they did heroic things yesterday and they are always very humble that they are truly humble heros. yesterday we lost two teachers these two teamers i would say are the cornerstone of that campus to some great degree. they are two beautiful souls, they taught for years, ne have kids in our district and they poured their heart and soul into educating our kids. 19 precious students who came to school yesterday to enjoy the day, to enjoy the awards assembly. and as i look at their pictures, you can just tell by their and angelic smile that they loved coming to school and there precious individuals. this is a difficult time for everybody. we are hurting. we have been cut deep here in our community. it will move forward. it going to take some time moving forward. our faith has been shaken. we ask you to continue to pray for these families, these kids and our community and our teachers. i am a product of uvalde. i worked for this district for 30 years. please pray for our teachers, pray for our community and we will move forward. thank you, governor. >> thank you. we'll take some questions. >> [ inaudible ]. >> the reality is i don't know the answer to that question. however, what i do know in talking to the leaders here, as well as leaders in other locations around the state and that is the one thing that has substantially changed is the status of mental health in our communities. what i do know is this, and that is we as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health. anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge period. we as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it. >> reporter: were kids caught up in the gun fire or were all kids shot by the gunman? >> we're in the process of processing that. it's a detailed process so i can't answer that. but for right now we believe all the children were shot and killed by ramos. [ inaudible ]. >> we did see some. >> we did have concerns. someone in california didn't report it. we're in the process to make sure she's interviewed and find out more about it. there may be other clues that we're not aware of. we're going to scour anything to make sure this doesn't happen given in the community. there's usually something out there. right now it's the report on the timeline. we find out something else, we'll provide that information. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i'll answer in part. we also have the commissioner who may be able to shed additional light. here is the information that we know. you pointed out sb-11, which you know but others may not. people need to understand i signed 17 laws to address school safety. and one of them dealt with threat assessment and preparation for threat assessment. and there are certain standards that schools are required to comply with to make sure that they are addressing threat assessments. i have no information as we speak at this particular time about the status of this particular elementary school. however, to make sure your broader question is answered sufficiently, the person coming up is the commissioner for the texas education agency. >> so there's significant appropriations provided to ensure that the local school systems around the state have resources for one of the component, senate bill 11 was a school safety allotment, additional up-front funding for that. we provide training to assure the threat assessment protocol, including threat response plans and multi-hazard plans are practiced on a recurring basis. there have been fairly significant efforts to bolster those managerial practices in these detective or preventive practices in schools all over the state of texas. we will continue to do more. after any incident like this of course you reflect on lessons learned to ensure that we can prevent this kind of situation in schools going forward. >> if i can just add to that -- >> i'll call on you next. >> if i can just add to that briefly the house and senate worked together to put $100 million in trying to give the schools all the tools that they needed to try and protect the students. the marshals program, the guardian program to arm teachers where schools want it. we left a lot of those programs optional, up to the parents and school boards and school districts and they're doing the best they can. and you're always going to have, again, no matter what you do, there's going to be someone to find another area that's vulnerable. but the legislature did act, the governor signed those bills but we can and need to do more in the area of mental health where we've also been working on that as well. but need to do more. we've got to in our smaller schools where we can get down to one entrance, one entrance might be one of those solutions. if he had taken three more minutes to find an open door, police were there pretty quickly, but this school district has been doing a really good job in trying to protect their students and those teachers died yesterday protecting their students and this is continued work for us. >> reporter: if you were at an official fun raiser in the county, why did you not cancel event? >> first, with regard to yesterday, i was actually in taylor county responding to a different disaster, the disaster of fires that had ripped through taylor county and destroyed 20 homes. that is when i learned about the shooting that was taking place pretty much at that time here. on the way back to austin i stopped and let people know that i could not stay, i could not go, and wanted to let them know what happened and get back to austin to continue my collaboration with texas law enforcement to make sure all the needs were being met here in the uvalde area. as far as future concerns, i'm living moment to moment right now. my heart, my head and my body are in uvalde right now and i'm here to help the people who are hurting. