Return to Transcripts main page

Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Obama Unveils New Gun Control Measures. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired January 05, 2016 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[11:59:58] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Just as we don't prevent all traffic accidents, but we take steps to

try to reduce traffic accidents. As Ronald Reagan once said, "If mandatory background checks could save more lives, it would be well worth making it the law of the land."

The bill before Congress three years ago met that test. Unfortunately too many senators failed theirs.

(APPLAUSE)

In fact, we know that background checks make a difference. After Connecticut passed a law requiring background checks and gun safety courses, gun deaths decreased by 40 percent. Forty percent.

(APPLAUSE)

Meanwhile, since Missouri repealed a law requiring comprehensive background checks and purchase permits, gun deaths have increased to an almost 50 percent higher than the national average. One study found, unsurprisingly, that criminals in Missouri now have easier access to guns.

And the evidence tells us that in states that require background checks, law-abiding Americans don't find it any harder to purchase guns whatsoever. Their guns have not been confiscated, their rights have not been infringed. And that's just the information we have access to.

With more research we could further improve gun safety just as with more research we've reduced traffic fatalities enormously over the last 30 years. We do research when cars, food, medicine, even toys harm people so that we make them safer. And you know what, research, science, those are good things. They work.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

They do. But think about this. When it comes to an inherently deadly weapon, nobody argues that guns are potentially deadly. Weapons that kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, Congress actually voted to make it harder for public health experts to conduct research into gun violence, Made it harder to collect data and facts and develop strategies to reduce gun violence. Even after San Bernardino, they refused to make it harder for terror suspects, who can't get on a plane, to buy semiautomatic weapons. That's not right.

(LAUGHTER)

That can't be right. So the gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now but they can't hold America hostage.

(APPLAUSE)

We do not have to accept that carnage is the price of freedom.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, I want to be clear, Congress still needs to act. The folks in this room will not rest until Congress does.

(APPLAUSE)

Because once Congress gets on board with common sense gun safety measures, we can reduce gun violence a whole lot more. But we also can't wait. Until we have a Congress that's in line with the majority of Americans, there are actions within my legal authority that we can take to help reduce gun violence and save more lives, actions that protect our rights and our kids.

After Sandy Hook, Joe and I worked together with our teams and we put forward a whole series of executive actions to try to tighten up the existing rules and systems that we had in place. But today we want to take it a step further. So let me outline what we're going to be doing.

[12:05:10] Number one, anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks or be subject to criminal prosecutions.

(APPLAUSE)

It doesn't matter whether you're doing it over the Internet or the gun show, it's not where you do it but what you do. We're also expanding background checks to cover violent criminals who try to buy some of the most dangerous firearms by hiding behind trusts and corporations and various cutouts.

We're also taking steps to make the background check system more efficient. Under the guidance of Jim Comey and the FBI and our Deputy Director Tom Brandon at ATF, we're going to hire more folks to process applications faster and we're going to bring an outdated background check system into the 21st century.

(APPLAUSE)

And these steps will actually lead to a smoother process for law- abiding gun owners, a smoother process for responsible gun dealers, a stronger process for protecting the people from -- the public from dangerous people. So that's number one. Number two, we're going to do everything we can to ensure the smart and effective enforcement of gun safety laws that are already on the books, which means we're going to add 200 more ATF agents and investigators. We're going to require firearms dealers to report more or lost -- more lost or stolen guns on a timely basis. We're working with advocates to protect victims of domestic abuse from gun violence where too often...

(APPLAUSE)

Where too often people are not getting the protection they need.

Number three, we're going to do more to help those suffering from mental illness get the help that they need.

(APPLAUSE)

So high-profile mass shootings tend to shine a light on those few mentally unstable people who inflict harm on others, but the truth is that nearly two in three gun deaths are from suicides. So a lot of our work is to prevent people from hurting themselves. That's why we made sure that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare...

(LAUGHTER)

Finally...

(APPLAUSE)

Under that law, made sure that treatment for mental health was covered the same as treatment for any other illness. That's why we're going to invest $500 million to expand access to treatment across the country.

