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Machine Gun Switches Linked To Violent Crimes Across The U.S.; Biden Administration Partners With Job Firms To Combat Teacher Shortage; Airlines Tweak Plans To Offer Meals, Hotels When Flights Are Canceled. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired August 31, 2022 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:30:00]
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: President Biden says he's determined to get an assault weapons ban passed. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is battling a more immediate problem, a nationwide spike in conversion devices that turn semiautomatic guns into machine guns.
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Using a 3d printer and the internet, it can take just a few minutes to create and then install this kind of lethal upgrade. CNN senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin has our exclusive report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN 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 --
(Gunshots)
GRIFFIN: -- to this.
(Machine gun gunshots)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No shit -- whoa.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): 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.
(Gunshots)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy smokes.
GRIFFIN (voice over): This is Houston where a team of police officers tried to serve a warrant, body cameras on.
BILL JEFFREY, HOUSTON POLICE OFFICER SHOT AND KILLED WHILE SERVING AN ARREST WARRANT: Deon, you need to step out. It's Houston police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is Deon inside? GRIFFIN (voice-over): Thirty years' experience conducting 2,500 previous major offender arrests couldn't help a cop named Bill Jeffrey.
B. JEFFREY: Deon, it's Houston police. Let's do this the easy way.
(Gunshots)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get an ambulance! Get an ambulance!
GRIFFIN: Your father didn't stand a chance.
LACIE JEFFREY, DAUGHTER OF FALLE 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 (voice-over): 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.
(Gunshots)
GRIFFIN (voice-over): In seconds, he fired 30 rounds. Officer Jeffrey died, a police sergeant also hit, crawled for safety and survived.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sarge, you good? You good?
POLICE SERGEANT: No, I'm hit. I'm hit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're going at Bill. Somebody get Bill.
GRIFFIN: What was your reaction when you found out what this criminal had in his hands?
L. JEFFREY: Disgust, disbelief, anger. We do not live in a war zone. There is no need for us to have these automatic weapons on the streets of Houston -- anywhere in the United States.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): But there is demand. Cheap, illegal pieces first imported from China were being sold easily over the internet.
[15:35:02]
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: I am not computer savvy but one of the guys says it's easy. Watch this YouTube. I watched the YouTube and in a matter of 15 minutes, I was able to do it myself the first time.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): He's not kidding. We searched YouTube and found this. AULKII: What's up YouTube? This is Aulkii here.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): A how-to demonstration --
AULKII: Once you get it 3D printed --
GRIFFIN (voice-over): -- that was still up on YouTube's platform --
AULKII: Bada bing, bada boom. That is how you install and remove a Glock auto sear.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): -- 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's 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 don't even know it.
GRIFFITH: A lot of them have never seen some of these devices like laying here.
GRIFFIN: Right.
GRIFFITH: 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 (voice-over): 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 --
POLICE OFFICER: Hands straight up!
GRIFFIN (voice-over): -- 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.
GRIFFIN: All of these in the last 24 hours --
TOM CHITTUM, VICE PRESIDENT OF ANALYTICS, SHOTSPOTTER: Four rounds, 9 rounds, 10 rounds, 18 rounds, 27 rounds.
GRIFFIN: Tom, that's like Tuesday.
CATLIN PARKER (ph): Yes. GRIFFIN: Tuesday in America we're having this?
CHITTUM: You should come here on the weekend.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): This is ShotSpotter. 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 (voice-over): Since 2019, the incidents of automatic gunfire picked up by ShotSpotter have increased from roughly 400 to 5,600 just last year.
Just spend a few moments at Catlin Parker's (ph) monitoring station and you can hear the havoc.
PARKER: So, all of these ones that I'm showing you here are full automatic incidents starting from the release of three rounds going all the way up into 30 rounds.
GRIFFIN: Thirty rounds!
PARKER: Thirty rounds came from Baltimore, Maryland.
GRIFFIN: In Baltimore. This was sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday.
PARKER: 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?
PARKER: You don't believe it until you hear it, and it's just said. Unfortunately, with a lot of these shootings, there was a victim behind these.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): 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.
L. JEFFREY: So, we are just trying to get lawmakers to look into this and just change 10 words to make it to where these switches fall under a felony offense.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): She wants Texas to treat possession of these modified weapons like the federal government does, as a felony.
GRIFFIN: What's the reception been?
L. JEFFREY: Nothing.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): She hasn't heard back from a single lawmaker.
GRIFFIN: Why do you think that is?
L. JEFFEREY: 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 crossfire. How many people have to be affected by these before you realize that a change needs to happen?
GRIFFIN (voice-over): Drew griffin, CNN, Smithville, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMEROTA: What an incredible expose by Drew. We would never have known that this was going on.
BLACKWELL: Is that a tough call though, switching?
CAMEROTA: Turning it into a felony.
BLACKWELL: I mean, I'm surprised that she's not heard anything.
