selling more guns that can be used to kill more people. mika, that s the question and i ll be curious to see what republicans cower in the corner on capitol hill today and what useful idiots in the media go out and trot out their same tired excuses for why we can t do everything while revenue from the nra and other gun groups flood into their web sites, their tv channels, or maybe their think tanks. it s just offensive. it s one of the key questions of our time and with us on set here in new york we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc, john heilemann, former new jersey attorney general and now a distinguished scholar in residence at nyu s law school ann milligram, also columnist for the wall street
rest. this man has a lot to answer for. trace, his background is coming to view. tell us what you can. we re still not going to release his name. police have not released it to us. we have scoured his social media footprint. we found on facebook, he left the picture part blank. there was not a lot of information to glean from there. if you look at things like his instagram page, you can see he s fascinated by guns. we don t know the type of weapon, we don t know the power. we know this suspect, if it s him, is fascinated by guns, fascinated by gun groups. he following resistance groups like syrian resistant groups and fighter groups of of iraq. we noticed a couple days ago, maybe a week ago, he was involved in a youtube chat room conversation about bombs or building bombs. because of that, we could hear
at douglas high school. the town is parkland. we re waiting for police to confirm that this active shooter situation is over. we ve seen the reporting there. we ve seen the incredible pictures from ralph rayburn in the chopper of carting away of this one person described as a student. with the maroon shirt and black pants. trace gallagher has new information. what do you have, trace? well, shep, we re not going to name this kid clearly because police have not named him but we know who he is. because of that, we scoured his social media footprint, which police have also done. we found that he has a number of relationships with gun groups and his instagram page is filled with gun associations. it s unclear what type of weapon was used today. police have not mentioned anything about that. there was earlier talk of a possible suspect wearing a black
apparently had made some kind of threats against students. this was last year. police say he is a former student. it s unclear exactly how we got on campus this year and was able to conceal a weapon while he did so. the superintendent was asked that question, if, in fact, there is any kind of threat or warning from this particular person and the superintendent said he was unaware if there was any threats or warning associated with nicholas cruz. we should point out we have scoured his social media footprint. we mentioned this before but he was clearly obsessed with guns because he was attached and followed all types of gun groups as well as resistance groups. the syrian resistance, iraqi fighters. we said earlier he was involved in a chat room discussion, youtube chat room discussion online about building bombs. as soon as police found that out, they put an alert out saying the school has to be
the director of the fbi gave him con kurnsicurrence to do so, an think that coordination was lacking. and all reporting is pointing to the fact that there was not coordination between the trump transition team and the obama administration. what about the new york times reports saying russians were using the nra and christian and gun groups? is that the m.i.a. for the russians? it certainly is. the russians have a lot of soft power. odd to say, but their weapons industry is one element. so is the russian orthodox church. there are lots of american citizens who enjoy shooting weapons and would be excited about shooting a drag nof sniper rifle and others who have an affinity with the russian church. and russian intelligence has used that soft power to make contact with individuals and develop relationships, yes. daniel, why do you think that flynn was so attractive to the russians, it seems, and who else do you think was attractive to them? well, i think that general flynn saw s