[000:00:00;00] hey hey . john harwood in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture another senseless act of gun violence loud love twelve people dead and nearly sixty injured at a midnight screening of the new batman movie last night colorado how many more tragedies are going to take before we pass sensible gun control laws to protect american lives also with growing levels of wealth inequality what's solutions do conservatives have to bridge the gap between the wealthy elites and everyone else that and more and tonight's big picture rubble and genetically modified crops are

all the rage these days and it crowded out regular crops in many countries but just how dangerous are genetically modified crops and should we really rely so heavily on them last jeffrey smith the conversations of great life. we begin tonight with a nation really and once again from another mass shooting this time it was in colorado with where a twenty four year old gun enthusiast walked into a crowded movie theater armed to the teeth with an automatic rifle a shotgun too and guns body armor and tear gas and opened fire twelve people were killed and at least fifty nine injured in the deadliest american mass shooting since the virginia tech massacre in two thousand and seven that shooter is now in police custody and a lot of questions still remain but putting aside the motive and mental state of the killer one thing is clear mass shootings like this it reached epidemic levels in the united states according to the brady campaign to prevent gun violence there have been hundreds of mass shootings in the united states just since two thousand

and five and as usa today report reported on average there are twenty mass shootings every single year in america let me repeat that there are twenty. the mass shootings every single year in america so what do we do about it when the pass we the people through our representatives in congress pass common sense gun control laws the brady bill was passed in one thousand nine hundred three foreseen background checks and firearms purchasers and in one thousand nine hundred four the assault weapons ban was passed outline certain semiautomatic firearms and high capacity magazines all the brady bill is still in place the assault weapons ban expired in two thousand and four and the bush administration chose not to ask that it be renewed seven years later congresswoman gabby giffords was shot in the head and six people were killed when a mentally disturbed man opened fire in tucson arizona is you know high capacity magazines filled with thirty one bullets that would have been outlawed under the assault weapons ban after that shooting common sense should have told us that it's

time to renew the ban get weapons of mass destruction off our streets and put in place better checks to make sure the mentally ill aren't arming up but none of that happened and now a year later here we are again weapons being used that would have been banned under the assault weapons ban and we can expect any sensible gun control to come out of this tragedy either because of how influential big money is now in our government whether the n.r.a. the koch brothers big oil the private health insurance industry or the defense industry special interest with a lot of money have taken commonsense solutions to our nation's problems off the table we should be doing something about our dependence on foreign oil about global warming with america's health crisis we should be guaranteeing health care is a basic right for all americans take the profit motive out of it for example but none of that's happening and would twenty mass shootings every year in the united states the common sense things to do that would make it just a little bit harder for deranged people to get their hands on weapons like handguns that are designed to have only one single purpose to kill or threaten human beings

are more and more difficult to have happen but that common sense legislative response is not happening instead of gun control politicians terrified. the power the supreme court gave the n.r.a. are saying just everyone had a gun in the movie theater then this never would have happened. and of course if everyone had a tear gas mask a flak jacket and night goggles pretty soon the n.r.a. as a lobbyist would be representing those industries too are we really that stupid i don't believe so it's not that we or our elected representatives are idiots it's that our political discourse has been corrupted by money and corporate power in this case the power of the gun industry's trade and lobbying association the n.r.a. and they were able to do that because the supreme court says that the n.r.a. like you and me is a person and they have free speech rights and that their money is the same thing as your voice and vote. well mayors have free speech rights too and they're speaking out mare's michael bloomberg of new york city and thomas menino of boston co-founded

a group that now numbers more than six hundred mayors from communities large and small all across the united states for the mayor's perspective on this all too common sense this act of gun violence i'm joined by mark glaze executive director of mayors against illegal guns marc welcome thanks for having me thanks for joining us. i'm curious how many your thoughts and how many more of these shootings we need to have before something's done and if you have any comments and i was being a little political in the set up there i realize you know you represent republicans and democrats and across the board but you know to what extent is this a political problem that's right you know we have now more than seven hundred mayors we have more than eighty republicans and they are very diverse they believe different things about kind of classic gun control but the one thing that brings these people together is that they are exactly where the american public is which is that there is a lot you can do that both respects the rights of law abiding gun owners to do what the supreme court said they could do which is keep a gun in the home for self-protection but much more to keep people who should not

