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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Children's Access To Guns; Mitch McConnell's Strategy And Political Style

Aired August 27, 2014 - 16:30   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

The national lead: gun rights advocates have long argued that the best way to keep kids safe around guns is to teach them how to use guns. But that logic came with some deadly consequences at an Arizona gun range. A 9-year-old girl accidentally killed her shooting instructor with she fired off an Uzi and lost control. No charges will be filed.

But there are still plenty of questions being asked, such as, how is it that someone so young and not strong could be allowed how to use such a powerful weapon in the first place.

Joining me now with more is CNN correspondent Tom Foreman.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is a different type of gun altogether. Most of the guns we're talking about most of the time. Around Las Vegas, there are plenty of places involved in what is called machine gun tourism, which means for a fee, you can go fire all sorts of weapons. This gun range was about 20 minutes away from the south side of Vegas, and that is where this young girl from New Jersey was handed this gun.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

INSTRUCTOR: Give me one shot.

(GUNFIRE)

INSTRUCTOR: All right!

FOREMAN (voice-over): At the Bullet and Burger's gun range, instructor Charlie Vacca is leaning over the 9-year-old girl, telling her how to handle the Uzi as she squeezes off a shot. Then moments later, she pulls the trigger for a burst of fire and the 9 millimeter submachine gun jumps toward Vacca's head, he is mortally wounded.

SAM SCARMARDO, GUN RANGE OWNER: We don't know what happened. Our guys are trained to basically hover over people when they're shooting. And if they're shooting right-handed, we have our right hand behind them ready to push the weapon out of the way, if they're left-handed, the same thing.

FOREMAN: Developed in the 1950s the Uzi can fire ten rounds per second at close to 900 miles an hour and in the hand of a skilled marksman it can be highly effective, but groups like a law center to prevent gun violence have long argued that guns in the hands of young people bring inherent risks. 28 states plus Washington, D.C., have laws to prosecute adults who allow children unsupervised access to guns, but they point out such laws don't apply to supervised use.

MICHAEL MCLIVELY, LAW CENTER TO PRVENT GUN VIOLENCE: There might not be a law on the books, but this is one of those situations where we think common sense should probably dictate our behaviors and it just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to give young children access particularly to very powerful automatic weapons.

FOREMAN: Still, it's happened before. In 2008, an eight-year-old boy at a gun show in Massachusetts shot himself in the head while firing an Uzi. The former police chief who organized that show could have gone to prison for more than 20 years, but he was acquitted and local authorities say so far in this latest incident charges will not be filed against anyone, calling the death the result of an industrial accident.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: There are still other investigations that have to go on there by OSHA and some other folks. So, maybe some charges of some sort may come out of it. We reached out to the NRA for any comment on all of this, we haven't heard back from them yet, Jake. But this is one of those weird issues where it falls into, you know, the gap really between the gun control debate and the question of adults and kids. What should kids have access to? You're teaching a kid to drive a car, you don't start in a Ferrari. You start with something that has a lot less horsepower to it. An Uzi that is a big gun, that's a very, very serious gun even in the world of guns.

TAPPER: This is a tragic story. Tom Foreman, thank you so much.

Coming up, Mitch McConnell told Republicans it was their sole mission to make President Obama a one-term president, but the Senate Republican is making news today for saying the commander-in-chief has his full support. Just what on earth could get these two to put their political differences aside? That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Now it's time for the politics lead in the middle of what might be the most bruising election battle of his three decades in office and likely the most expensive race in the history of the United States Senate. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did something today that the Senator from Kentucky very rarely dares to do. He agreed with President Obama. Our chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash just spoke exclusively with McConnell who remained quick to criticize the president's overall foreign policy, but said he is in agreement with the way the White House is handling the threat of ISIS now and that he personally would support authorization for strikes inside their safe haven of Syria if President Obama asks for it first from Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You are here in a tough race. A lot of your colleagues are, as well. Is there any trepidation about having a politically explosive debate on authorizing use of force right before an election?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Look, I think the security of the nation comes first. I believe and others believe that ISIS can hit us here at home, and that really trumps all other considerations and I'm anxious to hear what the president has in mind and I think he's very likely to get support.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Dana Bash joins us live from Louisville, Kentucky, and I am also joined by "The New York Times" Jonathan Martin whose new piece for "The New York Times" magazine is called, quote, Mitch McConnell is headed down the stretch. Dana, let me start with you. What's striking about this move, this announcement is that even the Democrat Alison Grimes has been keeping Obama at arm's length. Do you think there's any risk for McConnell?