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i can't. it's going to within 40 minutes or an hour, but i don't want to give you a particular timeline. law enforcement was there, they did engage immediately, they did contain him in the classroom and put the tactical staff together in a very orderly way and breached and assaulted the individual. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> the initial engagement? it was just -- yeah, confronted him and he seen the report of the particular accident and he followed him right in when wrounds -- rounds were exchanged. and we had had two uvalde officers also were responsible for containing that area. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i knew it wasn't the community but obviously the uvalde area because they got there so quickly and i'll let them answer that question. but they were there in force and they were there, importantly, had members of their tactical team there and they took the lead on that. but i'll refer to -- i have a border patrol uniformed -- >> first off, the u.s. border patrol del rio sector has a state in uvalde. we have about 150 agents or so assigned permanently in uvalde and we have several agents that choose to live in this community. we had folks at training, folks in the field and some 80 or more responded. as to where that particular individual came from, i don't have that yet. the investigation will bear it out but we have a large presence here in uvalde. i'm not going to release his name just yet. >> [ inaudible ]. >> we begin talking about it there. i'll tell you one thing that we talked about, which is something we've heard in some other regions of texas also and that is in approximately maybe as much as a 40-county region around the area where we gather right now, there is no mental health hospital and there is a shortage of beds for mental health in this region. if someone is suicidal, has a mental health problem, they often times would have to go to someplace like san antonio. with the growing population in this region, with the profound mental health challenges that were discussed with us, one takeaway i had was there is greater need for a physical mental health care facility in this region. but we know that buildings don't treat people. people treat people. so there needs to be more personnel, more strategies, a greater understanding by that mental health care provider community about what the needs are and they will be best equipped to know the best way to provide or let's say meet those needs. the bottom line is this and i think it's a fair statement, that legislative leaders understand about health challenges in the mr settings in the state of texas and we have a commitment to help address those challenges. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> it's one of those issues that was wide live discussed in the last several sessions, and in particular in the 2019 session. and pretty much every issue was raised by one legislator or another about fongs ways to address -- potential ways to address shootings like this. and those 17 buildings that i did sign, they hardened schools, made schools safer and addressed mental health. issues like that is correct the solutions were agreed upon by legislators at that time. and it's what i perceive legislators will continue to focus on. we consider that what we did in 2019 to be one. most profound legislative sessions not just in texas but we've seen in any state in addressing school shootings. that said, to be clear, we all understand our work is not done, our work must continue. and we will continue to discuss with legislators about all the potential avenues and pathways that we can take to make sure that schools will be even safer going forward. >> i know the people like to try to oversimplify this. let's talk about some real facts. there are, quote, real gun laws in chicago. there are, quote, real gun laws in new york. there are real gun laws in california. i hate to say this but there are more people who were shot every weekend in chicago than there are in schools in texas. and we need to realize that people who think maybe just implement tougher gun laws is going to solve it. chicago, l.a. and new york disprove that thesis. so if you're looking for a real solution, chicago teaches that -- our job is to come up with real solutions that we can implement. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. so the last thing first. all together we altogether we addressed more than half a million dollars to address school safety. with the laws we passed in 2019, which is three years ago, all those measures that you were talking about were included in those laws. let me give you several examples. an entire platform that was addressed was what's called school hardening or hardening schools. some of those strategies reduced the number of entrances. other strategies provide things like school marshals or having dps officers or others face off paperwork in schools so there will be a law enforcement presence in schools. they involve different type of strategies that would make it -- should make it more difficult for a shooter to get into a school. i can tell you what we all agree upon. we're going to go back and look at exactly what was