have gone into the chart lockers the james held and keep these people who are felons or domestic abusers who are already prohibited under federal law from having a gun but they slipped through the cracks and as a result thirty four americans are murdered every day well apparently this fellow today had you know like one traffic ticket so but on the other hand he was using a weapon in the air fifteen which was banned under the assault weapon ban and apparently it had a high capacity clips which was which were also banned this is the same thing with the gabby giffords shooting that he was he had a high capacity clips is the time to start looking at things like just i mean simple stuff we had the assault weapons ban for a decade in the world didn't end the n.r.a. didn't go out of business there was no crime wave in america right but there are a lot of things you can do you know there's disagreement in the country about whether you should ban assault weapons but that's a fantastic debate to have our mayors disagree on that. you know what they agree on is even short of kind of banning assault weapons or high capacity clips there's a lot you can do one thing is everybody should get

a background check the fact is not many people know this forty percent of sales in the united states are conducted with no background check whatsoever because they're not done through a federally licensed dealer this is the gun show loophole is the gun show loophole or the private sale loophole and as you can imagine criminals know that they don't have to get a background check when they go to a guy who's selling out of his car when they go over the internet from a private seller or when they go to a gun show and simply to buy from somebody who is not quote unquote in the business of selling guns huge loophole there we could pass a federal trafficking statute in this country a lot of people don't know also that there's nothing that makes it illegal that makes it a federal crime to traffic and it's the way you get these guys is by finding out that they lied on their on their background check form at a federally licensed dealer and said that they were legally entitled to hold the gun and they were going to sell them to somebody else you could make sure that everybody in this country including advocacy organizations like mine mayors around the country have access to trace data that the a.t.f. collects a crime scenes but because the n.r.a.

doesn't want you to know about where these guns are coming from lobbied heavily and today the a.t.f. can't release information that tells us what the worst dealers are only assume a handful of dealers they can't. the information is secret that's absolutely right to to think to think interesting things about that first of all there was actually a really good news story in all of the bad news of today and that's that one of the dealers that sold this guy to have is gone it's actually called the a.t.f. when they heard about what had happened and let them know that they had sold them the gun that's what most dealers do they are upstanding business people who just want to do the right thing and run their business and most gun owners are the same way but the fact is there's a very small handful of gun dealers in this country who routinely break the law and who don't get right with the law but we don't know who they are because of these funding riders that are in appropriations bills that forbid long for. when officials at the a.t.f. from telling people like me who those bad dealers are i mean this was one of the big problems it's a slight digression but i mean maybe not at all with the a.t.f.

program down and in arizona the whole became so controversial fast and furious but but what they were looking at was that folks from mexico were coming in and hiring local people in many cases people who had no income at all but suddenly had million dollar homes and paying them to go into gun stores and buy literally one hundred or two hundred guns for their own use and then the law in arizona allowed them to change their mind as they walked out to the parking lot and decide oh it's not for my own use i guess i'll sell it privately and independently to this guy from mexico who would then make off with the guns is that was that we were trying always to trafficking and that's exactly right what you just described is a classic scenario called straw purchasing which is a mexican drug all can't come up send somebody up here and buy a gun in arizona dealership so they recruit somebody who needs the money who doesn't have a criminal record and is old enough to do it they go into a dealership they lawfully purchase you know five ten fifty one hundred guns they leave and then pass them on to a middleman part of the reason that such

a pernicious problem that's now killed almost fifty million mexicans and helped facilitate the shipment of narcotics into our communities is that again it's not a federal crime to do that what is it it's a paperwork violation for lying on a background check form and prosecutors don't really want to spend their time on that kind of thing that's all and and given that and given all the all the few pardon the pun but all of fury around this. can something be done i mean isn't there isn't there any momentum toward doing something or is this all being blocked by the n.r.a. and i noticed in a couple days ago there was a vote in the house about the disclose act in the sun or other and the n r n.r.a. said we're going to score this as soon as they say that there's like this huge block of members of congress in both parties who just all of a sudden you know they're going to going to score me as being anti-gun i think that's right you know it's and it's unnecessary you know think progress which is the activism arm of the center for american progress around

