Transcripts For MSNBCW The Cycle 20130109

0 enacted. it's hard to defend. i don't know what grounds you have. the assault weapons being readily available in american society. some of the types of bullets and magazine clips and types of weapons of mass destruction that are available to the public. if you want to say all of american society will tote the assault weapons and need to defend each other, what argument is there not to ban it. >> assault weapons sounds scary. they are faithful useful and can be useful in a number of ways. a lot of reasons to have them. we had an assault ban for years during which columbine happened. >> what's the use of a large magazine, a large bullet clip assault weapon? >> if you are talking about magazine capacities, that's different than assault weapons. >> but explain what other than the hands of tactical police officers and the military, what is the use of a rapid fire assault weapon. >> i don't know what you think rapid fire means, but they are scary words that people use that have to be broken down. they don't mean that people in the media use them to mean, howard. >> explain to me what -- tell me a good one. >> we do this. will i don't want to take everyone else's time, but we can talk about this in more depth. >> we have seen the discussion that military capacity on the street has not necessarily agreed. >> what are is military capacity. that doesn't mean anything. >> for means what happened in the movie theater this summer. >> or newtown. let's bring in general. >> or virginia tech which were hand guns. we are focusing on a shiny object that is not to blame. the person is to blame. >> the person with the gun is to blame. >> i think where we want this discussion to go, to put the options on the table whether it's an assault weapons ban. a lot of us agree at the table that the assault weapons ban was in place and full of loopholes and didn't include a buy back program. we have to look at that and look at the totality of evidence and not ask the question and i said this before. would this have prevented a newtown and is this going to decrease gun violence overall? that is the question. who knows what could have prevented newtown. columbine you can say they would have found a way around this law or that law, but howard, you mentioned democrats running in red states and the political realities of that that i understand pretty well. >> i bet you do. >> steve schmitt made an interesting point with rachel maddow saying we tend to think of this as a partisan issue. it's more of a regional issue. we show regional ownership of guns by region. do you think that these new groups that come up, mayor bloomberg's group and gabby giffords and mark kelly's group, over the long-term that they can shift the political calculus and shift that cultural dynamic that is in play right now? >> first of all, it's not just a regional thing. it's by party as well. if you look at polling on guns and possession of guns and types of weapons and so forth, republicans are strongly in favor of being extremely cautious about imposing any new restrictions. democrats are pretty strongly in favor. independents are split right down the middle. again that's something that democrats have to be concerned about. i don't claim to be steeped in the gun culture, but i worked in kentucky for years and i know the state and the people there and they rightly care about their guns not only for constitutional reasons, but reasons of sport and way of and hunting and it's very much in rural america and not just in the south. it's very much a part of the culture. all i'm saying to groups like the nra is based on my sense of american politics, to take a closer look at some of the types of weapons, some of the rapid fire types of weapons, some of the types of weapons that wouldn't seem to have a cultural or hunting use or even for that matter in a sense constitutional use, it's worth doing. i understand the slippery slope argument and what gun advocates are saying and if you start chipping away then pretty soon we take up all the guns and there will be confisication programs and we will rip out an important part of the constitution. short of that surely there is something sensible that can be done and that's what joe biden will attempt to do. i wouldn't expect the president to stake his whole presidency on this. as you pointed out before, the biden report i don't think is coming out until after the state of the union. that's a perfect way to allow the president to finesse making it a centerpiece of his speech. >> to talk generally about it and not get specific. >> wal-mart said we are not going to the meeting with the vice president and quickly changed courses and said we are going to go because we cannot politically say we are not going to go. what does that switch say to you? >> what it says to me is the people who are advising them politically are shrewd and smart. they had enough bad publicity as it is with the labor practices, etc. they want to serve all their customers throughout the country. wal-mart is everywhere. wal-mart needs to look at the country as a whole and i think it was smart of them to show up. that doesn't mean they have to agr agree, but i wouldn't be surprised if wal-mart ends up being on board. >> that's part of the idea for the white house. trying to pick up the other stakeholders. always great to see you and thanks for coming on today. next, first they give pot the grown light and now a colorado lawmaker wants to make it legal for parents to buy their kids booze. could looser laws make it safer? as the cycle goes on for wednesday, january 9th. new prilosec otc wildberry is the same frequent heartburn treatment as prilosec otc. now with a fancy coating that gives you a burst of wildberry flavor. now why make a flavored heartburn pill? 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