passed, any shortcoming in what was passed, any shortcoming in implementation. i want you to know also that included in those laws were requirements by school districts across texas to work with the school safety commission to make sure that all the strategies would be used and employed and tested, including active shooter strategies for schools to be ready to be prepared to employ as needed. and so, yes, from pretty much every angle it was debated. let me go back in time. this is something where i began working up the governor's plan to respond to this a year in advance. and an entire to looking for that, to debating for that and get prepared for that, which meant that everyone was going to be focusing on it and they did. so my point in saying that is that this took the time, effort and mental involvement of all legislators during the course of that session to put what they consider to be the best solutions on the table, meaning they're more adopted, some were not. we adopted what we consider to be the best plans of that session. again, we will always and especially in this coming session evaluate what more needs to be done in our schools to make them even safer. >> we understand that. now we're looking at surveillance video so we can go frame by frame and track that every minute. that's part of the investigation. and i'll wait until we complete that part and provide that information. right now i don't want to say. i think we have an answer but we haven't confirmed it yet. [ inaudible ]. >> no, not chased. not at all. >> all the victims have been identified. all the notifications have been made. >> yes, there's an ongoing recovery team. we have our company of texas rangers and we have the evidence response team and atf is helping as well. >> can we get you to speak up a little bit. >> we don't see a motive or catalyst right now. we're scouring and will continue to do so. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> they were public, like anything else. they were out there. he was trying to communicate. of course some of the information we're going to have to continue to do interviews with people he was in contact with so we're not even close to being done yet. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i can't comment on that right now. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> very interestingly in the meeting we had before coming out here, i raised that exact issue. because we talked about mental health. and, to me, someone who is as dimented as it takes to kill little kids, it goes beyond seems to me a mental health issue. listen, i'm not a doctor. i can't classify these things. i don't know the extent to which mental health would be able to address someone who has the challenges that they would shoot their grandmother and then shoot and kill all these babies, all these young kids. kind of what was pointed out at the time in our discussion earlier is there could have been a time earlier in his life when it was a more typical mental health issue that could have been addressed. i don't have any information about that. maybe others don't either. is there a difference between a mental health challenge that could be addressed and evil? i don't know. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> well, it obviously is a meaningful characterization and the point is this, if you know someone more evil, i want to see what they did but i consider this person to have been pure evil. go ahead. say it again. well, the answer to that was given to this gentleman back here earlier and that is it's something we did talk specifically in our meeting before coming out here and that is, for one, not just this community but the surrounding geographic area is lacking in a mental health hospital or other physical facility. there literally are either no beds or inadequate beds to address those with mental health challenges when you look at a population base and a growing population base, it will be an issue we take in what ways we address mental health issues, does it include a physical mental health facility, if so, how large would it be. so there are many issues for us to consider and i val wait and to work on addressing. >> i'd like to add to that. in the last special session we appropriated about $115 million to partner with campuses across the state of texas, higher education, to have a mental health professional on campus. this is mainly a covid issue, mental health coming out of covid but it's mental health across the board for any child who wants to meet with a professional. it's a challenge to have those professionals in your community. we appropriated half a billion to make sure communities out in texas have high-speed internet so where they can have a consultation online with a mental health protection. in texas we pass you can -- they were april dressed late in october this past year and many of those programs are being rolled out right now. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> we have other ways of addressing it. