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At Least 15 Dead, 60-Plus Wounded In Mass Shootings This Weekend; Ongoing Senate Talks On Gun Reform Amid String Of Mass Shootings; Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) Allies Urge Trump Not To Meddle in Georgia Governor's Race. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 06, 2022 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): I think that right now we are in special moment, Jim, where I think that even a majority of people on the other side of the aisle, even at the grassroots want something done to control gun violence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: We will see if this special moment is different.

The Uvalde community still faces many more funerals for the children killed there. And this morning, there is new grief caused by gun violence in numerous cities across the country.

Over the weekend, another rash of gun violence, at least 15 people killed, more than 60 others wounded. We are now approaching nearly 250 mass shootings this year alone, this according to the Gun Violence Archive.

For reference, we categorize mass shootings as an incident of gun violence in which four or more people were shot, that's excluding the shooter.

CNN's Polo Sandoval, he is in Philadelphia, one of the locations of these shootings this weekend, three people killed there, 11 wounded after multiple shooters in this case opened fire at a crowd.

First, Polo, begin with what we know about the shooting there in Philadelphia.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And, Jim, unlike those cold-blooded massacres that we saw play out or at least carried out in Buffalo, in Tulsa and in Texas in recent weeks, this started as a street brawl but it very quickly took a violent and deadly turn when some of the individuals that were involved that street brawl, according to police, used firearms, opened fire, sending people here in Philadelphia's South Street District scrambling for safety. In the end three people were killed with about 11 people injured. Investigators believe that among the dead was one of the individuals that was involved in that scuffle, but, still, the police commissioner here making it clear that there were also innocent bystanders that were among the victims, and that is fueling her frustration and that of police officials in cities across the country this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL (voice over): This is the scene following another mass shooting in the United States, this time in Philadelphia.

Police said several active shooters fired into a crowd Saturday night killing at least three people and injuring 11 others.

COMMISSIONER DANIELLE M. OUTLAW, PHILADELPHIA POLICE: We're absolutely devastated, devastated by this incident. And we mourn the lives lost and the dozens and dozens of lives affected by this tragedy.

SANDOVAL: Philadelphia police said a physical altercation led to the shooting. They said one gunman was likely shot and wounded but escaped police and another suspected gunman likely among the three people killed.

In all, police said at least five guns were likely used by multiple shooters.

OUTLAW: It's unacceptable, it's beyond unacceptable.

SANDOVAL: There's been at least nine mass shootings since Friday across eight states, leaving at least 12 people dead and dozens more injured.

MAYOR TIM KELLY (I-CHATTANOOGA, TN): I am tired of standing in front of you talking about guns and bodies.

SANDOVAL: Sunday morning in Chattanooga, Tennessee, three people were killed and at least 14 others injured near a downtown nightclub. Police said some of the victims were hit by bullets, while others by fleeing cars.

KELLY: There are families whose lives have been shattered forever because, once again, we had people deciding to resolve their issues with firearms.

SANDOVAL: Another shooting at a bar, this one in Mesa, Arizona, two people dead, two more injured. Also in Arizona, a strip mall shooting early Saturday in Phoenix, one person was killed, eight others hurt.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I heard over 100 gunshots going off.

A group of people that just started running like every different direction.

SANDOVAL: Phoenix police said the person killed is a 14-year-old girl.

More children hurt this time in Summerton, South Carolina. Police said a drive-by shooting at a graduation party left one woman dead and seven others injured, including five minors ages 12 to 17 years old.

And the mass shootings didn't stop there. Another five hurt in Socorro, Texas, one killed, three hurt in Omaha, Nebraska and one person killed and five hurt in Chesterfield, Virginia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was almost asleep and heard numerous gunshots, 20 to 40, woke me up instantly. My fiance run down the steps yelling get up, get up, gunshots, gunshots.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL (on camera): And that list does continue to grow as we have now confirmed that another shooting in Saginaw, Michigan, left three people dead.

Back here in Philadelphia, I can also tell you that even before that mass casualty incident that took place on Saturday night, a woman, a pregnant woman involved in a separate nonrelated shooting was killed.

However, doctors were able to save her child, but, really, just fueling those frustrations not just across the country but, really, here in Philadelphia as well, as we heard from the police commissioner say yesterday, Jim, that she worries that she will continue to see the steep increase the cases and there is a very really real concern in law enforcement in Philadelphia alone that the rates of these kinds of shootings might even match or maybe even surpass the record number of shootings they saw last year.

