you put this in the perspective of american health policy, doctor. >> it's hard. i've got kids that age, and i know that school well. i have friends whose kids graduated from that school. there's a lot of -- it's very -- i just want to say to anyone listening, it's very hard not to be personal about it no matter who you are, this is just not supposed to happen. but, chris, as you mentioned, we have said that too many times. in terms of health policy, i think that we're talking about exactly en you said, guns are a public health crisis. we talked about covid for many years. you look at the number of deaths and ongoing predicted deaths that continue to rise. we can't act as a country, as a world, that we value. it is a health policy issue. if it helps what's happening right now. you've got first responders that are there, you can imagine the crowds that are there, trying to understand if it's their loved one that has been affected.

if it's their loved one that they can or cannot get in touch with. first responders know this better than anybody. they are not just the first to the scene, but i've been in the emergency room when we have had these shootings and we're waiting for people, and we don't get them. there are no people that can be saved, and then when you look at the aftermath of the violence, chris, as we've seen an escalation in the ability to print guns, the ease in which you can gain ammunition, the uneven pattern of laws, depending on the state you're n and the culture of violence. i see it with my 10-year-old son, the video games hids friends play. and i want to go back to american health policy. this is awful but it's a reminder that i need to keep at the screening that i do with patients on whether they have guns in the household, how they keep the guns safe, whether they have children in the household, what they do when other children

visit their household. i have had parents even say, should i ask other parents about guns in the household. i said you should. it should be a checklist, not even to think about it. that's part of what we're talking about. these are not just policies that we have to enact at our local level, they need to be implemented at the federal level. as we're talking about a secretary of hhs potentially, we're talking about people who are going to be in leadership position, they don't even support science when we talk about vaccines. how are we going to depend on them to support the science around gun violence, literally unfolding in front of our eyes, and it's tragic. the long-term mental health effect we don't know what that has done to our generation and the generations that follow, but it's devastating. >> to talk about something that might be useful or hefrl helpful in a situation as this, the police chief did point this out, the madison police chief said madison has excellent health care, excellent hospitals, the

six injured were taken to hospitals. he described their injuries from minor to life threatening. we always talk about how police prepare for a situation like this, how schools prepare all the time for a situation like this, you mentioned the er, how do hospitals, how do doctors prepare and other health professionals for a situation like this? >> sadly, we have kind of gone through this so many times, that we're incredibly prepared at hospitals, clinics. remember, you need to be able to mobilize no matter where you are, whether it's a nearby shooting and you're a clinic down the street, like january 6th, what we saw in washington, d.c., chris, or an example today in madison, wisconsin. there's a protocol that gets enabled as soon as that emergency sound hits the bell, and all of the er, trauma surgery, o.r., blood, mobilized so it can be prioritized, where anybody can comes through the doors, a serious trauma to a

minor injury. you need to be prepared and you need the staff to be able to kind of get out of the care of regular care patients, that means that we're triaging literally who's the most emergent all the way to who can wait just for some time, and then keep in mind that in parallel, you've got people coming through the doors of the hospital because they obviously would want to find out if it's their loved one, minor or seriously injured. they deserve details. and there's an incredible amount. the layover of technology, i will describe to you in many hospitals and health care suspects, we're often screening social media because we're learning about things as they're happening. sometimes in realtime on social media before even law enforcement can get to the site. so it actually is a really interdisciplinary team that gets activated at the health care system level, in conjunction with law enforcement. now with technology, chris, that's adding a new layer that you have to monitor. i'll just make it a point here that the grief does not change. you mentioned newtown, you

mentioned sandy hook. uvalde, texas, columbine, the list goes on and on. those people are still florida, it's too numerous to count, as we say, but the list goes on. and each time these incidents happen, it's like ripping open a new scab. this too should have been prevented, should have been stopped. >> i keep using personal examples. i was at columbine, i think it was about two weeks, back when we thought we hoped this would be a unique situation, and years later when there is a shooting at a theater in aurora, colorado, one of the dads from columbine came to see me and sat down and talked to me, and he had spent all of those years trying to stop this from happening again. and there he was just down the road from where his own child was murdered and having to talk about other families who were going through the same thing he

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we are back with more of the breaking news. a shooting at a christian school in madison, wisconsin. we do know a shooter killed two people and injured six others. police say the shooter who is a juvenile believed to be a student at the school is dead.