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> so i'm not exactly clear on your question but i think i have the gist of it well enough to be able to answer it in this way, and that is we will all consider the best strategies for schools to employ but, importantly, we do that in conjunction in working with schools. we won't be imposing policies on schools without working with them. we need isds and schools and school leaders and school safety professionals at the table for that discussion purposes if we are going to achieve the best standards that are possible. thank you all. governor greg abbott and company there addressing the shooting in uvalde, texas. there was a lot that happened in that news conference, a lot of detail, how exactly the shooter operated, what exactly he did that day. there was a moment where beto o'rourke stood up and said this isn't right and things need to change. he was shouted out by the governor and those on stage, and we'll get into what he said in a moment. one thing the governor said a moment ago, he was asked whether 18-year-olds should be able to buy a gun. this 18-year-old shooter just turned 18 a few days ago and got two guns and a lot of bullets. he said in texas 18-year-olds have been able to buy guns, long guns specifically for 60 years and he doesn't know what's changed now to make shootings more prevalent in texas. i'm katy tur. it is not a good day to be with you. it could not be a good day when we live in a country that shrugs its shoulders are children are being murdered. 19 kids shot to death with an assault rifle, an a.r.-15 style weapon according to law enforcement, a weapon designed for war. so deadly the inventor of the ar-15 who was an avid hunter never even used it, and his family says he would be sickened by how it is being used to kill civilians. and here we are again with our kids dead, 19 kids and two of their adult teachers killed in their classrooms just after recess, two days before summer break. so far eight have been identified. you see them here. fourth grader eliana cruz torres, third grader annabelle guadalupe, fourth grader javier lopez was 10 years old. he was bubbly. he loved to dance with his brothers and his mom. fourth grader ann marie joe garza was 9. she called 911 to try to save herself and her friends. she called 911. hours earlier she got an award for making honor roll. jose flores jr. made honor hole that morning. he was so smart and he loved to last and play basketball. and lucia lucia said he was the sweetest little boy he'd ever known and he added it's not just because he was his grandson. >> irma garcia had been a teacher for years and eva mireles. she loved the outdoors and loved to hike. her cousin said she bursted with life. >> she was absolutely vivacious. she was definitely an adventurer. it breaks my heart. i just saw her for christmas this last december and she was just -- her cooking was amazing, her laughter was contagious and she's going to be missed. she did love what she did at the school and she put her heart into everything that she did. >> there have been some reports that she was trying to protect the students at the moment that she lost her own life, which i'm sure does not surprise you. does that sound like the woman you know? >> 100%. she is a hero. >> now she is dead, her life stolen. there was a good guy with a gun at the school and officials say law enforcement tried to stop the shooter, but they were no match for the shooter's fire power. according to two law enforcement ours, it took a specialized off-duty customs and border patrol agent, a member of the unit known as bortak to eliminate the threat. bortak's training rivals that of special forces and that is what it took to eliminate the threat, a special forces trained officer who was also shot, although not fatally and not before the threat killed 19 kids and two teachers. joining me is kerry sanders and jose diaz-balart and chuck todd. thank you. kerrey, we learned a lot in that news conference about how the shooter operated. what did we find out? >> well, it's interesting because everybody wanted to know is there any kind of indication that this was going to happen and while the officials say not really, there were postings on social media to facebook. the gunman, salvador said i'm going to shoot my grandmother. moments later he returned to facebook to say "i shot my grandmother." a short time later he posted "i'm going to shoot an elementary school." that's the indication about 15 minutes later that the shooting happened. now, his home where he was with his grandmother is a very close distance, 0.2 miles. the authorities say after he shot his grandmother, she was able to get some help from the neighbor but he then stole her car, came down, came to the school here, crashed the car and then we heard the governor talking about bills to harden schools, to make it more difficult to get in and wondering whether maybe there should have been only one entrance to the school. in this particular case, officials say he crashed the car, was automobile to find but when confronted it doesn't appear that that officer pulled his gun. this gunman, this 18-year-old kid, then fled back to classrooms and barricaded himself in there and that's when the carnage began. that's when all of these horrible murders were unfolding as the other officers were responding. remember, it wasn't just the school resource officer. you had the uvalde police officers who arrived here and as you said it so quite eloquently, it took special forces training from the border patrol to ultimately neutralize this 18-year-old after he had committed such heinous crimes. the fear of course is if he had not been taken out, who ewould have continued. we don't have the count on the number of bullets he had in the magazine. he essentially had the type of jacket that had not on protection from bullets, like a bullet proof vest, but it also had places where he could put those mag sfwleens to pull they will out, put them in the gun and continue shooting. we now have all of that. we know