SCIUTTO: Consistent warning from law enforcement in many cities around the country have had gun violence. Polo Sandoval, thanks so much.

Well, as many Americans call for their lawmakers to do something, anything to try to prevent gun violence, there is renewed hope, at least from some, that perhaps this time Democrats and Republicans can reach some sort of compromise.

[10:05:09]

CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill. Manu, you are veteran of covering multiple negotiations like this one following multiple mass shootings. You do hear from someone like Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator, some hope that he hasn't expressed before. I just wonder, based on what you're hearing, is that real?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It really is an open question at this point because the question right now is, what will Republicans in the Senate accept?

That is what will be sorted out this week as senators return from Capitol Hill, to Capitol Hill after a week off for the Memorial Day recess. There have been negotiations among the small bipartisan group of senators, Chris Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator, John Cornyn, this lead Republican negotiator, discussing a package that could deal with issues, dealing with state red flag laws, dealing with background checks, dealing with school security, dealing with mental health provisions.

Not going as far as what many Democrats want but going further than what senators and Republicans in particular have been willing to accept in the months and years prior. The question is can they cinch a deal as soon as this week.

Now, Chris Murphy speaking to our colleague, Jake Tapper, yesterday expressed some optimism but some concern that, potentially, if a deal doesn't get reached, that this would be -- there's a possibility that this could collapse at the end of the day. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): I have never been part of negotiations as serious as these. There are more Republicans at the table talking about changing our gun laws and investing in mental health than at any time since Sandy Hook.

Now, I've also been part of many failed negotiations in the past so I'm sober-minded about our chances.

SEN. PAT TOOMEY (R-PA): I think there is a place to land that's consistent with the Second Amendment, as I've been advocating for expanding background checks.

By the way, I think encouraging states to have some kind of red flag laws could make sense as long as there's adequate due process. I think there're school safety provisions, mental health issues that we could address.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, the last senator, Republican Pat Toomey, has been part of negotiations in the past, including a deal to expand background checks on commercial gun sales.

There's talk about narrowing the plan that he had drafted with Senator Joe Manchin as part of this larger gun package.

But a lot of the issues here, Jim, that Joe Biden particularly has pushed for, such an assault weapons bans, that is not even being discussed right now, and including raising the age from 18 to 21 to buy those semiautomatic rifles.

I am told that Senate sources are skeptical that they can get into a deal at the end of the day, so what can be reached. And if they do reach a deal, will it be enough to make a difference? Jim?

SCIUTTO: It's a test. We'll see where it goes. Manu Raju on the Hill, thanks so much. All right, so joining me now to discuss a Charles DiMaggio, he's professor of surgery in population health at New York University School of Medicine, also director of injury research.

Now, this is key because he did a study about what measures work, specifically the assault weapons ban, which was passed with bipartisan support in 1994. Good to have you on, Charles. Thanks for taking the time.

CHARLES DIMAGGIO, PROFESSOR OF SURGERY AND POPULATION HEALTH, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Good to be here, Jim. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: You will often hear in debates like this from Republicans and gun advocates that measures being considered won't do anything, they won't prevent all or most shootings.

We have a test case here, we have data that you've looked at from 1994, for ten years, assault-style weapons as defined were banned. Did that lead to a drop in mass shootings, and when it expired in 2004, did we then see an uptick? What does the data show?

DIMAGGIO: I think all results were unequivocal. I mean, we found that there was a significant decrease in both the number, rate and risk of mass shooting-related homicides during the ban period compared to the non-ban periods.

And our approach really was a public health approach and epidemiologic approach, which was to look at the risk of fatality, the risk of gun- related fatality in the United States.

SCIUTTO: Now, this is not unique to the U.S., is it, because, for instance, in Australia, mass shooting there in 1996, they looked at the kinds of weapons that were most often involved in mass shootings, banned them and saw a drop-off, the U.K. had a shooting in Dunblane, Scotland, again, looked at the data, banned specific weapons.

So, is this, when you look at the data, a consistent result from countries that have tried this sort of thing?

DIMAGGIO: Well, national comparisons are very clear and you've mentioned probably the most important case, series that we have.

If you look at the Australia experience, essentially, the number of mass shooting-related fatalities decreased to zero for the 23 years following the implementation of their assault weapons ban.

[10:10:06]

And you see similar experiences in the U.K. More recently, Canada has instituted a legislation to ban assault-type weapons or weapons characterized as assault-type weapons and that experience is, you know, currently being reviewed and the conclusions from that are still pending.

