i understand all of that. it is complicated. but if you look across america, there are people reeling from this horrible shooting, from the one we had a few days ago in colorado springs, from uva, and the many before that. they don t know as they re approaching thanksgiving, neither do i, as i shop for my daughters and my step-sons, where am i safe? and we can t actually think about ourselves as a country that are the land of the free and home of the brave if we don t solve this. the solutions are before us and we ve got to take it up. i mean, david jolley, none of those things should be polarizing or politically difficult votes. they have 85% approval or higher on background checks, assault weapons ban is upwards of 67%, i think, approval rating.
mr. chairman, ranking member corker, and members of the committee, thank you very, very much. i m in awe of the wonderful comments that were just made, and i appreciate them and i ll say a little more about them. before i begin, i would like to have the privilege of just introducing very quickly, i think most of you know my wonderful wife teresa who has been part of this wonderful journey for a long time, my brother cam who is serving in the government department, and my daughter vanessa and her husband brian, both of whom are working as physicians at mass general in boston and another daughter who is not here, alexandra, and three step sons who likewise are spread around the world. but we are thinking about them
get my step son out of the house. i have two step sons. only one was there at the time. his name is gabriel. he s 12 years old. very brave boy. i got him in the truck. i said get your suits on. we got to go right now. so i took him down the road to go check on another neighbor friend of mine and they said they were all right. they were in the process of leaving. sohen i was ready to go i decided to, look, son, i have to stay here and try to help the neighbors to get them away and get them notified of the fires and to help save my house. he understood that so i got him in a safe zone and i ran back up to my neighborhood and some neighbors helped me shovel dirt and stuff around my trailer because i had no water, no water lines out there, and no fe hydrants of course. we re too far out. and i managed to get a call to 911 as my air conditioner was burning, my porch was burning, and all the trees around me were engulfed. but it was jumping across to the neighbor s properties and t
extraordinaire newsman who also home run suffered and communicated that and an was honest enough to acknowledge it. so there were so many sides to mike wallace and we, of course, the condolences to his wife mary and his son, his step sons and, of course, chris wallace his son, our former colleague, tom. but the legacy that 60 minutes has created i heard you talking earlier, i was just riveted to bob simon s report everywhere congo last night on that orchestra. the story telling on that program after all of these decades is just amazing. it is. and mike helped set the pace for it. it was not just all about interviews with him. he also did other stories but he had a keen sense of a narrative. i think that too grew a little bit out of his early theatrical training but it was his i think sting and don hooewitt s instin.