a great analysis by progressive writer named paul waldman who book for the first time believe it or not actually looked at what the n.r.a. has done in the endorsements it's made over the past several election cycles and the truth is their influence is very rarely dispositive in any given election they tend to give money to income and they tend to give money to people who are in safe seats four or five races in the past several cycles have they potentially made a difference so people run away from this organization and they don't have to. have maisie's all these politicians live in terror of the n.r.a. and the n.r.a. is a paper tiger that's exactly right now it's not to say that people on our side of the issue don't need to do more you know democratic donors who give money to you know politicians and let's be frank to blue dogs in particular need to start asking those guys where they are on this issue if they're not in the right place they should give the money elsewhere yeah absolutely how come the rights of non gun owners are never discussed in the media or in the database it's very important you know we we deal all the time with survivors of the victims of gun violence. people

in tucson who were shot who had spouses killed who wrestled jared lost their second clip away from him we talked to and worked with all the time a guy named tom mauser in colorado whose son was shot in colorado at columbine and that's the question they often ask you know gun owners do have rights the constitution we are told says so but we have rights too and there's a lot you can do to keep guns out of the wrong hands it doesn't get in the way of anybody's right to sell guns are used to. tell us in the minute we have left here just about your organization and whether individuals could get involved or if they should encourage their marriage to get involved absolutely they can do all of the above they should visit a website at fix gun checks dot org give them the opportunity to sign up when members of congress are going to take votes when we want members of congress to support or oppose things will let folks know and they can contact their or their member of congress and they should also contact their mayors and let them know they ought to join seven hundred around the country who belong to i believe a lot of different things but but like most people in this country there's

a big consensus around what we ought to do good work or glaze thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you for. more on the colorado shooting coming up in tonight's big picture rubble right after the break. we'll.

get started here. for going global and not. only. choose your place. take your stuff. to. make your statement. for the war. on the street.

that's. it's friday time for the big picture rommel joining me tonight are marc harrold attorney a libertarian commentator attorney and author nicole williams democratic strategist and michael was a reporter for the weekly standard thank you all for joining us tonight let's get right into it here. we just were talking with the executive director of mayors against gun violence over this is this is a big issue the colorado shooting on average one hundred thousand americans are shot with a gun every year we have twenty mass shootings like this every year in the united states a lot of get no publicity there was one in kentucky just a couple weeks ago i guess with seventeen people were killed nobody talks about it in big cities you get a lot of media maybe they're more photogenic i don't know. the homicide rate of

with firearms is twenty times higher in the united states than in the twenty two other than the next twenty two nations the the wealthy nations gun violence cost this country one hundred billion dollars and the states in the united states they have the weakest gun laws in the most guns lead in gun deaths so michael what do we do about this well look i mean if. the people are still the other many to bury dead of an over it's really appropriate to start talking about you know what do we do about this about what i'm going to add all these these sort of what it was about this and i would like to say that i think we focus too many times on the tools that people use and none of it and not of this is it guns don't kill people people kill people it's all it's a little more complicated that's ok so then why don't why don't we legalize shoulder fired missiles but you have to ask yourself you look back at not just not just this guy but but you look back at virginia tech and all these other instances when when when people have done these mass murders and you have to ask what's going

on and they're wise why were they driven to do this what whether it's mental illness or something else and i think that if we focus more on the actual people who are. doing these things and trying to prevent them from doing that in the first place and getting these guns in the first is what's different about these people i mean that problem has to do with access i mean when you go into a gun store they don't do it with psychiatric evaluation you know they do a criminal background check make sure you know you've never killed anyone in the path or anything along those lines but you don't know the psychological mindset of the person you're selling the gun to we need stricter gun control laws in this country i mean we are far behind other industrialized countries in the world in terms of gun violence and we have to get to a point where we have to say ok it needs to stop something needs to get to i mean what happened in colorado was it was a travesty and they said something like that should have never happened in the

