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New Day

Scarlett Lewis is Interviewed about the Latest School Shooting; School Shootings in the U.S.; David Hogg is Interviewed about the Texas School Shooting. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 25, 2022 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:32:30]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman, live in Uvalde, Texas.

Moments ago, one of the children killed here at the Robb Elementary School was identified. Her name, Amerie Jo Garza. She was just ten years old. Her father had spent seven hours trying to find Amerie in the wake of the shooting. He pleaded, please help me find my daughter.

But then this morning, he wrote this message on his Facebook page, thank you, everyone, for the prayers and help trying to find my baby. She's been found. My little love is now flying high with the angels above. Please don't take a second for granted. Hug your family. Tell them you love them. I love you, Amerie Jo. Watch over your baby brother for me.

That poor man.

Our next guest knows all too well the pain that the parents here in Uvalde are going through. Scarlett Lewis' six-year-old son Jesse was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting nearly ten years ago. Following her son's murder, Lewis founded the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, teaching essential life skills to school children to fight the root cause of violence.

And Scarlett Lewis joins me now. She's also the author of "From Sandy Hook to the World: How the Choose Love Movement Transforms Lives."

Scarlett, thank you so much for being with us.

SCARLETT LEWIS, FOUNDER, JESSE LEWIS CHOOSE LOVE MOVEMENT: Thanks, John.

I don't know what to say reading the message from the father. That poor man. That poor man talking about his daughter. But you know what he's going through.

Just talk to us about that this morning.

LEWIS: Absolutely. I mean, I had flashbacks watching the parents waiting for hours to hear whether their children were going to be found alive, hoping against hope. And it is the absolute worst. I can't believe that I'm talking to you, John, ten years later after having lost my six-year-old son alongside 19 of his first grade classmates and six educators. And we've had over 350 school shootings since then.

BERMAN: He'd be driving. Your son would be driving today.

LEWIS: Yes, he would be turning 16 -- he would be turning 16 on June 30th, yes. We are -- we are so aware of that every single day, the enormity of the loss, and also the fact that it could have been prevented.

[06:35:08]

Just as this shooting could have been prevented. This was the classic scenario of a child growing up in a dysfunctional household, that was bullied terribly, that was isolated, lonely, hurting, without the coping skills to manage that pain. It turned into anger and then rage. And he took it out on his former elementary school.

BERMAN: So, for these parents, the mothers and fathers, for the grandparents, the caregivers, the sisters, the brothers, how are they processing the pain they're feeling this morning?

LEWIS: I remember the morning after. And I woke up and, of course, actually you wake up and it's a new day and all of a sudden the crushing reality hits you. And they're all in shock right now. They were looking forward to planning their summers. They were looking forward to being together and trying to find fun things to do over the summer for their kids and now they're going to have to start thinking about writing obituaries and finding a place for funerals and caskets and headstones. And it is just such a nightmare.

I would just -- want to tell those families that they're not alone. That the nation grieves and mourns with them. The world mourns with them. They are not alone. We are determined. We're going to make sure that there is -- is meaning in their children's lives and that they will survive. I think that they're not even sure that that's possible right now without their child. I'm here to tell them that, ten years later, you do survive.

I have turned really my anger and pain into a movement that addresses the root cause of this. And that is lack of coping skills. And it is lack of social and emotional confidence. And all these things can be taught. But we have to do a better job and we have to prioritize the safety, health and well-being of our children. We have to notice people who are having a hard time, who are isolated and alone and sending out angry messages. We need to start really being aware and really getting those people the help that they need.

BERMAN: These families are not alone. I know thanks to you, you've been a resource for so many. I won't be surprised if they reach out to you soon.

We thank you for everything you've done, and we thank you for being with us this morning, Scarlett Lewis.

LEWIS: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: And we will never forget your son, either.

New details on the investigation here in Uvalde, Texas, this morning, and more on the children who lost their lives.

This is CNN's special live coverage from Uvalde, Texas.

Stay with us.

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[06:42:42]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: It is tragic, but mass shootings have become an almost daily occurrence in the U.S. The Texas attack is the second deadliest grade school shooting in the country's history, behind only Sandy Hook a decade ago.

CNN's Tom Foreman is joining us with more on this.

Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brianna.

We've been talking so much about how this just keeps happening and happening. If you look at the list of the big shootings out there that have happened over the years in schools, you get a sense of what we really mean there.

