Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Texas School Shooting; Australia Gun Laws; Russia's War on Ukraine; Champions League Final. Aired 1-1:30a ET

Aired May 29, 2022 - 01:00   ET

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

[01:00:00]

(MUSIC PLAYING)

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello and welcome, live from Studio 7, at CNN Center in Atlanta. I'm Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company.

Coming up here on CNN NEWSROOM, a row of empty chairs recalls the 21 people killed in a mass shooting at a school in Texas. Outrage, grief and many unanswered questions, as the U.S. President is set to pay his respects.

Resolve and resilience: we hear from Ukrainians starting over, not willing to let war get in the way of their livelihoods.

And celebrations into the wee hours: Real Madrid clinches the Champions League title but not without security issues.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Michael Holmes.

HOLMES: And we begin in Uvalde, Texas, a community still very much in mourning, beset by grief and outrage, after the massacre that left 19 children and two teachers dead at an elementary school.

But amid the devastation, we are also seeing an outpouring of support for the community. On Saturday, a long line of mourners, waiting to lay flowers at a memorial set up outside Robb Elementary School; 21 empty chairs placed outside a local business, one for each life lost during Tuesday's rampage.

But as the community and the nation reel from yet another mass shooting, outrage growing, too, over the timeline of events at this particular one. And why a group of law enforcement officers waited so long before they rushed in to take over the gunman.

The shocking, yet all too familiar violence also reignited the country's fierce debate over gun reform. On Saturday, U.S. Vice president Kamala Harris was in Buffalo, New York, attending the funeral for one of the victims of the mass shooting at a grocery store just earlier this month.

Like in Uvalde, the gunman in Buffalo used an AR style rifle. Parents urging for action, calling for an assault weapons ban. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: On the issue of gun violence, I will say, as I've said countless times, we are not sitting around, waiting to figure out what the solution looks like. You know, we're not looking for a vaccine. We know what works on this. It includes let's have an assault weapons ban.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now in the coming hours, U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Uvalde, to do something they did just a couple of weeks ago after that tragedy in Buffalo. They'll be comforting the victims of gun violence. CNN's Arlette Saenz reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Biden is preparing to spend several hours on the ground in Uvalde, Texas, to try to offer comfort to those grieving families, dealing with the losses of the two teachers and 19 young children following that shooting at Robb Elementary School earlier this week.

The president and first lady will depart Sunday morning from their home in Wilmington, Delaware, and then travel down to Texas, where the president is expected to meet with community leaders, religious leaders and most importantly, the families who have lost their loved ones.

President Biden, time and time again, has gone into these types of communities, to try to grieve and offer comfort with them, in the wake of their losses. Of course, the president himself has very strong personal experience with loss as well, having lost his wife and young baby daughter in a car accident and then, additionally, his son, later in life, Beau Biden, who passed away from cancer.

But ahead of this visit to Uvalde, Texas, President Biden spoke at a commencement ceremony at the University of Delaware, where he talked about his trip and also issued a call to action for the next generation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tomorrow, I'll be heading to Uvalde, Texas, to be with each of those families. And as I speak, those parents are literally preparing to bury their children, in the United States of America, to bury their children. It's too much violence. Too much fear. Too much grief.

And while this can feel like a very dark moment in America, I'm optimistic.

[01:05:00]

BIDEN: I've never been more optimistic in my entire life. Here's why. I mean this, my word as a Biden, I mean it, because of you, this generation, your generation. Makes me more optimistic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: One of the big questions now facing this White House is what more can be done to try to prevent tragedies like this from happening again. The president has said he wants to see stricter gun control but says that there's not much more he can do on his own, on the executive level.

So the White House has pushed for Congress to take action. There is that bipartisan group of senators, who are holding preliminary discussions about possible new gun safety laws. But it's unclear what kind of traction that might get.

And there are some outside groups, pressing for President Biden himself to do more. But for now, that visit to Uvalde, Texas on Sunday, will give the president an opportunity to focus on offering solace, offering comfort to these grieving families, who have had their lives shattered -- Arlette Saenz, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Now as the U.S. comes to terms with the yet another mass shooting, many are wondering, why this seems to be a uniquely American problem.

