the ultimate and in evitable consequence of surrendering gun policy to the gun lobby. crossed on gun control i'm joined by donna shelly in los angeles she is a lecturer in the department of criminology law and society at the university of california irvine in denver we have david coco he is a research director at the independence institute and in washington we cross to mark levine he is a radio host and senior advisor with the truman national security project all right folks crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i don't know if i can go to you first if guns make a country safer than the u.s. should be the safest country in the world but it's not why not well it is then that that's a very interesting question and it raises questions about you know kind of irony and and contradictions and fact the crime rate is going down and yet more people are interested and guns and we saw in the wake of the shootings in colorado and immediate uptick in people contacting. gun schools firing ranges wanting to take out permits on guns and and. and a lot of

members those are the gun crusaders. maybe one of the n.r.a. members would fall into this category there's a huge chunk of gun owners in our country who are not n.r.a. members the n.r.a. has a membership of about four million or something like eighty million gun owners in our country but the n.r.a. is driven by these gun crusaders these really hard when they really are and they're able to create these and really. the biggest deliberation of their video years after the n.r.a. is able to recruit intensely committed members because they're framing gun rights or threats to gun rights in a way that makes them feel like all their rights are threatened or you're proud of your country want to stay in school or i don't want you really want to thank you i was. great thank you very much thank you frank rich thank you i there are a good audience is conservative white gun owning men and they feel pinched and they feel sort of displaced in our society i've been fired up. the last election i got enough change already and again only more if you have been losing

to enter the bar, i hear, he's got a gun. now for a split second i thought they were talking about me, but everybody was running toward me trying to get past me, to go out of the back door. >> with the gun drawn, sawyer moves toward the door. yet another gunman has his weapon drawn racing for a fight. >> there was someone else on my left who was at the point of the pool table. >> robbins moves in and then starts to fire. [ gunfire ] the second gunman from outside joins in the fight. the shootout rages at close range. the gunman next to sawyer by the pool table and the second shooter outside are never identified. as the blasts ring out, sawyer scrambles for cover under the pool table. >> that first shot when he finally got one off, it actually hit the pool table. when i put my head up it hit right next to me, the right side of my head. it hit right there on the corner of the pool table. >> after several volleys, sawyer crawls back to the kitchen area, lucky to be alive. >> that was the craziest thing i've ever seen. you know it

amendment chosen we legally bought both guns in virginia which has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the nation critics say those laws need to be tightened do you think these things are happening because there are too many guns in the united states it's too easy to get too high powered weapon rate in this country it's been eight years since columbine we've done nothing as a country it's been six months since the school shootings we've done nothing i wrote an open letter to the president of the university. and in it i asked them to let me take responsibility for my safety legally licensed to carry a firearm anywhere in the state of virginia except for some very limited places and yet when i come on campus it's not illegal it's just i'm subject to disciplinary action which means they'll expel me. i just couldn't help but think that had one person in that classroom been able to legally carry and defend themselves that things could have been very different. some people seem to think the carrying out. some sort of vigilante behavior or something like that and that's not that at all it'

gun and and herbs. communities calling the police. that's a lot of time for anything that you know to be perfectly honest. i have a gun. and i'm not the type of guy who killed people i never killed anyone and i'm not that type of family but even a family man. and it's crazy. like . philadelphia's reputation is one of the deadliest so you're actually in the deadliest neighborhood. in one of the deadliest cities in one of the deadliest countries. in the civilized world. if you've been shot before. like on two different occasions twice and wanted to do and how many of you know somebody who's been shot raise your hand if you know something's been. ok so i'm going to walk you through the experiences of one young man this is lamont adams you know if you notice more than ten thousand people here. this is hard to wrap your mind around the fact that we can live in a city that the cradle of american history and to think this so many of its people can be shot young man four rounds into his back and dropped this young teenager then stood over the

i know you think if we just got rid of all the guns, we would just get rid of all the gun murders. don't think anybody really thinks that can happen in this country. certainly strong gun control laws will reduce the number. there's no question about that. i'll give you another example. australia. 1996. had a mass murder. as most countries do have their own mass murder. norway, last summer. scotland. the schoolyard. a number of years ago. most countries do get this because there are insane people everywhere in the world and they've existed since cain killed abel. okay. so this not a new thing. the individual on friday, early friday morning in aurora, probably just as lunatic as everybody else who's done this. the difference is, as you point out, is that he was able to get guns and ammo as if he were getting a car wash. as if he were getting bubble gum. as if he were -- it was nothing. and that is a huge, huge problem. but i think that there's something very unique about us. because it's not that, again, these countries are any better than us. the british empire i think you guys ruled

