blogs are in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture in the wake of the colorado shooting massacre on friday politicians and everyday americans alike are questioning the role of guns in our society should lawmakers introduce stronger gun control legislation or a mass shooting is something we need to learn to live with the supreme court says the n.r.a. and their weapons manufacturing corporations are persons also super wealthy americans like the koch brothers have corrupted our democracy with millions in campaign cash but at least they put their name to it what about the other oligarchy who are buying our democracy in the shadows they have a right to an image when it comes to buying politicians and over the weekend protesters in anaheim california were met with

a brutal show of force by that city's police officers is this latest episode of police brutality a sign of the over militarization of the nation's police forces and what can be done to stop the epidemic of excessive force. we begin tonight it's a bigger picture discussion with the aurora theater massacre the shooter was in court today for his first hearing dressed in a marine room a prison jumpsuit with his hair dyed red and his eyes looking rather lethargic in the weeks leading up to the shooting he purchased more than six thousand rounds of ammunition spending roughly three thousand dollars on his arsenal he also purchased a bulletproof vest and other tactical gear to mimic a swat team member and high capacity magazines that would have been illegal under both the assault weapons ban and numerous other pieces of gun control legislation that have stalled out in congress he build up his unusually large collection of deadly weapons just before the shooting without once raising

a red flag with authorities also he was never required to submit. background check or register his name to the weapons you bought tragically twelve people are dead now and fifty eight others wounded as a result of his rampage and like every mass shooting in america the debate over gun control has again flared up here was republican senator ron johnson. unfortunately i don't think society can keep sick demented individuals from obtaining any type of weapon to kill people i mean somebody who wants to purposely harm another individual is going to find a method of doing it. he's not trying to pick a fight with the gun lobby president obama seemed to reject calls for any new gun controls his press secretary jay carney carney told reporters on sunday the president is focused on doing the things that we can do that protect second amendment rights which he thinks is important but also to make it harder for it of vigils who should not under existing law have weapons to obtain them the key words there are under existing law meaning no new laws regarding gun control democratic

congresswoman carolyn maloney a champion for gun control in recent years offered this sobering assessment on the chances of any sensible gun control legislation coming out of this latest tragedy saying this. i always look at it this way no one from the n.r.a. is ever going to vote for me and they're just not they might even come after me on other issues but the thing of it is as a politician a lot of politicians know it's the right thing to try to fight for something to save lives they don't have a spine anymore they pander to who's giving the money and the n.r.a. has a lot of money so what is our in a nation do in the wake of this latest mass shooting one of roughly twenty that happen every year is a time to rethink the role of the second amendment in america or our guns just being scapegoated in a society that's simply way too violent and turned over to my panel brian darling a senior fellow of government studies at the heritage foundation and a columnist for the daily caller and townhall dot com carl frisch is

a sudden kit syndicated columnist and progressive strategist and partner with bold played strategies as he robinson is the deputy director with the paul revere project with a contributor to the blaze and josh horowitz executive director of the coalition to stop gun violence josh welcome first you're the expert on this topic no other mass shooting in america what do you say who say that we shouldn't or on the other side we should have stronger gun controls and look i think you need to look at this this particular situation here we have this is a someone who walked in with an a r fifteen variant made by smith and wesson with a. hundred round drum magazine these are the types of weapons and magazines that are only made for one thing to kill lots of people that implements of war if we need them in a society there for one thing but for taking on the government that's that type of militarization that we're seeing in the gun community right now and i think it's very important to put a stop to that and this is the this is the exact type of thing the exact type of situation that really highlights what is so wrong when you solve these band went

out and that we definitely need to make sure that these weapons we take these weapons out of society that you can't buy these types of magazines and by the way that something like ordering six thousand rounds of ammunition through mail doesn't raise any red flags right those are important things to do and we need to take care of its should raise some red flags if you read the federalist papers you read the medicines notes on the constitution nowhere at anytime anywhere was there any discussion about weapons about the second amendment right to fight back against a government and if i could just finish this really quick i noticed for most of my life the argument that the n.r.a. has made is a variation on somebody's going to hijack my car or try to rape my wife or something like that it's typically kind of a masculine frame argument and i pull out my concealed weapon and go away. it seems to me and please tell me if i'm completely wrong in this perception that when president obama was elected all of a sudden that argument at least on the hard right change to we've got to do