(APPLAUSE)

It's also why we're going to ensure that federal mental health records are submitted to the background check system and remove barriers that prevent states from reporting relevant information. If we can continue to destigmatize mental health issues, get folks proper care and fill gaps in the background check system, then we can spare more families the pain of losing a loved one to suicide.

And for those in Congress who so often rush to blame mental illness for mass shootings as a way of avoiding action on guns, here's your chance to support these efforts. Put your money where your mouth is.

(APPLAUSE)

Number four, we're going to boost gun safety technology. Today, many gun injuries and deaths are the result of legal guns that were stolen or misused or discharged accidentally. In 2013 alone, more than 500 people lost their lives to gun accidents and that includes 30 children younger than five years old.

In the greatest, most technologically advanced nation on Earth, there is no reason for this. We need to develop new technologies that make guns safer. If we can set it up so you can't unlock your phone unless you've got the right fingerprint, why can't we do the same thing for our guns?

(APPLAUSE)

[12:10:04] OBAMA: If there's an app that can help us find a missing tablet -- which happens to me often...

(LAUGHTER)

... the older I get.

(LAUGHTER)

If we can do it for your iPad, there's no reason we can't do it with a stolen gun. If a child can't open a bottle of aspirin, we should make sure they can't pull a trigger on a gun.

(APPLAUSE)

All right? So, we're going to advance research, we're going to work with the private sector to update firearms technology. And some gun retailers are already stepping up by refusing to finalize a purchase without a complete background check, or by refraining from selling semi-automatic weapons or high capacity magazines.

And I hope that more retailers and more manufacturers join them, because they should care as much as anybody about a product that now kills almost as many Americans as car accidents.

I make this point because none of us can do this alone. I think Mark made that point earlier. All of us should be able to work together to find a balance that declares the rest of our rights are also important. Second Amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that we care about as well. And we have to be able to balance them, because our right to worship freely and safely -- that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina.

(APPLAUSE)

And that was denied Jews in Kansas city, and that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights too.

(APPLAUSE)

Our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette. Our inalienable right to life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high- schoolers in Columbine, and from first graders in Newtown.

First graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun. Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. And by the

way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.

(APPLAUSE)

So, all of us need to demand that Congress be brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby's lies. All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors, and legislators and businesses do their part to make our communities safer.

We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners, who grieve with us every time this happens and feel like your views are not being properly represented, to join with us to demand something better.

(APPLAUSE)

And we need voters who want safer gun laws, and who are disappointed in leaders who stand in their way to remember come election time.

(APPLAUSE)

I mean, some of this is just simple math. Yes, the gun lobby is loud and it is organized in defense of making it effortless for guns to be available for anybody, anytime.

[12:15:06] Well, you know what? The rest of us, we all have to be just as passionate. We have to be just as organized in the defense of our kids. This is not that complicated. The reason Congress blocks laws is because they want to win elections. If you make it hard for them to win an election if they block those laws, they'll change course, I promise.

(APPLAUSE)

And yes, it will be hard and it won't happen overnight. It won't happen during this Congress, it won't happen during my presidency. But a lot of things don't happen overnight. A woman's right to vote didn't happen overnight, the liberation of African-Americans didn't happen overnight. LGBT rights, that was decades worth of work. So just because it's hard that's no excuse not to try.

And if you have any doubt as to why you should feel that fierce urgency of now, think about what happened three weeks ago. Zavion Dobson was a sophomore at Fulton High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. He played football, beloved by his classmates and his teachers. His own mayor called him one of their city's success stories.

The week before Christmas, he headed to a friend's house to play video games. He wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time, he hadn't made a bad decision. He was exactly where any other kid would be -- your kid, my kids. And then gunmen started firing, and Zavion, who was in high school -- hadn't even gotten started in life -- dove on top of three girls to shield them from the bullets, and he was shot in the head and the girls were spared. He gave his life to save theirs. An act of heroism a lot bigger than anything we should ever expect from a 15-year-old. Greater love hath no man than this than a man lay down his life for his friends.

We are not asked to do what Zavion Dobson did, we're not asked to have shoulders that big, a heart that strong, reactions that quick. I'm not asking people to have that same level of courage or sacrifice or love, but if we love our kids and care about their prospects and if we love this country and care about its future, then we can find the courage to vote, we can find the courage to get mobilized and organized, we can find the courage to cut through all the noise and do what a sensible country would do.

