The Daily - Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018

Episode Date: February 22, 2018

The aftermath of a mass shooting has become a familiar cycle in the United States: One side demands change, the other works to block it. But this time, it is the students who survived the assault who are pressing lawmakers to impose new restrictions on guns. Guest: Michael D. Shear, a White House correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Watch. Today, the same thing has happened this past week that always happens after mass shootings. One side demands change. The other works to block it. But this time, there is one difference. The students of Stoneman Douglas High

School. It's Thursday, February 22nd. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society, and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. For about the past 10, 15 years, in the wake of what has now become countless mass shootings, both sides have followed a sort of familiar script. Michael Scheer covers the White House. Immediately, there is on all sides a kind of outpouring of genuine emotion and outrage. There are precious few words for days like this. Our collective hearts are broken once again.

And I think it's entirely appropriate for the Senate to take a moment today to acknowledge the victims of this nightmarish rampage. And then quickly... I reject the notion that it is too soon to act. On the left, that morphs into a demand for government to act. If not now, then when? For the politicians to do something. What Congress can do, what Congress must do, is pass laws. Pass new laws, pass new regulations, make changes that will somehow prevent the same thing from happening again. And at the same time, on the left, there is a political movement to sort of ramp up a public relations campaign to kind of shame the other side.

kind of shame the other side. It is time to make a choice right here in Congress, the American people or the NRA. And then on the right, there's a different script that plays out again and again. Initially, it tends to be a quieter one, especially in recent years, the National Rifle Association and conservatives have come to the conclusion that after the expressions of moral outrage and grief, that they should keep quiet, that it's better for their cause to sort of take a back seat and let the other side have their day. But that changes over the course of time. The Second Amendment recognizes the God-given right to self-defense.

Then quickly turns into a public campaign about the Second Amendment, about the importance of the Second Amendment. You don't defeat terrorism by taking away our guns. You defeat terrorism by using our guns. The National Rifle Association has been very good coming up with catchy phrases like guns don't kill people, people kill people. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And increasingly, there's a newer talking point as well, mental health. This bill focuses on

making the background system work better, to do everything we can to punish, to prosecute, and to deter violent criminals. And questions about whether it's the mental health system that needs to be improved in this country, not the system of gun controls. And at the same time, to safeguard the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. So given all of that, the left advocating for more gun control in a pretty systematic way, and the right in its own sophisticated campaign arguing for gun rights, what usually happens in terms of action? Well, nothing.

I mean, the script that we've seen, you have one shooting after another, the same dynamic emerges, the machinery on both sides ramps up. And in the end, the political system in the country has largely been frozen. In terms of major legislation or major policy changes, that has hardly changed in the decades that we've seen all these mass shootings. in the decades that we've seen all these mass shootings. We need to dig out of this hole. We need to step out of it and take a look back and realize there's something seriously wrong here. And some of our policymakers and some people need to look in, they need to look in the mirror and take some action.

But this time, things seem a little different. You know, in past shootings, you would hear from maybe the parents of victims, but these were the victims themselves. These were the students who were in the school, huddling in fear in their classrooms as the shooter was using this assault weapon to mow down their friends. And so, you know, while the expressions of grief were similar, it quickly shifted. They quickly changed. grief were similar, it quickly shifted. They quickly changed. Those students who we saw grieving almost immediately turned to activism, turned their grief into anger, and they began speaking out. I don't understand. I turned 18 the day after, woke up to the news that my best friend was gone. Woke up to the news that my best friend was gone.

And I don't understand why I could still go in a store and buy a weapon of war. An AR. How is it that easy to buy this type of weapon? How do we not stop this after Columbine, after Sandy Hook Hook I'm sitting with a mother that lost her son it's still happening we need to do something and that's why we're here so let's be strong

for the fallen who don't have a voice to speak anymore and let's never let this happen again please for the fallen who don't have a voice to speak anymore. And let's never let this happen again. Please. Please. They appeared on national television programs. They called politicians out at rallies almost immediately within hours of the shooting. They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS.

They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say that no laws could have been able to prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call B.S.! They boarded buses to head up to Tallahassee, to the state capitol, so that they could lobby their lawmakers and try to demand some kind of political action. Look me in the eyes. Look me in the eyes when I'm saying my friends are gone,

but they will never be forgotten because me and my students, me and my peers of MSD, we will not stop fighting. Look me in the eyes and tell me right now. How do you feel? No, how do you feel? Tell me right now.