something about the government oh absolutely in my book guns democracy in the insurrectionist i did that's the whole premise that the modern gun lobby is less about self-defense they talk about that but they also talk about the guys with the guns make the rules the idea that average citizens should sort of have some kind of leverage in violent you know political leveling with the government and i think that's a really dangerous thought the idea that individuals get to decide when the government becomes tyrannical and exercise that and the really scary part is that we've given them the means to do it the guy with the assault weapons the body armor the ballistic head gear i mean we've you know we've really bought into that and we need to take a step back and say it is undemocratic it is it is against the most important values of this country to say individuals have the right to take on the government we brian brian in illis open this up to the panel here in the story that i was telling you about you know the kind of apocryphal story of the all of us who were in this in this business years ago continually heard was

a guy tried to carjack you know somebody i know is wife almost got carjacked and in many cases the story was it was a black guy who was doing it i mean there was always that subtle racial undertone and then all of a sudden a black guy gets into the white house and the debate becomes now we've got to be able to defend ourselves against the white guy do you see any do you see the element of racism in the here that i'm seen no not at all you have about why did the government all of all of a sudden become the bogeyman it's not already into that in one thousand a always there's always been a strong second amendment movement in this country of good about one hundred twenty thousand americans that live in households and have a farm we have about eight thousand individuals the concealed carry permits of this country people in the country thousands and thousands of. sought weapons and they're not criminals they're not bad people and just because this one horrible incident happened is not make the case to ban all assault weapons because then we

could ban shotguns this individual may have had a shotgun during the commission of this crime he may have had a lot so we don't know would specifically happen but the evidence jacket can't let off while he had a shotgun and we have a discussion about banning violent films why are we having a discussion about that and giving the violence this is let's have a discussion about what happened then or some guy walked in with hundreds maybe thousands of rounds of ammunition. fifty with one hundred round magazine does anybody on this panel think that's a good idea that somebody should be able to just walk off the street with no background check by six thousand rounds of ammunition with no background check by the hundred round drum magazine does anybody think that's a good idea so you don't want to and i don't think you're going to preventing gun violence is something that we all have an interest in doing and the government plays a role in that but the question is by banning guns are you doing anything to prevent violent gun crime and i think that the i think that the burden is on. i allow it because of the argument that we all believe that we should be lowering gun violence

i mean the next thing i'm expecting to hear from my conservative friends and you can stop gun violence with gun violence is what i expect to hear. is to my already show like i have probably been to more gun shows than every single person at this table put together i've been to scores of them growing up my father said a federal firearms dealers license he's got guns on loan to the n.r.a. is museum and i'll be the first person to admit that i grew up in a culture around guns and i have a healthy respect for the government has not created through the laws that we have on the books any kind of a system that would show that we have a healthy respect for what guns can do if they did we would have registration of guns we would have licensing of guns you can get behind a car you can't get behind a big wheel truck without a license and you can buy a gun. that gun show without a background to that point s.e. one cars first came out there was no registration there was no license and and within the first decade of the twentieth century all these people were dining car

accidents because there weren't stop signs that you know there was rules of the road and serba got together and said you know we got a name we had a nose thing down and over time we develop rules of the road and driver's licenses isn't it rational to do the same thing for weapons i mean guns have been along been around for far longer than and these are the numbers in the in the one nine hundred century people think the wild west everybody was packing heat the fact the matter is very few people were because they were incredibly expensive and they rusted easily you had oil your gun every month or it was useless time if if if they want to go back to the times of muskets and maybe a bolt action rifle then i would be much less in favor of any kind of gun control but that's not what we're talking about anymore. you know what it comes down to is the idea that obama is going to take your guns obama is going to take your guns obama he showed no indication of any kind of support during the campaign but he already you are saying i think of during this. anything that you hear from the n.r.a.