That's what we're doing today, and tomorrow, we should do more and we should do more the day after that. And if we do, we'll leave behind a nation that's stronger than the one we inherited and worthy of the sacrifice of a young man life Zavion. Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The president of the United States in the East Room of the White House with many of the survivors, the family members of victims of gun violence in the United States, the president pointing out, 30,000 American lives cut short in every year because of gun violence here in the United States.

We've got a lot to assess. I want to quickly get the reaction, though, from the House speaker, John - excuse me, Paul Ryan has just issued a statement reacting to what we just heard from the president. Paul Ryan saying, "from day one, the president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding. He knows full well that the law already says that people who make their living selling firearms must be licensed, regardless of venue. Still, rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens. His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty." That statement just released by the House speaker, Paul Ryan.

[12:20:38] Jake Tapper, it didn't take very long for the Republican leadership in Congress to make its views known on what the president just said.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: No. But to talk for a second about what President Obama did say. First of all, he was ad- libbing quite a bit, which is unusual for him in an address in the East Room. He usually sticks to script, sticks to teleprompter. Much of what he was saying, he was just speaking extemporaneously. Second of all, of course it's not every day that we see President Obama actually crying. It's a very rare occasion for any public official, much less the president of the United States. And I think having covered him for so long, I can tell you, this is the issue that gets to him at his core more than any other issue. Having worked on Chicago on the streets and seen the plague of gun violence there. And then, obviously, he was very deeply affected - we would hear anecdotally, those of us who covered the president at the time, about how inconsolable he was after the Newtown shootings. How people would find him in his office weeping. And we saw some of that from the podium when he came out to talk about it a few days afterwards, and we see it again today. It is - it is something that I have been hearing for years that President Obama, when he does take a moment and think about the 20 innocent children, six and seven-year-olds, as well as the six teachers and faculty members who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School that day, it does - it does bring him to a very, very vulnerable and emotional place.

BLITZER: Well, you could see him choking up, wiping away tears from his eyes.

Gloria, Jake is absolutely right, it's not every day you see a president of the United States get that emotional.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And he also said something today that I thought was interesting. He said, you know, this won't happen during my presidency. He admitted, look, this is a long road ahead. We heard from Paul Ryan, we are hearing from people, Republican candidates on the campaign trail. Mike Huckabee just called what Obama's proposing a "blatant belligerent abuse of power." It's - it's as if they're living in alternate universes on this.

And don't forget, as Jake said earlier, what the president is trying to do here is very narrow and very small, and clarifying existing rules and trying to close an Internet loophole on background check for - for gun buyers. But this is a president, I think, who sees this as one of the greatest frustrations of his presidency. And he sees it as a failure. And what he was saying to the American public today is something that he has quite frankly said before, which is, do what the NRA does, which is become a single issue constituency and vote on this issue because we need to get as much power as they have. And he said, look, the gun lobby may hold Congress hostage, but it should not hold you hostage. And his frustration was so evident and so real and something you couldn't put on a teleprompter.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And to Gloria's point, his candor about the fact -

BORGER: Yes.

KING: That this will not happen during his presidency. That's hard for a man as proud and a man who still wants to be relevant in his final year, to look the American people in the eye, even as he's wiping the tears, and acknowledge the fact that, I'm in my final year, I know what the Republican calculation is, this will not happen, but that's not a reason to have the fight.

And I think this is a defining question for us politically, for the president personally, is, how relevancy can he be in this final year? His final State of the Union address is next year. He wants to keep this issue front and center, even though he knows he will get little or nothing. Maybe the mental health area. It's a potential area for compromise. Even before the holidays, Speaker Ryan had said he was willing to talk about a mental health package. But that's also changing the dynamic. If we were three or four election cycles ago, Hillary Clinton would be cringing if the Democratic president of the United States was putting gun control front and center heading into a national election. But the Democrats now believe that for their coalition, their electoral map, that issue actually works for them in the suburbs of Pennsylvania -

BORGER: Yes.

