Ready, dino abdallah. Okay. Ill be ready. State of the union starts right now with candy crowley. En yjoy your sunday. The white house forces the issue and signaling it will go wherever it can on gun control. Today, biden panel readies the report for a white house banking on public revulsion. There is nothing that has gone to the heart of the matter more than the visual image of little 6yearold kids riddled and not shot by a stray bullet, but riddled with bullet holes. Conversations with nra president david keene and Connecticut Governor chris murphy and also president ial candidate jon huntsman and senator joe manchin, and also we will talk to congressman elijah cummings, and Marsha Blackburn as well as jeff zeleny from the New York Times and Michael Scherer from the new york time times. A month after the newtown mas ka ser, the president is expected to present an array of options. He has publicly mentioned universal background checks on gun buyers and bans on high capacity magazines. Biden did not mention a controversial ban, because the Panel Focused on consensus proposals. You can consider the nhr nra out of those proposals. After the discussions, they said they were disappointed how little it had to keep the children safe and how much of an agenda tot ak the Second Amendment. Joining me is the nras president david keene, and thank you for coming. Set the bottom line here. In that meeting, was anything said by the Vice President that you could agree with in terms of a proposal and was anything said by you that he could agree with . Well, hed have to speak to that. We sent jim baker the former president of the institute for action to the meeting and he knows most of the people and has been involved for a long timek and we went to the meeting under the assumption that the Vice President and the president have said many times without any conclusions having been reached but as you pointed out, the con cl concollusions had been reached and they wanted to say that they were going to go forward after talking to us. One of the things that we have pushed for, for a number of years is those ajude kated to be mentally incompetent and potenti potentially dangerous to be put on the list of those prevented from buying firearms and that has not been done. That should be dop done, because most of the people who engage in these things are people who have had real trouble. For example the Virginia Tech shooter would not have been able to purchase a firearm had that been done in virginia. We hope that the administration will get behind that kind of proposal. It appears they are positivelypositive ly are doing that, but we know instance that the nra has fought in one of the states to try to put folks who are mentally ill may not have guns, and you wanted to make sure they had a right to go back and correct. And you know say, im okay now. So in every and even though you talk about it, it seems that a lot of people, you put the brakes on things like that. Well, what we put the brakes on is anything that simply take s away a persons Second Amendment right for in good reason. You can restrict the free speech, and famously you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater, and what we have suggest and this has particularly come up, because this administration and a previous one have attempted to bar returning veterans who sought psychological help from buying firearms and we said fine if there is an adjudication this should not happen, be but if th get help, and the purpose of the Mental Health system is not to ratify them to a status, but to cure them, and if they are cured, there should be a way out of that, and we belief that is very, very fair. Insofar as the things we have seen out there, universal background checks in assault weapons ban, and something that contains these clips, makes them so that you cant have the large capacity, that is just a nonstarter for you. Well, we dont think any of those things work. So the art of compromise in washington is for somebody to give something up, and for the other people to give something up. What are you willing to put on the table . Well, you should absolutely be able to compromise on things that accomplish the purpose. T our objection to those things is that they interfere with peoples rights without doing anything to solve the problem. If you are going to solve the problem, there are two things that you have to do. You have to get to the root of the problem, and in virtually all of these cases, it is a Mental Health problem and we have a Mental Health system that has collapsed and you to provide security, because you cant always find somebody who is about to do something. We are not experts on Mental Health and we are not experts on security though we have set up independently somebody who is to look into that, but we do a little bit about guns and firearms and what works and what doesnt work. We are not willing to compromise on peoples rights when there is no evidence that doing so is going to accomplish the purpose. No assault weapons ban and no ban on the multiclips, and i dont think that, you know, i dont think that the white house is going to budge on the push for it and you wont budge on the push back and lets talk about the politics of this, do you think that you have enough support on capitol hill to keep an assault weapons ban from passing . Right now we do. As opposed to and you have been watching capitol hill for a long time, candy. And when a president takes all of the power of the office if he is willing to expend the political capital, you dont want to make predictions, and yo you dont want to bet your house on the outcome, but i would say that the likelihood is that they are not going to be able to get an assault weapons ban through this congress. How about a clip . Some kind of a