the authorities inside have videos from the school surveillance system. was it really possible someone was going to be monitoring his facebook page to say this was going to unfold. as an adult there was no indication he had been in trouble with law enforcement before. >> facebook released messages that governor abbott was describing saying there were private one-on-one text messages discovered after the tragedy. jose, how is is the community doing? >> reporter: it's just, katy, destroyed. this is a community of about 17,000 people. many people have been living here for generations. the school where this horrible tragedy was carried out, everybody knows each other. there are people here that have been living for generations, about 70 miles from the border from mexico. and yet this is where people stayed, where people were establishing future dreams and aspirations for their family. i just can't help thinking about the 19 kid that yesterday morning their parents dropped them off at the school. and, katy, thank you for mentioning their names. thank you for telling us who some of these children were and the fact that, you know, the little fourth grader who today -- who yesterday was with his mom to receive a recognition. and the little girl who was holding this diploma she was awarded yesterday and then later tried to call 911. you know, these are people that almost everyone here knows someone who was affected here. and, katy, just this morning on msnbc i was speaking to some of the folks that are here that came out here. i don't know if you can see, give us a zoom there of those three police officers. and then behind them and that sign that's been here for so long, the robb elementary. on the top is sauz where people come and leave flowers for 19 children that lost their lives and the two teachers that lost their lives. here's what some of the folks that came out here this morning were sharing as they come to grips with this unexplainable tragedy. >> heartbreaking. the community right now is heart broken. i didn't get any sleep last night. i had a phone call from a friend that they didn't get any sleep so everybody is -- >> this is where we as a community need to come together. we need to have a vase. we need to we are tree city, the honey capital of the world. not another columbine or sandy hook. >> the honey capital of the world, the place that so many people call thome, they're so proud to live here, yet shattered 26 hours ago, kate. >> thank you you might have noticed there was an interruption. that was beto o'rourke who is kupt. >> excuse me. excuse me. excuse me. >> sit down. you're out of line and an embarrassment. sit down and don't play this stuff. >> right now you are doing nothing. >> no, you need to get out of here. sir, you're out of line. sir, you are out of line! sir, you are out of line! please leave this auditorium. i can't believe you're a sick [ bleep ] that would come to an event like this to make a political issue! it's [ bleep ] like you. why don't you get out of here! >> let him speak! >> it's hard to tell who is yelling back at beto o'rourke. it might have been lieutenant governor dan patrick. they said this is not the time for politics. now is the time to be with families and that this isn't partisan but, chuck, it is partisan. there's one party that's refusing to pass gun laws. >> you brought up the comment he made at the beginning about it's been -- that 18-year-olds have been able to buy long guns for 60 years. i thought it was a strange thing for the governor to say. okay, i'll take that to your logical end there. you know what happened 56 years ago, katy? the school shooting that basically began this epidemic. 356 years ago it is and the one that unfortunately started it all. i'm not going to sit here and say that's cause and effect but it's not a good argument if you're governor abbott to say they've been able to do this in of 0 years and you're like, oh, in the last 60 years what has become an epidemic in this country and what has not? so there's that. ironically the other thing is he's talking about the issue of the lack of rural hospital beds, particularly mental health bed. there's a piece of legislation that the federal government is basically begging states to take that haven't taken it and it's called medicaid expansion and that would have a huge impact on the issue he was describing there, which is mental health. i'm not going to sit in and weigh in on who is leaning into to political theater. governor abbott sent people right outside my office here, i think that people need to remember the glass house that they live in. i don't know what's going to shake you have one party that has decided that the second amendment is almost a religious tenet and there is such a fervor on it that you cannot have sort of a logical or ration conversation. i went through the hour before and noted all of the loosening gun laws technical as pass mass we had to do a scroll. there been and so you when you go back to say look what i did to protect the second amendment today, we get to a situation when suddenly any 18-year-old, they can buy as many weapons they want and no training or anything and that's the state of texas right now. >> the nra convention is in houston this weekend on saturday. the governor was asked chuck, thank you very much. columbine, sandy hook, parkland and this is not the first time children and their teachers have been targeted at school and it prit clear and leading with himself. >> what are we doing? what are we