guns. there are two issues that divide us. that is theis this whole gun show loophole where it's easy to get your hands on a gun. and then the guns that you saw me shooting in today's shooting are perfectly legal, semi auto automatic assault rifles. we're the only country in the world where you can buy something like these things without a problem. >> cenk: it didn't used to be legal. what was used, an ar 15, a glock pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun. howhow many bullets can an ar 15 hold? >> it can hold about 100 bullets. when you put on a little bit of a drum on top of that, you can hold up to 100 bullets. we argue back and forth if it's auto or semi auto. you saw me shooting shooting shooting it. you can still fire off a tremendous amount of runs. he had a 100-round shoot off. >> cenk: semisemiautomatic does not mean that you have to refill the musket. it's very quick. when you talked to the guy who values this stuff the gun owner, the store owner the excuses we make to justify this >> i told 50,000 of these rifles, that does not make me a

the preventing gun laws nra the other entity is wall street. that's right. wall street financiers are behind efforts to loosen gun control laws despite popular support for tighter regulation. frank luntz found that 85%, 85% of non-nra members think that more should be done to close the gun show loophole. the poll was entitled: we can do more to top criminals from getting guns. closing it got nine nra members to agree. nra members, themselves, by 69% think that the gun show loop hole, as one measure, should be closed. why is there such a disconnect between the nra members and their leadership on the issue? well enter the gun industrial complex, a mysterious private equity company called "freedom group." the freedom group is gobbling up u.s. gun manufacturers like remington, dakota arms bushmaster and a whole array of others, u.s. gun makers and the freedom group was created by the secretitive wall street private equity firm called capital management, named after that three-headed dog in mythology that guarded the gates of hell. well hades, here comes cerebus,

and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture another senseless act of gun violence led left 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 passed 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 intense big picture rubble and genetically modified crops are all the rage these days and 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 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

i know who i sold the gun to. was selling my collection at a gun show and i think gun shows are wonderful. i'll get full value for my guns. i don't have a clue who i am selling the guns to. >> right. >> i think we can fix that problem in a way that protects gun owners gun sellers, and eliminates the small number of people who would be stopped by the background check. it's around 1%. but we have to take into consideration that this is really a big issue, and one part of the puzzle doesn't answer the question. there are over 500,000 firearms stolen in this country every year. >> right. and that's a problem too. there needs to be greater enforcement of that. i'm sorry to put you off. unfortunately we're coming near the end. promise you will come back on. that's richard feldman, president of the independent fire arm owners association. coming up, final thoughts on a really difficult day. we'll be back in a minute. ñtt >>> thank you for joining us tonight at the end of a very difficult day. the emotions inside of our s

guns. >> no. right. >> there was that was the whole point of it was to track the guns, and they didn't track them. >> right. the only way their traceable now, when they show up at violet crime scenes, they're left at that scene, and then they're traced back to these gun dealers in the united states who were participating in this program. and one thing i want to bring up, too, is, you know, because the media hasn't really been paying attention to this in a way that they should be, um, they haven't really been digging into who the players are behind fast and furious. and the people in the chess game are always very important. and one person who was key to this entire thing was former u.s. attorney for arizona, dennis burke. and he worked for janet napolitano when she was the attorney general of arizona as her staffer, was her chief of staff when she was the governor of arizona, served as her senior homeland security adviser when she went into the obama administration, and president obama strategically placed him back in arizona. why do i say strategically? it's a pro-second amendment state, it's a b

are what the vast majority of guns are in the uniteds. once you can put a clip in, you can put a clip in of any length. clips are very easy to make. one thing you should do, since we're talking about science earlier, look at the academic research on this. you cannot find one criminologist who's published in an academic journal -- >> you cannot -- >> let me finish. >> apparently again i am laboring under a misapprehension. >> i still haven't been able to respond. >> you're not giving me a sensible answer. >> what i'm saying is you cannot find one criminalologist -- either one who was put in place or removed -- >> i'm not an expert but a 24-year-old kid has gone in, bought four weapons, including an assault rifle, he's bought a magazine drum which has the capacity for 100 bullets a minute. he's armed himself to the teeth with defensive gear. which will stop anybody who has got a gun in there trying to kill him anyway. he's then slaughtered a load of americans. he slaughtered them. in a movie theater. and your answer is, it doesn't matter,

the shooting. trying to take gun-control off the table. ttle they are saying, both of them differ sharply from positions they once held. it isn't for us to decide what is wide or long when it comes to gun control but that is you to decide. we believe that of you. keeping them honest tonight, both president obama and former governor romney heavy their flip-flop on the show or back away from it. see if you can spot any difference between the 2 met candidates. >> i still believe the second amendment is the right course to preserve and defend and don't believe that new laws are going to make a difference in this kind of tragedy. >> that's mitt romney last night. quote, the president's view is we can take steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them under existing law. did you see much difference? neither did house republican speaker john boehner today. >> has made clear he's not going to use this horrific event to push for new gun laws.