united states of america never happened in the united states marc when you look at . the equality trust richard wilkinson keep the authors in the u.k. call it equality trust or got you kids their website or any quality dot org here in the united states you look at the statistics either on a state by state basis in the united states or on a country by country basis over the top fifty states in the world and what you find is that those states that have the lowest levels of inequality in other words where where there's less poverty and there's fewer super rich people and a larger middle class they have the lowest levels of gun violence and homicide and those countries that have the greatest inequality in the united states being in the top three us singapore in the u.k. have the highest levels of homicide and gun violence should a duke knowledge those stats and if so what do we do about that well our knowledge of stats because you said there's there and they're there and i trust you that those are the numbers i haven't looked at him personally or at least recently looked at him personally you know do we need more gun laws does this have to do

with poverty are there situations where poverty fuels crime yes there are do we need more gun laws we don't need more gun laws we don't enforce the gun laws that we have the other thing is when you ever you get into an act. sess argument whenever you talk about the access to guns there's still this idea that criminal activity can be you know can be stopped with more criminal laws and the fact is criminals don't follow criminal laws and the bottom line here is when you talk about access whether it's marijuana or drugs or guns or whatever it is if people want to get ahold of something they will get it they will you have to trick right now there might be a situation where somebody just situationally grabs a handy weapon and uses it more gun laws are not the answer to this problem well but you know we have specifically for years and years michel we've we've outlawed you know as i said shoulder to shoulder fired missiles air to air to ground you know there are actually readily available in a number of other countries most in the middle east and they're very problematic we've outlawed the people are using them you know people are using guns that are designed for one thing killing people so as to say ok so is it

a question of where you draw the line and terms of what what guns do and what i want to question is who won is what do we allow and what are we don't you know hunting rifles no problem in my mind self-protection you know pistol no problem in my mind but what does somebody need an air fifteen with a thirty round clip for well i don't know and i don't know if it's the government's . i don't know where that line is i should say but but what i'm saying is all of us already know where that line is what it is if you use it in war it was illegal but tom so again back to my earlier point is that if we want to talk about the causes of gun violence i don't think you can say the guns are the cause of gun violence because there's got to be a finger pulling that trigger there's got to be somebody i'm not pulling that out and i know it is and this isn't a government question my question is though as a society we've got to look at how we're dealing with people i mean the mother of this of this killer was called this morning she didn't hear about it she was called by the press and she said immediately she hadn't heard about it but she knew it was her son so the question is why did it get that takes us back to my inequality

argument because the other thing you find is in those countries that have less inequality have less mental illness this guy was a ph d. student he came from a. no there was no hole in thought but from a mental illness i don't disagree we don't need to deal with mental illness in our country i mean i think we do still need to deal with mental defects and things along those lines but at the same time i think it is an act that he legally purchased those guns in the state of colorado it wasn't as though he got them on the black bark it wasn't as though he went and got the meat legally he way illegally purchased those weapons would it i don't understand why you need a cape forty seven to go shoot deer you don't need that for sporting park with the fact that we're talking about a shoulder mounted bazookas well it was using the american version of an a k forty seven he was but the other day when we go in these things most of the crimes we're talking about those large numbers of gun crimes that you're talking about are used or utilized the kinds of guns you say are ok in the general context their hunting rifles their shotguns their pistols we're jumping we because this is becoming a medium duty regular political thing we've immediately gone from all of these

instance of gun crime which are done with the types of weapons you described that should be legal and we jumped right to take a forty seven senate and really you know missiles which we do need to move along and but just to this this question clearly the cole you think that this is an issue of access if they're widely accessible some crazy person is going to grab them i agree with you michael and mark i haven't heard from either of you what you think may be causing this what makes us different from canada which actually has more guns than we do why for now we have we have a significant worry or people as you know it's going to you know people abuse their freedoms but that we can do all sorts of things tonight here in this table to make us less free and will be a lot safer but will be a lot less free so when people abuse freedom sometimes people get hurt i am this is a tragic situation i'm not justifying there's just yeah absolutely we're freer than my country and people abuse it i agree look when you when you allow greater liberty like this well like we do in our country. liberty to own