CNN's Brian Todd takes a look at how other countries have successfully dealt with a deadly issue.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the wake of the school massacre in Uvalde, attention focuses on the responses of other Western nations to mass shootings, responses which made enormous differences in their levels of gun violence.

April, 1996: a gunman killed 35 people at a resort in the Australian state of Tasmania; 12 days later, Australian prime minister John Howard announced sweeping gun reforms, a national gun buyback program that took up to 1 million guns out of circulation, a ban on rapid fire rifles and shotguns, a 28-day waiting period to buy a gun and a national registry for would-be gun owners.

How did those reforms work?

DANIEL WEBSTER, JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR GUN VIOLENCE SOLUTIONS: Their rates of gun violence declined quite substantially, both with respect to homicides and with suicides. And it virtually eliminated fatal mass shootings.

TODD (voice-over): Since Australia's gun control laws went into effect in 1996, mass shootings have gone from almost once a year to almost never, with only one since that time. And John Howard later pointed out, his government was able to get that done, even though he's a political conservative. JOHN HOWARD, FORMER AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: There was a lot of

resistance inside sections of my own political base. But even the most cynical, skeptical person would acknowledge that we have made a big difference with that prohibition.

TODD (voice-over): Hungerford, England, 1987: a man used two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun to kill 16 people. The British government responded by banning semiautomatic and pump action weapons.

Nine years later, after a gunman killed 16 children and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland, Britain announced a law banning the private ownership of all handguns. Britain now has one of the lowest rates of gun related deaths among developed countries.

In New Zealand, after massacres at two mosques that left 50 people dead in 2019, the government was praised for immediately banning military style semiautomatic weapons and announcing a gun buyback program.

New Zealand, Australia, Britain: all countries that, like the U.S., had a culture of gun ownership before those mass shootings. But analysts say they don't see the changes those countries made happening in America.

SEUNG MIN KIM, "THE WASHINGTON POST": The right to own a gun, the Second Amendment, is a huge part of American culture. And I think that's really affected the political dynamics, the political will of being able to get anything done.

WEBSTER: It's the simple structure of our government in the United States that gives substantially undue power to low population, mostly rural states that are not too keen on gun control.

TODD: The analysts we spoke to believe the best the U.S. could do at this point is expand background checks, expand red flag laws, the state laws that allow police or family members to petition to take guns away from people believed to pose a danger to themselves or others, and institute more oversight of gun dealers.

But they say even those modest steps could still make a difference -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Charles Watson is a spokesperson for Gun Control Australia, where that mass shooting led to substantial change to gun laws. He's also emeritus professor of Health Sciences at Curtin University. He joins me now from my hometown, Perth, in Western Australia.

Professor, it's good to have you on. You wrote after the Port Arthur massacre, about the initial political reaction in Australia. And I just want to quote it, because it's quite a paragraph. You said this in that paper.

[01:10:00]

HOLMES: You said, "The initial political responses to the Port Arthur massacre were predictable: condemnation of the act, sympathy for the bereaved, hopes that the tragedy would never be repeated, et cetera.

"However, these ritual lamentations fell short of specific commitments to gun law reform that might upset the shooting constituency."

Of course, there were changes in Australia. But listening to those words, you could be talking about America today, not Australia in 1996.

What changed for Australia?

CHARLES WATSON, SPOKESPERSON, GUN CONTROL AUSTRALIA: Michael, it's a very interesting question. Our lobby group, which in those days was called The Coalition for Gun Control, was a group of only five people.

But we jumped on the opportunity after the massacre to take control of the airwaves, where basically we were on every radio and television station for a week. And we had a fortunate thing happen.

Howard had just been elected as the new prime minister. He was looking for something to gain public popularity. And so he took it to the police ministers' conference and basically told them to join up with the national firearms agreement.

And of course, the most important thing in that agreement was the banning of assault weapons. There were other important things, registration, administrative things, registration of all guns and restrictions on getting a gun license and that sort of thing.

