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It was a normal Friday to start with.
You know get the kids up give them their breakfast.
Dylan went to the Sandy Hook School.
That day I put my boys on the bus and
then my friend was calling and she said,
"Nicole, it's a shooting and it's at our school."
It was the day after Thanksgiving.
I was at my family's home in Chicago.
My son was with his father in Florida.
I picked up the phone and there was just this,
this dead silence.
And I said, "Where's Jordan, what happened to Jordan?"
And that's when Jordan's dad said Jordan's been shot.
[gun shoots]
You're 25 times more likely to die by gun violence
in the United States of America
than any other developed nation in the world.
What does this say about us as Americans
if we're just willing to let people die?
Because we're afraid of the NRA?
There's no other single issue lobby in the United States
that has had as much success advancing its agenda
against the wishes of the majority of the country.
- Gun violence is taking lives at a historic rate.
It's only getting worse and worse,
and yet we're focused on the right to bear arms
and not the right to live.
[gunshots]
- The NRA has managed to convince millions of Americans
that when people get killed in gun violence,
that is the price of freedom.
Why has that happened?
We have to start unpacking their myths.
[Man] David Keene.
[Slate Claps]
I'm Dave Keene.
I was president of the National Rifle Association
from 2011 to 2013.
I continue to serve on the NRA board,
as I have since 2000.
I've been in politics in Washington and nationally
for more than 40 years.
I've been involved in one way or another
with every major battle over gun rights in this country.
At the NRA, what you have to do is try to every day
advance and protect the rights of gun owners.
- No, you shall not take the freedoms
bequeathed to us from us.
We will go to the ballot box.
We will demonstrate, we will organize.
We will do everything it is necessary to do
to protect those rights.
[audience applauds]
- Americans came to this country, survived on the frontier,
protected their families.
They knew that if they got into trouble,
help was probably not gonna come.
And so they developed this self-reliance.
Gun control is not simply about guns.
It's about an assault on values and an image of America
that believers in the Second Amendment hold dear.
It's an attack, not just on the guns.
It's an attack on them.
It's an attack on their lifestyle.
It's an attack on the country
and the values that the founders cared about.
It was George Washington who said,
"Every citizen should be armed."
- [Man] The NRA wants you to believe a fantasy
about our founding in which our founding fathers believed
that there should be no regulation of firearms.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
[gun shoots]
It is absolutely clear that our founding fathers
loved gun control.
They in fact had loads of it.
- From our very earliest days in the 1600s
through the 20th century,
there were literally thousands of gun laws,
and they were gun laws of every imaginable variety.
[Sen. Murphy] We had rules on who can own a weapon
and who couldn't.
You had to register your weapon,
you had to register your gunpowder.
You couldn't bring your weapons certain places.
[Spitzer] When we think about the American West,
you think of it as a lawless period
where everybody carried a gun
and that it was guns that won the West.
And that's really not the story of the West at all.
The norm was strict regulation
and prohibition of gun carrying.
That's why in recent years even Justice Antonin Scalia,
a very conservative member of the Supreme Court,
made very clear that the Second Amendment
wasn't an unlimited right.
- How far does that constitutional right go?
- Limitations upon the right to keep and bear arms
are permissible because there were some
that were acknowledged at the time.
[Spitzer] We think today of this great battle
between those who support gun rights
versus those who want stronger gun laws,
but in the first 300 years of our history,
that was not how it was.
[Smyth] When the NRA was founded in 1871
they took no position on gun control whatsoever
because they saw no need.
I started covering the National Rifle Association in 1994.
The National Rifle Association was founded
in order to deal with future possible threats
involving European military forces.
They organized shooting competitions
to improve the skills on the range,
which could then be applied to the battlefield.
[Man] The fact that the high level of marksmanship
is maintained and that a continuous program of training
and education is carried forward
is the result of the work of the National Rifle Association.
[Smyth] And that remained their main focus,
riflery and later hunting to expand the shooting sports
for over a century before the NRA changed.
[Reporter] The President's car
is now turning onto Elm Street.
And it will be only a matter of minutes
before he arrives at the Trademark.
[gunshots]
It appears as though something has happened
in the motorcade route.
[Reporter 2] President Kennedy has been assassinated.
It's official now.
- The 1960s is a decade in which the gun
comes to symbolize the chaos and disunity
that the nation is experiencing as a whole.
- For the first time, you get signs
that there's going to be a push for racial equality.
♪ Black is beautiful
You get signs that there's going to be a push
to say women have equal rights.
And you also see at the same time
this incredible upsurge of dramatic gun violence.
- From the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
to the assassination of Malcolm X
Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers.
[gunshot]
There's also the mass shooting
at the University of Texas, Austin in 1966
that begins the age of mass shootings.
It's a decade that's awash in police violence.
Most of the urban unrest is tied in some way
to firearms and to shootings.
My first true understanding of what gun violence does
was when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.
I distinctly remember watching my father be so distraught
and my mother sobbing.
Because he represented freedom.
[Franks] It's not a coincidence
that the assassinations of the 1960s
are against people who are representing progress.
Every time it seems that there is some group
that is going to rise up and say, "We are Americans too.
And we deserve the same rights as everyone else."
That's the point at which violence breaks out.
[Spitzer] The upsurge in violence shocks the country
and spurs calls for new, stronger gun laws.
[Pres. Johnson] I call upon the Congress
in the name of sanity
to give America the gun control law America needs.
[rifle shots]
- NRA members and gun rights activists arose in the 1960s,
not just in response to the rising tide
of support for gun control,
but also in response to the political
and social movements of that time.
Those movements threatened the status of a lot of white men.
[Keene] It wasn't until what we now call the culture wars
broke out back then that gun ownership
and the Second Amendment became a matter of controversy.
[Shop Owner] Restrictive legislation at the present time
is the initial step to the takeover of this country.
[Keene] At that point
a fight took place within the National Rifle Association.
[Smyth] You had one element focused on the shooting sports
and they were not interested in politics.
You had another element of the NRA
starting to raise the alarm about gun rights.
[Keene] Some NRA members believed the goal
was to abolish firearms in the United States.
They realized unless you do something
you're not gonna have the right to have a firearm.
- We stand in the forefront of millions
of those people in America who like to shoot.
[Igor Volsky] These new voices in the NRA
are led by a man by the name of Harlon Carter.
- We believe that the right to keep and bear arms
is a salient part of the American tradition.
[Volsky] Carter believed that every gun control measure
violated true American identity
and principles of individualism and freedom
and began organizing NRA members.
[Reporter] The NRA has been campaigning
against the gun laws,
fearing it might curtail their members' activities.
[NRA Rep] We have sent a letter to our entire membership.
[Reporter] By sending instructions
on how members were to write their congressmen
the NRA had clearly launched
a very effective lobbying campaign.
- Harlon Carter wanted to take the activities
that the NRA had been supporting
for over a century in the shooting sports
and co-opt all of that activity
into their gun rights agenda.
[Robert Kennedy] The nation and sportsmen
have been subjected to a
massive publicity campaign against this bill.
This campaign has misled thousands of our citizens.
It is a responsibility to think
not only of our own convenience,
but of the tragedy of sudden death.
[gunshot]
[crowd chattering]
[Reporter] Senator Kennedy has been shot.
[Reporter] The National Rifle Association of America
is under siege today.
[Matthew Lacombe] After the high-profile
political assassinations, a lot of Americans began
to see the NRA as this organization
that is responsible for preventing
the passage of strong regulations on guns.
