this court. let me tell you exactly what's going on. conservatives now reversing one of the only measures for gun safety that was actually passed in the recent era, and again you can put all politics aside. as a measure of how extreme the supreme court is today with this ruling i'm going to tell you this was one of the things that got through the broken hyper-partisan washington that we hear so much about that even had centrists and moderate and republican support to try to deal with one part of our gun crisis in america. today the court reversed a ban on something that are called bump stocks, and the opinion was 6-3, meaning the conservatives and all three trump justices are making it easier to get deadly weapon in america. the other three justices from democratic appointees dissented. all you really need to know about the bump stock thing is it takes weapons and makes them deadlier, basically makes a faster semiautomatic with a faster rate of fire. in fact you can go hundreds of rounds a minute which from a legal perspective goes beyond what most people would ever need for self-defense. you don't need to shoot-off 100 or 200 rounds a minute to stop one or two people that might be legally justified and you're shooting them to defend yourself. that's more like war. now, you'll recall we all heard a lot more about this in america after something terrible happened in las vegas. it's actually still the deadliest such mass shooting in american history ever. now, i'm not trying to make this too dark. we're not going to just show terrible images or anything too extreme. these images are just of the general situation and some people who actually were alive. 58 people were killed that day, and over 800 -- let me repeat that. over 800 were injured. there are many mass shootings, so this one may have blurred with others in your memory, but this was the worst ever, and the shooter had brought 12 rifles that were all basically super sized into far deadlier weapons with these bump stocks that i'm mentioning. the shooter was able to fire off more than 1,000 rounds of ammo. that a wartime level. it was so extreme and so deadly that it actually jarred the republican party, which is as you've heard usually says after any shooting, it's not a time to act, it's too soon, just grieve. but in response even with a republican president, then-president trump, they decided to make a measured move. and again, i'm just telling you legally, policy wise how this worked. it wasn't some sweeping restriction on confiscating guns, taking back people's guns, anything like that. they banned just this device that makes these guns deadly. and they did it through executive action, as you probably know it's hard to get anything through the congress, and it's especially hard to get gun legislation through. but donald trump did something that really overlapped, and i would say it's one of the only gun or domestic safety measures he did that overlapped with what president obama had talked about, which is sometimes using the power of the presidency, executive action rather than going through congress. and there are many ways to do that as you may recall that are generally lawful if you're building on, for example, agencies and regulations that already exist under law. the congress, of course, has been much slower or generally blocked through senate filibusters not allowing majority votes on this. i mentioned president obama who also ran into those congressional roadblocks after the terrible massacre of sandy hook. >> the majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this regardless of the politics. >> that's definitely true regardless of the politics because if you define politics as what the whole country generally wants, well, most people want more gun safety regulation especially if it doesn't if involve as i mention the more far reaching measures like confiscating guns. but if you talk about limiting the semiautomatics or having background checks or doing these kind of basic things, widespread support. obama was referring to the politics of congress where the nra has a stranglehold. the failquer to get background checks, which again doesn't take anyone's guns but makes sure people who are mentally unstable are vetted and unable to get deadly weapons. he said if anything that happened in his two terms the fact that even after sandy hook they couldn't get those background checks through was, quote, his biggest disappointment. that's key to what i'm telling you about today. mass shootings of course have spanned all of our recent history. >> survivors of gun violence will be meeting with lawmakers to discuss some new legislation. >> tonight the entire town it seemed showed up to pray together and comfort each other. >> state leaders joined hundreds packing the uvalde county fairplex arena, prayer for the 21 lives lost. >> there's never before been a sit in by members of the house of congress. >> bring legislation to the house floor. >> this is one of the great crises in the united states. it's a problem that is partially of our making because other places with similar populations and systems have found ways to reduce gun violence without giving up all liberty. like i said universal background checks, restricting certain types of ammunition, certain enhancements of guns. these are all things you can do while letting people who have regular self-defense handguns or rifles for hunting they can keep. and it's a personal issue like i mentioned because even president trump who was generally cozier with the nra, he took this action which the supreme court overruled today. president obama who was seen as a kind of moderate didn't push for sweeping gun confiscation said he couldn't get the background check done. in a lot of places people have lived through this and pretty open to the idea we can do something more to protect ourselves. i don't mention this when we cover shootings in the middle of them because we are focused on gathering that information, but i can tell you i went to a high school that had a shooting in it and they had another one recently. whether you are a student, a graduate, a member, a parent of the community, you look at a situation like this and look at the risk to innocent people and