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Biden Argues for Stronger Gun Control, Assault Weapons Ban; World Honors Life and Legacy of Princess Diana 25 Years After Her Death; Williams Hits Court Tonight for Second Round of U.S. Open. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired August 31, 2022 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:30:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: As President Biden unveiled his Safe America Plan to reduce gun violence and support police, he also emphasized his hope to once again ban assault weapons. Listen.

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JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: You know, we're living in a country awash with weapons of war, weapons that weren't designed to hunt or designed to take on an enemy.

I'm determined to ban assault weapons in this country, determined. I did it once before and I'll do it again.

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: While Washington debates an assault weapons ban, in fact, as there really aren't the Republican votes for it, authorities say tiny devices are already today making it far easier to convert handguns into automatic weapons, essentially do-it-yourself machine guns. It's remarkable to see.

In a CNN exclusive, CNN Senior Investigative Correspondent Drew Griffin looks into just how easy it is and how dangerous these can be.

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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): They are the size of a Lego, come in colors of the rainbow and in seconds can turn America's most popular handgun from firing like this, to this.

This is the gun range of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, where an undercover agent shows how a tiny device called an auto sear can turn almost any gun into a machine gun.

This is Houston, where a team of police officers tried to serve a warrant, body cameras on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you step out? It's Houston police.

GRIFFIN: 30 years experience conducting 2,500 previous major offender arrests couldn't help a cop named Bill Jeffrey.

Dion, it's Houston police. Let's do this the --

Your father didn't stand a chance.

LACIE JEFFREY, DAUGHTER OF FALLEN HOUSTON POLICE OFFICER: No. He was completely blindsided and there is nothing that any of them could have done to change the outcome. Everything was done the way it was supposed to, but this guy ambushed them.

GRIFFIN: What the officers couldn't see was the multi-convicted felon hiding in a dark apartment holding a pistol that was turned into a weapon of war. In seconds, he fired 30 rounds. Officer Jeffrey died, a police sergeant also hit, crawled for safety and survived.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you good? Are you good?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I'm hit. I'm hit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody get Bill.

GRIFFIN: What was your reaction when you found out what this criminal had in his hands?

JEFFREY: Disgust, disbelief, anger. We do not live in a war zone.

[10:35:00]

There is no need for us to have these automatic weapons on the streets of Houston, anywhere in the United States.

GRIFFIN: But there is demand. Cheap illegal pieces first imported from China were being sold easily over the internet when ATF and customs cracked down smuggling began across the southern border. Now, thanks to cheap 3D printers like this and how-to demonstrations on YouTube, making machine guns is a simple do-it-yourself project says Earl Griffith of ATF.

EARL GRIFFITH, CHIEF, ATF FIREARMS AND AMMUNITION TECHNOLOGY DIVISION: Now, I'm not computer savvy but one of the guys says it's easy, watch this YouTube. Watched YouTube, and in the matter of 15 minutes, I was able to do it myself the first time.

GRIFFIN: He is not kidding. We searched YouTube and found this, a how-to demonstration. that was still up on YouTube's platform.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is how you install and remove a Glock auto sear.

GRIFFIN: And getting hundreds of thousands of views even though, bada-bing, bada-boom, as he says, the guy was arrested by ATF months earlier, charged with possessing, making and transferring machine guns. He has pleaded not guilty. YouTube took the videos down right after we asked about them.

Call them auto sears, switches, whatever, they are everywhere and spreading. The ATF seized 1,500 machine gun conversion devices last year, that is five times as many as the year before. Griffith says police departments across the country have confiscated modified machine guns but many do not even know it.

GRIFFITH: A lot of them have never seen some of these devices like laying here and when we tell them about it, they go back into their evidence vault and they look and check and they find this stuff.

GRIFFIN: More and more this stuff is being found in the slaughter it leaves in its wake.

This January, three more Houston officers were fired upon, all three wounded, when a career criminal opened fire with a machine gun-style pistol. When they arrested him, they found more machine gun parts and 3D printers.

In Sacramento this April, a massacre on the city's downtown streets, six dead, a dozen injured, one of the guns in the shootout, according to police, had an auto sear or switch to make it fully automatic. All of these in the last 24 hours --

TOM CHITTUM, VICE PRESIDENT OF ANALYTICS, SHOTSPOTTER: 4 rounds, 9 rounds, 10 rounds, 18 rounds, 27 rounds.