[Smyth] Under pressure, the NRA came around
to support the Gun Control Act of 1968.
[audience applauds]
We've come here to the cabinet room today
to sign the most comprehensive gun control law
ever signed in this nation's history.
[Volsky] The Gun Control Act of 1968 was a measure
that for the first time
created categories of prohibited purchasers.
[crowd applauds]
[Volsky] There were leaders within the NRA
who didn't have a significant problem with that law
and thought the organization
had strayed too far from its original intent
of marksmanship and sports shooting.
They gutted its lobbying shop, fired about 60 individuals.
[Smyth] This was the Old Guard
and they were interested in moving the NRA out of Washington
to shift the focus of the NRA away from politics completely.
[intense music]
Harlon Carter ended up leaving the NRA
and accusing the NRA of betrayal.
He truly believed that gun rights
was the most important issue facing America.
[Williams] There's a deeper history with Harlon
that goes back to a murder he committed
when he was just 17 years old.
He had killed a young Mexican named Ramon Casiano
in an act of vigilantism
for which he will ultimately be convicted of murder
but have that sentence vacated by a judge who felt
the jury had not been properly advised about self-defense.
[Smyth] Harlon Carter changed the vowel in his first name
from "Harlan" to "Harlon" and in doing so
managed to keep his murder conviction quiet for 50 years.
In the 1950s he had been a border patrol officer
and the border patrol chief using truly draconian measures.
[Man] You're talking Harlon about
being able to carry a handgun around in your belt.
And you're saying that is a liberty
that I demand at the expense of 25,000 lives per year.
[Carter] The price of those lives I put up against my right
to the presumption of innocence,
my right against self-incrimination
under the Fifth Amendment,
the right of due process under the Fifth Amendment
that the government can't seize my property
without due process.
Those things are worth all the lives you will ever pay for.
So this man, this former convicted murderer,
this man who advocated extreme positions
as a border patrol chief, this man believed that gun rights
are more important than the toll of gun violence.
- And I respectfully submit to you,
that if we can ever embark upon the principle
that because a liberty might be abused
the government can restrict it, restrain it, or abolish it,
ladies and gentlemen you have lost everything.
[audience Applauds]
[ominous music]
[Anchor] The National Rifle Association convention
in Cincinnati went into overtime last night
a stormy all night session.
[Smyth] Harlon Carter plotted and organized
to take over the NRA.
Back then the NRA elections
were conducted in person at the annual meetings,
and he managed to get more than 500 of his supporters
to travel to Cincinnati for this meeting.
[Man] If you take my rifles,
my shotgun and my pistols away from me
then what are you going to do then after that?
Take the pocket knives, the hunting knives?
You know where's the stopping point?
[Smyth] You had a convention floor that was rowdy.
Carter had deployed his followers in the audience
equipped with walkie talkies
so that he could give his lieutenants the orders
about which way they needed to vote.
The old guard was caught completely unaware
and ill prepared,
and they ended up firing the old guard,
every one of them, one by one,
getting themselves elected as the new leaders of the NRA.
This is the founding of the modern NRA who believes that
almost any form of gun control must be opposed.
Any national gun law no matter how innocent in appearance
no matter how simple it might be
presupposes a still further growth in a centralized
computerized gun control bureaucracy in Washington, DC.
[ominous music]
[Smyth] The NRA in '77
implemented a practice of total control.
The entire organization was restructured
so that everything went up the chain of command.
Independent voices would not be allowed
because they had a political gun rights agenda,
and they wanted to make sure
that everything they did supported this agenda.
[gunshots]
[audience applauds]
[Volsky] NRA membership really exploded.
It grew by something over 300%.
[Reporter] This is headquarters in Washington,
plush, computerized, heavily staffed,
well-funded and geared for action.
[Volsky] The NRA began to use the Second Amendment
as the bedrock for arguing against gun control measures.
They're gonna wrap any argument in the American flag.
[Reporter] Here at the organization's convention
there are pamphlets citing the Second Amendment,
posters and booths.
It's all part of the NRA's lobbying effort
against gun control legislation.
[Smyth] The NRA started hiring paid scholars
to start writing articles in law journals to shift
the way the American system of jurisprudence
and the courts look at the Second Amendment.
[Keene] The Second Amendment is not about hunting rabbits.
It's about self-defense.
It's about self-reliance.
It's about all the things that the founders cared about.
Our job is to say, here is a threat to the Second Amendment.
Our members know when they hear that, they rise up.
[Williams] Harlon Carter recognized
the tremendous potential of the NRA
as an organization that can lobby,
an organization that can have political influence,
an organization that can amass a great deal of power.
[Keene] The main sponsor of the Gun Control Act of 1968
was Senator Joe Tydings.
He was supposed to be a slam-dunk candidate for reelection.
Then all of a sudden he found that he was being attacked
by all these gun owners.
Joe Tydings lost, and he lost because of the gun issue.
That was the first political scalp on the wall.
That served as a wakeup call to the political community,
because the difference between gun owners and others
is that gun owners actually vote.
My name is Matt Lacombe.
I'm currently unpacking
why the NRA's members are so politically active.
I collected about 80 years of the NRA's magazines.
The American Riflemen is the NRA's official journal.
It's the most widely circulated
firearms-related magazine in the United States.
I digitized those
and used a tool called structural topic modeling,
a fancy computer algorithm to take all the documents
and to group them together into topics.
There was a topic
that was clearly related to the Second Amendment.
Also a topic called Americanism and Guns.
There was also clearly a topic related to crime.
I was then able to plot the substantive ideas
that the NRA pushed over time.
The NRA has played a singular and important role
in cultivating an identity around gun ownership,
in which guns are not simply tools that a lot of folks use
but instead are symbols of who they are
what they value and how they view their place in the world.
The NRA has taken this identity around gun ownership
and politically weaponized it.
We see the NRA portraying gun control as threats
to who its members and supporters are.
When people's identities feel threatened
they're much more likely to take action.
This gun-centric ideology enabled the NRA
to align with the Republican Party when the time was right.
[Host] David Keene, southern coordinator for Reagan
last year, what do you think the Republican Party
needs to do to resuscitate itself?
[Keene] It should be based on an opposition
to government involvement
and interference with the family and individual life.
[Keene] Ronald Reagan emerged as a hero
to most people on the right
and certainly to most gun owners.
He was of course an outdoorsman himself and a gun owner
and recognized these things.
[Pres. Reagan] Tales of Wild West men and women
are woven into the dreams of our youth
and the standards we aim to live by in our adult lives.
You know what they are, words like self-reliance,
personal initiative, those bedrock values
that made America great.
[crowd noises]
[Volsky] It is not surprising that the first presidential
candidate that the NRA endorsed was Ronald Reagan,
who came from Hollywood, starred in many cowboy movies.
- You wanted law and order in this town.
You got it.
I'll shoot the first man that starts for those steps.
[gunshot]
[Volsky] He personified this myth that the NRA told
that the country is built on individualism,
on manifest destiny, and that those notions
were rooted in firearm ownership.
[Man] The NRA are the type of people
who stand for this country.
[Man 2] They are patriotic Americans
interested in preserving our heritage and our American way.
[Reporter] It was an appreciative crowd
that heard President Ronald Reagan today
reinforce their philosophy
and tell them what they wanted to hear.
[Reagan] We will never disarm any American
who seeks to protect his family from fear and harm.