KING: In the suburbs of North Carolina. So the Democrats are not afraid of this as a national issue anymore. We could go house district by house district, or Senate race by Senate race, and we might have a very different conversation. But in presidential politics, the president is doing this with such vigor because he thinks - not only it's important to him, you could see that, but it helps his party.

TAPPER: The president also, Wolf, comparing the fight for further restrictions on gun ownership to both women's suffrage, as well as the liberation of African-American, and then LGBT rights.

[12:25:03] One thing that needs to be worked on, and he's acknowledging this in what he said is, the fight for public sentiment. And the fact is that polls are very divided right now when you ask the American people. In our poll, CNN/ORC in December, do you support further restrictions on gun ownership or not, it's - it's roughly 50- 50. Actually an edge going to the not. People who don't want more gun laws.

Now, when you dive deeper and you ask them about, well, would you support expanded background checks and the like in the poll, you see there is the widespread support as the president referenced to specific measures. But as a general argument, more gun control or not more gun control, that is not something - an area where the president's side is winning. It is, at best, a wash.

BLITZER: I want to play that little clip right now. Here is the president of the United States getting very emotional in remembering those little kids who were killed at Sandy Hook.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our inalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high schoolers at Columbine, and - and from first graders in Newtown. First graders. And from every family who - who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun. Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: You can see, Gloria, the president wiping - wiping away the tears as he was remembering those kid. And it was, obviously, a very, very painful moment in our nation's history.

BORGER: You know, he also added that it happens on the streets of Chicago every day. And I think when you look back at this presidency and you go back to the time at Sandy Hook and you recall how emotional he was and how unable he has been to get anything done - and, by the way, don't forget, in 2013, when he made all those proposals, when he had Joe Biden up on Capitol Hill lobbying for them, four Democrats who were worried about the reactions in their states voted against the president on this in the Senate. And so he was opposed by members of his own party.

And I think now what we're seeing, to John's point, is a really important sea change in Democratic politics. I remember since - since Al Gore lost the 2000 election, Democrats were worried about the gun issue in their states. Now you see presidential candidates, you see Hillary Clinton changing. We don't know whether this is going to hurt Democrats or not in the south. That - you know, that remains to be seen. But they - there is a distinct difference now between presidential candidates in the Democratic Party and in the Republican Party.

BLITZER: John, I think all of the Republic - almost all - not all the Republican candidates, I think almost all of the Republican candidates, they're make it clear they totally disagree with the president on this executive action to take this unilateral effort to tighten up what the president calls common sense background checks. The president did refer to it, to a certain degree. I think he was referring to Donald Trump specifically. And he said, "this is not a plot to take away everyone's guns." That's what Donald Trump told our Chris Cuomo yesterday on CNN's "New Day" when he suggested what the president really wants to do is take away your guns.

KING: That has been a narrative from the gun rights community and some of the political leaders who agree with it, now including Donald Trump, who was once for an assault weapons ban, by the way. Donald Trump once supported the assault weapons ban, but now he says, no. But that has been a narrative throughout. And you can see the president was out actually mocking it during his remarks. There were the tears of emotion, there was also some sarcasm from the president where he said, this is not a plot, because it has been said by groups for some time, you know, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the ATF, they're coming for your guns. Essentially, don't leave the garage unguarded, they're going to come take your guns if you go to work.

And that's the thing that gets under the president's skin. That's the extreme on the gun rights side. There are extremes on the anti-gun rights side as well. The president said he wanted to start a conversation, and that is the failure, to get people into a room to actually try to have a conversation about this issue is near impossible.

But to that point, Ben Carson made a fascinating point in his interview with Jake just yesterday where he said he disagreed with the president on this, but on the executive action, he said, if we're going to talk about these things, the society should talk about them. You know, the president should be talking to Congress. All of the elected leaders, from the president on down, should be talking to the people. And even though he said he was against these thing, and help me if I'm getting this wrong in any way, that if you're going to discuss them, maybe he would change his mind if he saw this groundswell of public opinion. [12:30:07] So even within the Republicans, their first answer is, if

Obama's for apple pie, the Republicans are against it. That's part of the world we live in right now. So part of it is the - this president