children and you think what can we do? as i'm telling you tonight in a world where there's so much polarization, donald trump and barack obama did agree on this one thing you could do, right? you could use executive powers to deal with some of the deadliest enhancements to weapons. i'm telling you all this that is the context when we live in a world of headlines and partisan sniping, and it would be easy to forget that we had some bipartisan, moderate not major, but moderate centrist steps towards gun safety. and even that is too much for some of the extremist members of this supreme court. now, this case here the court was once led i should mention if you go back a ways to a different type of conservatism. it's almost like you can't use the same word, but people who were at the time were on the right and at the time were affiliated with the republican party. look at former chief justice of the supreme court warren berger. he was a nixon appointee as you see there, and after he retired he spoke out quite clearly about the difference between what the constitution historically has meant about guns and how it has been perverted. >> the second amendment -- >> which says. >> a militia being necessary for the defense of the state gives people rights to bear arms. this has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud and fraud on the american public by special-interest groups that i've ever seen in my lifetime. >> and what a lifetime it was. that nixon appointee republican saying, quote, i repeat, the word fraud. he was talking of course about the special-interest group the nra. other people in the republican party who again support hunting and self-defense and law and order and police and all that type of stuff we hear about would also say that there is a reasonable or moderate conservative way to also protect the innocent with reasonable gun safety measures. >> i believe in background checks at gun shows or anywhere to make sure that guns don't get in the hands of people that shouldn't have them. >> we want to do everything we can to prevent guns from falling into the hands of people who are mentally unbalanced or criminals. >> i do think we ought to extend the assault weapons ban. >> i do believe that an ak-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon. >> reagan with the applause and all. those are republican party leaders. i could show you many centrists, independents, of course many democrats and liberals known for even leading for this and more strict gun safety measures. the problem with gun violence is worse here. one study found that firearm homicide rates are not double, triple or quadruple. and by the way quadruple means four times as many deaths to be clear about what i'm telling you, but 19 times greater than in france, a whopping 77 times greater than in germany. and if you do comparative policy, which is what the congress and other policy maker decisions. if you look at that, you can see -- come back. you can just see if you look around the world at the spectrum. and so someone might say, well, that german example where it's 70 times safer but there's a lot more restrictions on gun rights and liberty and even hunting, someone might say, well, the u.s. doesn't want to go that far. okay, that's a fair, valid debate. if you watch this program you know we try to deal with facts and policy and not hyperbole, so maybe you don't want to go all the way here, but you could be here in the middle or even be here. instead i want to make clear the supreme court polling all the way off the map. justice thomas writing today in this ruling says they conclude that semiautomatic rifles equipped with what i mentioned the bump stock are not a technical machine gun because it doesn't fire more than one shot by a, quote, single function of the trigger. if that sounds like something different than traditional constitutional law is because it is. he's doing semantic back flips about gun descriptions. it's words on top of words, and justice thomas was parsing a law that is almost a century old from 1934. it went on like this, but because this ruling isn't really about the words i'm not going to read too many of them to you. in the dissent justice sote mayor said when i see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck i call that bird a duck. a bump stock equipped with semiautomatic rifle fires with more than one shot. she explains it fires by more than one shot without automatic reloading with the trigger. again, if it sounded like a lot of words salad, that's what court debates can be like, but you have the republican appointees who seemed like they basically wanted to even take the most moderate, mild, small gun safety rule that came out of donald trump's white house and knock that down. it seemed like they had that plan before they even went in and started writing about what a machine gun means in their own mind. conservative majority has done this. we covered how the corruption here gives you a window into what they really think, some of them at least. justice alito's wife flying the flag in solidarity with insurrectionists. justice thomas pocketing millions of dollars from a controversial republican billionaire who has a copy of hitler's mein komf signed on display in his home. these people want you to believe whatever they did on this case was parsed on the machine gun and go back and study this 1934 law. and the problem is and this is a problem larger than this ruling today. i went to law school where a lot of time is spent respectfully, almost rev rrchly looking at what the court writes as if it's true. the problem is a lot of this stuff doesn't sound very credible because it's not. and think about this justice thomas would have you believe that he spent all this time carefully parsing what the law from 1934 said not with his own agenda to help the nra or the gun groups or even the donors we consorts with but with an open mind because all he can to do is parse those words. but then you have to remember on something that hits much closer to home the ethics code that requires certain recusals and suggest that judges avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, that operates right now from 1894, justice roberts brought it out this year after