restriction . I dont think that ultimately they will get that either, because you cant make a case, a, that you can really regulate it, because these things cost virtually nothing. You nknow, you and david gregor could find one, but the fact is that we live in a society where first of all, we have constitutional rights, and secondly, there are millions upon millions of americans who value the rights that they have under the Second Amendment and who are involved in the shooting sports or use firearms for selfdefense and we think that they will be heard. And when you look at the power, one of the things that you said when you came in is that our number one political priority is to defeat the president for a second term, and that didnt happen. You also lost some high Profile Senate Races that you invested in. What does that say about the power because there are a lot of people out there who say, look, this has changed, that newtown has changed public sentiment, and it has changed the mood on capitol hill, and yet you think that the nra has the power to block this . The nra doesnt have the power, be but those americans who believe in the Second Amendment do. The races that were decided this year, werent decided on the Second Amendment issues as you well know and not discussed. The president discussed he would never take your rifle or sidearm and not interfere with your Second Amendment right, and in those races where there is a clear choice and let me give you an example. We were very involved this the wisconsin gubernatorial recall, because you had a clear opponent of the Second Amendment and proponent of the Second Amendment and in that race, gun owners made a sixpoint difference and this that case, we did a poll after the election, and they said that 45 were willing to vote for it. So guns are more acceptable now than they were ten years ago. One of the Big Questions here is who does the nra represent and you do take millions of dollars from people who make gun, and people who make bullet s and all perfectly legal and fine folks. Well, actually, we get less money from the industry than we would like to get. But you get millions of dollars from them. So less than we used to. So that the criticism out there that the nra and some other gun supporter groups gin up this, that they are going to come take your guns away, because what happens is that the gun sales rise and people go t out, and you know, sort of frighten people into thinking that the guns are going away when in fact members who are sort of friendly to you all who have aratings say we have to look at the assault weapons ban and the accusation is that you are ginning up this conversation, because it helps gun sales. The two people selling socalled assault rifles are senator finestein and president obama and not us. They are the ones who are scaring american gun owners and it is not the nra, but we do say that one of the core mission, and the nra has been around since 1871, and from the 1970s on, we have emerged as the defender of Second Amendment rights, and that is a core part of the mission. Sure. But in that, do you support gun ners or gun mfers . Gun owners and our members and the people in the country who believe in the Second Amendment. With we have had our differences in the past, if you know the history of the nra with the gun manufacturers, because it is not our constituency. Our constituency is twofold, the American People who want to own guns and use them legally, and it is the Second Amendment, itself. David keene, president of the nra, thank you for joining us this morning. Any time. While washington debates gun control, connecticuts governor pays tribute to the fallen. In the midst of one of the worst days of our history, we also saw the best of our state. Teachers and therapist who sacrificed their lives protecting students, a principal and School Psychologist that ran into harms way. A unique perspective on guns, background checks and Mental Health with senator chris murphy next. What are you doing . Nothing. Are you stealing our Daughters School supplies and taking them to work . No, i was just looking for my stapler and my. This thing. I save money by using fedex ground and buy my own supplies. Thats a great idea. Im going to go. We got clients in today. [ male announcer ] save on ground shipping at fedex office. Progressoh oh oh oh oh what do you know . Oh bacon . Oh oh oh [ female announcer ] with 40 delicious progresso soups at 100 calories or less, there are plenty of reasons people are saying progressoh share your story for a chance to win a progressoh makeover in hollywood. Go to facebook. Com progresso to enter. Since the deadly rampage at sandy hook elementary school, newtown, connecticut, has done what no other shooting has, prompted what may be decisive changes to gun laws. Joining me now is connecticut senator chris murphy. You are in newtown today and i appreciate your taking the time. Let me get a quick update from you about what we know. It has been a month, and are we any closer to understanding what motivated this shooter . This is an ongoing inv investigation and i think that it has been very difficult for the police to find out the motive here. This guy did a pretty good job of destroying a lot of the evidence, and his computer which he may have done a lot of gaming and correspondence on was ruined be by the time they got to the house, and although we expect there is going to be a report and the families desperately want as much information as they can get, we havent gotten much. This community is still really grieving. This is certainly about the families of the little boys and girls who are lost, but it is also about teachers and administrators and First Responders who may with be in the fury of the days and the weeks after the shooting didnt