SCIUTTO: To zero in Australia, and people often make a comparison saying that's a better comparison for the U.S. given frontier culture, more of a history with guns.

I do want to ask you because the situation in this country has changed since that assault weapons ban, one big way, there are a lot more guns.

I mean, gun sales have gone up by multiples. Would another assault -- and I know you are a backwards-looker here, but based on what the data points to, would another assault ban -- weapons ban today have an impact?

DIMAGGIO: Well, even in our study, I mean, we were very circumspect and try to be careful about our conclusions. You can draw direct causal associations and these are observational data.

But given what we know, given the result of our study, given the results of additional studies that have since come out that have essentially either replicated or failed to falsify our results, I would have to think that an assault-style -- an assault-style weapons ban in the United States would certainly decrease the risk of these kinds of incidents occurring and fatalities from these kinds of incidents occurring.

If we were to extrapolate our results to the experience since the assault weapons ban, where we found that, essentially, there were about nine fewer fatalities per, say, 10,000 gun homicides in the United States.

Even given the fact that there were, let's say, 500 or of so such fatalities, that would have prevented 300 fatalities. 300 people would be alive today who would otherwise not -- who are otherwise not alive today.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that's a good point. Because maybe one measure doesn't make a difference, but it doesn't stop them all, right, but can still make a difference.

Charles DiMaggio, thanks so much. And, folks, if you are skeptical of that data, I'm going to share it on social media so you could have a look yourself.

Still ahead, new details about how the Republican governor of Georgia is approaching a tough battle to win reelection. Sources tell CNN that Brian Kemp's allies are now asking former President Trump to at least take it easy on him.

Plus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will face a vote of no could have dense, as it's known, in just a few hours, this from his own conservative party.

Are there the votes to force him out of power? This all from the party-gate scandal there. We're going to be live in London with an update.

And later, an Abbott plant in Michigan has now restarted production of a certain specialty formula, goes to the most needy children and babies. An update on when store shelves may be stocked again. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:00]

SCIUTTO: New this morning, top Republicans and allies of the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, are trying to get President Trump to stay out of Kemp's gubernatorial race against Democrat Stacey Abrams.

Sources tell CNN advisers to the former president have recently been approached to see if Trump can be persuaded not to attack the incumbent GOP governor as he fights for reelection here. He did so in the primaries but his candidate lost.

CNN's Gabby Orr has more. So, Gabby, what is the ask here? He's not going to endorse Kemp by any means, he is his big target because he didn't roll over and overturn the results in Georgia, so what's the ask?

GABBY ORR, CNN REPORTER: Yes. The ask is basically for Trump to just go easy on Brian Kemp between now and November.

I mean, if you go back to last fall, Donald Trump was on the stump in Georgia encouraging Republican voters to support Stacey Abrams over Brian Kemp.

I mean, he joked that she would be a better alternative than Brian Kemp. And that's the last thing that Kemp's advisers want Trump to be doing while he's fighting for reelection.

And so my sources have told me there has been some back-channeling over the last week since the primary between Kemp advisers and Kemp allies and Donald Trump's advisers and they basically have been trying to figure out what is the path forward here.

We know that Donald Trump is not going to endorse Brian Kemp. There's virtually no world in which that happens, but will he go easy?

And it does seem as though Trump is persuadable in terms of going easy on Brian Kemp between now and November, and the reason for that is 2024.

Donald Trump is thinking of running for president again and Georgia is a state that he lost in 2020, and he does not want to have enemies in that state come 2024 if he does run.

SCIUTTO: Why? Politically or to help overturn the state?

ORR: Both. I mean, number one, you want to have the political apparatus in terms of local Republicans and state Republican officials who are willing to help your campaign if you are the Republican nominee and a sure fire way to make enemies in Georgia is to run against the incumbent Republican governor two years prior.

And number two, as you said, he's trying to install allies who will help him overturn election results if it did come to that again. He wasn't able to do that in the secretary of state race or the

governor's primary. And so he really needs to get behind Kemp and I think that that's why you're seeing this effort to sort of get him to do so.

SCIUTTO: Gabby Orr, thanks so much.

ORR: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Here to discuss big picture politics regarding Georgia and elsewhere, CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein.

[10:20:02]

He is the senior editor as well for The Atlantic. Ron, good to have you here.

