can imagine. but the fact we're allowed to see it, florida allows video in courts to go out to news. here we go. >> he's walking in. you see him in the orange jumpsuit. let's listen. >> mr. cruz. okay. thank you. are you nicholas jacob cruz? >>, yes, ma'am. >> okay you are charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. i have something very important to tell you. you're charged with some very serious crimes. you have the rrs right to remain silent. if you give up that during this hearing whatever you say can and will be used against you in the prosecution of this case. state, how would you like to pr proceed today. are you seeking no bond and a presumption break? >> yes, your honor. >> you may proceed. >> your honor, the state is

relying on the sworn affidavit the court has provided to the 17 counts of first-degree murder and the contents of the sworn affidavit by defgts citing the ankles of the defendant of going on to the high school on february 14th, 2018, with a premeditated design in that he went loaded with an ar-15 rifle. he had additional am in addition with him and shot 17 individuals who later died as a result of the gunshot wounds. and then he fled the scene. the state is seeking a no bond hold on the defendant. >> defense? >> the defense has no arguments at this time and will defer until further court proceedings. we invoke mr. cruz's rrz and that applies to law enforcement agencies that are involved in this case both at a state and federal level. >> okay i've reviewed the

probable cause affidavit. mr. cruz filed in your case i find probable cause, i further find the proof of guilt to be evident, there are mr. cruz you will be held without bond until further order of the court. this order is without prejudice for you to file auto set bond a request a hearing. has he been assigned a division judge? >> yes, judge shears. >> thank you very much. sir, you're going to be held no bond. >> we see him for the first time since the shooting yesterday. nikolas cruz in shackles and an orange jumpsuit. it's 2:00 p.m. in the east coast, 11:00 a.m. in the west coast. we only heard him say two words in that rarmt. the judge asked him if he was nikolas cruz and he responded,

yes, ma'am. we're going to get into in august of and what we should expect. first, it has now been just about 24 hours since the 19-year-old accused of opening fire with an ar-15 inside his former high school killing 17 people has been in court for the first time. to understand the gravity of what he's charged with doing and the horror he's accused of inflicting, her are the words of the students from marjory stoneman douglas high school who made it out alive. >> i was so confused. i was like, guys, it's a gun. everyone get in the room. we were taking care of each other. we dove in the back of the room in the corner and he just waited and covered our ears. it was insane. >> i saw two girls dead next to each other holding hands. >> i heard six shots, loud shots. so i started running. >> i know your best friend was shot right next to you.

>> yeah. >> do you know how she's doing? do you know what happened to her? >> yeah, unfortunately she didn't make it. >> i don't want this just to be another mass shooting. i want this to be the last mass shooting. >> what happened inside that school was captured on video. we're going to warn you before we play it in case you need to cover your eyes or walk away. we also think it's important to show this because the reality is these kids could not cover their eyes or walk away. they had to walk through it and, in some cases, over the bloody bodies of their peers, their teachers, their friends. >> holy -- [ gunfire ] >> oh, my god. [ gunfire ] [ screaming snchltd ] >> today the president of the united states announced he will be going to parkland. he quoted scripture. he urged americans to come

together. but he didn't talk about guns. he proposed no real answers and no real solutions to this national crisis. >> we are all joined together as one american family. and your suffering is our burden also. no child, no teacher, should ever be in danger in an american school. no parent should ever have to fear for their sons and daughters when they kiss them goodbye in the morning. >> in 2018 alone there have been 12 school shootings. but except that reality there have been 18 incidents where students have been exposed to guns at risk of harm or death at school, while they're learning and supposed to be safe. that's one school shooting or whatever you want to call it, every 60 hours. it's only february. so our big question today is

why? why did this happen again? why does it keep happening? why are we okay with children living in fear that their schools are not safe? why where we okay with kids killing kids? why do we express condolences and do nothing? why do we do nothing? literally every single time. this hour we're going to show you the names of every person killed in every mass shooting at a school since columbine. and we're going to spend the next hour endeavoring to answer those questions we just posed knowing there are no good answers, knowing very little if anything have been done to stop this from happening again. nikolas cruz just appeared in court. let's bring in our reporters and analyses. tammy leitner is in florida. danny cevallos is an msnbc legal analyst. we just saw him appear before

the magistrate. he said just two words, yes, ma'am. he's been assigned a judge. tell me what happens next. >> as we saw, what we expected was that he would be denied release. the judge has to make a finding that the proof is evidence or the presumption great as to a capital offense or a life imprisonment penalty. as we heard on the video he's already been assigned a division judge. that case will leave that rarmt court. we will not likely see that judge again. division judge is assigned so anything else his attorneys immediate to argue will be made directly to that court, to that judge. from here on out the next court date will be scheduled and he'll but probably not within the next couple days, but a little farther out but not very much expected today. not very much happened. it was very, very likely that he would be held without bail even though florida requires a significant showing from prosecutors in order to completely deny bail or bond.