the scandal, justice thomas doesn't parse it at all. he doesn't pretend to look at it and explain to us why he defies it, he just flouts it. so, yes, it may be time to put away the reverence and deference and understand this crisis is part of the other crises we have in america. that's why although i could have another fellow j.d. holder, a fellow lawyer come in today, we've decide today explain the ruling and turn to someone with knowledge of politic and the right-wing movement. our special guest is here when we're back in 90 seconds. t is hn we're back in 90 seconds you know what's brilliant? boring. think about it. boring is the unsung catalyst for bold. what straps bold to a rocket and hurtles it into space? boring does. boring makes vacations happen, early retirements possible, and startups start up. because it's smart, dependable, and steady. all words you want from your bank. for nearly 160 years, pnc bank has been brilliantly boring so you can be happily fulfilled... which is pretty un-boring if you think about it. the future is not just going to happen. you have to make it. and if you want a successful business, all it takes is an idea, and now becomes the future. a future where you grew a dream into a reality. it's waiting for you. mere minutes away. the future is nothing but power and it's all yours. the all new godaddy airo. get your business online in minutes with the power of ai. somehow this has become routine. the reporting is routine. my response here at this podium ends up being routine. and what's become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common sense gun legislation. >> then-president obama on the gun safety repass in this country. jay, thanks for joining us this friday. >> good to be here, ari. >> you see a link between the court's credibility crisis and its creeping corruption, and these kind of rulings, which as i mention are legally out of the mainstream and they are politically even against trump in some of the recent conservative mainstream, explain what you mean and what we should understand from today's ruling. >> yeah, i mean the court corruption story and the court's ruling are not separate stories. they're not separate events. they are linked. we have a supreme court that no longer serves the american people, no longer serves the constitution. they serve the republican party of donald trump. you saw that with this ruling today, this ruling in many ways was a trump campaign message event. it was a sign to a pro-gun constituency in this country and in the republican party that donald trump and his supreme court have your back. they support you. they support your right to have access to these weapons. they support the idea of male dominance, which is central to the entire gun discussion in this country. you know, there was a very famous ad i think for an ak-47 that said, you know, this is your man card now. you know, they use masculinity, a sense of wounded masculinity and appeal to that over and over again. and that's what the supreme court did. they did exactly what donald trump and the republican party want with this ruling and with many other rulings. >> yeah, that makes sense, and i appreciate your sort of blunt clarity. justice sotomayor notes that these kind of enhancements, basically you're taking this type of rifle and you're making it far deadlier not really for self-defense purposes. as i mentioned self-defense means one or two people are coming at you and you live in a rural area and police are far away. that's not 100 or 200 people, that's more like war. they put the enhancements and bump stocks back in civilian rather than law enforcement hands. to do so they cast aside the court's definition of machine gun and seizes upon one inconsistent with the meaning of the text unsupported by context or purpose. am i being too harsh in noting the gap between the supposed parsing textualism of clarence thomas on this 1934 law while he just ignores the other rules be it the u.s. flag code for alito or the ethics rules for himself? >> no, i don't think you are being too harsh. i think the reality is that this court now serves donald trump and his political interests, not the constitution. you know, the textualism of clarence thomas was largely a front. it was a front to get himself on the court. it was a front for other justices, people on the federal society to say this is what we stand for. they do not stand for that. they stand for the immediate urgent priorities of donald trump and the republican party. and i think if you look at the ethics issues that clarence thomas has run into, you know, there is -- there is really an underlying message here, which is ethics are for democrats. constitutional standards are for democrats. they are things that we use to apply to others, not ourselves. and you see this repeatedly over and over again, you know, in our political dialogue where one side constantly claims that standards and rules do not apply to them but apply to the other side. >> i think that's very true the way you put it, and that's why there's this double standard on that policing, and in a different context we see that how people use the justice system, so i think you make fair points. we're over on time for you, but as i mention in bring you on tonight, say you have a challenge in life. if you call an accountant that's different than calling a lawyer, which is different than calling, you know, a house painter or a hit man. who you call kind of focuses on what kind of challenge do you think you have. and we called you as a shrewd observer of politics because i can't really seriously look at this ruling as a legitimate legal outcome. it looks much more like a political outcome, and you've helped us with that, so thank you, chai. >> thank you. >> appreciate it. as i mention we have some special historian firepower tonight. doris kerns goodwin is here with her new book. and trump has a swing state nightmare after attacking milwaukee in strange and harsh terms, and republicans finding some amnesia. here's lindsey graham. >> the road to the majority in the senate is to marry up with president trump. s to marry up wh president trump. missing out on the things you love 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