moments ago we got an update on the ground in madison. elizabeth wattis is reporting on buses that took the surviving school children away. >> reporter: yeah, we didn't want to show -- zoom in on the people on the bus for privacy reasons of course but as it was passing, i was able to see there were tiny children on that bus. definitely grade schoolers, elementary and a bunch of police as well. there were adults holding those children tightly. they all looked safe, and they are headed to that reunification center where tim is about a half mile away. there are two more buses waiting to load kids on them. again, they're doing it in a way that, you know, police are blocking that off for good reason, giving those students some space there, and then again, the buses will take this route and go down the road as you just saw that first one bringing kids to their parents

at the reunification center. we will keep you updated. that is the big thing going on right here. they are taking kids that have been housed for safety in the church on to the city buses, back to their parents, so we hope that they are reunified very very soon. for now, reporting live in madison, wmtv 15 news. >> our appreciation to elizabeth, i want to bring in dr. julie caplo, executive director at the hack et center for mental health. and former fbi agent clint watts, an msnbc national security analyst. of the many horrors today, dr. caplo, one of the most horrific and gut wrenching are there are people who go to reunification centers in the after math of the mass shooting. some of them will get the news that their children or other loved ones survived, some will get other news, that the worst they could possibly imagine has happened, what can and should be in place right now at that

reunification center to help everyone who is going through this. >> yes, you're absolutely right, this is probably one of the most nerve racking and traumatic experiences more any parent or care giver or family member to go through. i assume what's happening is there are many people on hand who are mental health professionals who can help the families grappling with whether or not they and their child will be reunited and of course, you know, the most important thing that you can do is be able to talk about these things with our kids, we know that many of the students are going to have lots of questions and concerns and so i'm sure we'll get to that. again, in this more immediate after math with the reunification going on, the most important piece is having the mental health professionals there to comfort and guide the parents through this. >> you and your team helped coordinate mental health response in uvalde, texas, in

robb elementary school. this is something you're all too familiar with. what are the things you learned through personal experience. what are the things that you would say to family, to friends, about how to help a young child who has been through the most unimaginable thing they could ever have been through. >> i think the most important thing we have learned in these experiences is that it really depends on the individual child in terms of how they are going to respond. we know that there are lots of developmental differences in how kids respond to a situation like this, and we also know there are certain risk factors that can put certain children at greater risk for having a harder time in the aftermath, things like how close they were in proximity to the shooting. how close they were to individuals who died, whether they have a strong support system. all of these things come into play. i'll go back to what i said

earlier about really ensuring we're talking to the students about what happened. often times, care givers and parents shy way from talking about. they're worried it's going to upset the kids further. what we have learned is that the more we can openly discuss it in a way that allows the child to ask questions. allows them to voice what their worries or concerns are, the better off those kids will be in the long run. >> after a school shooting, children do often deal with whatever their age, survivor skill, whether they're old enough to put a name to it or not. after uvalde, there was a 10-year-old who drew this image writing i'm sorry i let you die about his cousin who was killed. is honesty the best policy, whatever their age, to what extent do you mitigate? obviously you talk to a much younger child differently than you would a teenager, but is the truth, is helping them to understand exactly what happened always the best way to go?

>> it's a great question. you know, we always want to just start with the basic facts, and, again, as parents or care givers, sometimes we err on the side of giving too much information, which can be overwhelming or not giving any information at all because we're worried about upsetting the child. what we found is if we can allow the child to guide the conversation themselves, by asking, you know, i know or saying something like i know what happened today was extremely scary, and upsetting. what questions do you have for me? or what worries do you have for me? and that way we're able to meet the child where they're at. we're being developmentally sensitive, and we're asking them what are their concerns and addressing them head on. >> dr. julie kaplow, thank you so much. your expertise has been invaluable. clinlt, let me talk to you. we have talked about what are the kinds of things that might be happening outside the school

we haven't gotten into so much. we talked about potentially looking to talk to parents, looking to talk to people who knew the shooter. what's key in the immediate aftermath that police are doing off campus? >> i think the big things, chris, are identification of motive. were the targets known inside the school? were they specifically picked out? or was it somewhat of a random shooting inside the school. if it turns out the shooter, the juvenile was a student at the school, that he picked out certain people. they're always going to explore, did anyone else have any involvement in this, that can be everything from supporting with weapons or helping with the plot or maybe some sort of online discussion that might have revealed what the motivations and intentions were or that could inspire others to action. we assume that it's a lone shooter who did this on their own. you always want to make sure there's not other shooters or potential shooters, other people

involved in the plot that might undertake further round of violence. they want to make sure there's no future violence from this. that speaks to the larger issue, chris, we always talk about when we come on in these situations is contagion. is there someone else around the united states right now or even around the world that has seen this attack, maybe seen other shootings in the last couple of weeks that you have mentioned and uses this as an opportunity to really find inspiration. i think that's the much wider and nationwide sort of thing to look at is are there any indications, more violence down the road, somebody with no connection to the shooting whatsoever. seeing it on television and social media and being inspired to take up a cause they have considered and hadn't actually executed so far. >> we do know that the governor has issued a statement, tammy baldwin, a senator in wisconsin issued a statement, the president has been briefed on this. does the fbi get involved immediately? what is their role?

