. >> joining us now is dave cullen, the author of columbine, the high school massacre and how it changedcolumbine. this is a component of a lot of mass shootings and reportedly with this shooting as well. it's only part of the prevention and i come back to the fact that one doesn't want to stigmatize people with a mental health issue. >> i'm a huge proponent of doing something about mental health, but narrowing that to teen depression and -- what's the word? teen depression or surveying for it. that's such a deflection. if you are going to do something about mental health, great. it's been 19 years. where is the plan? where are the bills? how come you haven't done anything? it sounds like a big deflection to me. what they want to avoid is a window of outrage opportunity where anything about guns is going to happen in the first week or two and it's going to get steam rolling by then and if they keep deflecting and change the subject, they are going to win by the outrage dropping. i don't know this time. i don't know that these deflection politicians, they may have met their match with the

dave cullen, appreciate you being on. thanks everyone for watching "360." be here tomorrow as well. on tomorrow from 9:00 to 11:00 tomorrow morning and tomorrow night. don lemon picks up our coverage "cnn tonight" starts right now. >>> this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. thanks for joining us. thoughts and prayers. you've heard a lot of people offering thoughts and prayers for the 17 people who lost their lived in a florida high school yesterday. students and teachers shot to death by a 19-year-old who had been expelled. a 19-year-old who had absolutely no business having a gun. none whatsoever. we should all know better by now than to offer empty words about thoughts and prayers. i don't want you to misunderstand me at all, heartfelt sympathy and prayers are very powerful, we all need them from time to time, but we need to turn those thoughts and prayers into action. we

with me now is author dave cullen, who wrote the book columbine. i've read it two or three times. it's an incredible read. it changed my whole perspective on this. nothing ever changes. i mean we talked about this. you've been on countless times, and it just -- nothing ever changes. >> it doesn't. that's what i can't -- i couldn't agree more with what he said. we don't do anything, and the gun thing is -- we've got to do something. but at least there i understand the politics of it. some of the other things like screening for teen depression, that's easy. it's not political. it's really cheap. there's a one page form. it takes 30 seconds. it's highly effective. why don't we start there. >> you said studies show a lot of these shooters have depression. >> exactly. exactly. that's the greatest number of them. so the definitive report the secret service did where they studied all the school shooters for more than a 25-year period, and 78% had either suicidal attempts or had talked about attempting suicide. that's an astounding number. and this is in a situation where looking for prof

we have dave cullen with us, the author of "columbine," a school where two students killed 12 students and one teacher nearly 20 years ago. david is here. i was there at the time, as you remember. we believed they were part of this nefarious trench coat mafia and this was some discrete aspect of society and that's what was going on and didn't mean anything for anybody anywhere else. boy, were we wrong. the only lesson we learned was a tactical one. you have to go in, you can't wait and ring outside the way the police used to. the police aren't the answer here. what are the answers? the question. what do we do to stop the school shootings? is there an answer? >> there's a couple things we can do. first of all, i agree with everything you said there. i was in the infantry. seeing that rifle, it looks just like the m-16 we used. an m-16 is to kill people. we were trained to kill people with it. they're assault weapons. they're military weapons. they should be limited to the military. >> would it matter? >> it would totally matter. i've been doing a lot of tv the last couple weeks -- russi

dave cullen, appreciate you being on. thanks everyone for watching "360." we'll be here tomorrow as well. on tomorrow from 9:00 to 11:00 tomorrow morning and tomorrow night. don lemon picks up our coverage "cnn tonight" starts right now. >>> this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. thanks for joining us. thoughts and prayers. you've heard a lot of people offering thoughts and prayers for the 17 people who lost their lived in a florida high school yesterday. students and teachers shot to death by a 19-year-old who had been expelled. a 19-year-old who had absolutely no business having a gun. none whatsoever. we should all know better by now than to offer empty words about thoughts and prayers. i don't want you to misunderstand me at all, heartfelt sympathy and prayers are very powerful, we all need them from time to time, but we need to turn those thoughts and prayers into action. we need to do it now. we can't waste one more day waiting for another shooter somewhere to erupt in deadly violence and end the lives of more innocent americans. leaving families in al