Look, there's Robb Elementary, the number there, we have a star next to it because it seems to be changing over the hours. Hopefully we'll have that settled today. But look at the numbers here.

There's Stoneman Douglass High School 17. Santa Fe High 10. Sandy Hook, 27. Virginia Tech at the collegiate level, 32. And then way back there in 1999, Columbine High School.

What is common about all of these, Brianna? More than anything else what is common about these is they've all happened in the past 25 years.

I covered a few of these before then, but they were so rare. This is absolutely a phenomenon of the past 25 years, Brianna. And we're just talking here about the really big numbers.

If you look at the smaller ones, then you start talking about many, many incidents. Every Town for Gun Safety says that from 2013 to 2019 there were 549 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, 129 deaths, 270 wounded. So, when we talk about this, we can't even list all the shootings where five or four or three or one or two were killed because the list just gets too long to look at on television.

This is what's happening, Brianna. People can say, oh, it's all been around with violence. Yes, violence has been around. This phenomenon of mass shootings in schools is absolutely a phenomenon of the past 25 years.

KEILAR: And is there any indication that these shootings are happening more often at one type of school or another?

FOREMAN: Yes, you might think that they would happen more at colleges where people are more mobile, they have more ability to move on their own, get guns and have more adult conflicts. Not the case. If you look at that graphic we had just a moment ago there also from Every Town for Gun Safety, look at that, 63 percent, a little bit over, in their assessment from 2013 to 2019 happened at K through 12 schools.

[06:45:02]

That's where this is happening.

So, when we look at this, of course this is a heartbreaking, terrible, terrible tragedy. But when people say we're seeing it all the time, yes, we are seeing it all the time and this is the first generational period in which Americans have seen that. This was not the reality before in any way, shape or form.

KEILAR: Yes, we have to know that. We have to.

Tom, thank you so much.

FOREMAN: You're welcome.

KEILAR: We are learning more about this morning about a fourth grade teacher who was killed there in Uvalde at Robb Elementary School. She spent 17 years as an educator and now the shattered town is going to bury here.

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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Why are we willing to live with this carnage?

[06:50:00]

Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God's name is our backbone, of the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies? It's time to turn this pain into action.

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BERMAN: President Biden urging action after the deadly school shooting here in Uvalde, Texas, that left at least 19 students, and I mean young students, second, third, fourth graders, and two adults dead as well.

Joining us now is David Hogg, he was at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida, when 14 of his classmates and three staff members were killed in 2018. He's the co-founder of the activist group March for Our Lives, which has pushed for gun control legislation. David, I do want to ask you about those efforts, but first there's a "Washington Post" report. They spoke to a local pastor who went inside this school yesterday saying he found traumatized students, some were rocking themselves, holding each other, covering their ears or screaming, some stared blankly ahead.

Now, four years ago that was you. You were one of those students who were inside that school. And I just wonder if you can reflect for a moment on what it's like for the other students, the students who survive this morning.

DAVID HOGG, CO-FOUNDER, MARK FOR OUR LIVES: I mean, the reality is, I don't even know how those students even begin to process it, considering they're so much younger in the first place in comparison to what happened in Parkland. I mean at least we had the vocabulary to discuss what happened at all. These aren't even -- I wouldn't even call these people kids, they're babies, basically. You know, these are kids that are under 10 years old a lot of the time. I don't even know how they begin to process it. I don't know how anybody of any age begins to process this because this is something that never should have happened.

KEILAR: What is this community going through right now, David?

HOGG: You know, I can only speak on -- in Parkland's experience. But I think for all communities that experience this, whether it's Buffalo, where I just spent three days helping distribute food and a number of other things, right, it's shock. It's shock. Again and again there is no way to process what has happened here.

There are people that are waking up right now looking at their TV in shock seeing their home town on CNN and imagining that it likely never could have happened there and now they are seeing the cost of this epidemic of gun violence in our country that has now, unfortunately, visited their community and is starting to visit every community in this country.

BERMAN: There is shock here. There's no question about it. I can tell you there's shock here. There's sadness.

But, David, you also know there's numbness. There's a certain numbness to this across the nation.

HOGG: Right. Right.

BERMAN: So, how do you cut through that? Is it even possible?