>> it was pretty short but pretty emotional. the judge looked at him directly and he held his head down for most of the time and said i have some very serious charges here and these are very serious things that you did. when are we going to get more of a sense of the motive of this, danny? >> we may never. and here's why. going forward, he's represented by counsel. we may never hear his voice again other than the two words that we heard today other than basic words we might hear in court. what we will expect is attorneys will advise him not to speak to anybody. they will develop their defense. there is a chance we might see an insanity defense which requires admitting to the facts of the crime, that additional inducing evidence meeting his considerable burden to prove his insanity that he simply had a

mental defect or infirmity at the time of the killing and he didn't understand what he was doing was wrong or he didn't understand the nature and consequences of his actions. given the vast evidence against him so far, that may be in the eyes of his defense team the only option. of course, they may see something there we just don't see right now. >> tom, this shooting started about 24 hours ago, almost exactly 24 hours, 2:30 in the afternoon yesterday during this hour. what do you know now about the suspect, about cruz? what have we been able to learn? >> there would appear to be a lot of evidence of premeditation here. we know he allegedly was on youtube talking about how he wanted to be a school shooter. we know that other students at the school said he talked openly about violence, especially towards animals, that he had a collection of weapons, that he

boasted those weapons, showed them off online, that he was expelled from the school because of threats of violence. we know now specific to the incident yesterday that he arrived in an uber car just as school was letting out. we believe that there may be surveillance video inside the school which would capture him in the school. according to federal law enforcement authorities, he came with a gas mask and he came with smoke grenades, and pulled a fire alarm, allegedly so he could then have more politentia targets. he came with many magazines. and then we believe this history of threats having been expelled from the school and showing all of this premeditation might be used as compelling evidence against him. so to danny's point, if, in fact, there is also photographic or video evidence from inside the school, this would seem like

a pretty compelling case. as for him himself, what we know about him, he lost his father six years ago. he lost his mother back in november. he was living with a friend's family. they believed he was depressed but not necessarily mentally ill. but many in the school believed he exhibited signs of being socially awkward and prone to violence or at least interested in violence and guns. >> ann, a lot of the kids say that they told the authorities, they told their parents, they told their teachers that something seemed off about him. the teachers knew about him. there's an e-mail telling people to watch out for him. he wasn't allowed to enter the school with a backpack, only a clear ziploc bag. what can the authorities do, though, with just warning signs? >> i suspect this is going to be a big part of our conversation now because he was essentially hiding in plain sight.

we know that there was notice to the fbi. there was a youtube identity. they couldn't identify it as him but there were teachers and students saying there was an issue. there's a lot in between that can happen. police can knock on the door. they can have a conversation. they can talk to the teachers. i'm not saying that that didn't happen here or something different should have happened because we don't know enough. but i think that this raises a huge issue for us about how we're dealing with these issues in america when we have this volume of school shootings in the past month and a half. we're talking about the 18th school shooting. a lot of these complaints come through, so the police have to figure out as does the fbi, whether when do we go out. >> tammy leitner has been doing just that. she's been talking to people on the ground since yesterday. bring us up to speed on what you've been hearing.

>> sure. katy we're actually expecting a news conference to start shortly. what i can tell you is we will be learning a very detailed time line of how things went don't even. what i can tell you is we do know that nikolas cruz arrived at the school a little bit before 3:00 right when school was getting ready to led out and we asked how was he able to walk onto campus because it was because school was getting ready to let out that there wasn't a lot of security. a lot of people watching who was coming and going. he took an uber to school and then pulled the fire alarm. he did this to draw the students out. that was when he started to open fire. he then followed the students as they ran back into the classrooms, followed them into the classrooms, and basically prowled up and down thallways.

at some point he was able to slip out of the school pretending to be a student and police caught up with him less than a mile away from the school. there's still a lot of unanswered questions. obviously this community is grieving terribly. katy, i've been speaking with the mayor of parkland who's been speaking with teachers and community members. i want to start by asking you, how's the community doing? >> the community's very sad, devastating. this has been something one would never expect to happen in your city. our city is a little over 31,000 are then here, very close knit, family oriented, people come to parkland to raise their family, attend the public schools here. one would never have expected some of this to happen here. >> this conversation became political. it turned to gun control and the issue of mental health.