doing? just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down african-american patrons, we have another sandy hook on our hands. what are we doing? there have been more mass shootings than days in the year. >> and increasedingly more and more parents will never get to hug their kids again. >> i just don't know how many people, how many children have to die before politicians stop caring as much about their political careers as they do as their constituents. >> i'm very mad. i feel very frustrated. i cannot understand why we are this is something that is impossible to understand. >> this was predictable, but it was also preventable. sadly, the next one that's going to to happen is also predictable if we keep doing nothing. so what are we going to do? are we going to watch more kid joining me now is scarlet lewis, her 6-year-old son was killed at sandy hook. her son jesse. charlotte, thank you for being here. what's your reaction from what we just saw from the governor down in texas? >> my reaction is a little bit just too little too late. we need to have a plan and the fact that i'm talking with you today ten years after sandy hook, 20 years after columbine and we're still having the same narrative is so frustrating, it's absolutely unbelievable to me. >> are you still hopeful? >> i am hopeful. you know, this morning i was in a high school, i was speaking to 1,400 kids in the state of new hampshire, i was if i having them skills and tools to face their pain, to work through it, to be strengthened by it and i think that is a big part of the problem, that we have been reactive out of fear and i think that we need to address some of our that's time, energy, money, programming, on being proactive and preventative. the fact of the matter is, these school shootings are preventable. these are kids, young adults that are in pain. they're lonely. they have mental health issues. they have access to guns, and that is not a good equation. if we had given them -- let's put it this way, jesse wrote three words on her kitchen chalkboard shortly before he died. nurturing, healing and love. anyone who loves others is not going to want to hurt themselves or hurt others. this is something we can teach. we can teach hate as mandela said. we can also teach love and love comes more naturally to us. i think that, you know, governor abbott said that the shooter may have been pure evil. ihonestly think that's a copout, that would mean there's nothing we can do. i don't think anyone is born evil. people are born. they're in difficult situations. they are faced with a lot of hardship and pain , bullying and they get angry and they don't have social/emotional competence, they don't have coping mechanisms so they become enraged and they try to off-put their pain on other people. we can literately prevent this. we know how to do it and the fact this type of program something not in every school is just absolutely an anathema to me. it's the easiest thing that we can do. it not only helps students, but it helps -- it helps their educators as well. >> almost all mass shooters are young men and almost all of them are between the ages of 16 and 25, with easy access to assault weapons. how do you feel about having assault weapons on the market to buy, to have as a civilian? >> you know, i -- after sandy hook, i decided to not be against something. i mean, there was the gun control narrative then. it didn't work then. it's not working now. we have more guns on the street than ever before in the history of mankind. we have more violence -- in fact, i think violence increased 30% last year. you know, we can talk about that, but it hasn't happened, and for the president to talk simply about gun control without having another plan, ten years after sandy hook? i'm hearing the same thing over and over. let's change the narrative. let's actually do something to keep our kids safe. it's our responsibility, and i told these high schoolers today that you know -- and i'm telling you, that i think we're waiting for somebody to come in and fix this for us. there is not going to be someone to come in and fix this. we're going to have to do that ourselves, and i believe that it's going to have to be through awareness and education. >> scarlet, thank you very much for being with us. i can't imagine what it was like, uhm, to hear about this yesterday, as somebody who has gone through it all right. scarlet, thank you very much. >> thanks, katie. joining me is nbc news investigative correspondent tom winter. so tom, what have you been learning? >> a couple different things, katie. first off, they've not been able to determine a motive for this at this point. >> not that it matters. >> not a motive would make sense over what we've seen over the last 24 hours. the guns were legally purchased after his 18th birthday, which means he would have passed a background check, so the types of things that could potentially stop this, unless there's a clue or something that is missed along the way, something in his juvenile record, and i thought that was interesting what the governor said, there is no adult record for him. he turned 18 on may 16th. >> so there wouldn't be. >> that was five days ago. there might be a juvenile record for him. those records are typically confidential so we don't have the easy ability to get into that at this point and understand that immediately, but unless there was something that might have tripped a red flag law, which texas does not have, it appears that there would have been no way legally based on the laws that are on the