>> the fbi would trail in this case, chris. let local law enforcement really lead the investigation, be their support in several different ways. one, if there's crime scene support that's needed as jim cavanaugh would likely tell you, the atf with respect to the weapon might get involved to try and do some tracing on that, and separately, are there any leads outside the jurisdiction, outside the state that need to be run down. those are all points where the fbi would come in and try and support. it's hard to know at this point just based on the scale of the attack. we still just have a lot that we don't know. but the fbi obviously would be offering assistance at this point. >> we just got a tweet from representative mark pokan who represents wisconsin's second district, which is where the school is located and he wrote this, thoughts and prayers without action means more school shootings, more dead kids, more action, and he capitalized

action, is needed by our elected officials, and more backbone, again, capitalized to stand up to gun manufacturers. this is a uniquely a united states problem that doesn't have to happen. and i'm wondering what your conversations are with other members of law enforcement when it comes to mass shootings, and maybe some law enforcement officials who aren't from this country. i just can say whenever i have traveled abroad, when there has been a story recently in the news, people who live elsewhere just shake their heads. they don't understand how this keeps happening in the u.s. >> chris, the big question is just access versus responsible gun ownership. as jim noted, we don't know anything about the weapon yet. what the type was that was used, but one of the first questions will be where did this weapon come from, and how did a juvenile get access to it? even beyond that, just looking across the board with all of these shootings, there used to be a preponderance of focus,

growing up as a kid in missouri, if you had a weapon, there was a level of responsibility for the weapon. if you were the owner, there was a level in terms of safety. if you were the user of the weapon, and those principles have really been lost, i think, people get the proliferation of weapons around the country, nearly anyone can get their hands on a weapon in one form or another and add this dimension, which we saw in the unitedhealthcare shooter creation of essentially ghost guns, or ghost weapons, all of this is not just about control, just responsible access and use of weapons, and how can we let juveniles get ahold of these weapons and bring them into a school environment. why should we try and cordon off schools or essentially build a castle around these schools. why not focus on how do we keep responsible gun ownership in this country, if we see it as an essential right, and how do we prevent people with mental health challenges or those that are too young to even have a

weapon from getting those weapons. these questions have never been answered and it's been a decade of nonstop, really, incidents like this, of school shootings, workplace shootings with proliferation of weapons and people having access to weapons that often times should not have access to those weapons. >> i wonder, clint, if some of the best information comes from the local folks, i mean, eyewitnesss can be traditionally not good sources of information, especially in a traumatic situation, but we just learned, for example, that there is a church next to the school, it's just maybe a football field away, and people were saying there were kids who fled to that church after the shooting, and there's a car full of pizzas that's being brought to the kids that often in traumatic situations, obviously people they know, people who are familiar, people from the community who can be a calming force. but they can also be a source of

exceptional information. this is a very diverse school. 200 different families, but they represent 56 different churches in dane county. what brings them together is this church and this community, this school. and i wonder how reliable and how important the people are who were around this situation, the parents of other students who may have known the shooter and things like that. >> what we always see, chris, is when there's an incident like that, people start immediately looking reverse to see was there any tip-offs in terms of motive, that plot might unfold. was there any tips or leads that were called into the school resource officers, counselors, teachers, but like you said, other community members tend to be a great first line for detecting something like this. if this individual did commit suicide, were they contemplating it, if they were thinking about

violence or some sort of anger directed toward a subset toward the school, essentially brought this violence into the school, what are those tips and leads there? it's the local community that always does that, it's families that will know those indicators, and i'm sure that's what law enforcement will be looking to immediately here as they start this investigation. access to the weapon, then what's the motive, and also were there things that could have prevented this. >> i also want to bring in wisconsin state senator who represents madison and in her district is this school. first of all, it sounds insufficient to say simp ympath are with you, your community, it's a horrific thing that you are dealing with right now. what can you tell us? what do you know? >> well, we're all waiting to learn more about this tragedy and how it occurred, and how many people are going to survive. it is just an unthinkable for

any community to face. >> do you know this school? do you know that church where many of the children are now next door? >> i do. i'm aware of it. and i've had a lot of messages from folks around the country, asking if my family is okay, because, you know, madison is a special community. we are close knit, and something like this affects obviously the school where it occurred, but everyone who knows people, has friends and neighbors who attend the school, who are part of that church community, so i think it affects all of us just like we have seen when these mass shootings occur around the country. it affected everyone who lives there. >> tell us a little bit about not just madison, but that neighborhood, that area in particular. i think for a lot of folks and the rest of america, they know madison for football, they know it for, you know, a big university. and may not know it for the heart of what that community is.