So, is this the one thing that gets Trump over the line to supporting Kemp is at least the possibility that he would have a more favorable not just political environment in Georgia in 2024 but perhaps post election turn over the election possibility?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, Donald Trump, in some ways, has to be cognizant of not only his impact on his electorate but his electorate's impact on him.

I mean, he has had a lot of success in Republican primaries, as we talked about not only in candidates that he has directly endorsed, some won, some lost, but you have seen the entire party move in his direction.

On policy, Trumpism survived -- kind of extending beyond Trump himself and really conquering the party.

But in Georgia, you saw a significant pushback among local Republicans to the breadth and kind of heavy handedness of his involvement in the primary, endorsing so many challengers against their elected officials who they have chosen and nominated and elected.

And so I think he's got to be conscious about not overplaying his hand also in terms of trying to be the kingmaker in the party.

And, look, as I said, if you are talking about Brian Kemp, you are talking about someone who has governed in an extremely conservative manner and doesn't really leave Trump a lot of ground to go after him except on this, you know, ongoing conspiracy theory about what happened in 2020.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And, by the way, his influence in the primaries was not great. I mean, his candidate got stuffed.

BROWNSTEIN: In Georgia, except for Walker, it was pretty poor, and lieutenant governor was poor across the board. And it was an overreaching.

SCIUTTO: Okay. Let's talk about January 6. So, we are going to have these public hearings set to begin in three days.

The intention here, it appears, of the committee is to try to move the public, right, I mean, both in prime time and during the day to get across that this was serious, serious behavior by the former president and others.

We're 50 years since Watergate. Those hearings, we know, changed the course of a presidency. In our current environment, can these?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. We are going to see, Jim, in these hearings how impenetrable the dome is that essentially surrounds conservative and red America in the modern era.

I mean, you know, Barack Obama famously said one of his great laments as president was that there was no way to talk to red America except for going through the filter of Fox News as well as conservative talk radio.

And now we're going to see just how much that dome can kind of keep out unfavorable facts.

I mean, you have not only the entire conservative media I think but in reviewing of what we were just talking about, whatever Trump's one loss record on individual candidates, you have virtually the entire Republican at this party that is committed to normalizing and sanitizing the January 6th insurrection, the broader conspiracy, by portraying any effort to uncover it as partisan grandstanding.

And so that's been the line of House Republicans, Marco Rubio tweeted out something to that effect today, that the national -- Republican National Committee -- so we're going to see whether it is still possible as it was in the Watergate era to reach the entire society with actual facts and information or whether this dome basically cannot be penetrated.

And you have essentially 45 percent of the country living in its own manufactured, you know, sanitized reality.

SCIUTTO: You do have some Republicans who say that Trump's influence in the party is not what it was, you will hear that, and granted some you might imagine it's a dose of wishful thinking perhaps and that these are Republicans who themselves are publicly against the former president,

But you have some data, you look at a place like Georgia, he doesn't have the sway that he might have had before. What is your view or does he have a fast lane towards being the 2024 GOP nominee if he wants it?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, let's separate two things, Trump and Trumpism. There is no question that Trumpism is consolidating its dominance over the party on a policy point of view across a broad range of issues and specifically around the issue of the 2020 election where we've seen not only what we were just talking about, the attempt to sanitize the attack.

But we've seen almost an astonishingly broad effort to operationalize the attack through the passage of the laws, making it tougher to vote, through the passage of laws in red states allowing for greater partisan potential interference in the counting of the votes and in the proliferation of big lie supporting candidates running for positions of control over election machinery with Georgia being the big exception where they were defeated.

In a lot of other states they are moving on to the ballot, places like Michigan and Minnesota and Pennsylvania with Mastriano.

So, I think there is no question that Trumpism is consolidating its hold on the ballot. Trump himself, you know, still, I think, the dominant figure in the Republican Party, but inexorably kind of shedding influence as time passes on from the White House and others assert leadership.

[10:25:01]

The big question may be whether he feels -- all of this is progressing fast enough that he has to preempt it by announcing for reelection before the 2022 midterm before others can gain more momentum.

But I think he is still the dominant figure and there is no question that Trumpism is consolidating its hold on the party at this point.

SCIUTTO: Ron Brownstein, thanks so much.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: New this morning, Russia has admitted another one of its top generals was killed in fighting in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, this as fighting escalates for control of that key city and, boy, is it bloody out there on that eastern front.

The Ukrainian president did visit his soldiers on the front lines to thank them in-person despite the danger. We're going to be live in Eastern Ukraine, coming up.

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