books now to stop this shooting, and so i think that's an important thing for people to realize, it's not necessarily just a texas issue, federal law as well allows somebody to purchase this type of weapon once they're over the age of 18. we understand, reporting from andy blankstein here, two separate ar-15 weapons were purchased. it's not clear if it was same day, different day or on his birthday. not that it matters, it was legally purchased. he took one of them into the school. there's some indication there was a significant amount of ammo that was purchased but how much ammo was on his person is still something that needs to be figured out and just brutal forensic work that will be taking place. >> i think about the people that have to go to remove the bodies, is so hard to consider. he engaged with law enforcement. we have a little bit more detail from the governor about that, and it seems like there's still a bit of confusion about whether he was engaged with a law enforcement officer outside of the school, with that officer's gun. >> that's something that remains a little bit unclear. we haven't gotten a press release, haven't gotten a specific time line from the department of public safety or texas rangers which would be helpful in understanding what time did he actually arrive at the school, who first contacted him and then what happened from there. we do understand at some point, he comes barricaded to the point where they needed to breach through a door and then eventually get in there and shoot him. >> tom winter, tom, thank you very much. just hours after the texas shooting, golden state warriors coach steve kerr angrily warned americans not to get numb to gun violence and to demand action from senators. >> when are we going to do something?! i'm tired. i'm so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. i'm so tired of the excuse -- sorry, i'm tired of the moments of silence. enough! there's 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on hr-8, a background check rule the house passed a couple years ago. it's been sitting there for two years and there is aa reason they won't vote on it, to hold onto power. >> join me is msnbc contributor jake sherman. so what's happening over there on capitol hill? >> reporter: katie, just now, just a couple minutes ago, 30 minutes ago chuck schumer said we will have a vote on gun legislation. the question is what does that look like? what component pieces are there? schumer has enlisted senator chris murphy to find a deal with senate republicans. sitting here right now, it looks like the closest thing they could get are these red flag laws. there's just not a critical mass but beginning to be a number of republicans who are for red flag laws across the country. i think that is probably the biggest bridgeable difference between the two parties. assault weapons ban is just simply not going to happen right now, and there is approaching probably six or seven republicans who are for red flag laws, so this moment, it seems to be the most likely scenario. i don't think it's going to happen today or tomorrow. i think the senate is out next week. who knows they might but that seems to be, when it, the most likely scenario. >> all right, so maybe some sort of compromise. are they hopeful that this is going to happen? you heard in the moments after this, ted cruz come out and say that we know from our experience that law enforcement can stop, is the best way to protect schools from shootings. i don't know what experience he's talking about, because law enforcement engaged with this shooter, law enforcement engaged with the shooter in buffalo and they weren't able to stop the shooter in buffalo, wasn't able to stop the shooter yesterday. has something changed in the last 24 hours? >> you have to just write off ted cruz and about 35 senate republicans, and work with about 15 of them to see if there's any sort of way to get something that is as passable. i don't think there's a lot of hope or a lot of confidence that there will be a deal, but i think among a certain set of republicans, there is a disgust here. obviously all senate democrats are on the same page on the red flag law angle, and it's just about working within that coalition, that middle coalition of 15 or so republicans who are open to some sort of common ground, sensible, middle of the road gun legislation and again, there isn't much hope. chuck schumer said we've been burned before but he's taking a risk here because putting as steve kerr said hutting hr-8 on the floor which is the house-passed background bill is not going to pass. it could be a good political move for democrats to get people on the record on this. i'm not saying it's not. it's not going to get into law. >> just a few years ago we were covering the shooting that targeted lawmakers, lawmakers. steve scalise was shot, a moment everybody thought maybe it will change now and still did not change. now 19 more kids at an elementary school are dead, two teachers as well not to mention what happened in buffalo the other day. jake sherman thank you very much. that does it for me today. halle jackson picks up our breaking news coverage right now. as we come on the hair, we get horrific, new details about what happened in uvalde, texas and learning about the lives of the little kids murdered in a fourth grade classroom and the hero teachers who tried to save them from a shooter who we found out warned he was going to do exactly what he did. in a confrontational moment in the last hour between a furious