a gun we're going to carry we can have the same liberty but how many those countries have a second amendment it doesn't matter you have the same you have this. liberty you can't have more guns and we do per capita ok so they're not killing each other what's different between us that's and that's what i'm saying i what i'm going to talk about is the actual culture in the is there is something wrong with our culture right that's my point and let's get to that wealth inequality gun violence and mental illness are both symptoms of cultures with extreme wealth inequality wealth inequality is reaching new heights in the united states a new report this week shows the six wal-mart errors on more wealth than forty one percent of americans the bottom forty one percent of americans the bottom fifty percent just own one percent of all the wealth in the united states this is a third of what it wasn't in one thousand nine hundred five and probably a tenth of what it was back before the reagan presidency so and in fact here's this graph you know we can i think we can try to you know show on the screen i'm sure with the median wealth in two thousand and eleven by country and you see that in

the united states the median half is owns more half owns was is a around fifty five thousand dollars in australia it's over two hundred thousand dollars in italy it's over one hundred fifty thousand dollars in japan the united kingdom switzerland and ireland median income this is net worth of wealth is over one hundred thousand dollars all of these countries are less equal than we are and we're having this crisis i'm not i'm not sure those numbers tell you other than that america has a lot more billionaires then you know been everywhere else and what poor people know but let's talk about what that all the while it's a relative question right so you said it's now one percent of the wealth is concentrated with fifty percent below the bottom fifty percent. right and say what was that for years ago it was three percent but the amount of wealth in this country has grown in the last twenty four twenty five years so you're not talking about you're not apparent reason alone you know i'm not actually the levels of

poverty in this country of actually instead of zero zero seven game it's not it's not something where if if there are more wealthy people that means the people on the lower end of. economic scale have west necessarily hope not but that middle class is shrinking felt the middle class have to go somewhere they're either going to go to the top or they're going to the bottom unfortunately they're going to the bottom based on the things that we're seeing and unfortunately when you know people are suffering financially it has a tendency to cause an increase in crime in most countries i mean even when you look at the u.s. economy when the u.s. economy goes down crime has a tendency to rise just in general and that's probably why we're seeing a large increase in violence probably why the united states has a larger increase in violence that most other industrialized countries so mark what's the solution what's conservative solution of this problem i'll tell you the liberal solution is not raise taxes on rich people absolutely but there's a difference here too there can be situations where inequality could grow where the

rich could outpace and pull away further but the actual economy could grow in itself too so we're look at this is not all the same question you could have a vastly inequal system where the rich just got richer and richer and richer but as the economy grew the middle class could come with them i know that's not what's happened and i want to give over the last sixty years in america when the middle class. would have to leave the eighty's but when you go out and try to create the equality by punishing the rich or feel that they owe more and you have and you tax them at higher and higher rates the idea that this is going to make us more equal it does bring the quality together but the entire economy through that regulation not over taxation will shrink no those are the end of the anybody longer so you have a lot more people even if everybody's quality of living is the same and everybody's quality of living has to come down ok actually it and ok well leave you with the last word in the last question quick fire and romney was interviewed on a.b.c.'s good morning america yesterday in the interview robin roberts asked romney why her husband doesn't want to release any more of his tax and financial information this

was this is romney's answer but he's going on so many things that it will be open again for more attack and you just want to give more material for more attack and that. really that's just the answer and we've given you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how we live our life you heard right ann romney said you people are robin roberts so the question is what did she mean by you people we should refer to african-americans. this is this happened ross perot said this to the ninety two to anyone with less money than her husband you poor people you know who do nails and hair as one of her wealthy donors did recently to the people who are not the wives of mormon bishops who get their own planet when they die which which of the people was it michel you know it was probably that she probably meant black people because she was waiting until an interview with robin roberts to come out as a racist that probably was the answer so i'll say she does just that we suspect it's probably it was is probably you know anyone who is just not within our wealth

class you know and that's i got i think she generally meant the electorate the people generally but she's dead wrong the people get to decide what they need to know about their game and it's not her nicole michael thank you very much things. after the break with the world's population exploding many argue that we all need to rely more and more on genetically modified foods in order to survive the future that are genetically modified food safe for eating and safe for the environment are they just another example of corporations out to make a profit at the expense of society but pose that question and more to jeffrey smith in tonight's conversations with great. news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has

been seeing from the streets of canada as. a giant corporations rule the day. wealthy british style. is not on. markets why not canada. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike skies or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on r g.