family s life. live for us in miami and on capitol hill, thank you both for joining us this hour. i want to bring in republican congressman ryan costello from pennsylvania. congressman, it s great to have you with us. i appreciate you taking the time to be with us. i know you and 18 other republican house members wrote a letter to paul ryan in which you wrote essentially you re calling for a vote on the fix nics act that would require a better job of reporting records to the national background checks system, a lot of controversy why so many of these shooters have had key pieces of information not registered in the system. how much report does your request have at this stage? well, i think beyond the 18 of my colleague who is signed that with me i think it s much broader than that. a majority of the house has already voted to do a fix nics bill combined with the carry reciprocity bill which some of us had objections to. i hope the senate passes it,
sends it back to the house, and we just take it up singularly. i wanted to make a comment on what the father, a half hour ago said on the andrea mitchell show about the cracks in the system. we can all agree that the nics system needs to work better, that we need to make sure all the data gets in there. we need to compel states to do that. we can prevent tragedies. texas is one example. what happened in florida perhaps another. it is extremely frustrating to the american people when they see that we have a background checks system and it s either not working the way that it should because we might need to enhance it or have officials not uploading the data. that is not acceptable. i want to hone in on some of the specifics if i may with you to get a sense where you stand on these issues. can i just run through a list of questions and ask you, do you support arming teachers? no, i do not. i think it s valid to ask.
they decide how or if they ll proceed with gun policy changes? they will not because the american public is not going to allow that to happen. you know what the president said at cpac, actually i agree with a lot of it. he said we need to strengthen up the background check system. me is right. today one in five gowns is sold without a background check at all. that needs to stop. we ve made it too easy for those who are dangerous to get guns. and i don t think the american people are going to wait until the midterm elections to wait on these solutions that are supported by the vast majority of americans, both democrats and republicans. arthel: the president is calling for stricter background checks dan, let me get an answer from you. where do we go from here? well, the background checks system we have now is not working because states aren t inputting the data. fix the system we have now first. and avery s comment about guns is just not accurate.
bellantoni is an editor for the los angeles times. thank you for being here on what is the end of an incredibly busy news night. christina, i want to start with you. the president says he s going to have very powerful and strong changes to the background checks system. that is something that potentially if he s talking about the kind of film we discuss in the wake of newtown shooting would expand background checks. right now that s not what congress is talking about doing. they have a limited version of this bill that would make some changes to the background check system. that broader background check expansion couldn t pass congress after newtown. is there any chance in this environment that something like that could happen if this president pushed for it?
california, 8% of americans have concealed carry permits and the people watching this show right now, there are a lot of them getting ready for church in middle america, putting their guns on, millions of them. they re going to be carrying guns to church and to family dinner after that, and they re going to be safe. so all these hypotheticals that come out of the bubble in d.c. or new york city or california, what if this happens or what if that happens, we don t have to ask what if this happens. people are carrying every day. i guess i go back to is what are you so opposed to expanding the background checks system, why do you make the argument that it won t matter criminal gets them. why do we pass laws on drugs? why do we pass laws on murder? we should pass my law to repeal the gun free school zone act.