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Amanpour

Gun Issues in America

Aired March 29, 2013 - 16:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Just before Christmas, millions of Americans along with people all over the world were shocked and horrified at the callous murder of these 20 little schoolchildren shown behind me and the teachers who fought to protect them.

It seemed then that maybe, just maybe the mass shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut, school would be a game-changer, finally forcing American lawmakers to toughen up the incredibly lax gun laws that have enabled 30 mass shootings since the Columbine school massacre in 1999, all of which have left 259 people dead, many of them school children.

But instead, the powerful National Rifle Association went to work to block change. The NRA has used the three months since Newtown to mobilize fear and loathing among its base and on Capitol Hill. And it's done the seemingly impossible to, in fact, weaken national gun laws, not strengthen them.

The eminently sensible idea of banning military style machine guns like those used in Newtown and other mass shootings has fallen by the wayside. And the call for comprehensive background checks may also be in jeopardy.

And so what happened to President Obama's promise? After Newtown, he vowed to finally change America's irrational gun laws. But in fact, the politics have so far trumped his efforts.

And Mr. Obama is now being outdone by a big city mayor, New York's Michael Bloomberg, who's taking the bull by the horns, launching a $12 million ad campaign for gun control, using his own money to blanket key states ahead of a congressional debate on the issue in the coming weeks.

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MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: I think I have a responsibility and I think you and all of your viewers have responsibilities to try to make this country safer for our families and for each other.

And if I can do that by spending some money and taking the NRA from being the only voice to being one of the voices so the public can really understand the issues, then I think my money would be well spent. And I think I have an obligation to do that.

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AMANPOUR: The NRA's Wayne LaPierre lashed back, calling Bloomberg's ideas, "reckless and insane."

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WAYNE LAPIERRE, PRESIDENT, NRA: He can't spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public. The whole thing, universal checks, is a dishonest premise. There's not a bill on the Hill that provides universal checks. Criminals aren't going to be checked. They're not going to do this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: We'll explore that. But tonight, where does this leave this nation and the families of those who lost their precious children?

And later when it comes to leading from the front, John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia, accomplished what the United States cannot seem to. After a massacre at home, he pushed through strict gun laws and saw mass killings disappear.

But first, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy: as a congressman, he represented Newtown in Washington. And now as a senator, he's leading the fight for gun regulation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Senator, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining me.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D), CONN.: Thanks for having me.

AMANPOUR: What do you make and what difference will it make, $12 million ad campaign, personally paid for by Mayor Bloomberg of New York?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY, CONN.: Oh, I think it'll make a big difference. I mean, the fact is, is that, you know, when I talk to Republicans and Democrats, there are a lot of members of the House and the Senate who want to do the right thing, whether it be banning assault weapons, voting for universal background checks. But they legitimately fear the price that they're going to pay at the polls.

And, of course, I've been making the case for weeks now that the mythology of the NRA is vastly overblown. In fact, in 2012, the NRA put money into 16 U.S. Senate races, and they lost 13 of those 16 races. Frankly, you were better off being against the NRA than with the NRA --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Well --

MURPHY: -- in 2012.

AMANPOUR: You say that, sir --

MURPHY: But they need to know that there's somebody that's on the other side.

AMANPOUR: You say that, and it seems, though, that the NRA has mobilized and perhaps even outwitted the gun control folks in the three months since the terrible tragedy in your state at Newtown, that actually gun control seems to be sliding backwards rather than forwards.

MURPHY: Well, I don't think that's true. I mean, just remember that before Newtown happened, we could have never even envisioned having a debate on the floor of the Senate on universal background checks. There was no way we were going to ever get votes for a ban on high-capacity magazines.

The fact that we're having this discussion, that we're close to getting a vote, a positive vote, is virtue of the fact that this nation has changed after Newtown. But, listen, I don't deny the NRA's strength. They have powerfully stopped gun control from happening for the last several decades.

I don't think they're going to win this fight. But Bloomberg's right, that he's got to show members of the Senate and members of the House that if they go out and take on the NRA with this vote that somebody will have their back.

AMANPOUR: Senator, you are what they call a freshman. You've just been elected in the last set of elections. And you have made it very clear that you're going to take the NRA on and that you're not going to be afraid of them.

And yet in your own state, there's obviously a very powerful gun lobby, actually headquartered in Newtown, of all places. And it is slow in your own state legislature.

What do you think is going to happen there? And why are you not afraid?