on the subject or people that mouth their talking points is nothing but anti obama that is why you disagree about x. sonia sotomayor was nominated to the supreme court had a there was evidence of hostility to the second amendment when she was on the second circuit court of appeals she wrote a decision that the constitution does not protect the right of self-defense in the nunchuck case elena kagan when she was in the clinton administration she held out this issue in the supreme court for the first two hundred thirty three years the history of the united states is only been three years since the supreme court discarded the second amendment a personal right don't have a president does not believe in the second amendment me evidence is out there he has signed to out there on the side of the president the president has always been you know very disappointing to us in this regard the president is allowed guns in national parks he hasn't taken the opportunities much to my sorrow to really make a big statement on this he you know he. the n.r.a. the gun rights lobby you know doesn't have a lot to fear here what they want you to do is be afraid that's what you do and you fear mongering so that people say oh we can't do anything the reality is we have

a complex situation here i'm sure there's going to be mental health issues that come up there will be we know about the issues with the firearms we need to work on both of those and we need there's no evidence of this guy had any mental health counseling or there was any evidence that he was mentally imbalanced before you purchase these firearms are you going to pass someone is going to prevent it do anything but i don't know it's not going to have it would have prevented it i know what they're supposed to do that we have we have where we have to read ok but you know is this conversation will continue nationally for a long long time joshua levs thanks so much for. coming up since the citizens united decision millionaires and billionaires have been running politics in america the worst part is we don't know who most of them are for the wealthy elite have too much power america today and should they be allowed to flaunt our democracy with money if they if we don't even know their names stay tuned for more bigger picture discussion after the break.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images and seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day.

back to monday's bigger picture discussion i'm joined by brian darling senior fellow for government studies at the heritage foundation and a columnist for the daily caller and townhall dot com karl frisch

a syndicated columnist progressive strategist and partner with all fight strategies s.e. robinson is the deputy director with the paul revere project and a contributor to the blaze and now joining the panel is an expert on money and politics leaf investigative reporter united republics republic report and contributor to the nation nation magazine last week and welcome to early lead if you wanted to have you with us last week republicans in the senate killed the disclose act which would have forced any disclosure of any contributions made to an organization that spends more than ten thousand dollars on any political ads while super pacs are forced to reveal their donors at least eventually public charity groups are what are known as tax exempt five a one c. fours don't just so long as those groups don't explicitly call for the election or defeat of any particular politician koch brothers helped fund one of these so-called charity groups it's called americans for prosperity as the las vegas sun reports a.f.p. may have gotten self in trouble for abusing its tax exempt status getting a little too political with its electioneering if so then the koch's may just have

to reveal who their other donors are but likely won't happen until after the election is long over but the cokes aren't alone center for american progress has compiled a long laundry list of corporations that are funding right wing causes cleaning marriott hotels angel soft waffle house gold's gym and charles swallow so the question is do the wealthy in america have too much influence in our politics and should those who wish to spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in an election be forced to reveal their identities so lee you were you were on h.b.o.'s newsroom last night it was a nice cameo yeah yeah expose. so what's what's the story here with the lack of transparency in american politics well this is the big issue in one hand we have the entire country realizing that after citizens united and really after a string of supreme court decisions the wealthy corporations and some unions have

really taken advantage of this new campaign finance landscape and have lavished campaigns and outside groups with money but the other big problem is that much of this money is undisclosed when you see these ads on television no one knows who's really buying them even the journalists don't know because of these tax loopholes that allow secretly funded groups mostly fire one sees like these are the ones to force and see six's there are some legislative proposals to fix the problem there are some cases working their way through the courts but at the end of the day we still don't know we still don't even know who really bought the two thousand and ten midterm election something like ninety percent of the outside money came through these secret groups and the problems only getting worse when there's a lot of them disclosed has not been disclosed and it's been you know that's that was hundreds of millions of dollars hundreds of millions of dollars from groups like the u.s. chamber of commerce and lots of innocuously named five onesies like an american action network and what have you now back i forget the year but mitch mcconnell