[audience applause]
[Williams] The story of Reagan and the NRA
really it goes back to 1967.
Reagan had been governor of California
during the passage of the Mulford Act.
[Caroline Light] The Mulford Act criminalized the open carry
of firearms and was designed specifically to disenfranchise
and to disarm members of the Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense, because they were demonstrating in public
carrying firearms openly
to shed a spotlight on police violence
against black and brown people in California.
[Man] You have no right to take my gun away from me.
- There is absolutely no reason why out on the street today
a civilian should be carrying a loaded weapon.
[Williams] Throughout our history
the fear that African-Americans
could have access to firearms and use those firearms
to the detriment of whites is pervasive.
So what you see from the very beginning in American history
are very stringent laws to prevent the ownership of firearms
by people of color, like The Black Codes,
and this is gonna be a theme that will run
all the way up into the 1960s when we get The Mulford Act.
- The NRA helped draft the legislation itself
to make sure those new laws were passed.
- Ultimately the motivation behind their support
it really boils down to race.
Many argue that this isn't really an attempt
to deal with the issue of guns as much as it is an attempt
to scapegoat communities of color for the violence
that's overtaking the nation in that moment.
[Light] It's all part and parcel of a longer arc
of the NRA's support for the criminalization
of certain populations' access to firearms.
[Williams] In the 1980s this fear overtakes the nation,
and Reagan will campaign successfully
on this idea that Americans aren't safe,
that you need to reinvest in law and order.
- Guns don't make criminals.
Hardcore criminals use guns, and locking them up,
the hardcore criminals up, and throwing away the key
is the best gun control law we could ever have.
[audience applauds]
[Reporter] NRA spokesmen acknowledged
that part of their new membership comes not from sportsmen,
their traditional members,
but from people worried about crime.
- Crime is the important thing.
I think that's what the people are interested in.
[Williams] Gun rights activists concerned about crime
always decouple that conversation from the poverty
that accompanies the decline of American cities.
Industry is moving out of the inner city to the suburbs.
People have less space
and they're competing for fewer resources and fewer jobs.
Those pressures create a powder keg in American cities.
[Greg Jackson] Where you see gun violence
that's most rampant, root causes are most rampant.
The response in our country has been
to intensify our law and order approach.
[Woman] It cannot be that every black male
between 18 and 25 belongs to a gang.
And yet when you see an arrest invariably
that's what you see.
[Jackson] The '80s and '90s showed us that
you can't meet a public health crisis
with criminal law enforcement and carceral strategies
and expect it to work.
Even in current times we always start with
how do we manage a threat versus how do we save lives
of those who are most impacted.
Right now black youth are 14 times more likely to be shot
or killed by firearms than white youth in America.
And as a survivor of gun violence
I've seen that people in our communities
are the ones paying the price
for this quote unquote "freedom"
that advocates from the NRA are talking about.
[subway running]
[Anchor] It is Christmas Eve in New York
and the talk of the town is not peace on earth
but the violence among us.
This time in the subways, where a vigilante and his gun
brought terror this past weekend.
[Smyth] There are a number of cases that are instrumental
in the beliefs of the modern NRA.
One of them was the Bernard Goetz shooting.
[Reporter] A passenger on the New York City subway,
a white man, said four black teenagers
wielding screwdrivers pressed him for $5.
He shot all four then fled through the subway tunnel.
[Reporter] The shot severed Darrell Cabey's spinal cord
paralyzing him for life.
[Smyth] The NRA defended Mr. Goetz as a way of
putting their own stamp on gun rights through his case.
[Reporter] The National Rifle Association today
began running ads in New York City newspapers,
ads that say law-abiding citizens have the right
to protect themselves because the city no longer does.
- The greatest single deterrent to crime
is an armed citizen.
[Williams] Bernie Goetz is hailed as a hero
and lost in that conversation was the fact
that Bernie Goetz was carrying that gun illegally.
- Four young blacks wounded by a white gunman
and the cheering hasn't stopped.
- We're tired of being pushed around.
[Woman] Three cheers for him. Three cheers.
[Williams] People see him as a vigilante,
who's had enough and is going to fight back,
guns down these four teenagers
including famously saying to one of them after he shot him,
"You don't look like you're hurt too bad,
here's another one."
I remember how I felt going into the city after that
and it felt like it was open season.
You had to think differently
about the way that you showed up in public places.
It was clear in the way that people
talked about that case what the line of demarcation was.
And it was the fact that Bernie Goetz
who was white, shot four black teenagers.
Society bought the narrative that was promoted by the NRA
that armed white men could solve the problems of America
in going out and killing the bad guys.
In that moment, Wayne LaPierre rises to national attention
when he petitions to vacate Bernie Goetz's conviction,
because he argues that Bernie Goetz
had acted in self-defense.
[Wayne LaPierre] Any firearm has a legitimate self-defense
purpose when a criminal is trying to rape, rob,
or injure the victim.
[Rob Pincus] Wayne LaPierre was hired by Harlon
Carter as a lobbyist. He wasn't a diehard gun rights guy.
He wasn't the guy that wore the NRA patch on his sleeve.
He was a mild-mannered, educated guy
who could walk into a room and present an argument
for gun rights issues without being intimidating
without being bombastic, without being flamboyant.
[LaPierre] If you really want to get at gun crime,
you've got to narrow the focus
put in some tough mandatory sentences
and go after the bad guys.
[Pincus] I'm a gun rights advocate
and I'm the executive vice president
of Second Amendment Organization
and I've been in the firearms industry
for a little over 20 years.
[gunshots]
In the gun community when we talk about gaining ground,
one of the things that Wayne LaPierre has done
for us very, very effectively was to make it much easier
to get a concealed carry permit.
[Anchor] Tomorrow sweeping new state laws take effect
that will make it significantly easier for many people
in Florida to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.
[Keene] The first state
that allowed concealed carry was Florida.
Then Wayne LaPierre said,
"Let's get concealed carry across the country."
[Reporter] The new law to allow citizens
to carry concealed handguns.
[Reporter 2] Texans were given the right
to carry concealed handguns.
[Reporter 3] Thousands of concealed handgun applications.
[Reporter 4] 700,000 applications for permits
will come in to sheriff's offices.
[Cassandra Crifasi] Over the last several decades,
we've seen a shift from most states
not issuing a license to carry a concealed firearm,
now to every state doing so.
- Right to carry is sweeping across the land.
[Pincus] It became a concealed carry revolution.
[gunshot]
To get a concealed carry license
requires some training that you have to undergo.
[gunshots]
You have to pass a test.
But now we have 21 states
that don't require any form of license to carry a firearm.
[Anchor] Tomorrow anybody in Kansas
can carry a concealed weapon and won't need
a permit or the training to buy the gun.
[Keene] It's called Constitutional Carry.
[Franks] It's a great piece of branding by the NRA
to take a concept like permitless carry
and to say we're going to call that Constitutional Carry.
[Anchor] Texas Senators have just passed permitless,
or what's known as constitutional carry.
You wouldn't have to get a license, no training required,
and there would no longer be a test.
- We're going to take the notion of no regulation whatsoever
and we're gonna call that constitutional.
[applause]
[Crifasi] One of the most rigorous recent studies
that investigated what happened when these laws changed,
found that violent crime increased between 13 and 15%.
- If you suggested to Harlon Carter that by 2020
carry laws of one form or another would be in effect
in all 50 states, he would've said you're crazy.
But they are.
