personally i m pro rancor, pro vitriol, i am pro someone doing something about this rather than being polite, when you hear the president of the united states say the answer is to give every teacher in america a gun. that is insane. that is an insane idea. as mark bardon, one of the fathers who lost a child who lost a child in sandy hook, whose wife is a teacher. i mean seriously? did anybody go to school here? does anybody remember their teachers? do you think we should give all of them guns? do you think do you think they want guns? just what kind of country do we live in when we re talking about giving every teacher in america a gun. and that s a solution to this problem? but the fact that you had two people stand up as part of this dialogue and say, mr. president, not the way jeff just said it, but in a respectful, very clear
movement. and we ve seen that in history in the past where the ideaism of young people drives a mass movement. we saw it in civil rights, in the arab springs fo s for examp. and i think what we re witnessing today is very much like that. and what we saw in the white house was a real variety of views i d have to say there from the president talking about concealed carry to the parent of a sandy hook child saying, no, no, no you can t make teachers you you can t make teemps do th s teachers do that, that is not their job, to the president talking about mental health and how you deal with mental health issues. but what we didn t see was rancor. we saw people trying to and led by those kids. we saw people trying to deal with a very complicated complex issue, but what was missing was all of the vitriol we see from
and perhaps this is driving some of the meeting that he had. that said, this is not going i don t mean to be the naysayer here, but it s not going to stay out of the political realm for long. we ve seen the last time congress passed anything with regard to background checks or guns was 2007 after virginia tech. this added 200 million people to the background check system. felons, people with mental illnesses, but the problem is it was never fully funded. so it will come to whether this is window dressing, whether this is just feel good or whether they ll put their money where their mouth is. if it s just background checks, if that s as far as they can get, whether they fund the effort the president pushes. jeffrey toobin, what did you think of the white house event? it was very interesting and i think gloria is right there was no rancor and no vitriol.