Gun Control Debate Heats Up
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: It's 10:00 here on the East Coast. Good evening, everyone. We begin tonight with vital news, good news about a man whose courage is inspiring. His name is Zaidoun Al-Zoabi. And for more than a year on this program, he has raised his voice from deep inside Syria, raised his voice to counter the repeated lies told by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. For more than a year, this man, Zaidoun Al-Zoabi, has defied the dictator, insisting on using his own names in interviews, talking about the crimes he has seen the regime commit. He has done this knowing full well that any moment the regime that has killed and tortured and disappeared so many could simply choose to silence him. Months ago, I asked him why he was risking his life by talking, risking his life by insisting we actually broadcast his name.</s>ZAIDOUN AL-ZOABI, SYRIAN ACTIVIST: When I chant "I want freedom," I can hear my voice for the first time in my life. Now how can I give up this, even if it costs me my life?</s>COOPER: Imagine that, a grown adult hearing his voice for the very first time. Three weeks ago, Syrian secret police arrested him and his brother Sohaib. Today, we got great news. We learned he has been freed. He said he became seriously ill during his detention, close to death, in fact, and was not given medical treatment. He is with family tonight in Syria. His brother Sohaib though remains in custody and Zaidoun and his family fear for his safety. Zaidoun says he last saw his brothers eight days ago and that he was in good spirits. You can go to a Facebook page the family set to get the latest on his brother's condition and find out how to help secure his release. A relative says Zaidoun thanks everyone worldwide, especially this program and our viewers, for keeping their story in the public eye, which we will continue to do as long as it takes. And we hope to speak with Zaidoun as soon as possible. "Keeping Them Honest," the one true thing that we know about the gun debate here at home, that neither side has a monopoly on the truth, or even the facts, because the facts can be so hard to establish. One side has studies linking gun ownership with violent death. But correlation is not causation. The other side has research showing when people are allowed to carry concealed weapons, violent crimes slow down. Yet newer studies cast doubt on that conclusion. The bottom line, finding a way to study the problem and possible solutions to it would be hard enough even if this were not already such a pressing and emotionally charged subject. But it is. So with a shortage of facts but a surplus of victims and anguish and loss, the debate so far has evolved into passionately stated and exclusively competing articles of faith.</s>WAYNE LAPIERRE, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.</s>COOPER: That one view, more guns in more places. Here is the other.</s>GOV. DAN MALLOY (D), CONNECTICUT: When it comes to preventing future acts of violence in our schools, let me say this, more guns are not the answer.</s>COOPER: That was Connecticut's Governor Dan Malloy. His view and Wayne LaPierre from the NRA, they each ring true to a whole lot of people. That's because each side can point to real-life gun incidents to prove their point. And in a moment, the political state of play. We will talk also General Stanley McChrystal, his view of military- style firearms in civilian hands. But first, Randi Kaye with two very different gun stores. Take a look.</s>RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you wonder whether or not good people armed with guns really do help prevent more gun violence, look no further than the shooting in the San Antonio theater in December. And 9:30 p.m., December 17, 19-year-old Jesus Manuel Garcia allegedly opened fire at the China Garden restaurant. Investigators say he was targeting his ex-girlfriend who worked there. Police say when the employees fled, the shooter chased after them in the parking lot, firing at them. In the chaos he also shot at a San Antonio patrol car after the officer shined a light on him.</s>SGT. RAYMOND POLLARD, SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: He was having a difficult time dealing with the breakup and that's what may have set him off to come over here and commit this act.</s>KAYE: Garcia then followed the employees into the Mayan Palace movie theater next door. The gunman kept shooting as panicked moviegoers poured out the exit doors.</s>MEGAN ROEL, SURVIVOR: I could have died. I'm glad I'm OK and I have another day with my son.</s>KAYE: One of the fleeing patrons was wounded, but so many might have died had it not been for a quick-thinking off-duty sheriff's sergeant who also was armed. Sergeant Lisa Castellano, out of uniform, happened to be working security at the theater and ran toward the sound of the shooting. When Castellano spotted the suspect coming out of the bathroom with his gun drawn, she shot him four times.</s>LISA CASTELLANO, SHOT SUSPECT: That was really nerve-racking and it was -- I'm not going to lie -- it was frightening. But, you know, the training kicks in.</s>KAYE: Garcia, the suspect, is charged with attempted capital murder and has not yet entered a plea. He survived, but more importantly so did everyone else in that movie theater, thanks to one of the good guys with a gun. (on camera): But as we all know not every shooting incident ends like the one in San Antonio. Those in favor of tighter gun controls might argue that good guy with a gun scenarios can make a bad situation even worse. (voice-over): Take what happened in Arizona, January 8, 2011, when a loan gunman opened fire on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords at a community event. While Jared Lee Loughner was spraying Giffords and a crowd with bullets, an innocent bystander named Joe Zamudio was in a nearby drugstore buying cigarettes. When he heard the gunfire, Zamudio, who was legally armed with a pistol, ran to the scene. By the time he arrived his safety was off and he was poised to fire. Trouble is he almost shot the wrong man. Zamudio on FOX News:</s>JOE ZAMUDIO, WITNESS: As I approached the people wrestling with him, one of the other gentlemen actually had gotten the gun away from him and that's what I saw first, was him holding the gun. I had my hand on my pistol.