[Pincus] Because of the work that the NRA has done
we have this huge number of people
who now have guns in their everyday life.
It's not just Saturday afternoon at the competition.
It's not just hunting season.
You're literally carrying a gun around on earth every day.
To work, to the store, dropping your kids off at school,
with the idea that you're gonna be able to use it
to defend yourself or other people in an emergency.
[Light] The NRA has managed to promote this ideal
of guns everywhere,
that more guns are going to provide more safety.
[Williams] The NRA then begins pushing for legislation
that would encourage people
not only to be able to carry it but to be able to use
guns to defend their lives without fear of being prosecuted.
[Light] If you look at Stand-Your-Ground Laws, any person
who feels themselves under threat can use lethal violence.
[gunshots]
Stand-Your-Ground Laws have proliferated across 33 states.
The National Rifle Association
was a key element in the passage of those laws.
[Jackson] In all states where Stand-Your-Ground Laws
have been passed we've seen gun-related deaths
and homicides increase.
This violence continues to rage forward
and we're watching individuals in our community being slain.
Jordan was very compassionate and very, very sensitive.
He had a lot of wisdom, a great deal of understanding
and trying to figure out the world around him.
The man who murdered my son
was claiming that he feared for his life,
that my son had a gun or stick
and he needed to defend himself.
And the Stand-Your-Ground Law
gave him the ability to be able to do that.
[Woman] Oh my god somebody's shooting.
[Reporter] Jordan Davis was shot and killed here
at Baymeadows in Southside
during an argument over loud music.
[Reporter 2] Dunn admitted to firing his weapon
but said he did it in self-defense
after he says he was threatened by the teens.
[Reporter 3] No gun was found in the teens' SUV.
[Rep. McBath] That man was using his implicit bias
and his racism as a means to act out
his violent tendencies towards my son and his friends.
Because you can shoot to kill and ask questions later
based upon a perception of threat under Stand-Your-Ground.
Having just watched the same scenario with Trayvon Martin
I even had discussions with Jordan about Trayvon's murder.
And Jordan said, "Mom why did that man,
why did he kill Trayvon?
Trayvon wasn't doing anything wrong?"
And I remember saying to him
"Baby, you've got to be careful."
As a young black man
somebody will take out a gun and shoot you.
And there the very discussion I had with my child
became his own reality.
Every single moment that we ignore
what is happening in our streets with our laws, people die.
- I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear
that I will faithfully execute
the office of President of the United States.
[Lacombe] In the early 1990s the Democrats have control
of Congress and they decide to pursue gun regulations.
[Pres. Clinton] What's the point of being President
if you can't help improve the lives and futures of people?
[audience applauds]
[Clinton] Laws can help. That's why I wanna take
these assault weapons off the street.
To regulate how we deal with this craziness of violence.
[Keene] The '90s were a time of turmoil because of
the Clinton administration's assault on firearms rights.
[Clinton] I thought we weren't asking for that much.
[Melzer] Clinton introduced a couple pieces of legislation.
One was the 1993 Brady Bill, which established
background checks, named after Reagan's press secretary
Jim Brady, who was shot along with Ronald Reagan.
[Reporter] The new Brady Law could be a turning point
in the fight against gun violence in America.
- 87% of gun owners support this legislation.
And you begin to wonder, "Well who then does
the National Rifle Association represent?"
[Melzer] Next Bill Clinton introduced
the Federal Assault Weapons Act.
[Man] Weapons designed exclusively
for the purpose of killing people
should be banned except for military personnel.
[Clinton] When I was growing up all we had was
hunting and fishing. This is our culture.
And part of my political base
when I was elected President was working class whites.
I thought, we can fix this without interfering
with hunting and self-protection.
- We have taken this important part of the life
of millions of Americans and turned it into an instrument
of maintaining madness.
[Reporter] Public support for an assault weapon ban
is overwhelming, as much as 70% in some polls.
The trick is translating that into votes on the House floor.
[Smyth] LaPierre was elected to take over the NRA
as the highest-paid executive and try to defeat
any efforts to pass gun reform.
[LaPierre] This is a campaign
for eliminating the Second Amendment entirely.
Unless we fight it, that's America's future.
And it starts with a simple step like a simple gun ban
that too many are too cowardly to fight.
[Smyth] LaPierre started talking about something
called "the slippery slope".
That even the most seemingly benign form of gun control
would eventually lead toward greater gun control
and ultimately disarmament.
[Pincus] The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994
is the indicator that, Oh if we don't stand up
and really assert ourselves,
if we don't really do something about this
we're gonna potentially lose everything.
[Volsky] Wayne LaPierre began penning
incredibly incendiary communications to NRA members.
[Man] Mr. LaPierre talks about this administration -
They'll stop at nothing, even murder
federal agents wearing Nazi helmets
that attack law-abiding citizens.
[Smyth] The NRA's absolutist unyielding positions
was too much for many people then in the GOP
including even Ronald Reagan.
I support the Brady Bill and I urge Congress to enact it.
[Melzer] Former President George Bush Sr. resigned his NRA
membership in response to LaPierre's rhetoric.
[Reporter] Former Presidents Reagan, Carter, and Ford
all signed a letter urging House Members
to vote for the Assault Weapons Ban.
[Clinton] No good member of the House or Senate
no Republican or Democrat, no rural legislator
should ever fear losing their seat for voting for this bill.
[House Speaker] Recorded vote.
The Yeas are 216 the Nays are 214, and the bill is passed.
[applause]
[Lacombe] They passed the Brady Law of 1993,
and then they passed as part of a broader crime package
the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.
[crowd applause]
[Keene] It was an assault on an entire part
of the population on their vision of what America is.
And that's why the NRA's job is to ring the bell.
[Man] We need to make sure that come November
these traitors are defeated, humiliated at the polls
and never serve in public office again.
[Volsky] In this election cycle the NRA perfected their
well-oiled lobbying machine and powerful grassroots army.
[Lacombe] The NRA had developed scorecards that rate
political candidates making it very easy for its members
to find who it was endorsing and to act on that.
[Keene] Your congressmen is A-rated or F-rated.
They go out and they vote.
They turned out in huge numbers in the '94 election.
That was the year that guns made a difference.
[Anchor] Welcome again to CNN's
continuous coverage of Election '94.
[Man] This is an earthquake. This is a tidal wave.
[Anchor 2] It's happening in the House. It's happening
in the Senate. The sands are shifting
right out from under the Democrats' feet.
[Reporter] Republicans take over the Senate.
[Anchor 3] CNN estimating that the Republicans will take
more than enough seats to take control of
the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.
[Reporter 2] Day breaks in Washington, D.C. as voters
across the country wake to the scale of the beating they've
given President Bill Clinton and his Democratic Party.
God they took it out on us. The NRA claimed to have
defeated 19 members of the House when we lost the House.
And we lost 54.
I woke up in a cold sweat thinking about
how I'd let the country down.
I'm sorry I mean we got -
the NRA beat the Speaker of the House.
[Reporter] Tom Foley, 30 years in Congress
is the first Speaker of the House
voted out of office since Abraham Lincoln's time.
[Clinton] What does that tell you?
There's a difference between having popular support
and voting support.
We can't just depend on an opinion poll.
The NRA made guns a voting issue.
[audience applause]
[LaPierre] You launched a political revolution
that changed the face of Congress
and rewrote Bill Clinton's idea of American history.