the officers secured the gun in his shirt. the middle level was cleared as they moved to the upper level. they saw another gun lying on the bed. they moved to the lower level. they heard movement coming from an unknown area. they identified themselves as police officers and observed a woman walking towards the with a kitchen knife in one hand and a cell phone in the other. a woman was trembling with fear and told them she was the one who called police from the closet. when she dropped the knife on command of the officer who could have confused her with another suspect, the officers continued their search in remembered someone else live in the rear cottage. they quickly moved to the backyard area. chorizos a movement behind the tree. -- doorherty saw a movement behind a tree and called for the suspects to come out with his hands up. he was taken into custody with the murder victims property and a large amount of money. the officers should always be quick without hesitation and appropriate. during an officer's career, there are t

he says an illegal gun may stay on the streets for decades. >> we recovered a gun purchased in the '70sey can bounce around and be used in multiple crimes. >> guns are trafficked into illinois from 25 states because there are no gun stores in chicago. how much money do they stand to make? >> close to 100% profit on the guns they sell. in this case, gates made a few hundred dollars profit on the gun that fired the fatal shot. in the game of gun trafficking, the price of a policeman's life. the drug trafficker in this case was caught and is serving a ten-year sentence. >>> our next guest deals with this violence on a daily basis. he's a trauma surgeon in chicago. he's always a police officer. steve, good morning. >> good morning, how are you? >> i'm well, thank you. you have been working at the hospital for 13 years and you say that this is some of the worst violence you have actually ever seen. why is that? >> i think it's multifactorial. certainly, between the drug trade that is going on, the gangs, the availability of guns, i think they have all conspired together to take the violence

let's talk about the gun industry. >> the instant reaction as has happened after other tragedy gun salesdo and florida and oregon by more than double digits as people responded to the tragedy. it tooook $4.1 bilon industry and america and has grown accustomed to protecting itself. i do not see a long-term impact on gun sales as they watch where the gun control debate goes. >> so many diffeferent commmmentators made the point that ch time there is a tragedy likeke this, it promised a great dedeal off talk about gun-conol but seemems to lead nowhere. partly because it would not really curb violence. in part, people admit because thee gun lobby is very power and washington, what igoing on bend t scenes right now? >> thehere has been an extraordinarary o outbreaeak of bipartisanship in the wake of this traged >> we are s seeing right now to do nhing. >> president obama -- they all agreed note new gun control laws. it i is a ry toxic place to go. the last time this issue was taken on w by president into it did not work out very well for r his party and the midterm election. since then, the gu

for him he meant freedom from the government telling you that you could not buy a gun and he evoked theond amendment. president obama has been notably quiet on gun control issues over the first three and a half years of his tenure as president. both candidates seem cowed by the power of the nra's political might. how do you overcome that? you talked talked about a loophole, no one tries on capitol hill to take it on. what need to be done to create the backbone that you're talking about? >> well, republicans are owned by the nra and democrats are intimidated into submission. i don't think anything will change. i was asked to go to the white house two years ago when the democrats were in control of the house and the senate. i met in the white house with the president's adviser on justice and regulatory primarily. i said why is president obama not doing what he said he would do during the campaign, requiring background checks at gun shows and for gun sales and renewing the ban on military-style assault weapons and these high-capacity ammunition clips that are used at every mass shooting. i

and the roles guns plays in our society? t is the only time we discuss any reasonable attempt to limit the sale and distribution of guns is after tragedies like this. then a few days later, we all forget about it and nobody has the guts to do anything that's concrete. it's ridiculous because the nra's power is overinflated. i was for gun control from the day that i ran for office in pennsylvania. we have the second highest number of nra members of any state in the union, behind only texas, and i won three statewide elections by 10%, 12% and 21% margins so the nra, our politicians don't read polls. after gabby giffords there was a poll on the lautenberg-mccarthy bill which would limit magazine clips to only 11 bullets. remember laughner had a 33 bullet clip which allowed him to fire 27 bullets without reloading and 71% of americans, including more than half of the republicans polled were for it. yes it never got out of committee because we're terrified of the nra. we democrats are as bad as the republicans. everyone is scared