BASH: Well, it's certainly not a risk when it comes to Obama because, I mean, you cannot stand with him for more than five seconds and here he -- and not hear him criticize the president on everything else. I mean, everything else, and I've been with him now for two days here in Kentucky. I think ironically, the bigger risk is the supporting or at least, tentative supporting of military action and of a congressional authorization to do that because he is in such a tight race here and this is a war-weary country, and I was with him at a speech a couple of hours ago here, and he seemed to almost be preparing the voters here for it. He was saying, look, I get that we've had two prolonged wars. It hasn't been easy, but sometimes especially when the threat is as big as I think it is here we might have to act and I think that maybe is a bigger threat to him than saying at least on this small thing that he supports the president right now.

TAPPER: What's your take, John? You've just been a great deal of time with Mitch McConnell.

JONATHAN MARTIN, NATL. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK TIMES": Well, I was in the state three times. I don't think being hawk on ISIS is a political risk in Kentucky ...

TAPPER: Right.

MARTIN: Especially after what happened to Mr. Foley, the journalist. So, look, I think it's probably a safe place for him to be, but as Dana mentioned, he's going to change the topic back pretty fast for national security to what he wants it on which is trying to link his opponent to President Obama. That's his whole campaign, Jake, it's a one note campaign, trying to make the election about Obama rather than himself.

TAPPER: And rather than about Alison Grimes, the Democratic opponent.

So, Dana, let me ask you. Democrats today hyperventilating over this audio obtained by "The Nation" magazine. It's McConnell saying that the Republican Party will be attaching riders on spending bills to force the president's hand on everything from Obamacare to funding for the EPA. He made the comments two months ago to a group of donors including the infamous Koch brothers. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCONNELL: We will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what's called placing riders in the bill. No money can be spent to do this or to do that. We're going to go after them on healthcare, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: A recording apparently made with the two tin cans and a piece of string. Dana, your - his opponent, Alison Grimes reacted in an exclusive interview with you. What did she have to say?

BASH: Well, she was very eager to jump on this. Listen to what she said and we'll talk about it on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALISON LUNDERGAN GRIMES, (D) SENATE CANDIDATE, KENTUCKY: I think Mitch McConnell got caught in his 47 percent Mitt Romney moment. I think it shows the extent and the lengths he will go to to pander to his party, millionaires and billionaires at the expense of hurting Kentuckians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: But Dana, I don't think it's a 47 percent moment quite, right? Because he made very similar comments to Politico on the record.

BASH: Well, there's that, but I think if you sort of take it back a couple of steps and look at the context of this, Jake, you know that Democrats have been sort of, you know, foaming at the mouth when it comes to the Koch brothers because they have polling across the board in all of these races that shows that they do well when they make it about Republicans being in the pocket of millionaires and billionaires. That wasn't an accident that Grimes used those words and it's us against them and that's why you see the Koch brothers on so many ads in campaigns and also why you see Democrats trying to use this as a narrative.

However, you are absolutely right that Mitch McConnell has said a lot of this publicly, almost all of it publicly and I asked him about that today and here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCONNELL: I didn't say anything in the private meeting I haven't said publicly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So there you go. He completely stood by it. He basically said, you know, give me a break as someone - the other things he said was in this secret audio was that he doesn't support the minimum wage increase, that he doesn't support the Democrats on student loans. That he doesn't support unemployment insurance extensions. Again, that's all stuff that he supported publicly and voted on or against. So, I think the concept of Democrats having this and having it - the ability to hang it on him as a Koch brothers moment is something that's not great for McConnell, but it might not have the legs, certainly doesn't have the kind of impact that the 47 percent moment. I agree with you.