Please. I just want to know. And I will. I would like to give other students the opportunity to be heard. And remember, Florida is a state with a Republican-controlled legislature. It is a state that's friendly to gun rights. And yet these students are breaking through the traditional barriers. They are getting meetings with these Republican lawmakers. Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA? Listen, I respect, you can ask that question and I can tell you that I,

people buy into my agenda. I will answer any questions you guys have about any policy. Right now, right now, guys, be quiet, be quiet. You know, you know, I just think that ultimately that is not our goal here. Our goal here is to move forward and prevent this from ever happening again. In the name of 17 people, you cannot ask the NRA to keep their money out of your campaign. And then there's the most important Republican, President Trump, who, as a former reality TV star, I think he's uniquely aware of the power, the sort of public relations power that these students have right now, and that they've sort

of captured the imagination of the country. And I think, despite the fact that he's a Republican, I think there seems to be an understanding that he wants to get something that he can demonstrate to the country that he's doing and that he's behind that can respond to the Florida tragedy. I signed a memorandum directing the Attorney General to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns. Publicly, he has now talked about banning bump stocks, which are these devices that can turn a semi-automatic weapon into effectively an automatic weapon.

It was the kind of gun that was used in the Las Vegas shootings of the Country Music Concert. The key in all of these efforts, as I said in my remarks the day after the shooting, is that we cannot merely take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference. We must actually make a difference. He has signaled through his staff that he could be supportive of some improvements

to the gun background check database, which would improve the kinds of information there so that more people who shouldn't get a gun would be stopped from getting one. But what we really need is action because we can say, yes, we're going to do all these things, thoughts and prayers. What we need more than that is action. Please. This is the 18th one this year. That's unacceptable. We're children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role. Work together, come over your politics, and get something done. So things do feel different this time with the power of the activism from the kids in Florida.

But the question is, will the results actually change? We'll be right back. So there's reason, Mike, to be skeptical that these kids, while they're changing the conversation effectively, aren't ultimately going to change the outcome. Well, I think they're discovering that themselves. We're using our anger and our sadness to propel us to do something that's amazing and make change. We just really want the lawmakers to understand the type of things that we went through. And I think that the way that we're going to do that is by showing them that we're a united front and that we're not going to back down until change actually happens. If you look at just what's happened over the last, say, 24, 48 hours, we've seen these students head up to the state capitol full of determination to be the students. And I guess we're trying to take on their jobs right now as lawmakers and help them understand why

this is so important to us and to the whole country and to the state. But even as many of them were on the buses still driving up to the state capitol, others were literally sitting in the gallery in the state capitol watching the lawmakers. The legislature took up a measure that would have allowed them to vote on a ban on assault weapons, something that the students all, I think, were pushing for and hoping would actually happen. This afternoon, Florida legislators declined to hear a bill on banning assault rifles. Students in attendance overcome with emotion. That measure was defeated soundly. The idea of even debating this measure to ban assault weapons was rejected. Students visibly upset tonight after members of the

Florida House failed to pass a measure that would begin discussion on a ban on assault rifles and large capacity magazines. And then you have to look at what's happening in Washington, too. The president has actually embraced some of these perhaps legislative fixes, but what are they? The background check measure that he has indicated that he might support is literally nothing more than saying to federal agencies and state governments, do your job. do your job. Send the information that is required to be sent to the background check database so that it can accurately flag whether somebody should have a gun or not. If you talk to gun control activists, they say, look, that's more of a nod to gun control than actually gun control. And the bump stocks is a similar thing. It's a small piece of the problem. And the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has already indicated that

they believe they don't have the power to regulate bump stocks without additional congressional legislation. So we could find ourselves months from now back in Congress again with legislation pending but going nowhere. And at the end of the day, you would have had in Washington essentially very little movement towards actually responding to the problem of gun violence. So, Michael, how are you thinking about all of this and whether anything might ultimately be different here? You've seen this cycle play out from inside Washington many times before. from inside Washington many times before. Well, what I keep thinking back to is the end of 2012 when the children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut,

and the political fight that ensued at the beginning of 2013. I was covering President Obama. He had just been reelected. In some ways, that's the moment of maximum political power for a president. And he launched an effort along with the parents of the children who were killed at Newtown. Beautiful little kids between the ages of five and 10 years old. Those parents were perhaps imbued with the most moral authority that you could ever imagine a group of people having, certainly up to that point. And the

stories of these kids, I mean, and the pictures of these young elementary school kids that they carried with them as they lobbied members of Congress on Capitol Hill, and they would take the pictures of their dead children into them when they would meet with senators, they would meet with representatives. This is Dylan. I think the picture kind of sums him up perfectly. He was always smiling and always laughing. And he was very pure. Possibly because of his age.