</s>KAYE: Zamudio said he was incredibly lucky that he didn't shoot. Listen to what he told</s>MSNBC. ZAMUDIO: I saw another individual holding the firearm. I kind of assumed he was the shooter so I grabbed his wrist and told him to drop it and forced him to drop the gun on the ground. When he did that, everybody said, no, no, it's this guy. I would have shot him. I almost shot the man holding the gun.</s>KAYE: The man Zamudio almost shot was the hero who had tackled the real shooter and wrestled his gun away from him. Two very different shootings, two armed bystanders to the rescue and the debate continues. Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.</s>COOPER: The debate surely does continue and is growing. Vice President Biden meets tomorrow with the NRA. Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, both gun owners, by the way, have set up a lobbying group to press for new laws. New York's governor called for his state to enact -- and I quote -- "the toughest assault weapons ban in the nation, period," his challenge sparking protests from gun advocacy groups. On Monday, it will be four weeks since the Sandy Hook shooting. Perspective now from our panel, CNN political contributor and Republican consultant Margaret Hoover, Daily Beast senior political writer Peter Beinart and our senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. Peter, it is interesting just seeing these two different reports and these two different incidents. It is sort of a Rorschach test. It's just a sign of how tough this debate is and how tough as task this task force has.</s>PETER BEINART, THE DAILY BEAST: Yes. But if you notice, the first story was about a police officer. She happened to be not on duty but she was a police officer. No one disagrees that police officers should have guns and she said her training kicked in. I bet you guys went and looked long and hard for a story like that, but the one you found was actually one that I don't think does any damage to the pro-gun control argument because it was a police officer. I don't think anyone's arguing that police officers, perhaps even off-duty police officers shouldn't be armed. The second one seems to be much more like the actual situation you get when you have lots and lots of individuals running around trying to play vigilante.</s>COOPER: It's interesting. We picked that story because there are all these conspiracy theorists who were e-mailing us saying that we were afraid to tell that story because they point to that story as a sign of an indication where people being armed is a good idea. So, just to kind of address the conspiracy theorists. Margaret, you actually say there's more common ground and things that the president could do by executive order that the NRA would actually give a thumbs up to. What do you see?</s>MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: It may sound shocking, right, but the truth is I'm much more interested less in the politics of tomorrow than the policies and the common ground that can come from it. The president has taken a lot of flak from people like Mayor Bloomberg for not doing enough on gun control so far in his administration. But there are things like enforcement. For example, 77,000 people have lied on criminal background checks about whether they could legally obtain a gun. They have been identified by the FBI and turned over to the Department of Justice and not prosecuted by the Department of Justice. The administration could say prosecute people who are lying on their gun control -- on their background checks. There are also the national instant criminal background check mechanism is not fully funded by the federal government but could be and that would prevent people like the shooter at Virginia Tech who had a mental illness in his background -- would have registered and when he went to go buy his gun it would have sent a red flag that there's a mental illness in this guy's background. Maybe he shouldn't be legally able to buy a guy. There are things the federal government do, fully fund programs that are already in existence that the NRA wouldn't necessarily disagree with.</s>JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I totally disagree. There is no common ground in this argument.</s>HOOVER: What?</s>TOOBIN: There's zero common ground. The National Rifle Association and most of the United States Congress is against any sort of regulation of guns, period.</s>HOOVER: That's simply not true. David Keene on this channel on CNN, has said he's in favor of not letting people who have mental illness be registered in this criminal background check...</s>BEINART: He also wants the gun show loophole which allows 40 percent of people who buy guns not to have go through any background checks.</s>COOPER: ... to actually register then anybody with a mental illness or register people, which is -- I mean, that's a nonstarter. You can't have a database of people on guns, but you can have a database of anyone who has, what, received psychiatric counseling? Or how is that going to work?</s>HOOVER: I don't think that what they'd say. You would have to ask David Keene follow-up questions. But the NRA is favor of things. To say there is absolutely no common ground is defeating the purpose of this exercise. I think the American public wants us to find common ground. The NRA leadership at times defers from NRA membership, but the truth is there are reasonable Americans who are gun owns are like Gabby Giffords and her husband and Republican responsible gun owners who are willing to make reasonable concessions.