TAPPER: Democrats do point out that the one thing that he didn't say to Politico, Jonathan that he did say in his private meeting is attaching riders on financial services and that feeds into the whole - how much is any Republican in their pocket of Wall Street. But I want to turn to your article, because it's very interesting. One thing, the Rodney Dangerfield moment, he keeps on saying every time he sees you that he is 8 and 0, he has never lost an election. He really feels like he hasn't been given enough credit, it sounded like.

MARTIN: You think of Mitch McConnell, Jake, you think of a lot of things, but it's sort of needy and looking for a validation.

TAPPER: It's not one ...

MARTIN: At age 72 ...

TAPPER: Right.

MARTIN: to 30 years in the Senate is not one of them.

(LAUGHTER)

MARTIN: And I was so struck by it. The part of it is a shtick, part of it is, he likes to cultivate this outsider image even though he's the consummate insider ...

TAPPER: Right.

MARTIN: At the pinnacle of Washington power, he likes to call to it - this idea, that he's fighting the sort of liberal elite. So it's partly that, but I think there is something authentic there. He really does care about history. He's immersed in it. He deeply cares about his place in the state's history and the country's history, and I think he believes that - he's not been accorded the respect that he deserves over the course of a long political career because people don't like the way, frankly, that he runs his campaigns and the way that he conducts his politics. Look, Lamar Alexander told me this, he's won because he's run (ph) campaigns. He's not run positive, happy campaigns. He's won ugly. He's won, but it hasn't been pretty.

And that's why today he's (INAUDIBLE)

TAPPER: And I think seven of the eight people he defeated have never run for office again. That's how tough the campaigns were. Jonathan Martin, and Dana Bash, thank you so much. Coming up, their job is to serve and protect so why isn't anyone tracking the number of people killed by police officers in the line of duty? My next guest wants to change that. And dangerous rip tides and some of the biggest waves to hit Southern California's coastlines in years. We'll get the latest on Hurricane Marie.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. In other national news, the circumstances surrounding the shooting death of 18- year-old Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager shot and killed by a police officer sparked a national conversation about issues of police brutality and excessive force, and a whole number of other topics.

Brown is one of several high-profile police killings in recent weeks. There is Eric Garner who was killed while in NYPD choke hold and pinned to the ground. John Crawford, the Ohio man killed while holding a bb gun inside a Walmart, and Dillon Taylor, an unarmed man who was shot outside a Salt Lake City 7-11 while police responded to reports of a man carrying a gun.

But for anyone inspired by these cases to seek out information on just how often police killings happen, well, there is a good chance you discovered the same thing that we did the numbers are not out there and it's not because we're all using the wrong search engine.

There is actually no database federal or otherwise that tracks police killings unlike what exists for police officers killed in the line of duty which we reported on last week. But now one journalist has decided to take matters into his own hands.

He's compiling his own database of officer-involved killings on a web site called fatal encounters. Joining me now is Brian Burghart. He is the editor of "The Reno News and Review," who came up with this web site. Brian, what made you decide to start tracking police killings?

D. BRIAN BURGHART, EDITOR, "THE RENO NEWS AND REVIEW": Well, I discovered there was no database. There was a police killing in Reno, Nevada, and I tried to look and see how frequently that happened, and it wasn't available. So it seemed insane that this kind of data is not available to the American public, so I decided I was going to make it.

TAPPER: While putting this database together over the last few years, what have you discovered about the prevalence of police killings?

BURGHART: I discovered that the best numbers offered by the FBI are less than half what the real numbers are. For example, they generally claim that the numbers about 400 people a year killed by police and according to -- well, several sources, killed by police on Facebook in the last 365 days it's 1,080.