you have not been shy about speaking about this. why don't you give me your take. >> my take is right now we have people who are grieving. we have people who have just lost their children, have lost family members. and for now our number one priority is to make sure they get the support and the services they need to recover from this. >> and moving forward, though, you do want to make sure nothing like this happens. what will you do to make sure in the future that this community stays safe? >> going forward we have to make sure something like this never happens again. and the best way to do that is if people don't just pick sides and pick sides and issues. people come together and work toward a solution. >> thank you very much, mayor. i can also tell you governor rick scott will be meeting next week in tallahassee with state leaders, pushing to get some legislation passed here in the state that will prevent kids from bringing guns into schools and something like this from happening again. >> tammy leitner, thank you very much. michael balboni joins me now.

tami just said this has been made political talking about gun control and mental health. are those political issues in the eyes of law enforcement? >> no, they're not political issues. they are issues of public safety. as ann knows we've been talking about this thing for 20, 30 years. a the great frustration is there's no single way that you can solve this issue. there's tremendous frustration about this. every issue you take takes you down to a dead end. people say back and forth it's not the only answer. the problem here is house law enforcement going to respond? what are the questions for them and educators? are we going to have an armed camp? at the same time how dow ensure parents their kids are safe? >> we know the suspect was able to slip out with students after he finished shooting and then law enforcement picked him

occupy a short time after that. how were they able to figure out who was the shooter as quickly as they did. >> my sources tell me it was as a result of camera feed, not individual students saying there's the guy. which, of course, gives a chilling aspect. he had enough foresight, if it's true he pulled the alarm and then minimal with the students going out, if he ducked into a room and changed his shirt, if he had been wearing something that covered his face, could he have actually escaped? no, that's one of the chilling aspects of this. showing up when he did during the day, if he pulled the fire alarm, and in mixing with the students was pretty sophisticated trade. >> the law enforcement presence, the first responders that were there, to liberty tate the stud.

al is a professor with the university of alabama's department of criminal justice. he's been tracking mass shootings around the world since 1996 and the shooting at the university of texas. michael said there's no real answer to this because each thing leads you down to a dead end. you're talking about hipaa privacy, civil rights, the seam second amendment, et cetera. is there something we can do to mitigate this now? >> well, to say there's no easy answer, i think, is accurate, but to say that we don't know what's to blame, what the culprit is here would not be accurate. so in my study i looked at more than 40 years of public mass shooters around the world. and i tried to explain why do some countries have more public

mass shooters than other countries. i tested things like homicide rate, suicide rate, national wealth, urbanization, and also firearm ownership rate. what the statistics clearly show, it's not a matter of opinion firearm ownership rate is why we have far more public mass shooters than other countries. >> that alone? >> well, yeah. there may be other things that are difficult to quantify, so it's difficult to measure culture, and i was coding variables for 171 different countries. some people think researchers believe we're in the midst of a narcissism epidemic, fame seeking is part of the problem. the united states is number one in the world in firearm ownership rate, number one in the world of in public mass shooters. in fact, when i looked at school shooters and workplace shooters,

we had 62% of attackers despite having about 5% of the world's population. we clearly have far more than our share. >> the attorney for the suspect is speaking to reporters now. >> -- and care about you. if you throw another ball in and you don't have the support system that you need and the love and the kindness we all need as children, then you start dropping balls. and that affects who you are and that affects the people around you. and when your brain isn't fully developed, you don't know how to deal with these things. when you have the lack of impulse control that a 19-year-old has, that affects the behavior that you exhibit. that's the child that i'm sitting across from. he's sad. he's mournful. he's remorseful. he is fully aware of what is going on. and he's just a broken human

being. i can't disclose any conversations i've had with him. >> he hasn't said -- >> i can't close those conversations. >> you said he's broken, troubled child. but he's also accused of killing 17 other children. >> he absolutely is. and i have a tremendous amount of compassion for every one of those children that are lost, for their families that they're grieving today and what they have to go through for the rest of their life. sitting across from my client doesn't mean that we don't care about the people of this community, the people of this state and the people of this country. i had to have the exact same conversation that every parent in broward county had to have with their children this morning. and then i had to walk and meet with him. i'm fully aware of the impact this has on the people that live here. and this is a national conversation. and unfortunately it's not the first national conversation