[applause and cheers]
- Not only was the NRA very successful
in flipping party control in the '94 election,
it also put a 10-year limit on the Assault Weapons Ban
so that it automatically lapsed after 10 years,
and that was the price that they paid
in order to get that bill through Congress.
[Anchor] Now the Assault Weapons Ban,
The ten-year-old law expires at midnight tonight.
Is there any question in your mind
that the lifting of the ban will in fact
cause more of these weapons going on the streets?
- Oh, there's no question
that there'll be more weapons on the streets.
Right now the companies are taking orders.
[Franks] The NRA profit from this idea that the
assault weapon is something that was banned by those
liberals that were coming to take your guns.
Thank goodness that ban is no longer in effect.
You never know when it's gonna come back.
So everybody come out and get a gun like this.
- And I remember Christmas advertisements,
discount prices on AR-15s.
Buy your bargain assault weapons for Christmas.
[Spitzer] The NRA and gun companies really begin to market
assault weapons specifically their military features.
You can accessorize different stocks, different grips,
threaded barrels, removable magazines,
and that means much more profitability for the gun industry.
[Smyth] These weapons proliferated.
The AR-15 became as the NRA dubbed it, "America's rifle".
[Spitzer] But then you begin to see
these weapons used in mass shootings.
[Man] A gunman appeared at the front of one of the theaters
and then he opened fire.
At least 50 people were hit.
- If you look at high-fatality mass shootings
there are studies that show yes, they have increased
since the Assault Weapons Ban lapsed.
- In the face of these tragedies, the arms industry
is uniquely protected no matter how negligent
or reckless their practices might be.
[Keene] We did, I think in one of our great victories
save the firearms industry.
There was a move to hold firearms companies
liable in court for the misuse of a firearm.
We got Congress to pass an act that would prevent that.
[Franks] Because of this law you don't get products
that are designed for safety.
You don't get products that are designed
to stop people from using them for improper means.
You get a blank check to an industry
to advertise in the most irresponsible ways,
to market themselves to kids.
[Keene] If those frivolous lawsuits had not been stopped
gun companies would have gone out of business.
The NRA was key
to the survival of American firearms manufacturers,
more than the other way around.
So they ought to be grateful,
but we don't get our money from them, primarily.
[Men chanting] This is my rifle.
[Man] It's been tested in every theater of war
for the last 50 years.
[Men chanting] My rifle is my best friend.
[Man] Through the dust, the rain and the snow
it's battle tested.
And it's in a class all by itself.
[Men chanting] This is my rifle.
[Man] This is Colt.
[Rep. Jason Crow] I believe in the right to have
self-defense, but you don't need an assault weapon
or 1000 rounds or armor-piercing bullets to do that.
My name is Jason Crow.
I'm the Congressman from Colorado's
sixth congressional district and I represent
many of the families of the Aurora theater shooting,
the Columbine tragedy.
I served overseas in three combat tours
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is a big reason why I didn't carry an assault weapon
in the woods when I was deer hunting.
And there's also a really good reason
why I didn't have my deer hunting rifle
or my duck hunting shotgun
when I was in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Because the weapons that I carried in Iraq and Afghanistan
were weapons of war.
[gunshots]
They were designed to inflict terrible damage on humans
and to take human lives
and to do that with remarkable efficiency.
From every little element, from the magazine capacity
to the muzzle velocity to the type of round that's used
everything is designed with that singular purpose in mind.
The specifications and the technical aspects of weapons
mean a lot. So nobody's ever gonna tell me that
there's no such thing as an assault weapon
because there's no basis in truth for that.
[sirens]
Whether it's in El Paso with an AK-47 or in Aurora
we know what has occurred.
And it's not gonna stop unless we do something to stop it.
[Nicole Hockley] December 2012 everything changed.
Dylan was six so he loved school
and didn't want to go at the same time.
We had this routine that every day we would do a countdown.
So Monday was five days school, two days no school.
Tuesday was four days school, two days no school.
And as the bus was coming around the corner
and the kids were all lining up
Dylan just looked at me
and he said, "Last day school, Mommy."
And I said, "That's right, D.
One day school, two days no school."
And he just kind of nodded at me
and said, "Last day school."
And literally across the driveway
where I was standing with my boys,
the shooter had probably already killed his mother
in the house directly across the driveway from mine.
And I've thought, if I'd looked up at a window
would I have seen him looking down?
Is there something I could have done
to stop him from then driving to the school?
Only a few minutes later probably.
[Woman] Sandy Hook school,
I think there's somebody shooting in here.
[Reporter] 154 bullets fired in less than five minutes
from the Bushmaster assault rifle.
[Reporter 2] The gunman killed 26 people,
20 of them children as young as five.
- The majority of those who died today were children,
beautiful little kids
between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.
As a country we have been through this too many times.
[Sen. Murphy] In the days following the shooting
we thought the world had changed.
We thought everyone had woken up to the idea that we had
to get serious about preventing another slaughter like this.
And we thought that the silence from the gun lobby
and from the NRA meant that they were contemplating
how far they were willing to go to compromise.
[Smyth] The NRA didn't say anything, which has been their
practice after almost every mass shooting in the modern era.
[Crowd chanting] Shame on the NRA.
[Reporter] For four days after the killings in Newtown,
it had nothing to say,
nothing on its website, on Facebook or on Twitter.
[Reporter 2] The White House says that President Obama
is supporting new legislation banning assault weapons,
closing the gun show loophole for buying guns,
as well as a ban on high capacity ammunition clips.
- And then they announced
they were having a press conference.
- For the first time, the National Rifle Association
is responding to the Newtown attack.
[Keene] It was our assumption
that we were up against a very big fight.
So we had to be able to rally our people.
- Like all Americans
we've been discussing all of the various options
that are available to protect our children.
And at this point we would like
to share our thinking with you.
Good morning.
Some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain.
We have remained respectively silent.
Now we must speak.
[Smyth] I wondered what he was going to say,
and if he was going to say something
to attempt to validate the emotions
that were swirling around the nation
about this heartbreaking tragedy.
- The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun
is a good guy with a gun.
- And to me that's like, come on.
[Woman] Reckless behavior coming from the NRA.
- For people to stand there and say,
"No we need more guns."
It was extremely disheartening.
[Man] NRA, stop killing our children.
It is the NRA and assault weapons
that are killing our children.
[Smyth] He essentially blamed the victims,
that the teachers themselves of this elementary school
should have been better prepared.
And the vision that LaPierre put out was one that's
consistent with everything I knew about the modern NRA,
but they had never before said it so clearly and so plainly
out loud because they were afraid it would be too unpopular.
[LaPierre] We need to have every single school in America
immediately deploy a protection program proven to work.
And by that I mean armed security.
[bagpipes play "Amazing Grace"]
[Nicole] After the service we did our first interviews
with media. One of the first questions was,
"What is your response to Wayne LaPierre
saying this morning that the only thing
to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun?"
And I said, "Who's Wayne LaPierre?"
And all I could think was, whoever he is
that is one of the most absurd statements I've ever heard.
We can't just arm everyone and expect a safer society.
[ominous music]
That was my introduction to the NRA in this battle.
- All of us need to demand a Congress
brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby's lies.
[Reporter] Victims of gun violence
and their families demonstrated on Capitol Hill.
[Man] We're here from Tucson, from Aurora, from Columbine -
names that have become iconic in America's bizarre
and shameful epidemic of gun violence.
[Reporter] In Congress the leader of Senate Republicans
joined the chorus of politicians
who are suggesting that something needs to be done.