actually voted for five twenty seven's with the new you know the big new fad these the another part of the tax code. politically active groups republicans and democrats both want to disclosure of these groups and that was the traditional debate you had democrats who wanted caps on spending and contributions and you had republicans who wanted disclosure now that we have unlimited spending unlimited fund raising we have almost the entire republican party in lockstep voting against disclosure and that's what happened last week the disclose act which would have forced these secretive five a one c. groups to comply with the law the same as pacs or super pacs it was just there was the filibuster and they didn't. even allow the republican party didn't allow debate in the senate over this very common sense bill that was the same as the five twenty seven debate in two thousand and fourteen republican senators voted to force five twenty seven s. which were the secret money kind of loophole back in the day to be disclosed those

same senators today won't even allow debate on the bill and yet the major contributors to democrats are labor unions and ever since one nine hundred forty seven the taft hartly labor unions have to disclose everything do they not they do they are this close to the labor department some some argue i think rightly that maybe those disclosure point should be updated quicker than they are but they do have to disclose every penny now the disclose act would apply to everyone unions corporations individuals it would simply say these front groups i would call them have to disclose where their money is coming from regardless of the source so as see how is this not a good a good idea well i mean as a journalist i'm always in favor of having more information out there but i think that there are some very real problems with disclosing these donors identities in terms of their own health and welfare because as we've said the reason why they want them to be disclosed is so that they can shame them publicly in trying to influence public discourse that way well and i think that i think that there's a benefit of moderation that comes into play in a democracy that for example your boss glenn beck he's like he's but the

blazes head man in charge. he's friendly with the coax he goes to their big meetings where they wine and dine with g.o.p. senators and whatnot. the people that are capable of giving tens of thousands of dollars hundreds of thousands of dollars millions and billions of dollars. we shouldn't disclose that they've given these monies to push in support or against candidates because they might get their healing their feelings hurt if say the head of the marriott hotel corporation does it they might get their hotel and that's a bad thing it allows for the setting up of an enemies list so if you're an enemy of the federal government you'll make a. and you'll be shamed is only it's ok that you're going to be the publicly outed but it's not ok the billionaires publicly well first of all unions are effectively carved out of the disclose act because the way it was drafted i mean unions get

their money from mandatory contributions of headway these are your moments since one nine hundred forty seven this disclose act was unilateral disarmament it only went after the corporate donors did not go after unions it also had a provision in there that didn't allow any issue ads during presidential campaigns for a very long period of time which may be an infringement on the first amendment i mean you look at this law there are some serious constitutional concerns with the way they drafted up and it's all politics of the falls we know is what is going to. i've heard one right wing talking head after another say that union spent are going to spend three billion dollars in this election it's just it's a flat out lie what they've done is they've taken the wall street journal you know number which we're not even sure whether or not that number is accurate and they've said this is what they're spending this year that number represents the last three presidential cycles the corporations and moneyed interests in this election cycle will spend far beyond three billion dollars they'll spend over a billion dollars that we know of let alone what we don't know they're spending lee

you mentioned the unions were involved in this in the disclose act or did you miss speaker you know i mean i'm not exactly sure where mr darling is coming from but the disclose act applies equally if i find a group or i create a group called americans for poppies and i run nasty attack ads against anyone i think is against papias the disclose act would force the donors of my group to be revealed they could be a union they could be a corporation or it could be several wealthy individuals that would apply you know to help this dog sadly so so it has to be disheartening that rob yeah it was it was occurring to me so it is anyway you know we we used to have. in the first fifty years or so of our republic most elections were held by people getting together in towns raising their hands and then the secret ballot came along in the hundred twenty years and really kind of took hold by the fifty's we've had that since then but there's always been it seems a belief in in american politics that we should know where the money's coming from

