60 Minutes - Sunday, June 23, 2019

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

Scott Pelley reports on why AR-15 rifles are the weapon of choice for mass shootings. Steve Kroft tells us more about a lawsuit that could stop the U.S government from supporting fossil fuels.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. Shot fired, shot fired. As a result of the wounds inflicted by AR-15 style rifles, the weapons used in the worst of recent mass shootings, doctors, first responders, civilians, and children are now being trained to use something called a bleeding kit, an idea that comes from saving Americans on the battlefield. Turn it up! Turn it up!

You believe that these mass casualty events have become so common that it is important for everyone in this country to be prepared. Everyone. That's where we are in America. That's where we are. You're 11 years old and you're suing the United States government. That's not what most 11-year-olds do, right? Yeah. Levi Draheim is one of 21 kids asking federal courts to block the U.S. government from continuing the use of fossil fuels. They say it's causing

climate change, and they've amassed 50 years of evidence that's already forced the government to make some remarkable admissions. So you've got them with their own words. It's really the clearest, most compelling evidence I've ever had in any case I've litigated in over 20 years. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Thank you. in the industry and has been named one of the 2019 World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute. The freedom to go after whatever is next for you, that's the power of Pacific. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help give you the freedom to do what you love, or visit www.pacificlife.com. The mass shooting this past April at a California synagogue

has something in common with the deadliest massacres, the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Variations of the AR-15 were used to kill at two New Zealand mosques, a Pittsburgh synagogue, Texas church, a Las Vegas concert, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, and Sandy Hook Elementary School. The AR-15 style rifle is the most popular rifle in America. There are well over 11 million, and they are rarely used in crime. Handguns kill far more people.

But as we first reported last November, the AR-15 is the choice of our worst mass murderers. AR-15 ammunition travels three times the speed of sound. And tonight, we're going to slow that down so you can see why the AR-15's high-velocity ammo is the fear of every American emergency room. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Mass shootings were once so shocking. Where the f*** is this coming from?

They were impossible to forget. We have an aftershooter inside the fairground. Now they've become so frequent. it's hard to remember them all. There's people here, there's people, they're all bleeding, they're going to die. Oh my God, they're dead. Last October, in a Pittsburgh synagogue, 11 were killed, 6 wounded. Just 11 months before, it was a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Assistant Fire Chief Rusty Duncan was among the first to arrive.

90% of the people in there were unrecognizable. The blood everywhere, I mean, it just covered them from head to toe. They were shot in so many different places that you just couldn't make out who they were. The church is now a memorial to the 26 who were murdered. I've never had the experience, not with any kind of weapon like this. For me to see the damage that it did was unbelievable. It was shattering concrete. You can only imagine what it does to a human body.

The police estimate that he fired about 450 rounds. I believe that I saw the damage it did. I saw the holes in the church from one side to the other. All the pews, the concrete, the carpet. I saw it all. A gunshot wound is potentially fatal no matter what kind of ammunition is used. But Cynthia Burr showed us the difference in an AR-15 round against gelatin targets in her ballistics lab at the University of Southern California.

Years of research have gone into kind of what the makeup should be of this ordinance gelatin to really represent what damage you would see in your soft tissues. So this is a pretty accurate representation of what would happen to a human being. Yeah, this is currently considered kind of the state of the art. This is a nine millimeter bullet from a handgun, which we captured in slow motion. The handgun bullet traveled about 800 miles an hour. It sliced nearly straight all the way through the gel. This one's going to be a little bit louder. Now, look at the AR-15 round. See the difference? Yes. It's three times faster and struck with more than twice the force. The shockwave of the AR-15 bullet blasted a large cavity in the gel, unlike the bullet from the handgun. Wow, there's an enormous difference you can see right away. Exactly. There's fragments in here. There's kind of took a curve and came out. You can see a much larger

area in terms of the fractures that are inside. Now watch from above. On top, the handgun. At bottom, the AR-15. It's just exploded. It's exploded and it's tumbling. So what happens is this particular round is designed to tumble and break apart. The 9mm handgun round has a larger bullet, but this AR-15 round has more gunpowder, accelerating its velocity. Both the round and the rifle were designed in the 1950s for the military. The result was the M16 for our troops and the AR-15 for civilians. There's going to be a lot more damage to the tissues, both bones, organs, whatever that

gets kind of even near this bullet path. The bones aren't going to just break, they're going to shatter. Organs aren't just going to kind of tear or have bruises on them. They're going to be, parts of them are going to be destroyed. That fairly describes the wounds suffered by 29-year-old Joanne Ward. At Sutherland Springs Baptist Church, she was shot more than 20 times while covering her children. Ward was dead, her daughters mortally wounded, as Assistant Fire Chief Rusty Duncan made his way from the back of the sanctuary. As I got a couple rows up, Ryland's hand reached out from under his stepmom and grabbed my pant leg. I wouldn't even have known he was alive until he did that.