- As we continue to learn the facts,
Congress will examine whether there is an appropriate
and constitutional response
that would better protect our citizens.
[Peter Ambler] Americans watched Congress,
they watched the Senate. Surely Democrats and Republicans
would come together to put something in place.
- We thought we could get a restriction
on assault weapons passed. That became unachievable
and we were left with this expansion of background checks.
Joe Manchin, coming from a pretty conservative state,
and Pat Toomey, a Republican
coming from a pretty conservative state,
got together at considerable political risk to themselves
and wrote a compromise that would save lives.
- Truly the events at Newtown changed us all.
Nobody here with a good conscience could sit by
and not try to prevent a day like that from happening again.
- I don't consider criminal background checks
to be gun control. I think it's just common sense.
[Ambler] The NRA during that period had an ironclad grip
on our political system when it came to the question
of guns and gun violence in America.
[Reporter] How are you, Congresswoman?
- [Ambler] It takes the courage and resilience
of somebody like Gabby Giffords to take them on.
I started in her office January 3 of 2011.
Five days later she was shot in the head
from three feet away.
[Reporter] Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has been shot.
[Reporter 2] Five victims are dead at the scene.
- Eventually made a miraculous recovery
and went on not only to fight for her life
but to contribute to public service once again.
- I've known days of pain and uncertain recovery,
but confronted by despair, paralysis and aphasia,
I put one foot in front of the other.
[Ambler] In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting,
on the two year anniversary of Gabby being shot,
we threw ourselves into working to pass
the Manchin-Toomey expanded background checks bill.
- Violence is a big problem.
Too many children are dying.
Too many children.
We must do something.
Today I struggle to speak,
but I have not lost my voice.
[Nicole] We never thought
background checks were going to be easy to pass,
but there was the will of the people
and the polls and the way people were speaking out.
- We hear all the time that no one agrees on anything
and why even bother? But it's really a false narrative.
I'm a gun owner, I regularly go to the range
and try to keep my skills up.
I believe that people should be able to own guns,
but we need to do a hell of a lot better job
to make sure that people who shouldn't have them
don't get them.
[Crowd] ♪ Shame, shame, shame, shame ♪
- The NRA just does not represent gun owners anymore.
My passion is hunting,
and half of all NRA members are hunters.
Why is an organization that claims to represent gun owners
working against any effective safety measure
capable of keeping American children safe?
We all want to see kids not get killed in schools.
We all want to see crime be lower.
We all want to live in a better, more perfect union.
By making guns so partisan and saying
politicians are trying to steal our guns,
the NRA is preventing a larger conversation from happening.
- More than 80 percent of US adults
support requiring background checks for all gun sales.
And there is no difference
between gun owners and non-gun owners
or by political affiliation.
[Sen. Leahy] Every American abhors the recent tragedies.
[Keene] I remember talking to Joe Manchin.
He bragged that he'd gotten a new shotgun and I said,
"Well, what happens if the guy on the neighboring farm
wants to buy the old one? You don't need it anymore.
How's he going to like it when you say,
'We got to get in the car and drive 25 miles
to a federal firearms dealer.
And then we got to do a background check on you.'
Is that going to make him happy?
And is he going to be any happier when he finds out
the reason he has to do it is because of you?'
[Nicole] It was bizarre to get to the actual vote
and feel that that was a victory.
And then to start hearing that
we might not have the numbers.
[Sen. Biden] The question is on the amendment,
the clerk will call the roll.
[Clerk] Mr. Alexander, Ms. Ayotte, Ms. Baldwin.
[Nicole] Sitting up in the gallery
you knew where your no votes were cause they wouldn't even -
They obviously couldn't look at themselves in the mirror.
They couldn't look at us.
We had senators who cried in front of us
and then voted against us.
[Clerk] Ms. Heitkamp, no.
Mr. McCain, aye.
Mr. Chambliss, no.
- A few minutes ago, a minority in the United States Senate
decided it wasn't worth it.
They blocked common sense gun reforms
even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery.
[Nicole] I felt that we'd failed.
I had failed Dylan. I couldn't even do this for him.
I couldn't save him and I couldn't even get
one measly little policy passed
that might help someone else.
- Everybody talked about how we were gonna change something.
- To see nothing happen was just a blow.
- So all in all
this was a pretty shameful day for Washington.
- If this, if the death of 20 children
can't motivate people to take action, what will?
[Sen. Murphy] We thought that we were gonna get all of these
changes in gun laws to make our communities safer.
But what we found out is that that's not how politics works.
The NRA had been organizing for 40 years
to get ready for that moment in 2013.
They were ready for those parents who came to Washington,
and they beat them.
[Nicole] When we started I knew nothing about the NRA
and I had no idea what a powerful lobbying group they were
and how insidious they can be.
You know, hearing the lies that they would tell.
You're not just up against smart political thinking,
you're up against people that are just gonna say
whatever they need to say in order to get what they want.
- We've all been under attack since the Connecticut tragedy,
by those who would exploit the victims of a madman
to advance their own anti-Second Amendment agenda.
But the United States Senators
realized that their constituents actually do count.
[Ambler] The NRA was not interested in compromise.
They were not interested in solutions.
They were interested
in a dark cynical vision for this country.
- By the time it was over,
we had a million new members and we had turned the tide.
[audience applause]
[Man] Please welcome our executive vice president
Wayne LaPierre.
- The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun,
is a good guy with a gun.
[audience applause]
[Spitzer] When Wayne LaPierre spoke in the aftermath of the
Sandy Hook shooting, his comments were very much aimed
at the more extremist gun rights community
that is the base of support for the NRA.
There's an old axiom in politics that
a small but a highly motivated minority can often win
the day over a large but fairly apathetic majority.
And that's pretty much the tale of the NRA.
[LaPierre] By almost every measure we are less free today
than we were a decade ago, in ways our forefathers
could never have conjured in their worst nightmares.
[Melzer] Attacking gun safety groups as folks who
fundamentally pose a threat to the future of the country.
This is the culture war that the NRA has been fighting for
decades now and that Donald Trump took up.
[crowd applause]
[Anchor] Some big guns backing Donald Trump.
This afternoon the National Rifle Association
endorsed him for President.
[LaPierre] Oh my gosh I mean here's somebody
that really understands. Let's go after the bad guys
and leave all the good people alone.
- The Second Amendment is under a threat like never before.
[Volsky] When Donald Trump ran for President,
the NRA believed that they were looking into a mirror
because Donald Trump personifies the playbook
that the NRA has successfully been using for decades.
- Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment,
just remember that.
- Our right to gather, our right to speak,
our financial freedom.
All of it in decline.
[Keene] In 2016 from the Trump and the NRA standpoint,
you're talking about the same people.
The people that came out in those small towns
were our people.
[Smyth] Trump represented something
they had never seen before.
Mitt Romney, McCain, H.W. Bush, even George W. Bush
didn't speak that kind of language.
- The National Rifle Association endorsed me
and they endorsed me early, long time ago.
[audience applause]
[Spitzer] They contributed $31 million to his campaign,
poured around $70 million into the 2016 elections overall.
[Keene] We decided that if he was gonna have any chance
in the fall that it was the one bet that had to be placed
and we placed it.
So we all worked together to create a tsunami of rural
small town votes that might not otherwise have occurred.
- And lo and behold, the gamble paid off.
[audience applause]
- Thank you.
[LaPierre] It wouldn't have happened without us.
Without us, we wouldn't have had President Trump.