we're having. but that's a conversation we need to have later. we need to let these families mourn the loss of their children, of their brothers and their sisters, and these communities can heal and these schools can heal, and we can collectively collectively make your children feel safe again. i think we're good, gordon. thank you. >> that was the lawyer for the suspect, nikolas cruz. we've missed the top of her interview with reporters. she was calling nikolas cruz a broken young man. and also talking about the hardships that he faces but also admitting she had to speak to her children this morning the way all parents had to speak to their children about what happened in the school, certainly not making excuses for him. michael balboni and ann mill graham are still with me. do you think they're setting up an insanity defense? >> that was kind of unusual,

first appearance in my experience of a defense attorney taking that -- almost make it really internal that she's trying to put her own views upon this whole case. talking about this person as a broken person begins to say, he's not right in his young mind. >> i think michael is right. i think it would be extraordinarily hard to get an insanity defense that you didn't know the difference between right and wrong. michael went through these sophisticated things, appalling fire alarm when the students are coming out, going in with a gas station mask, leaving, that shows a knowledge of what he was doing and shows a level i think of awareness. but i do agree it will be litigated. >> tom costello is asking to jump in. tom? i think we just lost tom. we'll come back to him once we get him. in looking at his body language there, what did you make out of that? he kept his head down the whole

time. >> defendants we see in first arraignment, they're shocked they in the system. we have this incredibly emotional and high-energy event in their lives and they're coming down from that. he's been sitting in interrogation room for the last couple hours getting peppered with questions until his attorneys came in. and attorneys interviewed him. there's a lot of information that's going through him. now he's being faced with the reality of the act is over and now this is what the rest of your life is going to look like for however long you're living. tom is with us now. tom. >> i was struck by something he said. he is sad and remorseful. that suggested she is at that moment suggested he is, in fact, guilty. i thought that was an extraordinary thing to say. and i also really sympathized with her.

here is a defense attorney who has a constitutional responsibility and believes that every person has a right to counsel and defense, and yet she's a mother and lives in that area and is clearly struggling with the emotions and the extreme nature of this and the impact on that community. boy, she's in a very, very tough situation. i was really struck by her comments there. but the other thing i would make a point of, she said -- she talked about 19-year-olds without impulse control. 19-year-olds who live in their own universe, their own world. well, his world was kind of broken. he lost his father six years ago. he lost his mother in november. neighbors said they saw police over at the house routinely before his mother died because she was struggling to control him. that he was living in some other alternative universe in which he celebrated violence and was looking for some acceptance

somewhere. so when the attorney talks about somebody who is kind of living in a 19-year-old's world without any sense of impulse control or even self-awareness, you know, we've seen this time and time again across the country in mass shootings. you go back to columbine, you can go back even before columbine. a this is so often the typical m.o. >> alert anybody you can to somebody who's exhibiting this unstable behavior or exhibiting behavior that you believe could lead to violence and they did in this case. >> they did. police were at the house. >> over and over and over again. so the conversation's got to move past reporting it. the reporting of it happened. the conversation has got to move to when you report it what are you going to do about it, or if you're going to report it and there's nothing you can do about it, do you need to move if you

read back and decide how people are able to have such an easy access to weapons? and not just a shotgun that you can use for hunting or a pistol. according to my reading and tell me if i'm wrong, he could not have bought a 9 millimeter glock because he was not 21. he could not have bought a pistol which shoots people one by one by one by one, but he could walk in and legally buy a semiautomatic weapon, who knows if he used a bump stock, doesn't really matter, and moe down children. why is the glock federally regulated and a semiautomatic weapon, i'm sorry i'm getting angry about this, an ar-15 used over and over again to not murder one person or two people, but to murder dozens. we saw this in las vegas. 49 people killed in las vegas or

might have been more than that. i might be misremembering the number. regardless, it was a ton of the people killed there. i don't understand why we're having the conversation about alerting the authorities when we alerted the authorities in this scenario. >> not only that, the authorities has been called the house, the school was aware, they were concerned about mental health issues, for whatever reason maybe because they can't do a mandate hold on somebody, the police can't just take you and put you into a -- >> you can't take somebody against their own will. that's something you cannot do in this country. so find another way to stop people who are unstable from getting semiautomatic weapons or they can mow down people in a movie theater or people in a church. these are places you shouldn't be worried about getting hit by rapid gunfire or worry about