exactly understand how deeply it had affected them. This is going to take a long time even after the report comes out for this community to e recover. Right. And the other thing that is still routstaoutstanding there, there any evidence that the shooter sought mental assistance or his mother sought it for him it for him, or was there any evidence of that . Well, the mother understood that he was a deeply troubled individual and at or around the time of the shooting, she was trying to find some serious treatment option for him, but the fact is that she would have run into the roadblocks that thousands of mothers and fathers run into all across this country. There are a lot of kids who need help and the waiting lines for Mental Health services are very, very long. Clearly she knew there was something wrong here and trying to figure it out, but there might not have been an option for her give ten lack of funding for a lot of the services. So that turns me to what is happening in washington now, because newtown, you are right, it is going to take so much time to heal, and in washington now taking up the kind of other end of this, and what can be done to prevent this, a legislative look. We are hearing a lot about gun control and i know you heard the interview that we did with david keene, the head of the nra and is there anything that you heard there where you said, okay, we can find some Common Ground and by the way, you get an f are the the nra, so you are not in sync with them when it comes to the issues, but is there some commonality that we heard that is helpful . Well, if they want to work on funding for Mental Health services, then lets go to work on it. What they have proposed a national rej cigistry of everyb in the country that is mentally ill and you want to talk about an abridgment to the bill of rights. That would be everyone with a Mental Illness on a list. This is not your fathers nra, but it represents gun manufacturers and less than half of the funding comes from their member, and they make tens of millions of dollars off of the purchases of guns. But what your guest didnt tell you is every time, and not every time, but when assault weapons and high capacity magazines are bought in the country, the nra will get a cut of the sales from the round up purchase program, where the purchase is rounded up and the nra gets the difference, and they make the salaries off of the gun purchases, and that is who they are representing in this debate. And mr. Keene said he believed right now there isnt enough strength in the congress to keeps a sault weapons ban from going into place. Do you agree with that this is. No, i think that he is wrong. This issue is going to continue to move. He is right that when a president puts the full weight of their Office Behind legislative change, that certainly means something. And i do think that you see even in the Democratic Caucus people like joe manchin and mark warner who previously never would have considered a ban on assault weapons or high capacity clips now coming to the table. Even last week, one of the more conservative members of the congress, phil gingrey said he would be willing to look at the high capacity clip bans and assault weapons, and that is a fundamental change, and the nra does not get this. They have to come to the table on the gun control just as they are saying they are coming to the table on Mental Health, because the previous allies and backers in the house and the senate are not with them anymore and just like the American People are not. And so let me ask you, because i know that senator finestein and senator blumenthal are about to introduce a ban on assault weapons, and what do you know about that piece of legislation . Well, im going to be a supporter of that legislation. Whats in it . This is a this is i think going to be a ban on the assault weapons moving forward and tighter ban than the previous ban and it will address high capacity ma magazine clips. The fact is that as soon as we passed the ban in the 1990s, the gun manufacturers found a way around it and other states like new jersey and california have passed stricter bans and that is what the Congress Needs to do. I get it that the nra is going to use all of the resources to try to stop this thing, but ultimately, the people of this country have been transformed, and these assault weapons and they know it, these are not used by sportsmen and you dont need an assault weapon to kill a deer or target practice and sportsmen are not going to have their rights abridged or their ability to enjoy their sport change by having these dangerous militarystyle assault weapons taken off of the streets. So, let me ask you a little bit back on the Mental Health issue. Does it concern you that when we are hearing things from the biden panel, we are not hearing a lot about improving Mental Health services so that women like the mother of the shooter could maybe find some help, and with we are not hearing a lot about these videos that seem to have some effect at least on those whose minds are already a little warped, so are you concerned that this is going to become only a gun control issue . I definitely want to hear us talk about Mental Health, because, you know, we are coming into the lean budget time, and there is always a tendency and a risk to go after those line items that support Mental Healthhealth Services First in the debates, and so i want that on the table, but lets be honest, we are not always going to be able to find these individuals who on a dime turn into mad men, and what could have helped here in newtown is a ban on assault weapons. I have to tell you that i fundamentally believe that if we had a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high capacity clips, this guy might not have taken up arms to begin