I mean there's not another organization in the country
that is directly responsible because of the influence
we all have as American citizens
that stand for the Second Amendment.
[Rep. Crow] You see the gun lobby try to wrap this issue
in the rhetoric of patriotism and freedom.
That language is incredibly troubling to me.
I especially take it personally when I see militia groups
dressed up like commandos,
carrying assault weapons on our streets.
[Smyth] Not only is the United States one of the only
advanced nations that allows for civilian ownership of guns
without licensing or registration,
but it's even permissible to walk around
during a political protest with loaded AR-15s.
[Crifasi] We're seeing more and more firearms openly
at demonstrations or rallies as a way to intimidate.
[Man] And we may be scary to some people
but that's because we don't know what's gonna happen
and it's our right in this country to do this.
[Crifasi] The NRA has shifted the pendulum so far
that there's a group of folks at the extreme
that think that the right to own guns as an individual
gives them the right
to do whatever they want with those guns.
[LaPierre] We stand and we fight like hell for freedom.
The revolution to take America back starts here.
[crowd yelling]
[Franks] Now you have a version of the Second Amendment
that says, I can stop you from speaking. I can stop you from
participating in democracy. I can stop democracy itself.
And I am honoring the constitution by doing so.
- I want you to fight back.
I want you to raise hell.
[Trump] We fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell,
you're not gonna have a country anymore.
[mob yelling]
[Lacombe] It's hard to imagine the support that Trump got
for his efforts to overturn the election
being there without the foundation
laid by the NRA as an organization.
[Spitzer] Whether it's the NRA or Donald Trump,
when you build and feed your organization members
such a steady diet of that kind of messaging,
it could explode into disorder and violence.
[gunshots]
- In Kenosha, an armed citizen sent out a Facebook message
saying, we need all the armed citizens to come out
and resist this Black Lives Matter demonstration in response
to the recent police shooting of Jacob Blake,
a 29 year old Black man.
[Man] ♪ Black lives matter
[Crowd] ♪ Black lives matter
[Franks] So Kyle Rittenhouse hears that there are
protests going on and thinks, "I should take up weapons
to defend this other place and their property,"
that that would be a patriotic thing to do.
And does in fact do that.
[Reporter] 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse
killed two protesters and left one injured.
[Lt. Gov. Barnes] What do you think is going to happen
if you have an agitated man with a long gun walking down the
streets thinking that he's some sort of peacekeeper?
[Williams] Why is there no attempt to deal with this person
who's obviously carrying a gun? It's because that narrative
that the NRA has been so effective at promoting
has really taken root in American society and culture.
[Clinton] The NRA believes the deaths of innocent people
is just a necessary price to pay
for people to exercise their freedom.
And you see what the logical conclusion of that is,
that we don't really have
mutual responsibilities to each other.
It's a very high price.
[Williams] The NRA talks about being fundamentally concerned
about American Liberty. Is it the liberty to own a gun
and to pass laws that give people really the opportunity
to treat neighborhoods like hunting grounds?
Or is it this idea that we ultimately want to protect life
and create a standard of living for everyone in this nation?
- The American Dream of wanting to live peacefully
and wanting to enjoy life and wanting to go to school
and become educated and raise your children
and have a healthy safe life,
and not be attacked.
[Fred Guttenberg] My girl, my 14-year-old baby,
I sent her to school. She was supposed to be safe.
My job is to protect my children
and I sent my kid to school.
[Reporter] A heartbreaking day in Florida and sadly
an all-too-familiar one. 17 people are now confirmed dead.
[Guttenberg] In the morning sometimes things get so crazy
and I don't always get to say, "I love you".
I don't remember if I said that to Jamie yesterday morning.
Jamie loved to dance
and I loved to watch my daughter dance.
She would have been an amazing person to watch grow up.
I won't get to do that now.
- Don't tell me there's no such thing as gun violence.
It happened in Parkland.
[Rep. McBath] It's with the Parkland shooting
that I absolutely lost it
because those children were the same age as Jordan.
As I watched them running
out of their high school for their lives.
[Anchor] President Trump is now publicly demanding stricter
gun control in a break with the NRA and fellow Republicans.
- I watched on television,
President Trump was at a round table discussion.
- It doesn't make sense that I have to wait till
I'm 21 to get a handgun but I can get this weapon at 18.
I don't know.
- You underestimate the power of the gun lobby.
- They have great power over you people.
They have less power over me.
[Rep. McBath] And I remember distinctly when President Trump
said, "You don't need to be afraid of the NRA."
And they're all sitting there shaking their heads
like yes, yes and I thought,
okay maybe something's gonna be done.
- Don't worry about the NRA, they're on our side.
You guys, half of you are so afraid of the NRA.
There's nothing to be afraid of.
[Reporter] President Trump held a late night meeting
with the National Rifle Association then tweeted,
"It was a good, great meeting in the oval office."
[Anchor] President Trump dialed back an earlier and
and stronger call he had made
to raise the age limit for buying some guns.
[Keene] In President Trump's case
he obviously empathized on some of these things
as do all of us, but then upon reflection
he realized that maybe what he said
wasn't what he really wanted to do.
He knew what we did in that 2016 cycle.
He was grateful for it and remains grateful for what we did.
He had our support and he had our back.
- The NRA had a seat at the table in the White House.
So at this point, nothing was going to be done.
- It all hit me.
My daughter didn't need to die.
These shootings are predictable and they're preventable.
The NRA knows it, but they're okay with it.
It's a cost of doing business. It's an opportunity for
the NRA to turn around and say, the only way is more guns.
And I just said to my friends and my family,
"I'm gonna break the fucking gun lobby."
Every single person up here today, all these people
should be at home grieving, but instead we are up here
standing together because if all our government and
President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it's
time for victims to be the change that we need to see.
[crowd applause]
- Anybody can make a positive change,
and I mean, we were kids.
I am Emma González, I now go by X González.
Young people took control of the narrative
and told our stories honestly.
- Politicians funded by the NRA telling us nothing
could have ever been done to prevent this.
We call BS.
[crowd cheers]
As a kid, being able to look at the politicians
and tell them you made a mistake and it hurt people.
That was something that a lot of people really understood.
[Crowd chanting] ♪ We want change and we want it now ♪
♪ We want change and we want it now ♪
♪ This is what democracy looks like ♪
- Young people became the new messengers
for gun control in America.
- They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun.
We call BS.
- When I gave that speech and it exploded
we all realized we actually had the eyes of the nation
on our social media. And I started reaching out to people.
We're gonna start this. Let's look into how we can
make March For Our Lives a non-profit.
Let's get a board.
Let's have the kids be in charge.
[Reporter] Thousands of students are expected
to walk out of their schools against gun violence.
[kids chanting]
[González] All of a sudden we went from
this organization that was barely existing
to seeing marches happening all over the world.
[Reporter 2] Here they are flooding the streets
of Boston, Massachusetts, in Philadelphia
and in Los Angeles.
[Crowd chanting] ♪ You are responsible ♪
♪ You are responsible
[Nicole] My kid couldn't do this, but these kids,
this happened to them and they were able to stand up
in that moment and say, "No way, this is not right."
And they don't have to control what they're saying
or be likable or moderate.
They're just gonna say exactly what they think.
- This is our opportunity to talk to President Trump,
Senator Marco Rubio, and all other members of the
United States government that are being funded by the NRA.
Now is the time to get on the right side of this.