</s>TOOBIN: Name one Republican member of Congress who is for any form of gun control today.</s>BEINART: Peter King is.</s>TOOBIN: He's from the Northeast.</s>HOOVER: And Mark Kirk and Susan Collins and you can go through the list. There are a lot of.</s>HOOVER: This is not a Democratic/Republican issue.</s>BEINART: It is. The biggest obstacle is John Boehner, because John Boehner having been humiliated in this fiscal cliff situation is then going to have to find a situation in which he would allow a vote in the House when most of his Republicans would not support it. And his own stated policy of the majority of the majority seems to me is impossible to imagine that happening.</s>COOPER: What do you think is going to happen?</s>TOOBIN: There is nothing.</s>BEINART: But the Obama administration is going to tee it up and then do executive action and then bring it to 2014. I think they do believe the politics of this has shifted enough they can make some Republicans pay a price for not even being willing to even hold a vote.</s>TOOBIN: But, remember, in 1994 the assault weapons ban passed and the Democrats got mauled at the polls afterwards and a lot of people remember that, especially in the West and the South. And you're right, Margaret. A lot of Democrats don't want to touch this issue either. But I'm just saying there's no common ground here because the people who don't want gun control, they don't want gun control and they recognize that they will pay a price politically for supporting gun control and they're not going to...</s>BEINART: ... since 1994. There are not as many Democrats in those conservative districts as there used to be. We have seen some of the conservative Democrats who still exist moving in response to the shooting in Connecticut.</s>HOOVER: If you begin with the point that there is no possibility for common ground, we will get exactly nowhere. And the truth is...</s>TOOBIN: Because I say it, it's going to...</s>COOPER: But, Jeff, what are the guidelines right now on how far the government can go in restricting gun ownership by executive action?</s>TOOBIN: Very modest. I think Margaret mentioned a couple of areas, but when you talk about the significant things that can be done like banning assault weapons, President Obama can't do that himself. And remember, guns are portable. And this is very much a state issue. Mayor Bloomberg points this out all the time, that New York and Andrew Cuomo can pass all the laws they want. But as long as guns are so easy to get in North Carolina and Virginia, which they are, they come up here and they are used in crimes up here. So unless you have national gun control and unless states also regulate it, you're not going to have any...</s>HOOVER: To that point, one of the programs in the Bush administration was called Project Exile. What they did is they prosecuted under federal laws state violations, because they're also violations of federal law. What did they do? They ended up locking up criminals, local criminals in federal courts to get them off the streets and the carry rate diminished by 50 percent. In other words, there are federal things that this administration can do now that would help gun control efforts that don't require passage of Congress.</s>BEINART: But it doesn't have to be either or. Even if we were totally to concede all of that, we could say because 40 percent of the guns are bought at a gun show or other places like that where there's no background check whatsoever, that even all the best enforcement of the current laws would not solve that problem. I think the most important meeting tomorrow is not the NRA, it is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the potential partner. Why? Wal-Mart has an economic incentive to end the gun show loophole so people buy their guns at Wal-Mart, rather than -- if Wal-Mart gets behind the idea of saying that all guns have to be sold in a place where you can actually have a background check like Wal-Mart, that is a powerful ally for the president.</s>COOPER: Jeff, you actually wrote a piece in "The New Yorker" recently, looking at the Second Amendment, arguing it is not quite what people think.</s>TOOBIN: It's changed dramatically. For a hundred years the idea that the Second Amendment gave anyone, individual, a right to keep and bear arms was, as Chief Justice Warren Burger said, a fraud, the idea that the Second Amendment gave you any rights at all. But a lot of Republicans and a lot of conservative intellectuals starting making the argument that, no, the Second Amendment does give individuals the right.</s>COOPER: The view it was only the militias.</s>TOOBIN: That it was only the militias. In 2008 the Supreme Court agreed. The Supreme Court said, yes, you do have an individual right. The extent of that right has not been clarified. Justice Scalia's opinion said individuals can have handguns in the home. But can they have handguns outside the home? Can they have bigger weapons? Can they have concealed carry laws? Those are still up for grabs. Even if Congress manages to pass something, it's not at all clear it will be declared constitutional by the court.</s>HOOVER: Justice Scalia also said the Second Amendment does not guarantee anyone who wants a gun the right to have a gun any time, any place anywhere they want it. The most conservative on the Supreme Court has said there are limits to the Second Amendment.</s>COOPER: We will see what comes out of tomorrow, if any. Margaret, thank you. Jeff Toobin, Peter Beinart as well. Let us know what you think. You can follow me on Twitter @AndersonCooper. I'm tweeting about this. We also have a big interview coming up with America's former top commander in Afghanistan, former General Stanley McChrystal, who has strong word about weapons of war in civilian hands. We will talk about gun control with him and also the war in Afghanistan as it now stands. We will be right back.