HOGG: I think it is possible. I truly -- I have spent the past four years, you know, helping register tens of thousands of young people to vote with March for Our Lives. We had one of the highest youth voter turnouts in 2018 and took out more NRA-backed politicians than ever before and voting them out in 2018, and then had the highest ever in 2020. We now have the most pro-gun reform president, at least on paper, and Congress in American history. And I do believe that this time can be different because I think Americans are tired of the division and just debating this issue. We've been debating this since I was -- before I was born. I was born

a year after Columbine happened and I am now here talking to you. It -- the time for debate is over. The time for action was yesterday, and now we need to act. We need to stop talking about what we can't agree on as Americans and start talking about what we can. Even if it's small. I'm not saying that -- there's no single policy, no single law that will ever totally eradicate gun violence in this country, unfortunately. But a reduction, even stopping one school shooting, stopping one more act of violence is worth it.

We, as Americans, need to come together and stop talking about what we can't agree on and start talking about what we can because we are being misled by our politicians, we're being misled in a number of ways to believe that we can't work together to protect the most valuable thing that we are here to protect, which is our children, and, as a result, our future. We have to focus on what we can agree on.

And that's why I'm asking, if you're a Republican, to work with us. We need to do something to save these kids. We did it in Parkland after the shooting. We worked with the Republican state legislature, with Governor Rick Scott, and we were able to pass gun laws with some compromises that I wasn't necessarily happy about, but we did it. We met in the middle, and we did something. We need Congress to do the same because these aren't Democrats or Republicans that are dying, these are our kids and this is our future that is dying.

KEILAR: David, you ask Americans what they want and they'll tell you. The majority of them, they don't want AR-15-style weapons, like this person used. They want background checks. They don't want high- capacity magazines. But they have a hard time, I think, sometimes operationalizing that, whether that is deciding how to vote or making it a priority or how they're going to speak out and advocate.

HOGG: Right. Right.

[06:55:00]

KEILAR: What do you say to them about actually taking how they feel and trying to do something to make it really happen?

HOGG: My -- what I say to people, and what I urge every single parent, every single kid that is watching this, everyone to do is, look, I -- I know that there are Democrats or Republicans that are watching this, there are moderates that are watching this. We may disagree in some ways with policy. We need to realize that we do agree that this issue needs to end.

And the thing that I would advocate all of you to do, gun owners, non- gun owners, people of all political, you know, sides, is to focus on what we can agree on, which is that these things never should happen and to copy the NRA's model, frankly, show up at your state legislature after these headlines go away and continue to show up every year. If we could get 1,000 people to show up at ever state legislature and make this a voting priority for people in those state legislatures, we could cut gun deaths in half in a decade. I am not joking. I am not in any way being -- it's the truth. We know that this model works the NRA is effective, not just because they spend money, but more than anything because they show up.

We need people to show up when these things aren't in the headlines because the reality is, if I'm just talking about this and Congress is talking about this after there's been the equivalent of another Sandy Hook or another Parkland or another Buffalo, which is still not getting near as much attention as it should, we are failing our children. The only way we are going to be able to successfully address this is by working together as Americans to create a more perfect union, because right now our union is incredibly imperfect and deeply broken because we can't protect our most valuable asset, which is our children.

And I think if we are to bring our country back from this cliff of polarization and extreme division that we are now on, where we've been lied to and we believe that our sole problems are the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world or the Donald Trumps of the world and not the systems that enable our politicians to lead us against each other than against the sources of evil, like Dr. King has talked about in the past, we need to act together as Americans fighting against gun violence, fighting against why somebody picks up a gun and address that. We need to address how we enforce gun laws by supporting people like Steve Dettelbach, who is the nominee for ATF right now, and address how somebody gets a gun in the first place.

But my message, as clear as I can state it, is, first of all, vote, and, second of all, show up at your state legislature every year demanding action on gun violence, not just around how somebody gets a gun, but why they pick up a gun in the first place. If we do that, mark my words, we could cut gun violence in half in a decade.

BERMAN: David Hogg, I do appreciate seeing you this morning. I regret the cause. We see a lot of you. Probably too much in some cases when it comes to stuff like this.

Thanks, David.

HOGG: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. And please vote.

BERMAN: Families here in Uvalde still awaiting answers about their loved one. Their children this morning. Many now giving DNA samples to try to identify these kids.

Stay with us. Our special live coverage continues.

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