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CNN NEWSROOM

President Obama on Gun Laws; Lawmakers React to Shooting; The Shooout with Police. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired December 3, 2015 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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[09:33:06] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The deadly shooting here in San Bernardino, like the Planned Parenthood and Oregon community college shootings before it, unfolding in the midst of a fierce battle for the White House. This morning, several Republican hopefuls will appear at a forum hosted by Jewish leaders. In fact, Ted Cruz, you can see him there, the senator speaking now, we'll bring you what he has to say in just a minute.

But that forum comes as the political reaction to the shootings highlights the ideological divide. Democrats urging tighter gun laws. Hillary Clinton tweeting, "I refuse to accept this as normal. We must take action to stop gun violence now." Clinton's words echoed by Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley. As for the Republican hopefuls, the sentiment focused on those affected by the violence. Ted Cruz tweeting in part, quote, "our prayers are with the victims, their families and the first responders."

And it's that phrase, "thoughts and prayers." Expressed by Cruz's rivals and others that prompted this provocative "New York Daily News" front page. It's gotten a lot of buzz this morning. Take a look. It reads, "God Isn't Fixing This," and slams Cruz and other 2016 contenders as, quote, "cowards" who continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes.

So let's talk about all of this from a political angle. Our CNN senior Washington correspondents Joe Johns and Jeff Zeleny are with me.

Joe, you're at the White House. The president was sitting down with CBS News as this happened. Tell us what he said.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: He did just talk a little bit, but I have to say, over the weekend the president did weigh in, if you will, on that issue of prayers and guns. And he did so in a statement that was issued after the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado. It said, in part, if we're going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again for God knows how many times with a truly clean conscious, then we have to do something about the easily accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business yielding - wielding them." So he did talk a bit about that.

The administration did have an opportunity today to weigh in on San Bernardino. The attorney general speaking here in the White House complex to a group of federal and state officials about criminal justice reform. She did not talk specifically about gun control, but did say in part that violence has no place in this country. This is not what we stand for.

[09:35:17] Now, the president speaking in that interview with CBS News last night. Let's talk - listen just a little bit to what he had to say.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There are steps we can take to make Americans safer. And that we should come together in a bipartisan basis at every level of government to - to, you know, make these rare as opposed to normal.

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JOHNS: Don't know if we're going to hear more from the president today. He is expected to meet with some members of Congress to talk also about criminal justice reform. Perhaps a chance for him to weigh in on that issue to people from The Hill. Capital - Carol, back to you.

COSTELLO: All right, thank you, Joe.

Let's get the other perspective because, as I said, that Republican forum just getting underway.

What is Ted Cruz saying, Jeff?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Ted Cruz is the first Republican presidential candidate who will be addressing this gathering of Republican Jewish Coalition, which starting with a moment of silence. These mass shooting are starting to become a soundtrack of this presidential campaign. Just less than a week ago, Colorado Springs, of course.

But Senator Ted Cruz said that there is still yet to be a lot known from this, but he drew a distinct line with this and radical Islamic terrorism. Take a listen.

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SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And at this point, the politically correct double streak - speak that comes from the Obama administration has gone beyond the point of ridiculous. When the president stands up and says, the Islamic State isn't Islamic, that's just nutty. We need a president who will call the enemy by its name, radical Islamic terrorism, and we will defeat it.

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ZELENY: So, Carol, as you can hear, even before knowing all the details of this shooting, even before knowing what actually was in the hearts and minds of these suspect, Senator Cruz took an opportunity here to directly criticize this administration. We'll hear from all the Republican presidential candidates as this day unfolds.

Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, we'll certainly check back. Jeff Zeleny and Joe Johns, thanks to both of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, several weapons and explosives are recovered. Next, what police are finding and how it's helping in their investigation.

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[09:42:14] COSTELLO: And, good morning. I'm Carol Costello, live in San Bernardino, California.

Of course, police are still piecing together a motive after that shooting rampage yesterday. Officials say Syed Rezwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were killed during a shootout with at least 20 officers. You see, that was the SUV they were riding in when that police shootout went down at a nearby neighborhood.