But there's no doubt that taking semiautomatic military assault weapons off the menu has made an enormous difference. There were about 13 mass shootings in the 20 years before Port Arthur. And there've been none with more than five people killed since that time.

HOLMES: Yes, going back and looking at that paper that you wrote, it was fascinating to me. And I want to quote from it again, actually.

You said, "The national response is a cultural turning point for Australia, an opportunity to become a society that does something about violence."

It's striking to me, because, you know, Americans will often say, that can't happen here. There's too many guns. The political will on the Right is not there. You know, it's about mental health and on and on, that meaningful reform just can't happen in the U.S.

What do you say to that from your own experience?

WATSON: Well, I think Kamala Harris is right. I think the one thing to start off with, you don't have to stop people owning guns. Just say you can't have military style assault weapons. That's -- that would make an enormous difference. That basically takes massacres out of the question by the time you do that. And now, of course, the United States is a much more difficult

opportunity than we had in Australia at the time. But nonetheless, there will come a point when the pressure of these events will turn things around --

(AUDIO GAP)

WATSON: -- people in the U.S., like Australia, want to be safe from guns; 90 percent of Australians want more gun control, not less. We've always been able to trade on that.

But in the U.S., there's a lot of people who don't want people going around with military style assault weapons and I -- there's just got to be some way of doing that. It might not happen through legislation.

It might have to be a national agreement, such as we had in Australia, because the country wasn't -- didn't have the legislative power to simply do it at a national level. And I think that may be difficult for the United States as well.

HOLMES: Yes, the political will is another thing. There is an outside influence, outsized influence from the Right, on what politicians do and do not do.

I wanted to ask you this.

When it comes to the gun lobby in Australia, how much influence does it have there?

What are they arguing for?

What have they being successful in changing or watering down?

Because, you know, it's an ongoing thing, I imagine, for you.

WATSON: You're absolutely correct. In nearly all of the states, they've been able, with a lot of financial power -- and there's a reason for that, I'll come back to it in a moment, but to basically lobby the governments in order to water down the laws that exist at the moment.

There was one bit of good news, though. In my state, Western Australia, the government has just committed to a massive overhaul of all the legislation so the legislation will favor community safety over gun ownership.

And that will be in place within about a year's time. The current government of the state controls both houses of parliament and they'll introduce this, no matter what sort of opposition is put out.

But the opposition has been significant. There is a dreadful quirk in all of that. And that was that with the initial firearms ban, one of the conditions to being able to get a gun license, a license to own a gun, was that you belonged to a gun shooters club.

And it increased the membership in gun shooters clubs enormously and poured money into the gun lobby. That was a mistake which we're still suffering from.

[01:15:00]

HOLMES: Right. Interesting lessons learned and a fascinating perspective. I've been here 26 years and I've never gotten used to the gun culture here. Professor Charles Watson, we really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much.

WATSON: Thank you very much, Michael.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Well, heated battles are now raging around the key Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk. And Ukraine says it's in a tough defensive position as Russian troops push into the city's outskirts. We will have the latest on the war coming up.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

HOLMES: In Ukraine, the country's military says some of the most intense fighting of the war is now taking place in the eastern Donbas region.

According to Ukrainian officials, Russian troops are on the outskirts of the Sievierodonetsk region or city and a fierce battle is raging at a hotel on the northern outskirts. Ukrainian forces are striking back.

This Ukrainian video reportedly shows a Russian target being hit by Ukraine in one of those northern suburbs of that city. Troops say they are in a tough defensive position.

At the southern port of Mariupol, Ukraine condemning the arrival of a Russian ship at the recently captured port. According to Russian state media, the ship will load up thousands of tons of Ukrainian metal and take it to Russia, an act Ukraine condemns as looting.

While the war rages on, we are seeing how resilient so many Ukrainians are as they endure this conflict. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux shows us how two different businesses in war-ravaged areas are picking up the pieces and starting over.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN U.S. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A rare missile attack in Ukraine's Western city of Lviv. In April, three Russian missiles hit military infrastructure. A fourth hit this family-owned car repair shop nearby.

