investigative reporting on guns after newtown and the shooting of gabrielle giffords. michael, tell me, after your extensive investigation what would curb what is the best shot at curbing these type of mass killings? we know crime is down. in new york city it s at historic lows, gun crimes are down. not quite historic lows but gun crimes are down as well but these sort of shootings, what did you learn? how do we stop the next newtown, the next parkland from happening? one of the things you talked about, joe, is whether if somebody had said something or in this case people did say things to law enforcement and whether anything could have been done. and the issue really is that the reality is law enforcement is pretty limited in what they can do when it comes to somebody who even pretty clearly mentally
many calls we got yesterday, people horrified that the nra would open themselves up, like lawyers calling me going oh, my god, do they not have lawyers over there? do they not understand how they re exposing themselves to liebltd? b liability? but apparently some corporations were listening yesterday because you had several that said we re going to dissociate ourselves from the nra. and that s where it hurts. there are two kind of changes that need to happen here in order for there to be any real movement. one of them is a cultural change and that s what you re seeing with the children and this notion that guns are no longer part of their lives. they re no longer it s no longer seen as cool to have a gun and that s why the nra is worried because the gun sales have been in decline. the other is corporate. so we just flashed up if you re driving to work right now, three rental car agencies
description we saw yesterday of what these bullets did what this gun did to these children s bodies and to their organs, that they smashed them like a sledge hammer, that s what these military weapons do and we can have the debate about whether americans need those military weapons to protect against a tyrannical government, we also should have a really honest conversation this morning about will it make a difference? i don t know if it will or not. stopping the sale of these weapons. i think we have to give it a try. just after 9/11 people saying we could have other terrorist attacks. and finally, we re going to have to turn a really hard look at
shrinking himself, ralph is a tough guy. and he writes a tough column today. and he talks about ban these weapons of murder and again, another tough guy, tough conservative, former military man, gun owner, fired his first gun when he was 7 years old and because he was such a delicate flower at 7 it was a sawed off shotgun. there you go. he spent his time in the military firing weapon after weapon, automatic weapon after automatic weapon and here s the line. said these are military weapons. their purpose is to kill human beings. they are not used for hunting unless you want to destroy the animal s meat. they re lousy for target shooting, but they are excellent tools for mass murder. now, anybody that suggests that you need these for hunting deer, hunting animals, the graphic