dying when you go to school to learn al gel bra. first responders are holding a press conference right now to talk about what they did yesterday. >> -- opportunity make contact with the suspect. spelling of my name is m-i-c-h-a-e-l. last name-l-e-o-n-a-r-d. [ inaudible question ] >> city of coconut creek. it's a neighborhoods city right next to coral springs, parkland. just to give you a little insight as to what happened in my day is i was at the police department headquarters in coconut creek when the call came out. i decided to come over and help in any way that i could. when i arrived to the area, there was a heavy presence of officers, emergency personnel,

and i decided to expand my search for this individual that was still on the loose. we had been given information via the radio as to what he had been wearing. this information was provided through the radio dispatch. i decided to travel to some of the residential areas located near the school. and as i traveled down one of the back roads, it's a heavily residential area. just myself, there was not a lot of people out. a couple people walking their dogs in the area. as i continued down this roadway, adiscovered an individual walking on the sidewalk that was wearing the clothing description that had been given over the radio. he looked like a typical high school student.

and for a quick moment i thought could this be the person? is this who i need to stop? training kicked in. i pulled my vehicle over immediately. engaged the suspect. he complied with my commands. and was taken into custody without any issues [ inaudible question ] >> you can't comment on that. the investigation is still ongoing. i would like to take this time right now to express my gratitude for my brothers and sisters in law enforcement, mercy services that have put all their heart and soul into this. this is what we train for. we hope this never happens, but i just want to thank them. i want to thank them for all their services and everything

that they do. and my condolences to the families that have love ones that have been lost. thank you for your time. >> hi, my name is frank be back nick, spelled b-a-b-i-n-e-k. i'm fire chief for the coral springs fire department. before i start with how this went for us yesterday, i'd like to tell all the residents of parkland and coral springs that from from all the men and women of our department that we are very sorry for what they're going through. our firefighters share in their grief. they feel for them. they feel with them. we are part of the community, and we are here to protect them during the event and we will be here to protect them after the event. yesterday just before 2:30 p.m., we received a call for a

possible active shooter event at stoneman doulglas high school. we get calls like this once in a while, and they turn out to be nonreal calls, which is a good thing. but as we began to respond, we got more and more information that made this more and more real for us. myself along with several other chief officers and fire personnel were responding to the scene. as we get to the scene, we had to set up an appropriate command post and triage area to deal with the number of possible patients we were going to v. as we approached the scene, we got information that there may be patients on the west side of the building. i went around to investigate that where we did locate one

victim. and removed him from that area. and i returned to the command post. i can tell you that all the first responders trained for events like this. we hope we never have to use it. we hope we never have to use that training. this is a horrible event. but i'm very, very proud of all of the firefighter paramedics, all the first responders, the e.r. folks. i cannot say enough about them. i want to thank you guys for allowing this opportunity, and our firefighters can never -- our first responders can never unsee what they saw yesterday. so we will work with them to make sure they get the resources they need to get through this as part of the community. thank you. [ inaudible question ]

>> thank you. >> thank you. >> michael? >> m-i-c-h-e-a-l. >> first responders talking to reporters and how they worked furiously and very quickly to save students. michael, i want to ask you one question, a bit of clarity. talk to me about the difference between a 9 millimeter and a semiautomatic and why can't we have a semiautomatic -- why can't there a federal regulation of that weapon? >> first of all, the ar-15 is referred to as an assault weapon. it has been banned in places like new york state. it used to be a federal law but it was sunseted. a semiautomatic, at virginia

tech they used a pistol. the bump stock makes it an automatic weapon. >> act like an automatic weapon. chuck rosenberg joins us, senior fbi official at msnbc contributor. chuck, thanks for being here. let's talk about the tips again. we talked to you before the show started and you said there are thousands of tips a year. but unless someone has committed a crime, there's nothing federal law enforcement or law enforcement, period, can do. >> katy, you're right. these tips come in all the time. and i can tell you that men and women in law enforcement are enormously frustrated because they know there's a lot of mental health issues out there and they know there's a lot of weapons out there. but unless someone can be committed, meaning they meet the standards of state law as a dissolution of marriage danger to themselves or others, we can't take them off the

street because of a bad feeling of what they said. that's not how the rules work, katy. >> i want to play a sound bite from paul ryan a little bit earlier today in reaction to this. and get your reaction to paul ryan in a moment. let's play it. >> and i think, as public policy makers we don't just knee jerk before we have the facts and the data. he warns don't have a knee-jerk response to something like this. can you call it a knee jerk response? >> katy, we have the facts and the data for god's sake. the list i was thinking of before i came on, auer and sandy hook and columbine, las vegas, the pulse nightclub in orlando. i don't know the speaker and i don't know what point he's trying to make. we have the facts and the data. look, these are complicated public policy issues, but we know the steps we can take to make your kids safer, for god's