Bozhena Paternak is helping her family put the business back together.

BOZHENA PATERNAK, CAR REPAIR SHOP OWNER (through translator): This building isn't reparable. MALVEAUX (voice-over): This crater, where the missile hit, was the

office, where four employees were killed.

PATERNAK (through translator): Three of them worked here for around 10 years. One was my age. He was supposed to celebrate his 27th birthday soon.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Along with grief and sadness, the employees felt the urgency to reopen, to help support the loved ones of those who died.

PATERNAK (through translator): Guys just put on their uniforms and came to work to clear the rubble.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Volunteers pitched in to make the repairs go faster.

OLEKSIY ANATASIEV, VOLUNTEER (through translator): We came to help, from our heart, because we are all brothers.

MALVEAUX: Because it comes from your heart?

ANATASIEV: Yes, come from our heart.

MALVEAUX: Yes.

[01:20:00]

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Just a month after the strike, the auto chance (ph) is back in business.

PATERNAK (through translator): We need to stand up and move on, no matter how much pain and suffering.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): In Lviv's city center, Chef Stanislav Dmitriev is about to open a new restaurant.

STANISLAV DMITRIEV, CHEF, BLUEFIN RESTAURANT (through translator): I love cooking. I love bringing joy to people.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Three months ago, Dmitriev had to abandon his sushi restaurant in Mariupol and flee with his wife and two little boys as Russian forces invaded.

DMITRIEV (through translator): We heard a huge explosion. We were very afraid. So we packed up and we called our business partners and started to leave.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): This is the second time Dmitriev have has had to pack up his life and start again. He opened his very first restaurant in Donetsk, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.

DMITRIEV (through translator): Everything was bombed there. Nothing was left, neither from the first or second restaurant. I was just thinking about how to get out, to get our children out. We didn't have plans to open up another restaurant. MALVEAUX (voice-over): But with financial support from friends, he's

opening Bluefin again, now even bigger.

DMITRIEV (through translator): We want to help our country financially, to create a small business.

MALVEAUX: What is it inside of you that keeps you going like this?

DMITRIEV (through translator): We are Ukrainians, period. It speaks for itself. It's our willpower.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Willpower that is essential to driving an economically strong, independent Ukraine -- Suzanne Malveaux, CNN, Lviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Still to come, Real Madrid wins the most prestigious championship in European football in a final marred by violence as fans clashed with police. We will have a report from Paris when we come back.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES (voice-over): You're looking at thousands of Real Madrid fans, celebrating late into the night in the Spanish capital after the team won its 14th Champions League title, beating Liverpool 1-0, 14, an extraordinary number.

Not everyone felt like celebrating, though. Hundreds of people took to the streets of Madrid and fought with riot police.

And in France, the match was marred by pregame clashes between police and fans outside the stadium.

(SPORTS)

[01:25:00]

HOLMES: Tensions are reaching new highs after Israeli troops killed a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES (voice-over): Angry crowds were chanting during his funeral on Saturday, the day after the 14-year old was shot. He is the second Palestinian minor killed by Israeli troops in recent days amid deadly violence that has been ongoing for weeks.

Israel says the incident happened in this spot, in Bethlehem, after troops opened fire on what they say were violent protesters. The teen's family, though, has a very different version of what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MOHAMMED GHUNAIM, ZAID'S FATHER (through translator): The witnesses said that there weren't clashes and they already shot at him, though there was nothing going on. He was sitting inside a garage at his friend's house. They shot him. They shot him with six bullets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Israeli officials say they are reviewing the incident.

More than 30 people have been killed in the northeastern part of Brazil, in landslides and flooding, triggered by heavy rains. Officials say most of the deaths were reported in just the last 24 hours. And hundreds of people are being forced to leave their homes. Some places have had more rain in a day than in the month of May.

Thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Michael Holmes. "AFRICAN VOICES: CHANGEMAKERS" is next. I'll see you in 30 minutes.

[01:30:00]