MURPHY: Well, I'm just sick and tired of people kowtowing to the NRA. I'm sick and tired of people believing all of their hype. This is not a group that represents common sense gun owners. This is a group that now represents gun manufacturers.

The reason why 10 years ago they were for background checks, the NRA, and today they're against background checks, well, it's because the nature of the gun industry has changed. And now the manufacturers have to sell lots of expensive assault weapons to a small number of people in order to turn a profit.

So coincidentally, not coincidentally, the NRA is all of a sudden trying to stoke this paranoia about the government coming and taking your guns. I'm just sick and tired of people, you know, giving in to this BS, because I think you're right. If the state of Connecticut can't pass strong gun laws by the time that we debate this in the Senate, it certainly will hurt our chances.

AMANPOUR: What do you say, then, to your own party, Senator, who obviously do fear this or fear not being able to muster enough votes? The leader of the party in the Senate, Harry Reid, has dropped the whole idea of assault weapons.

And President Obama himself, who said, right after Newtown, that he will use every power available in this office; by all accounts has not actually spent the kind of political capital to push this forward.

Are you disappointed with your own party?

And your president?

MURPHY: No, I'm not disappointed. I'm certainly not disappointed with my president. I mean, President Obama and Vice President Biden have been as strong as possible on this while managing all sorts of other crises, like the manufactured ongoing crises around the budget.

So I'm very proud of my president.

Here's what I'd say to members of my party or Republicans, and particularly Democrats, 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks. Don't be on the wrong side of this. There will be a price to be paid at the polls.

And second, I want everybody to think about what it would be like if we didn't pass common sense gun violence legislation and this happened again. I never thought this would happen in my community, in a sleepy little town like Newtown, Connecticut. It did.

And let me tell you, as a member of Congress, as a member of your community, you do not want to have to go through the pain that we are still living with today. Do everything within your power to make sure that you can tell your town if it ever gets struck by the kind of violence Newtown did, that you did everything to make sure that it couldn't happen.

AMANPOUR: You're absolutely right. You mentioned the polls that show a vast majority of Americans supporting comprehensive background checks. You say and you hope that that will pass. Some people do doubt it.

What do you say to Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA, who said -- and we heard it earlier -- that the whole thing about universal checks is a dishonest premise, that the criminals, the shooters of Tucson and Colorado, in Newtown, would not have been found, would not have been exposed by these background checks?

MURPHY: Well, he's not telling the truth. I mean, the fact is, in Columbine, the guns for that crime were bought by a friend of the shooters through a process by which there wasn't a background check and that friend said on the record that she didn't go into a gun store to buy those guns because she didn't think that she would be able to pass the background check. So, I mean, that's just not true.

And for those that say that some of the other laws wouldn't make an effect, it's not true, either.

If that shooter in Newtown, in Sandy Hook, had gone into that school with 10-round magazines rather than 30-round magazines, I absolutely believe that there would be still little kids alive today because he would have had to have exchanged and changed clips 10 times, 15 times rather than three or four.

And we know what stops these mass shootings is often the exchange of those magazines. So these laws would have changed the outcomes here. Are any set of laws going to guarantee that we will never have another shooting? Again, no, but it will greatly reduce the likelihood of that happening. And Wayne LaPierre is just not telling the truth when he says otherwise.

AMANPOUR: What do you say, Senator, because you're obviously right here at the interface, this battle against the NRA, and having to talk to and convince the families who lost so many in Newtown? What is it like, your meetings with them, when you see how slowly this is going?

MURPHY: It's heartbreaking. And you know, the families from Newtown have been back and forth to Washington, over and over again, as well as to Hartford in the last several weeks and months. And many of them are able to get up in the morning because they believe that this world is going to change as a consequence of this tragedy.

And I do shudder to think what I'm going to tell some of these families if we can't even get background checks passed in the United States Senate.

It won't mean that the fight's over; remember, Dianne Feinstein didn't pass the assault weapons ban the first time she proposed it back in the early 1990s. But many of these families believe that the only way that they can live on certain days and certain hours is to know that the laws are going to change and that other communities won't have to go through this.

I still have faith that we're going to get a bill done. Otherwise, there's going to be some very, very difficult moments in the community of Newtown.

AMANPOUR: Well, we wish you the best and, of course, our thoughts are with your community. Senator, thank you very much for joining me.