machineban the possession of machine guns within 500 yards -- ban the possession of machineguns within 500 yards of a school? consistent with the commerce clause, yes. >> and what are we supposed to do with lopez? >> because i believe that commerce can ban machine guns entirely, the choice of one particularly dangerous and unusual weapon, to focus on that, i do believe would be within its powers. >> with the possession for lawful purpose be possible for an inventor who was trying to develop a new method of making a rapid-fire weapon out of, say, an existing semi-aomatic rifle, tinkering with it in order to make it a fully automatic weapon, would that be a lawful purpose? for him to have one of these things in his possession while he is working on it? >> i think, not because of the unusual character of the machine gun. there are ways in which research and development can be done. it does include an exemption for legitimate possession by governmental bodies, for instance. it also includes an exemption for older machine guns. but for the same reasons that 18 per in his backyard

it might have been useful to go in later and get the gun. in terms of a carry a concealed weapon, i felt like the evidence was there. if i have a gun, when i move a certain way, it might be concealed. "qwhen i moved a different way, you might not be able to see it. i do not think the fact that owners could see it at certain points did not mean it was not ever concealed. >> some of our control specialists are post certified and can carry. >> i have not said anything. >> i am waiting for you. >> as the non-lawyer of the group, i will be blunt. my personal feeling is that assistant patrol specialist tachihara should be bending over backwards to make sure there is no confusion at all. that is the way i feel all the way around. with regard to personal weapons, with regard to identifying himself as an officer, with regard to sales. i am a little bit astounded. why would he relied on mr. hanby? why would he take his word that he could purchase the weapon in the first place? that does not make sense to me. he has the duty. he has the rules. he should

issue and the coming gun debate? >> two comments, if i may. the congressman who made the comment about if people in the theater had been armed they may have been able to stop this individual. he was armed to the teeth with all types of bullet protection materials. the ability of a citizen to try and take that individual down equipped the way he was would have been de minimus. the responding officers -- it seems his semiautomatic weapon jammed, otherwise they would have been outgunned, the responding officers. he would have been able to basically the way he was equipped take them on. first responding officers weren't s.w.a.t. officers so this issue of arm everybody, i'm sorry, in this circumstance i don't know that that would have made a difference. >> can i say something. you know, as horrible as this tragedy was and is, you have to remember how many people are killed every single day. >> 55. >> are getting illegal guns. and so when people say and the nra will say that also, oh, she's going to try to talk about gun co

one of the strictest gun laws in the nation. you know the murder rate and most of young black men, starting in january until now, 300. young black men are getting slaughtered in the state of illinois, one of the strictest gun laws in this nation. let me finish. >> you're making your point and i want to get monica in. you're making the point that nothing about a ban on all weapons will -- and getting rid of the 300 million -- will work. >> what obama is saying to get the hands out of the folks that are -- background checks on violent criminals, and mentally unstable people. so that is exactly what we're looking at here to prevent these kinds of things from happening. you said he was mentally unstable. if we were able -- if we're able to prove that and able to create some kind of system that will work, that we can check this, then we -- steps forward with this controversy. >> ak-47s i'm told by the director in my ear, are assault weapons. period. >> i think they are semi auto mattic. >> they are assault weapons. they checked it on

but the second he lifted up the gun and shot it and people knew the sound of a real gun and saw the real bullets, that was there. that only took two minutes to realize. it went from calm and collective to entertaining to massive amounts of people being shot. it was just too short of a time frame to be able to adjust. >> that was jennifer seeger, eyewitness to the movie theater shooting in aurora, colorado. let's check back in with msnbc's chris jansing who is in aurora. can you hear me okay now? >> i can. thank you so much, ron. i just want to add to what your guest had to say. because you could just imagine you're in this dark theater and while people in there when this started thought it was somehow part of the movie because he comes in and is in full tactical battle gear. he had ballistic vests, throat and groin protecters, a gas mask, a black tactical gloves. and he was carrying an assault rifle, a .40 caliber glock. early indications were he fired all of his weapons. then when he was later taken into custody, in his car police say they found another glock. the most recent was purcha

issue and the coming gun debate? >> two comments, if i may. the congressman who made the comment about if people in the theater had been armed they may have been able to stop this individual. he was armed to the teeth with all types of bullet protection materials. the ability of a citizen to try and take that individual down equipped the way he was would have been de minimus. the responding officers -- it seems his semiautomatic weapon jammed, otherwise they would have been outgunned, the responding officers. he would have been able to basically the way he was equipped take them on. first responding officers who probably would have had a .9 mill meter, .40 millimeter and a long gone. the first responding officer s weren't s.w.a.t. officers so this issue of arm everybody, i'm sorry, in this circumstance i don't know that that would have made a difference. >> can i say something. you know, as horrible as this tragedy was and is, you have to remember how many people are killed every single day. >> 55. >> are getting ille