Chris Cuomo, I'll bring you in here because you've been covering this story for quite some time. That is one grizzly picture.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, that is the result of a shootout that started with an officer taking fire. A local police officer had gone to a home in Redland to do a door knock. While he was there, this SUV with Utah plates comes across him and speeds off. Now it becomes a chase. They start to take fire. You wind up having about two dozen police officers involved, putting out a lot of shells, a lot of suppressive fire because they needed to stop this really quick and brave police work to chase down a car like this when you're taking fire and you know that people inside are already murderers.

COSTELLO: And supposedly the woman was driving, the wife, and the man, the husband, Syed Farook, he was shooting at police officers out of the window.

CUOMO: Yes, they were taking fire. They were obviously returning fire. They then brought in these things called Lenco BearCats, which were controversial back in the day. People said, this is the militarization of police. But they're dealing with militarized weapons. They brought in two of them. They wound up pinching the car. Obviously taking out the suspects. Chased a third person from the scene. They're not related to this. But a lot of questions remain. The worst is over, except for those in the hospital who are still suffering and fighting, but the investigation has just begun.

COSTELLO: I know. So I want to bring in - I'm sorry -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grant.

COSTELLO: Grant Whitus is - I'm sorry, Grant, I forgot your name for a moment. Grant Whitus. He's a former SWAT officer.

I just want you to take - take me through this police chase and how police managed this without harming anyone in the neighborhood. Shots were being fired from the car. Were police shooting back at that moment? Of course they were. So - so how did they keep the neighborhood safe?

GRANT WHITUS, FORMER SWAT TEAM LEADER: Well, I think they did a fantastic job on the shootout and the chase portion. However, I would have liked to have seen a much more aggressive on taking it out. What I mean by that is, our agency developed, and we've used the pit technique when you spin them out, and then the next patrol coming in would ram the side of them, disabling the car and hopefully disabling the people inside. And then the following patrol cars would pull up and engage in - if there was any battle left to be.

So, hats off to them. What a great job they did. I think, unfortunately, our agency's had three mass shootings, so we are much more aggressive on the way we do business here in Colorado.

COSTELLO: And, you know, to complicate matters, the suspects were throwing what appeared to be explosives out of the car.

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WHITUS: Absolutely. Sounds like they had pipe bombs. So one more consideration, and certainly when SWAT got there, they used the bumper shield to pull up on there and remove the bodies out of there, open that up, assuming there was going to be a bomb go off and that would be a way to protect them. Again, you got to worry about so many things. And certainly now when mass shootings occur, you have to worry about bombs all the time.

COSTELLO: Just insane.

OK, let's talk about motive here. Because everybody is wondering why this happened. Was it terrorism? Was it workplace violence? A lot of people have already made up their minds, Chris. You know that. But police are saying hold on. Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, spoke up this morning. She says we don't know why this happened yet. They have to gather all of the information. Americans have to be patient.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": Well, we're also in a very low information society when it comes to these kind of cases. Investigators are very clear. All my sources say the same thing. Slow down. We don't know. And it could be both.

You could have had something triggered in this guy about his workplace environment that wound up giving him some fuel to a fire that was coming from another place. There's very little chance that what happened here was spontaneous. Maybe he was spontaneously angry at this holiday party, the Christmas party. But the idea of the tactical wear, having weapons that they had gotten years ago, having explosive devices that you can't just make in an incident in all likelihood. The cover story to the grandmother. Remember, they handed off their six month old to the man's grandmother's saying we have a doctor's appointment. And then again, their exit is also confusing to the investigators. If

this was a terrorist act, usually what they want to do is kill as many as possible, fight the police, and then kill themselves. They didn't have the means or the aptitude or the interest in doing that.

COSTELLO: They had their faces covered, right?

CUOMO: That's right, and they left. And they then left but then stayed local. Very confusing to investigators, but they are very interested, Carol, in who else knew? They do not believe this begins and ends with these two individuals.

COSTELLO: All right, Chris -- Chris Cuomo, Grant Whitus, thanks both of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, renewed calls for tighter gun laws in the United States as 14 people killed in the deadliest mass shooting since Sandy Hook. I'll be right back.

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[09:51:44] COSTELLO: And good morning. This morning the community of San Bernardino is absolutely reeling as it becomes the latest U.S. city to be affected by gun violence. The growing frequency of the incidents highlighted during this report from the BBC.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just another day in the United States of America. Another day of gunfire, panic, and fear.