I didn't even see him under her. That's where me and him made eye contact for the first time. Joanne Ward's five-year-old stepson, Ryland Ward, was hit five times and was nearly gone when he reached trauma surgeon Lillian Liao at San Antonio's University Hospital. How much of Ryland's blood do you think was lost before he came to you? At least half. This is Ryland's ER x-ray. You see the two bullet fragments that are in him. The x-ray shows you the solid fragments of the shrapnel and the bullets, but it doesn't tell you much about the damage to the soft tissue. No, and it doesn't tell you what's on the inside.

I mean, a bomb went off on the inside, and our job is to go in there and clean it up. A bomb went off on the inside because of the shockwave from these high-velocity rounds. Correct. Ryland endured 24 surgeries to repair his arm, leg, pelvis, intestines, kidney, bladder, and hip. At some point, it's like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. What do you mean? Well, his organs are now in different pieces, and you have to reconstruct them. The arm was missing soft tissue, skin, muscle, and part of the nerves were damaged.

The bowel has to be put back together. Some of the areas of injury has to heal itself. So you can see that he can walk around like a normal child and behave as normal as possible. With the AR-15, it's not just the speed of the bullet, but also how quickly hundreds of bullets can be fired. The AR-15 is not a fully automatic machine gun. It fires only one round with each pull of the trigger. But in Las Vegas, it sounded like a machine gun. A special add-on device called a bump stock allowed the killer to pull the trigger rapidly enough to kill 58 and wound 489.

In other mass killings, the AR-15 was fired without a bump stock, but even then, it can fire about 60 rounds a minute. Ammunition magazines that hold up to 100 rounds can be changed in about five seconds. I remember hearing the gunshots go off and being so nervous and scared and all of a sudden I felt something hit me. You'd been shot how many times? Four times. How many surgeries? Three. For my arm, my stomach, and my ribs and lung. In February of 2018, 17-year-old Maddie Wilford was at school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 17 were murdered, 17 wounded. And I just remember thinking to myself, like, there's no way, like, not me, please, not me.

I don't want to go yet. Her vital signs were almost non-existent. She looked like all the blood had gone out of her body. She was in a state of deep shock. Paramedic Laz Oheda saved Maddie Wilford in part because Broward County EMS recently equipped itself for the battlefield wounds that the AR-15 inflicts. We carry active killer kits in our rescues. Active killer kits?

Yes. What is that? That is a kit that has five tourniquets, five decompression needles, five hemostatic agents, five emergency trauma dressings. Dr. Peter Antebi, Broward County Medical Director, told us today's wounds demand a new kind of training. If I take you through one of our ambulances or take you through our protocols, almost everything we do is based on what the military has taught us.

We never used to carry tourniquets. We never used to carry chest seals. These are things that were done in the military for many, many years. When did all of that change? It really changed, I think, after Sandy Hook. After Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 21st graders and six educators were killed with AR-15 rounds, a campaign called Stop the Bleed began nationwide. They're really tight. And Tevi and doctors, including Lillian Liao in San Antonio are training civilians who are truly the first responders. There have been more than 45,000 classes like this in the last four years. You have to go the second round to actually stop the bleeding here. Does it

hurt? Yeah, her face, you can undo it now. The day after the shooting, my kids are waking up and they're time to go to school. And my son heard, kind of heard what had happened the night before when I was on the scene. And he looked at me with the fear of God that he had to go to school that day. My first instinct was, he needs a bleeding kit. My son today has a bleeding kit on his person. How old is he? 12 years old. Here it is.

This is it. I've given him this, and I've taught him how to use it. You believe that these mass casualty events have become so common... Absolutely. ...that it is important for everyone in this country to be prepared. Everyone. That's where we are in America today. That's where we are.

Ryland Ward survived the church massacre because firefighter Rusty Duncan used his belt as a tourniquet. Look where you're going. For over a year, Ryland worked often six days a week. Slow but controlled. Learning to sit. All right, we're worked often six days a week. Slow but controlled. Learning to sit. All right, we're loosening up all your muscles. Stand and walk again.

Okay. You're very strong. You're very strong. Let me see if this actually goes in the hospital. Yep. Did you meet some new people in the hospital? You were there for a long time. How do you know?

They told me. I talked to some of the people who helped you. Like who? There was Dr. Lau? Dr. Lau, yes. Oh, how are you? I'm good.