MURPHY: Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So Senator Murphy just told us how the Columbine shooters would not have been able to buy their guns had there been stricter background checks.

My next guest is Tom Mauser. He lost his son, Daniel, in that horrific massacre 14 years ago. And he's been fighting for tougher gun laws ever since.

Mr. Mauser, thank you for joining me.

What must you be going through every time you see another massacre of the kind that robbed you of your son?

TOM MAUSER, FATHER OF COLUMBINE VICTIM: You say the same thing to yourself every time, have we not learned any lessons? Why are we not doing something to reduce this terrible gun violence?

AMANPOUR: Do you feel at all vindicated, optimistic, in that your own state, Colorado, has just passed stricter gun laws and is way ahead of the national situation on this, passed gun laws on background checks and, indeed, the size of magazine clips?

MAUSER: You know, I'm proud. I'm really proud of my state, that our elected officials had the courage to stand up and say this is what people support and we're going to make a change.

You know, it was just two weeks before the tragedy at Columbine that my son said to me, Dad, did you know there were loopholes in our Brady bill, our national gun laws, that require background checks? And that's really what inspired me. And I'm grateful to see that today we're closing more of those loopholes.

AMANPOUR: What do you think when you see now the National Rifle Association really mobilizing? You hear Wayne LaPierre say, listen, background checks, it's all rubbish; it's not going to make a difference. The Columbine killers, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown, none of them would have been found.

MAUSER: Every year there are tens of thousands of people who are criminals or mentally deranged people who attempt to purchase a gun at a gun show. And it's the background check that stops them.

But when you have 40 percent of sales that don't go through a background check, you've got to close that kind of loophole.

AMANPOUR: Do you have hope, 14 years after Columbine, after you lost your own son and all the others who were killed there and since, do you have hope that there will be a national, a federal toughening up of these gun laws? You know, something like 9 percent support for gun control has slipped since Newtown. Does that worry you at all?

MAUSER: It does, but I think people, unfortunately, we have to continue getting the message out to people because, clearly, when they understand the basic facts and they realize that the gun lobby exaggerates everything, they create so much fear we have to overcome that.

And you know, I think at the national level, it's more difficult because of the power -- perceived power of the NRA. But when states start changing the laws, we set -- and I think we've set the stage for doing something at the national level.

AMANPOUR: Senator Murphy, who has to talk to the families, the bereaved families of Newtown, said that what gets them through every day, what gets them out of bed every day is the sure hope and knowledge that there will be some kind of improvement in this situation, in this country.

What got you out of bed every day? What keeps you getting out of bed every day?

MAUSER: It's that same thing. It's the hopefulness as opposed to what I think is the hopeless message of my opponents, who really have nothing to offer. But when you've been through something like this, you don't want it to happen to other people. That's the thing we have in common with the -- with the families of the other victims.

You don't want this to happen to other people. And you're just driven to do something in honor of your child, your loved one, to prevent it.

AMANPOUR: What do you do and how did you get involved in this? How did you decide to -- for want of a better word -- take on the NRA and the powerful gun lobby?

MAUSER: Again, it was my son's words to me about the loopholes.

And 10 days after the tragedy at Columbine the NRA had its national convention in, of all places, Denver. A friend asked me if I was going to go to a protest of that convention. And I said to myself, I can't be doing this 10 days after Daniel's death.

But on the other hand, I know who creates those loopholes that Daniel, my son, was talking about. So I went to that -- I went to that protest. There were 12,000 people gathered. And I got up in front of the crowd. When I found out that there were no other Columbine parents who would be there that day, I decided I had to get up in front of those people and talk about it.

And that's what launched me into this issue.

AMANPOUR: And it must have taken enormous courage, especially so soon after your tragedy.

And I hear also that when you are talking about this, you wear Daniel's shoes. Tell me about that.

MAUSER: Yes, it's amazing, but Daniel was the same size shoe that I was. And it occurred to me that, you know, symbolically I could be walking in his shoes the way that he was on the debate team at Columbine, despite being very shy in front of other people, that I could take that on, also, that I would walk in his shoes in this great debate. And I did with a pair of shoes that were in his closet.

And then five years after Columbine, I was given the shoes he was wearing that day of the tragedy. And so when I -- when I speak to people, to crowds or media interviews, I wear those shoes to represent standing in his shoes.

AMANPOUR: Tom Mauser, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

MAUSER: You're welcome. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: The heartfelt determination of one bereaved parent.