CAMEROTA: Yes, in Texas, she was saying obviously they have a strong Second Amendment culture. However, why do you need an automatic weapon for hunting?
[15:40:00]
I mean, that's always the argument is that they can't, you know, you need to be able to have a strong Second Amendment. You don't need something to turn it into an automatic weapon. No civilian needs that.
BLACKWELL: Fivefold increase in this machine gun conversion from 2020 to 2021, we're seeing more of them. All right, Drew, again, thank you for that report.
After summer plagued with cancellations and delays, airlines are trying to make it up to travelers. Details on their plans to offer meals and hotels -- oh, that's nice -- when flights are cancelled. That's next.
CAMEROTA: Suddenly you're interested.
BLACKWELL: I'm in.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: First Lady Jill Biden met with education leaders today about the country's teacher shortage.
[15:45:00]
The White House is partnering with sites like ZipRecruiter and Indeed, to try to fill the country's roughly 50,000 teacher vacancies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JILL BIDEN, FIRST LADY: This is a powerful coalition, and we are all ready to get to work to make sure that our students have the teachers they need and deserve.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Also, at today's meeting was Randi Weingarten. She's the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Randy, thanks for being here. I know there are factors that have led to this teacher shortage. But in the interests of time (INAUDIBLE) ...
RANDI WEINGARTEN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS: ... but you want to raise a family, and you want to live in the communities in which you teach and you want to buy a home, is really hard to make ends meet when you (INAUDIBLE) ...
(AUDIO GAP)
CAMEROTA: (INAUDIBLE) ... then the freedom of the support that they need. I read that the national average for teacher salary is 64,000. So, if you're going to increase that, as you're saying, by 25 percent, I mean, how would that be possible? How will municipalities do that?
WEINGARTEN: Well, remember, Alisyn, you know, you and I have known each other a long time. Remember what we did in New York? It took six years, but between, you know, Mayor Bloomberg, who I didn't agree with a lot of things, and the UFT, we actually raised teacher salaries about 40 percent in a six-year period of time, and so what ended up happening is one of the only places in America that doesn't have a teacher shortage right now is New York City because then you can just keep up.
But this is a matter of what we're seeing is that even though we have a lot of money from the American Rescue Plan and that was really important in terms of dealing with the after effects of COVID, which we're still living through, really have to focus on what kids need this year. But ultimately, we need to have the ongoing investment in schools if we want to have the teachers we need for kids.
CAMEROTA: Yes, I totally understand the human investment, and making it a really appealing field again.
WEINGARTEN: Exactly right.
CAMEROTA: Well, Randi Weingarten, thanks so much, we always appreciate talking to you. I recommend that everybody go to the web site of the American Federation of Teachers and look at all of the suggestions there, and we'll see how this school year goes, and we'll speak again. Thank you so much for your time.
WEINGARTEN: Thank you, Alisyn.
BLACKWELL: In the next few hours, Donald Trump's legal team is expected to file its response to the Department of Justice court filing that said the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago were likely concealed or removed to block their investigation. We'll talk about what you should expect ahead.
[15:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLACKWELL: If you're getting ready to fly this Labor Day weekend -- excuse me.
CAMEROTA: Like one of us is.
BLACKWELL: You stay telling my business on television. Some airlines are hoping to make those inevitable delays and cancellations a little less painful.
CAMEROTA: At least five major carriers just rolled out new voucher policies. And CNN's Pete Muntean joins us with a look at what they're offering. So, Pete, what will Victor get when his flight is delayed this weekend?
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, you know, airlines have been under this mandate From Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to step up their game ahead of the Labor Day rush. And just a couple weeks ago, Buttigieg urged airlines to take another hard look at their policies. They're called "customer service agreements." Essentially the airline version of that dreaded fine print.
[15:55:00]
They lay out what you as a passenger are entitled to in case of a cancellation or a delay.
Remember, airlines in the U.S. have canceled about 45,000 flights this summer alone, according to Flight Aware. And now, airlines are really caving to this federal pressure. American, Delta, JetBlue, United, and Southwest have all rewritten their policies. Before you almost had to be a lawyer to sift through some of these. All these airlines have rewritten their policies in plain language.
But in some cases, some airlines are going one step further and outright changing the policies themselves. Here's one example. On United Airlines, you used to be entitled to a meal voucher only if your flight was delayed four hours. Now United will give vouchers to passengers delayed more than three hours. So, a bit of improvement there.
One big caveat here, these passenger protections only apply to delays and cancellations within an airline's control, we're not talking about the weather. But this is coming out right before the Labor Day rush. FAA expects tomorrow to be one of the busiest days in terms of flights in the air -- Victor and Alisyn.
BLACKWELL: All right. Pete Muntean, thank you very much. I now I something to look forward to now that we all know.
CAMEROTA: That free meal.
And "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts after this short break.