talk to us about that. >> well, madison's a really diverse community. people live here because you can have a wonderful quality of life and raise a family, and still get from a to b without too much traffic. it's a really wonderful, vibrant community that has a lot of the special things, you know, cultural aspects and a big university that a larger city might have, but we also have kind of a small community feel. we pay attention to helping our neighbors, we pay attention to our local government. we care deeply about making sure that this community is a good and equitable place for people to live, and we take care of each other, and in that way, i think it's very similar to most communities in this country! one of the local tv reporters interviewed a gentleman from the neighborhood who said i didn't think it could happen here. nobody wants to think it can happen here. this is something you have given a lot of thought to.

your web site says that you were endorsed by moms demand action, which is a gun violence prevention group. from that perspective, obviously this hits home. tell us why this was a particular cause that you have taken up and you have felt strongly about. >> no other country on earth accepts this level of gun violence as a matter of just every day occurrence, and we do. i think that's unacceptable. i'm a parent, i have young kids who are in schools, and the idea that we're just going to allow gun violence to continue to be the number one cause of death for american children is totally unacceptable to me. this is a policy choice that we are making. and we can choose differently. every one of us, every child, every family deserves to live in safety. freedom from gun violence and freedom from fear.

free to learn, free to go to the mall, go to concerts, free to go to church. all of us deserve those freedoms, and yet in state capitals all over this country, we have politicians choosing the interests of the gun manufacturers lobby over our children's right to live, and it is wrong. that's my passion about this issue. >> i know that you sponsored a bill to make college campuses gun free earlier this year. i wonder what the prospects for that are, and i just want to say that as i heard you talking about everyone has the right to live in safety, every little kid who goes to school has the right to live. just live. >> absolutely. >> do you have hope for this bill that you have cosponsored? >> well, we have so many gun safety measures that we have introduced year after year. wisconsin was a very heavily gerrymandered state. we had a powerful republican majority, and now we have more

competitive maps. i'm hopeful. this is an issue where americans actually agree. we are not as divided as our politicians would have us believe. the vast majority of americans want to see common sense reforms to prevent tragedies like this one. and my hope is that now we'll have republicans ready to accept our hands, the democrats' hands that have been extended on this issue, and say, yeah, we accept, we don't want it to happen here. and it's, you know, obviously school shootings are horrific for so many reasons, but we also have crisis in suicide, and the vast majority of suicides are done with a firearm. so there are a lot of reasons why we should be taking action on this, and a lot of things that we could do to help reduce firearm injuries and deaths, and it's just a matter of americans saying, yeah, we're going to actually do what our constituents demand and deserve, and take that step to make wisconsin a safe place for everyone to live. >> i know this hits close to

home. this is your community, you have three little ones, as you say, two young adult stepchildren and their safety, i know, must be foremost in your mind. wisconsin state senator, kelda roys, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. jim cavanaugh, let me give you the last minute of this. what happens now in the last say, 12 to 24 hours. >> we're going to get some answers from the police chief, i think, that probably that, you know, what this shooter, killer child had said or done in the weeks or months leading up to this event, and i think they're going to uncover that in his writings, his postings, and from other children at the school, what he might have said, and we're going to get a clearer picture of his exact motivation to go in and do this, but he's frustrated. or she is frustrated, young person. that's not abnormal. and the emotions run high and

the judgment runs low, and firearms are introduced, and you know, tragedy sometimes is the result. i think we're going to not be satisfied with the answers. there's a lot of heart ache in wisconsin tonight, and all through christmas. it's a really sad event. i would say to every parent watching, encourage all the parents of every child in every school to lock your guns up. half the guns come from there. i have seen it over my whole career. please, lock your guns. make sure they're locked. nobody can get them. no child can have them. i know you trust your kids, but kids aren't fully developed yet, and sometimes their emotions get ahold of them and they'll reach into the closet and get a rifle or go in the drawer and get the pistol and then it's tragedy for your whole community, for your child, for others' children who are killed and injured. it's a thing we can all work on together to do and encourage each of us to do, and that may make us safer by some percentage. >> with that important message, i thank jim cavanaugh and clint watts, that is going to do it for us this hour.

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good to be with you. i'm katy tur. we've got breaking news out of madison, wisconsin, where at least three people are dead and six others injured at a k through 12 school. police say it was a le