GRIFFIN: Tom, that's like Tuesday.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

GRIFFIN: Tuesday in America, we're having this?

CHITTUM: You should come here on the weekend.

GRIFFIN: This is shot spotter. It locates gunfire for police by listening to a network of microphones across American cities and more and more of those microphones are picking up automatic fire.

CHITTUM: The rate of fire, the number of rounds being fired in only a few seconds is very serious. Innocent bystanders are being hit by rounds that weren't intended for them.

GRIFFIN: Since 2019, the incidence of automatic gunfire picked up by ShotSpotter have increased from roughly 400 to 5,600 just last year. Just spend a few moments at Kaelin Parker's (ph) monitoring station and you can hear the havoc.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, all of these ones that I'm showing you here are full automatic incidents starting from the least of 3 rounds going all the way up to 30 rounds.

GRIFFIN: 30 rounds?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 30 rounds here in Baltimore, Maryland.

GRIFFIN: In Baltimore. This was sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, sir. This was 4:00 P.M. yesterday.

GRIFFIN: When you sit here and listen to this and realize what's going on out on the streets, what are you thinking?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You don't believe it until you hear it and it's just sad. Unfortunately, with a lot of these shootings, there was a victim behind these.

GRIFFIN: In fact, those sounds you heard from Baltimore were bullets hitting two people, including a 14-year-old boy.

Back in Texas, Lacie Jeffrey is trying to do something in her father's memory.

JEFFREY: So, we are just trying to get lawmakers to look into this and just change ten words to make it to where these switches fall under a felony offense.

GRIFFIN: She wants Texas to treat possession of these modified weapons like the federal government does, as a felony.

What's the reception been?

JEFFREY: Nothing.

GRIFFIN: She hasn't heard back from a single lawmaker.

Why do you think that is?

JEFFREY: I think that, especially in Texas with the Second Amendment, people are scared to touch upon it. I don't understand why this isn't important enough. We have lost so many officers. So many civilians are even being caught in the cross-fire. How many people have to be affected by these before you realize that a change needs to happen?

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GRIFFIN (on camera): Guys, the autopsy on Officer Bill Jeffrey showed that he was struck more than a dozen times in just those seconds in the doorway. You know, his daughter asks who on the streets of America needs a gun that can do that.

[10:40:01]

The answer, Poppy and Jim, is no one.

HARLOW: That's right. What remarkable reporting, Drew, thank you very, very much.

Well, 25 years after her tragic death, the world is honoring the life and legacy of Princess Diana. We are live at a memorial in Paris, next.

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HARLOW: That was 1960s rock band, The Monkees, and today, the last surviving member is suing the FBI. According to the lawsuit, Micky Dolenz wants the agency to hand over any records on the band members, the band or its members, I should say, and those records do exist.

SCIUTTO: A portion of them is actually already public on the FBI's website. They describe a 1960s Monkees concert and include references to supposed is subliminal messages on stage. The heavily redacted file reads, quote, these messages and pictures were flashes of riots in Berkeley, anti-U.S. messages on the war in Vietnam, racial riots in Selma, Alabama, and similar messages, which have received unfavorable response from the audience, end quote. But there was no indication the band did anything illegal.

HARLOW: Dolenz's lawyer tells CNN they're trying to expose why the FBI was monitoring the band. The FBI did not respond to CNN's request for comment yet.

SCIUTTO: 25 years ago, a death that shocked the world, a horrific car crash in Paris killed Princess Diana, her boyfriend and their driver. The royal family is marking that moment quietly today.

HARLOW: When asked about the anniversary last week, Prince Harry, who was just 12 when his mother died, said I want it to be a day filled with memories of her incredible work and love for the way that she did it. I want it to be a day to share the spirit of my mom with my family, with my children, who I wish could have met her every day. I hope to do her proud.

Joining us from Paris now is CNN's Senior International Correspondent Jim Bittermann. He covered both Diana's wedding and her death. Jim, I remember that day in August of 1997 like it was yesterday.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think we all do in some ways you remember where you were and I certainly remember where I was, which was right here. We got to this tunnel about an hour or so after the crash.