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COSTELLO: That's how this incident is being reported overseas, the BBC calling it just another day of gun violence in the United States. And according to at least one unofficial tally, the numbers support that claim. Shootingtracker.com, which defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people including the gunman are killed or injured by gunfire says San Bernardino was 355th, the 355th mass shooting this year alone. It was also, according to Shootingtracker's definition, the second worst mass shooting in the United States. The first took place early Wednesday morning in Savannah, Georgia, where a gunman killed one and wounded three others.

So, let's talk about guns in America. John Lott is the founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and author of "More Guns, Less Crime". Good morning, John.

JOHN LOTT, FOUNDER &PRESIDENT, CRIME PREVENTION RESEARCH CENTER: Good morning.

COSTELLO: John, you know, gun rights advocates and those in favor of more gun laws, they always talk at cross purposes. They can't seem to get on the same page. And I guess I don't feel like having an argument with you this morning. I kind of just want to find out how we can stop these shootings together. How can both sides come up with a plan together?

LOTT: Well, sure. I mean, if you have proposals you want to talk about, I'm happy to do so. I suppose, part of it though is inflammatory claims such as the two you just went through from the BBC, as well as the tracking numbers there. I mean, first of all, these occur at about the same rate in Europe --

COSTELLO: Oh, John, let's be clear. There are too many mass shootings in this country.

LOTT: I know, but I'm just saying --

COSTELLO: We've seen several just in the past couple weeks. So let's just concentrate on that. There's a lot of gun violence in this country. We can all agree on that.

LOTT: Right, but the point was, I was just saying, in order -- there's a reason why you started with those two things. I'm saying, just to be accurate, Europe has about the same rate of mass public shootings as we do here in the United States. France, this year, has had 508 people killed or wounded in mass public shootings. In the entire Obama presidency, there has been a total of 424. This tracking number that you just had, the vast majority of those are gang fights, which are bad. Gang fights over drug turf are bad things. But it's I think misleading.

COSTELLO: John, let's just concentrate on the matter at hand -- gun violence in the United States and how we can stop it and how we can prevent these mass shootings, how we can prevent mentally unbalanced people from getting a hold of guns? How can we all do that? How can we all get on the same page?

LOTT: Right. Well, I think you're going to have a hard time stopping terrorists or others from getting a hold of weapons.

[09:55:02] I mean, if you really believe someone is a danger to others, you should lock them up. But simply and going and telling them they're not going to be able to legally buy a gun when these individuals, such as the ones in San Bernardino, I wouldn't be surprised if they were planning this a year or more in advance. It's very common for these types of mass public shootings to be planned at least six months and sometimes even a couple years in advance. And if somebody's planning that long in advance, they're going to make the pipe bombs, they're going to get a hold of other the weapons that are there, and this is very difficult to stop them.

The question is, what is your backup plan? What do you do when you can't stop these individuals from making these types of weapons? And I hope we're beginning to get to the place where we allow individuals to go and allow and defend themselves. California, it's extremely difficult for anybody to go and get a concealed carry permit, to be able to go and defend themselves against these types of attacks, the type of attack that occurred at Planned Parenthood on Friday or this or at the Oregon school -- are all places where --

COSTELLO: But let's be honest about one thing, John. Two of the weapons that these suspects used were purchased legally. In fact, all the guns as far as we know were purchased legally. So even though tight gun controls in the state of California, it's still easy to buy a high-powered weapon in the United States.

And that's because there are so many guns out there. Over the Thanksgiving Day holiday, 185,000 firearms were purchased. That's a record for the holiday season. Lots and lots of people have guns in this country. Yet these mass shootings keep happening. So, how can more guns be the answer?

LOTT: Well, the question is where people are allowed to have guns. If you ban guns from certain areas, people like these killers don't -- aren't stopped by the bans. The people who obey the laws are law- abiding good citizens who are no longer able to defend themselves, who are essentially sitting ducks. You make it safer for the attackers to go and commit these crimes because they don't have to worry about law- abiding citizens being able to stop them.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there, John. Thanks for joining me this morning. John Lott.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

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