we know what we ought to do. we have to eliminate the loopholes and background checks so you have to pass a background check wherever you buy a gun. we have to ban assault weapons, ban large capacity magazines. then there are subsidiary ones. ban mental health, ban sales to people who can t fly, ban sales to people who commit domestic violence even if they re not married and so forth. i don t disagree with any of that and the president did step up in the sense that he opened the microphone to the people affect affected but then he tweeted about jeff sessions. jerry, i won t talk to you about the president asking people to call his attorney general, that s unusual but what about his point that is a fair point. i believe it s a fair point not
talk and watching that young fellow talk about his anguish, of course that s moving. you d have to be a stone not to be moved by that. do i think the president or republicans were moved? i don t know. we ll find out. actions speak louder than words. we know what to do to decrease gun violence. you look at the statistics, the number of people killed by guns, the united states 33,000 a year and the only real variable is the easy availability of guns in this country. australia had a school shooting a number of years ago, they banned assault weapons, they did a number of other things and they haven t had it since. we know what to do. will we do it? i haven t seen the president or the republicans step up to the plate and evince a willingness to do anything meaningful.
i hope it s true that he s willing to take action because that s not the only thing that has to happen. we also need universal background checks. we have to ban bump stocks and you have to either abandon the assault rifle or assault weapons or limit high capacity magazines so that somebody can t shoot off 30 rounds before somebody even turns around and has a chance to respond. michael steel. congressman, i want to shift gears a little bit. the immigration debate is still sort of seething in the background here. we watched the senate shoot down not one were four bills last week. the one supported by the president got the least amount of support. what happens on march 6? is this daca issue dead now? is this something that becomes the new normal? we watch the daca recipients being escorted out of the country? what does this look like on the
a huge bully pulpit and what s the outcome of it? the white house knew that they needed to do more on this issue. they made those visits. i was traveling with the president when he was traveling to the hospital. they knew they had to do more on this. over the weekend they were putting together a schedule, he s meeting with state and local officials to keep momentum going on this but they realized over the weekend that was an issue they had to get out in front on. so over the weekend people i talked to said he wants to do background checks and ban bump stocks and they were talking about assault weapons so-called assault weapon bans. i m sure they won t get that but i was surprised. what can you tell me about their
i m not talking about assault weapon bans or high capacity magazines. i m talking about criminal background checks. 90% of americans support this. in florida, where marco rubio is from, 90% of floridians in a very conservative state support criminal background checks. i hear a lot of people making noise and posturing. i ve been in washington long enough to know that if something is 90/10 issue, it passes. yeah. there s certainly a dozen or more republican senators feeling that right now and weighing relatively small number of angry people who remember this versus a broader number of people who will support this. i think the question is whether they feel an intensity to their support whether they will be rewarded or who care are the nra. we showed earlier this morning, bob, something the president said in politico attacking mitt romney, saying that millionaires, obviously,