justice. scalia has argued in favor of disclosure saying that one should have a civic responsibility to take responsibility for their own actions and. in an election cycle it is citizens united concur it's right and you know there are bigger issues that are involved you know you could say look. for example gave millions of dollars to these secret groups in two thousand and ten it was never disclosed during the election people saw those ads they had no idea where they're coming from we only know that. gave that money to the health insurance company because they accidentally disclose that to a regulator but the conservative argument against this that or at least the republican argument that this will allow the government to create an enemy's list and to you know find all kinds of political adversaries and somehow i tacked them or something is not fair because these five you want to see groups already disclose their donors to the i.r.s.

they just don't disclose them to the public and to the press so as he isn't isn't this isn't this becoming partisan when really it should be it should be about democracy and functions well i mean i agree that it's equal interest to american citizens who spending money to influence elections and at the in the day it's not like they can just put spend ten million on an election and then they win it they still have to make commercials the people still have to take in that media and think about it themselves so i think there's a you but when you say that they're buying the twenty one had only mentioned seed the point that if a candidate walks in and spends half a million three quarters of a million dollars in the outside groups come in and spend ten times that or fifteen or twenty times that that the comparison is apt to thing. that it's going to help them along the way and even if it doesn't you know what the value of short circuit the morality of odor you of being able to hide where you're spending your money is actually more aggressive and more damaging when they can go to a member of congress is office and say look if you don't vote the right way we will spend millions against you president obama is expected to spend about

a billion dollars in this campaign i'm sure mitt romney and azad allies and spend about that it's going to be a push i mean as you can have campaign finance rules where you try and squelch just you do something in an election year that would clearly hurt the minority party that's trying to take over but i don't even apply to this election unfortunately the bill that they were debating in the senate last week wouldn't even applied to january two thousand and thirteen but we know it was going to pass i mean center house republicans would never have taken even if it passed the house so saying they don't want to have one of the house republicans passing health care reform repeal thirty five times if that's an issue will be enough to take a vote on it so you don't believe i mean i do believe that there should be votes in that some and i'm ok with that good thing i mean your question go ahead national sovereignty what if a muslim brotherhood group funded a subsidy subsidiary corporation of america and decided to find a front that ran ads against your favorite candidates do you think the american people have a right to know something about american muslim brotherhood or foreign basically

should be illegal for foreign entities to get involved in a little bit with these two to a paul ryan's twenty largest donors or credit suisse and u.b.s. both foreign corporations close with banks but to have as large as twenty twenty largest lifetime dollars if you just play in foreign money in american politics i'm personally of the opinion that is helping fund or i really believe that the american people that they're going to see an ad and change their mind just because they somebody has more money than they were having having run and have owned and run an advertising agency for seven years and having worked in that in that field for you know well over a decade and a half yeah i i don't think that people are dumb i think that they are vulnerable to advertisers advertising where there's an art. don't apply to ahmadinejad if he is funding romney as you said i want to but. it would have. directly him but let's remember the reason we passed our very first blogging and campaign disclosure law in america for an agent registration act was because of foreign influence that has

happened in american history is an important issue but that's not what the support is just one of the last twenty seconds just a real quick one the recipients of this two billion dollars that you identify brian are going to be the corporate media mostly television could that be why this conversation that we're having right now is not happening on american television why do you feel the twenty four hour news cycle if you don't have commercials to show and analyze is the only argument in favor of shutting down these ads is that i think we're all already getting sick and tired of seeing among t.v. so ok thanks so much for being with us tonight good to have you with with us over the next several months stories of the police using excessive force on criminal suspects innocent bystanders and occupy protesters have been coming in fast and furious are these displays of excess of force the consequences of over militarized police forces in america and just how dangerous and out of control. just how dangerous are out of control police officers to our society or bigger picture discussion coming up.

next the. wealthy british style sun it's time to rise. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for

a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our. welcome back to monday's bigger picture discussion i'm joined by brian darling senior fellow for government studies at the heritage foundation.