- The NRA is so good at threatening people because they
have so much money and power. Interviewers would be like,
"And you're not scared to take on the NRA?"
No, because we have no money from them.
We were experiencing a problem and vocalizing solutions.
- Senator Rubio can you tell me right now
that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?
[audience applause]
- They were afraid of us.
[Jackson] What was encouraging about March For Our Lives
is that they opened the door for folks
who were impacted by violence of all walks of life,
to take the mic and start to tell their stories.
- Everyday shootings.
[Crowd] Everyday shootings.
- Are an everyday problem.
[Crowd] Are an everyday problem.
- It's time to care about all communities equally.
It's time to stop judging youth that look like me
or my brother and that come from impoverished communities
any different than anyone else.
[González] We are trying to stop gun violence
in all of its forms. You have to address the system
on the whole, and gun violence is an epidemic.
It should be treated like an epidemic.
- What are you asking for here in Washington?
- An assault weapons ban,
prohibition of sales of high capacity magazines.
- You're not saying no guns, right?
- We're not saying no guns. We are saying we want
to regulate semi-automatic weapons
and accessories that make them fully automatic.
[crowd cheers]
- We need to focus on changing the conditions that foster
violence and trauma. That's how we will
transform our communities and uplift our voices.
[crowd cheers]
- The young leaders were instrumental in
breathing new life into the gun reform movement.
When there's limited opportunity to tighten gun laws,
we have to ask ourselves what power do
non-legislative actors have to help us solve this problem?
- Dick's Sporting Goods says thoughts and prayers
are not enough. The chain will stop selling
assault style rifles at its 600 nationwide stores.
It's also ending the sale of firearms to buyers under the
age of 21 and will no longer sell high capacity magazines.
[Ed Stack] If these kids are brave enough to organize
and do what they're doing,
then we should be brave enough to take this stand.
- No chance you're gonna reverse this?
- Never.
[Reporter] First it was Dick's Sporting Goods
and now Walmart. Walmart said they will no longer
sell guns or ammunition to anyone under 21 years old.
[Reporter 2] At least 16 companies
now say they cut ties with the NRA.
- When you saw the rhetoric that the NRA had
we could not have our brand attached.
[Chip Bergh] It was the Parkland shooting
that really got to the tipping point.
We needed to take a position.
[Melzer] The general public cried out for change
and that led to tremendous progress at the state level.
- In Florida, its Republican governor Rick Scott
broke with the President and with the NRA.
[Reporter] The so-called Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School Public Safety Act
raises the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21.
- The School Safety Act put in place red flag laws,
extreme risk protection orders.
It started spreading gun legislation all over the country.
[Reporter 2] Despite being the newest target of the NRA
Vermont's gun-owning Republican governor
says he's not backing down.
[Reporter 3] Getting a gun in Illinois
just got a little harder.
Governor Bruce Rauner signed two gun measures.
[Reporter 4] The governor says she is proud
that Oregon passed gun control legislation
since Florida's mass shooting.
[crowd cheers]
- And then we started pushing the importance
of midterm elections.
[crowd cheers]
- Register, speak out, vote. Because what if
checking a box could save a life?
[González] Elected officials are not in charge.
We can vote them out whenever we want to.
We had candidates running primarily
on gun violence prevention, like Lucy McBath.
- I was afraid.
- I will always just be a mother on a mission.
[audience applause]
I'd never run for a federal office before
but I felt it was more of a tragedy
not to even try to save people's lives.
And that even if I didn't win, making sure that people
know this has to be an issue that you go to the polls on.
This has to be an issue that you stand righteously on.
This has to be an issue that is not going away.
[Rep. Crow] I'm a first time candidate.
I've made this a part of my campaign
because I'm frankly not willing to sit back
and let this become a new normal.
- When you know that something is right and you know
that there needs to be change.
Sometimes you just have to jump in.
[Guttenberg] Americans for the first time
were given the chance to respond to candidates
with clear plans and messages, being given the chance
to say, yeah, we want this done.
[Ambler] We ran campaigns from coast to coast.
We endorsed in dozens and dozens of races,
spent millions of dollars.
We elevated gun safety as a primary voting issue
for the American electorate.
[González] We saw on election night
all of the counties and all the states
flipping from the NRA owned.
It was wonderful to watch those returns
come back around the country.
[Anchor] This morning, Lucy McBath
was declared the official winner.
- We managed to help beat 40 NRA-backed
Republican incumbents and elect in their place a
gun safety majority to the House of Representatives.
- This is your night. Your democracy.
- Tonight we begin a new era that puts people first
and recognizes our shared destiny.
[applause]
[Rep. McBath] There is a sea change that's happening
with all the young people that are marching forward.
They're going to the polls as a one issue voter,
and that's guns.
- When I say guns, you say laws. Guns.
[Crowd] Laws.
- Guns. [Crowd] Laws.
[Crowd] Vote them out.
[Clinton] There is a critical mass now of people
who at least know they won't get beat
for doing the right thing, unlike what happened in 1994.
And they know we've got a chance
to have a civilized conversation about it.
That's a big plus and we owe it to them. They did that.
I couldn't do it in my time, but I tried.
[Keene] Anybody that thinks the NRA is gonna disappear
has got another thing coming,
because every time they've thought
that was about to happen, it didn't.
And it's not going to now.
The Second Amendment believer, whether he's an
NRA member or not will rise up once that bell's
been rung and do whatever's necessary
to guarantee the continuation of those rights.
- Think about what would have happened
if the revolution at the NRA didn't take place.
What if they had become an important community organization
and a place for people who cared about the skills
associated with firearms?
Would we have the division that we have right now?
The politicization of the NRA
did signal the end of rational conversation about guns.
[Siler] Any organization that will not bend or compromise
is going to break and that's what we have in the NRA.
Children are dying in our schools as we speak
and nobody is representing gun owners
in the conversation about how to make that better.
[gentle music]
[Crifasi] I want us as gun owners to be
part of the solution, part of the conversation
so we can co-create strategies that are respectful
of the culture of gun ownership in this country
but also have an evidence base
so that we can reduce the burden of gun deaths in the US.
[Jackson] By letting an organization like the NRA
have such a big role in the debate,
they're dominating the discussion.
When in reality, this is a public health crisis
and requires community leaders and survivors
to be leading the discussion.
[Crowd] ♪ Hey hey, ho ho
♪ The NRA has got to go
♪ Hey hey, ho ho
♪ The NRA has got to go
[Rep. McBath] We the activists, we're the Davids
to the Goliath of the NRA gun lobby leadership.
And just as David took down Goliath
we too will take down the gun lobby.
[Giffords] These are scary times.
It will be a long hard haul.
Now is the time to come together.
Be courageous.
- What I want people to do is care, learn,
be angry, and then use that rage to become courage
to take action and do something,
to say, this is not okay and I'm not just gonna be apathetic
and let it continue happening and saying,
it's never gonna touch me. Because it will.
And you have the power to do something about that.
[González] One of the most basic ways
that we are capable of making an impact is voting.
Let the politicians in your area know
that you are paying attention to what's going on
and a lot of people working together on that
can make a huge difference.
[soft music]
- My strength comes from Jamie.
I've lost this capacity for fear and anxiety.
We can't be afraid of the NRA anymore.
Too many people have died, and now it is time to fix this.
[Giffords] We are at a crossroads.
We can let the shooting continue, or we can act.
We can protect our families, our future.
We can vote.
We can be on the right side of history.
Please join us in this fight.