students. i wouldn t be here now if it wasn t for law enforcement confronting the shooter in in my case. it is disappointing that ultimately somebody didn t go into that school that was there and armed to protect those kids. casey? [ inaudible question ] there was a colossal breakdown in the system locally. so there was a colossal breakdown. and we need to get to the bottom of this and how these breakdowns occurred from what steve just mentioned, to the armed officer who was in the school at that time, to the fbi who failed to follow up on a glaring tip, that this young man wanted to shoot up a school, so that s pretty profound. then we also know that there are problems in the system with background checks with people slip through the cracks. we already passed a bill to fix that. we want to finish by getting
all to hold for a minute. ron brownstein, i want you to talk about young people in a moment, you have a fascinating take on this. joining me now, and he has to run, we re getting to him right now, senator john kennedy, republican from louisiana. senator, thank you very much for being with us right now. i m glad you jumped in at this part of our discussion. we re talking about this measure before the senate, that at least the number two in the senate, john cornyn, wants to bring up, which is, you know, to fix, called the fix nics plan, to address some changes to improve the national criminal background check on buying guns. you have actually opposed these changes over the last couple of months. why? i support the spirit of senator cornyn s bill. but the spirit isn t the legislation. i just don t think it is going to do anything. i mean, this is what it says. it says, look, we know for a fact that many federal agencies and many states are not sending information into the nics
system that need to be plugged. we passed a bill to do that and we think that should get done clearly. let me just say this, we shouldn t be banning guns for law abiding citizens, we should be focusing on making sure citizens who should not get guns in the first place don t get those guns. that s why we see a big breakdown in the system here. this particular case, there are a lot of breakdowns. from local law enforcement to the fbi getting tips they didn t follow up on to, you know, school resource officers who are trained to protect kids in these schools and who didn t do that. and that, to me, is probably the most stunning one of them all. there is a lot we have to look at. we want to protect people s rights while making sure that people who should not get guns do not get those guns. teachers. look, as we have sheriff rutledge has a bill that we re looking at as well that addresses this issue. he s a sheriff from jacksonville, as you may know. we re looking at the rutledge
bill. that s a question for local government, local school board, local states, as a parent, myself, a citizen, i think it is a good idea. as speaker of the house, we need to respect federalism and respect local jurisdictions. on not being able to address some of the concerns i think it is good they re coming up and engaging in the legislative process. we should encourage, especially with our youth. so this is, again, there are a lot of questions that need answers. and there are a lot of members putting their heads together to figure out where the common ground is, what we want to do is find common ground to make a difference. you want to add to that? as people are contemplating new laws, i think the most important thing to look at is what about all the laws that are already on the books that were not enforced, that were not
case, felt they had to vote with bill clinton to pass those gun control measures. what happened in recent years is that the successor to those republicans in those suburban districts have been voting with leadership and the nra against gun control. for example, almost all of the suburban republicans voted for that nationwide conceal carry bill that you cited. they are now, i think, the ones who are most out on a limb post parkland where you have polling showing a strong demand for gun control among those kind of suburban voters where donald trump is already weak in those kind of districts and i think they re the ones who are left most exposed by the speaker and the leadership s refusal to give any ground. ron brownstein, bakari sellers, alice stewart, thank you for your patience and sticking around for the full hour. appreciate it. we have breaking news we ll get to, we ll be right back.