He was six. And possibly because he was autistic. I'm Neil Heslin. I'm Jesse Lewis's dad. Jesse was six years old. He was my best friend and my buddy. And so you had all of the, you know, forces seemingly arrayed towards, you know, what I think a lot of people in Washington thought might be that sort of tipping point moment when something would actually change. And I remember the day that they finally voted in the Senate.

And of course, in the Senate, in order to proceed and to actually pass a piece of legislation, you need 60 votes. And they came short. They got 54 votes. piece of legislation you need 60 votes and they came short they got 54 votes i've heard folks say that having the families of victims lobby for this legislation was somehow misplaced a prop somebody called them emotional blackmail some said. Are they serious? Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don't have a right to weigh in on this issue? Do we think their emotions, their loss is not relevant to this debate? So all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington. The look on the faces of the Newtown parents when they realized that despite their pleas that they had lost and that this wasn't going to happen and that we were once again going to

answer what could be one of the most tragic shootings in America with essentially a shrug was just devastating to them and devastating to President Obama, who came out to the Rose Garden on that day after the vote went down and was as angry as I've ever seen him. And when Newtown happened, I met with these families and I spoke to the community and I said, something must be different right now. We're going to have to change.

That's what the whole country said. Everybody talked about how we were going to change something to make sure this didn't happen. Again. Just like everybody talked about how we needed to do something after Aurora. Everybody talked about we needed to change something after Tucson. And I'm assuming that the emotions that we've all felt since Newtown, the emotions that we've all felt since Tucson and Aurora and Chicago, the pain we share with these families and families all across the country who've lost a loved one to gun violence, I'm assuming that's not a temporary thing. gun violence. I'm assuming that's not a temporary thing. I'm assuming our expressions of grief and our commitment to do something different to prevent these things from happening are

not empty words. I believe we're going to be able to get this done. Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people. Thank you very much, everybody. He was flanked by some of the Newtown parents at the Rose Garden, saying that the fight wasn't over and that they would continue. And, you know, here we are, multiple mass shootings later, and we're still basically in the same place, wondering whether another set of people, this time the students, who are also imbued with a great sense of moral authority because they were there, they saw their friends being shot, whether the tipping point has arrived. And I got to say, I'm skeptical because, you know, I've seen this movie before.

But if we come to the end of this process and there really is legislation to limit the availability of guns, then I think we're going to look back on this process and think that the one thing that was different and the one thing that made the difference was these kids. I'm just not sure whether that's going to happen. Thank you, Michael. Happy to do it. On Wednesday night at a CNN town hall in Florida, students from Stoneman Douglas High School confronted Republican Senator Marco Rubio and NRA spokeswoman Dana Lash.

The shooter at our school obtained weapons that he used on us legally. Do you believe that it should be harder to obtain these semi-automatic weapons and the modifications for these weapons to make them fully automatic like bump stocks? Well, first off, Emma, I want to applaud you for standing up and speaking out. Emma Gonzalez, a senior at the school, quick and remind you that the question is actually, do you believe it should be harder to obtain these semi-automatic weapons and modifications to make them fully automatic, such as bump stocks? Well, I think the ATF is deciding about bump stocks right now. The president ordered the DOJ to look into it.

I'm asking your opinion as a representative of the NRA. That's what the NRA's position has been. In fielding questions from students, That's what the NRA's position has been. In fielding questions from students, Senator Rubio repeatedly made news in the responses he gave about his positions on gun control. I believe a big issue when it comes to the debate about semi-automatic weapons and automatic weapons

is large-capacity magazines. Would you agree that there is no place in our society for large-capacity magazines capable of firing over from 15 to 30 rounds, and if not, more? I traditionally have not supported looking at magazine clip size. And after this and some of the details I've learned about it, I'm reconsidering that position, and I'll tell you why. some of the details I've learned about it, I'm reconsidering that position, and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.

Because while it may not prevent an attack, it may save lives in an attack. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.