Now President Obama promised to use all the powers at his disposal to change the gun laws here. In a moment, I'll speak with a leader who actually did that and saved lives.

But first, it is the tweet heard around the world, even President Obama retweeted it, Yoko Ono's anti-gun message last week on what would have been her 44th wedding anniversary. As you can see, it included a photo of the bloodstained glasses her husband, John Lennon, was wearing when he was shot down outside their New York apartment more than 30 years ago and 1 million lives ago.

Tying the gun lobby up in knots, when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. It is not rocket science. Study after study here in the United States and around the world show incontrovertible evidence that where there is more gun control, there are fewer gun deaths.

Overseas, the mass killing of school children in the town of Dunblane in the U.K. in 1996 brought swift new gun control that's dramatically reduced fatalities. And after 35 people were killed in Australia that same year, the newly elected conservative prime minister, John Howard, went to the country to appeal for and to ram through changes. And there's not been a mass shooting in Australia since.

During his recent visit to the United States, I asked Mr. Howard just how he navigated the tricky political shoals of gun control where he comes from.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Prime Minister Howard, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining me.

JOHN HOWARD, FORMER AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: My pleasure.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, when you see the results of what you did in Australia and in other places where gun control has been enacted, and you're here in the United States, what do you make of how hard this is in the U.S.?

HOWARD: Well, I certainly understand that the United States is different from Australia. And what I am happy to do is explain what we did in Australia. And I hope that contributes to the debate. But I don't come here with any lectures.

AMANPOUR: I hear you loud and clear. Let me just pose you, then, this quote and then ask you how you did it in Australia.

The facts, as I said, seem to be clear: more gun laws, less (sic) gun deaths. Quote, "A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state overall, and for suicides and homicides individually."

Now that's from the "Journal of the American Medical Association" this March.

How did you do it, then, in Australia, after that terrible massacre in Tasmania?

HOWARD: Well, it was because that massacre was so terrible I was able to use the authority I had as a newly elected prime minister with a big majority to force the states that had the legal control over automatic and semi-automatic weapons to introduce a national ban. And it involved a buyback.

The buyback of guns was financed through a tax levy. And we bought back what would be the equivalent in American terms of 40 million weapons. We've got a much smaller population. So there were a smaller number bought back in Australia.

As a result of this, there has been a marked decline in the number of murders involving firearms. There's been a decline in the suicide rate, particularly amongst young males, which was very high in rural areas of Australia in the mid-'90s.

Now we started with a lower gun death rate. And I'm not saying that everything we did automatically translates. But our experience was that if you take guns out of circulation, you do reduce the number of deaths.

AMANPOUR: You say there are obviously clear differences between the United States and Australia. One, of course, is the gun culture.

How big was the gun culture in Australia?

HOWARD: The gun culture was nowhere near as big in Australia as it was in the United States. And of course, Australia is not a Bill of Rights country. We don't have a Bill of Rights. We don't have constitutional guarantees in relation to these things.

However, doesn't alter the fact that our murder rate using guns has fallen and there's not much doubt in my mind that it's the availability of guns that causes such a high rate of murder using weapons.

So many people have a snap point. And if that's -- that point arrives and you've got a gun handy, you're far more likely to use it to kill somebody than you are a knife or some other instrument.

AMANPOUR: Well, again, there's a huge difference between the U.S. and Australia. In the United States, 10.26 deaths per 100,000; while in Australia, that figure is 1.06. So it is a massive difference in terms of the level of violence.

I know you said you do not want to lecture the United States, the Congress, state legislators, whatever. But looking at the debate over this, the very public debate since Newtown especially, what do you think the U.S. could reasonably do? And do you think it'll happen here?

HOWARD: Well, that is a matter for Americans and your president and your legislators to decide. All I wish to do is explain what happened in Australia, to be objective. Bear in mind that even before these national laws were brought in in 1996, our murder rate using guns -- murder rate generally was lower, much lower than in the United States.

AMANPOUR: Prime Minister Howard, thank you very much for joining me.

HOWARD: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So that's how it's done. And we'll be back with a final thought.

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AMANPOUR: Finally tonight, the key moment in America's gun control debate will take place when Congress returns to Capitol Hill from its Easter recess. After all the sound and fury, legislators will finally consider changing the law, taking a stand and casting a vote.

And we'll be watching.

That's it for tonight's program. You can always follow us on Twitter, on Facebook and at amanpour.com. Goodbye from New York.

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