Yeah, how's your arm? Good. Let me see. He has his strength back. It's remarkable, really. But healing from the loss of his stepmother and sisters won't be as quick. How was your day? Maddie Wilford is also moving forward. Like many who suffer physical trauma, her interests have turned to medicine.

And an internship. Maddie, come here. trauma her interests have turned to medicine and an internship where she's studying the kind of surgeries that saved her not long ago many communities assumed mass murder would never come to Today, all Americans are being asked to prepare for the grievous wounds Oh, my God. of high-velocity rounds. Turn it off! Turn it off! Of all the cases working their way through the federal court system, none is more interesting or potentially more life-changing

than Giuliana versus the United States. To quote one federal judge, this is no ordinary lawsuit. It was filed back in 2015 on behalf of a group of kids who are trying to get the courts to block the U.S. government from continuing the use of fossil fuels. They say it's causing climate change, endangering their future, and violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. As we first reported earlier this year, when the lawsuit first began, hardly anyone took it seriously, including the government's lawyers, who have since watched the Supreme Court reject two of their motions to delay or dismiss the case. Four years in, it is still very much alive,

in part because the plaintiffs have amassed a body of evidence that will surprise even the skeptics and have forced the government to admit that the crisis is real. The case was born here in Eugene, Oregon, a tree-hugger's paradise and one of the cradles of environmental activism in the United States. The lead plaintiff, University of Oregon student Kelsey Juliana, was only five weeks old when her parents took her to her first rally to protect spotted owls. Today, her main concern is climate change, drought, and the growing threat of wildfires in the surrounding Cascade Mountains. There was a wildfire season that was so intense, we were advised not to go outside. The particulate matter in the smoke was literally off the charts. It was past severe in terms of danger to health. And you think that's because of climate change?

That's what scientists tell me. It's not just scientists. Even the federal government now acknowledges in its response to the lawsuit that the effects of climate change are already happening and likely to get worse, especially for young people who will have to deal with them for the long term. How important is this case to you? This case is everything. This is the climate case. We have everything to lose if we don't act on climate change right now, my generation and all the generations to come. Okay, here we go. She was 19 when the lawsuit was filed and the oldest of 21 plaintiffs. They come from 10 different states and all claim to be affected or threatened by the consequences of climate change.

The youngest, Levi Draheim, is in sixth grade. You're 11 years old and you're suing the United States government. That's not what most 11-year-olds do, right? Yeah. He's lived most of his life on the beaches of a barrier island in Florida that's a mile wide and barely above sea level. What's your biggest fear about this island? I fear that I won't have a home here in the future. That the island will be gone? Yeah, that the island will be underwater because of climate change. So you feel like you've got a stake in this? Yes.

The Department of Justice will... The plaintiffs were recruited from environmental groups across the country by Julia Olson, an Oregon lawyer and the executive director of a non-profit legal organization called Our Children's Trust. She began constructing the case eight years ago out of this Spartan space, now dominated by this paper diorama that winds its way through the office. So what is this? So this is a timeline that we put together. It documents what and when past U.S. administrations knew about the connection between fossil fuels and climate change. The timeline goes back 50 years, beginning with the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. During President Johnson's administration, they issued a report in 1965

that talked about climate change being a catastrophic threat. Whether it was a Democrat or a Republican in office, Olson says there was an awareness of the potential dangers of carbon dioxide emissions. Every president knew that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change. 50 years of evidence has been amassed by Olson and her team, 36,000 pages in all, to be used in court. Our government at the highest levels knew and was briefed on it regularly by the national security community, by the scientific community. They have known for a very long time that it was a big threat. Has the government disputed that government officials have known about this for more than 50 years and been told and warned about it for 50 years?

No. They admit that the government has known for over 50 years that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. And they don't dispute that we are in a danger zone on climate change. And they don't dispute that climate change is a national security threat and a threat to our, and a threat to people's lives and safety. They do not dispute any of those facts of the case. The legal proceedings have required the government to make some startling admissions and court filings. It now acknowledges that human activity, in particular elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases, is likely to have been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-1900s. The global carbon dioxide concentrations reached levels unprecedented for at least 2.6 million years.

The climate change is increasing the risk of loss of life and the extinction of many species. It is associated with increases in hurricane intensity, the frequency of intense storms, heavy precipitation, the loss of sea ice and rising sea levels. It's really the most compelling evidence I've ever had in any case I've litigated in over 20 years. The lawsuit claims the executive and legislative branches of government have proven incapable of dealing with climate change. It argues that the government has failed in its obligation to protect the nation's air, water, forests, and coastlines. And it petitions the federal courts to intervene and force the government to come up with a plan that would wean the country off fossil fuels by the middle of this century. You're just saying do it. We don't care how.