And I think that one of the things that is amazing to go me after 25 years is that not much has changed in 25 years. Almost within, I would say, hours of the crash, people started coming to this spot and laying flowers and sending messages to Princess Diana, that sort of thing, and that has been going on almost continuously. I mean, I come by here often as a Parisian and I see people here all the time and today, of course, especially because of the anniversary, there is a lot more people and the media. But in any case, that hasn't changed.

The other thing that hasn't changed, Poppy and Jim, is that the explanation for the crash has not changed. There were two major investigations into the crash, one in the U.K. and one in France, cost millions of dollars, and they basically came up with the same conclusion, at the end of it, it was a drunken driver, the chauffeur for the couple, and also the fact that they were going at high speeds through the tunnel, 65 or 70 miles an hour in a place that's limited to about 30, and as a consequence, the crash occurred.

And what's more many of the safety experts would say that, in fact, Princess Diana could have been alive today if she had been wearing her seat belt because the one person in the car who was wearing his seat belt, Trevor Reese Jones, the security man in the front seat, actually survived, all the rest perished.

SCIUTTO: Yes, quite a detail there looking back. Jim Bittermann, thanks so much.

Well, in sports, Serena Williams is getting ready to hit the court again in the U.S. Open, hoping tonight's match will not be the last of her storied career. She's a competitor. We will have a look ahead, next.

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SCIUTTO: Tonight, the tennis spotlight will be on Serena Williams once again at the U.S. Open.

HARLOW: She will square off against the world number two Anett Kontaveit in the second round.

CNN Sports Correspondent Carolyn Manno joins me now. I wish I was going to be there. You're going to be there again.

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: It will be exciting.

HARLOW: What's it going to be like?

MANNO: Well, a lot of people are saying this is a second round, second seed opponent, and this is where it ends for Serena, but I don't view it that way. I mean, this is a very winnable match for Serena Williams. She's going to have to do two things well. She's going to have to serve well. It always comes down to the serve for Serena. And she's going to have to, again, handle the magnitude of the moment and the crowd even though, as she put it too, the pressure cooker is open just slightly because she got that first round win under her belt. So, she has a feeling of what it's going to feel like.

But when she serves the ball well, it makes it very difficult on her opponents. I mean, when she gets into that rhythm, it's incredibly hard to predict it, also allows her to dictate a little bit more on the court. And so that's really going to be the key, as it always is. But take a listen to what they both had to say about this upcoming match.

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SERENA WILLIAMS, 23-TIME MAJOR WINNER: At this point, honestly, everything is a bonus for me, you know, I feel that -- I mean, I think every opponent is very difficult and I've seen that over the summer and the next one is even more difficult. So, it's good that I was able to, you know, get this under my belt. ANETT KONTAVEIT, RANKED WORLD NUMBER 2: I'm really excited. I was really rooting for her to win today. I've never played against her. I mean, this is the last chance, better late than never.

[10:55:01]

But, yes, I'm really excited. I mean, I think the atmosphere is going to be amazing.

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MANNO: That's the right mentality for both players to have. If you're Kontaveit, you really want to embrace the atmosphere because this is a home slam for Serena. And for Serena, like we're saying, you want to go in there a little bit looser, feeling like, okay, win, lose or draw everything is okay. And Kontaveit is also a player that's really liked on the tour, so if she's going to lose tonight, it's actually nice to lose to somebody that you like. But we'll see what happens. If she plays well, game on.

SCIUTTO: How about Venus? There's another Williams sister. What's the future of their doubles team?

MANNO: Isn't it so funny, Jim? Venus just won't tell us absolutely anything about whether she's going to retire. I mean, good luck to anybody who is retiring this weekend outside of Serena, and there are a couple of players who actually are.

I mean, Venus has stayed mum about what her singles future holds. That ended. That run ended at the U.S. Open already. But she said Serena is the boss, she told me to play doubles. And even though they haven't played together in a long time, they are going to team up starting tomorrow. They could make a deep doubles run as well. And if they met the likes of Coco Gauff, the number one ranked doubles player in the world, and Jess Pegula, that would be a very fairy tale ending, seeing their legacy reflected across the court in a player like Coco.

HARLOW: Yes, wouldn't that be? Have fun tonight. We will be watching from home. Thank you, Carolyn.

And thanks all of you for joining us. We will see you back here tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

Erica Hill starts right after a quick break.

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