TAPPER: You say that the fact that this database does not exist, you don't think it's an accident or an oversight. You think it's by design. Explain what you mean? BURGHART: Well, there is a law -- there was a law passed in 1994 requiring the Justice Department to keep this data and the fact that they've been ignoring that law for 20 years suggests to me that they don't want to do it. It's clear evidence.

TAPPER: Because they do, in fact, of course, keep a database on how many police officers are killed in the line of duty. We reported on that last week, but you can't get the other figures.

Now you just mentioned a Facebook group. You have been relying heavily on crowd sourced information. Are you concerned about how reliable that is?

BURGHART: Absolutely. Since most of the crowd sourced information comes from journalists, it's not perfectly accurate. What I started with, the original intent of this was to do public records requests of all 17,985 state and local law enforcement agencies.

But that -- with roadblocks that was taking a very long time so I did manage to foil all of the state and local in Nevada, but now it's growing and actually we may be able to go to primary documents for many cases.

TAPPER: Ultimately, what do you hope is going to come out of the work you're doing?

BURGHART: Ultimately, I want the U.S. Department of Justice to collect this information in their uniform crime report exactly the same place where they keep the police killings, the police who are killed by criminals.

TAPPER: Right. In 2013 that number was 27, 27 police killed in the line of duty. Brian Burghart, thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate it.

BURGHART: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

TAPPER: Coming up on THE LEAD. We have a live look at how nature has set the stage for a surfer's dream come true off the California coast. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. In other national news, if you can hang ten with the best of them and you've conquered your fair share of humpbacks, you are salivating at the gnarly action going down off the California coast.

Hurricane Marie is kicking off some giant waves in the Pacific Ocean and it's got surfers flocking to places like Malibu Beach in droves, but as far out as it all looks, a wipe out in these waters could be potentially deadly.

And CNN's Akiko Fujita is live in Malibu. What size waves are we talking about, Akiko? AKIKO FUJITA, CORRESPONDENT: We're talking 10 to 15-foot waves and that's about double any I'm worried the waves will splash on to the rock. Nature putting on a show for all of the surfers here at Surf Riders Beach. It's the biggest waves to hit the coast in decades and it is drawing quite the crowd.

Just take a look. You can see all of the waves crashing in and the surfers out here are really taking advantage of this. You can imagine these waves are heaven for these avid surfers in California.

These waters have been absolutely packed all day. Among them, big wave surfer, Laird Hamilton, riding that wave from one side of the pier all the way to the other side. We had a chance to catch up with him earlier today, and he called this a surfer's dream.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAIRD HAMILTON, SURFER: We're just thankful that we get to ride these waves and everybody just needs to be head's up right now. This is not a game. This is some serious stuff and, you know, somebody passed away last night down here and some people have been hurt. And it's something that you just have to have your respect for the ocean.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FUJITA: Now that fatality that Laird is referring to, officials out here say they found a surfer who was unconscious last night here in Malibu. They don't know if this is directly related to this or whether that surfer had a medical condition.

But lifeguards stress conditions are dangerous for inexperienced surfers here. They've carried out more than a hundred rescues in the last 24 hours and they're saying it's not just the in magnitude of the surge, but the consistency at which it's coming.

I can tell you out here at Malibu Pier, they've had to close down the pier because they've lost six pilons. Surfers coming out here all day and they'll stick around for the next few days as well -- Jake.

TAPPER: Very quickly, Akiko, is there a concern about flooding?

FUJITA: Well, there is. We're talking about 10, 15-foot waves and down south we're looking at 25-foot waves. So they've crashed into sort of we've seen the homes flood near the seal beach area in Orange County and this -- the surge is expected to last for the next few days.

So they'll be keeping a close eye on that. Akiko Fujita, thank you so much. Check out the page on at cnn.com/thelead for video blogs and extras.

That is it for THE LEAD. I am Jake Tapper and I turn you over to Mr. Wolf Blitzer in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.