Do it well and do it in the time frame that it needs to be done. You're talking about a case that could change the economics in this country. For the better. Well, you say it changes the economy for the better, but other people would say it would cause huge disruption. If we don't address climate change in this country, economists across the board say that we are in for economic crises cause huge disruption. If we don't address climate change in this country, economists across the board say that we are in for economic crises that we have never seen before.

The lawsuit was first filed during the final years of the Obama administration in this federal courthouse in Eugene. Did they take this case seriously when you filed it? I think in the beginning they thought they could very quickly get the case dismissed. In November 2016, a federal judge stunned the government by denying its motion to dismiss the case and ruling it could proceed to trial. In what may become a landmark decision, Judge Ann Aiken wrote, exercising my reasoned judgment, I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society. Federal judge ever said that before? No judge had ever written that before.

The opinion was groundbreaking because the courts had never recognized the constitutional right to a stable climate. That's a big stretch for a court. Ann Carlson is a professor of environmental law at UCLA. Like almost everyone else in the legal community, she was certain the case was doomed. There's no constitutional provision that says that the environment should be protected.

Why is the idea that the people of the United States have a right to a stable environment such a radical idea? Well, I think that Judge Aiken actually does a very good job of saying it's not radical to ask the government to protect the health and the lives and the property of this current generation of kids. Look, if you can't have your life protected by government policies that save the planet, then what's the point of having a constitution? How significant is this case? Well, if the plaintiffs won, it'd be massive, particularly if they won what they're asking for, which is get the federal government out of the business of in any way subsidizing fossil fuels and get them into the business of

dramatically curtailing greenhouse gases in order to protect the children who are the plaintiffs in order to create a safe climate. That would be enormous. So enormous that the Trump administration, which is now defending the case, has done everything it can to keep the trial from going forward. It's appealed Judge Aiken's decision three times to the Ninth Circuit Court in California and twice to the Supreme Court each time it's failed. They don't want it to go to trial. Why? Because they will lose on the evidence that will be presented at trial. And that's why they don't want one. That's why they don't want one. They know that once you enter that courtroom

and your witnesses take the oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, the facts are facts and alternative facts are perjury. And so all of these claims and tweets about climate change not being real, that doesn't hold up in a court of law. The Justice Department declined our request for an interview. But in court hearings, in briefs, it's called the lawsuit misguided, unprecedented and unconstitutional. It argues that energy policy is the legal be solved by just the United States government. In other words, it's not responsible. Why is the federal government responsible for global warming?

I mean, it doesn't produce any carbon dioxide. How are they causing it? They're causing it through their actions of subsidizing the fossil fuel energy system, permitting every aspect of our fossil fuel energy system, and by allowing for extraction of fossil fuels from our federal public lands. We are the largest oil and gas producer in the world now because of decisions our federal government has made. What about the Chinese government? What about the Indian government? Clearly, it's not just the United States that has caused climate change,

but the United States is responsible for 25 percent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide that has accumulated over the many decades. Julia Olson is confident they're going to prevail in court. Ann Carlson and most of the legal community still think it's a long shot. But she says she's been wrong about this case every step of the way. Courts have asked governments to do bold things. The best example would be Brown v. Board of Education when the court ordered schools to desegregate with all deliberate

speed. So there have been court decisions that have asked governments to do very dramatic things. This might be the biggest. You've been stunned by how far this case has gotten. Why has it gotten so far? I think there are several reasons this case has actually withstood motions to dismiss. I think the first is that the lawyers have crafted the case in a way that's very compelling. You have a number of kids who are very compelling plaintiffs who are experiencing the harms of climate change now and will experience the harms of climate change much more dramatically as they get older. I think the hard question here is the law. The latest oral arguments in Juliana v. The United States were heard earlier this month in Portland.

But whatever happens next will certainly be appealed. 2,000 miles away in the aptly named town of Rain, Louisiana, the family of one of the plaintiffs, 15-year-old Jayden Feudland, is still rebuilding from the last disaster in 2016 that dumped 18 inches of rain on rain in southern Louisiana in just 48 hours. JAYDEN FEUDLAND, That's just something that shouldn't happen. You can't really deny that climate change has something to do with it, and you can't deny that it's something that we have to pay attention to. I'm not sure if most of Louisiana, of southern, of south Louisiana is going to be here. That's

just a really big worry of mine. For the foreseeable future, it's impossible to predict when and how the storms and the lawsuit are likely to end. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.