sakes, we need to do that. >> wae have a scroll of all the students and teachers that have been killed since columbine. we'll show that periodically throughout the show when we're able to rerack that list. but it's dozens and dozens and dozens of people long. 1999, april 20th, and on and on and on and on. chuck, if you could change one thing right now, what would you change? >> i would make it much more difficult to acquire these automatic and semiautomatic weapons and to convert these weapons. we've been talking about this now for decades. we know what we need to do. there doesn't seem the political will to do it and that's a tragedy. >> why don't you think there's a political -- what is the mitigating factor. >> i remember thinking after sandy hook if this doesn't change things, nothing will. and it's the same conversation.

i'm all for thoughts and prayers, but thoughts and prayers don't cut it, they're not going to solve this problem. we need legislative action and there doesn't seem to be the political will or encourage to do that. >> i will say this. tell me if i'm wrong about it. in shootings past, we haven't had these sorts of direct conversations in the immediate aftermath. we submitted to this idea that you have to give honor and time to the victims and submitted to this idea that all the facts need to be gathered and tread careful around the issue of gun control. the issue of gun control came out and people started talk about it immediately after this. and people were outraged over those on social media who were offering their thoughts and prayers. there was a response that i noticed. tell me if i'm wrong, seemed to be different this time. >> well, it does sound a little bit different, but the proof's in the pudding. time will tell. there's all sorts of cliches to

describe my cynicism, katy, but i worry that while the tone may have changed a bit, the tune remains the same. we still need folks to act. we know what we need to do. i can tell you coming from a law enforcement background, we've said this over and over and over again. we know what kills people, it's weapons on the street, often in the hands of the mentally ill people. i'm all for thoughts and prayers, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't cut it. it's not nearly enough. yeah, the conversation seems to have shifted a bit but will we actually do something about it? god, i hope so. >> ali velshi is with us from florida. we were just playing the scroll of victims from school shootings since columbine. the hair on my arms stood up as my college scrolled by.

uc santa barbara. all of us have a story of something that doesn't touch us maybe directly but indirectly touches us. we're not all that far removed from this sort of thing now. >> no. but this shooting -- when i was in texas recently, you have the same thing where people say, why would that happen in parkland, florida. just yesterday this city, 30,000 people, was named one of tsafes in america. i was speaking to a parent and said i didn't believe my daughter initially because this is parkland. that wouldn't happen around here. to your earlier conversation, you know, the concept of thoughts and prayers and this isn't the time to tackle some things has become engrained. the dollars and cents are much clearer than thoughts and prayers. the fact is there is a

successful gun lobby that we can essentially say has won. to the extent the politicians say these are the decisions we're going to take. for marco rubio and paul ryan to suggest there's needs more studying to be done, i have students who have survived say to me right now they don't understand why politicians can't fix this. there are things that can be done none of these are absolute secrets or things that come out of the blue. we have always some sense of it and it comes down to who owns guns in this country. it's a complicated topic no one wants to address today in particular circles. >> we have somebody who wants to address this directly, and that's senator chris murphy who will join me next. in the meantime, though, stay with us. senator chris murphy is here to talk about what he thinks needs to be done to change this and why he is calling his colleagues complicit. stay with us.

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we are responsible. for a level of mass atrocity

that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else. as a parent it scares me to death that this body doesn't take seriously of my children. >> that was senator chris murphy on the senate floor yesterday right after he found out about the shooting in florida. murphy was senator when 26 small kids and adults were sprayed with bullets from a semiautomatic weapon inside sandy hook elementary in newtown, connecticut. now he's getting bluntly. if you're a political leader doing nothing about this slaughter, you're an accomplice. so why hasn't congress acted on gun control. when he asks, it never seems to be the right time to talk about it. >> the facts of this case are important. as more details become available, we'll have a deeper conversation about why these things are happening. i think it's important to know about that before you jump to conclusions >> i think it's particularly

inappropriate to politicize an event like this. it just happened within the last day and a half. it's entirely premature to be discussing about legislative solutions, if any. >> senator chris murphy of connecticut joins me now. senator, thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> you represent newtown. since then, 439 people have been shot and 273 school shootings. 112 people including children have been killed. you say your fellow lawmakers are complicit because they didn't done anything about this. that's pretty strong language? >> it's strong language but it's true. the fact of the matter is this happens in the united states. there's no greater degree of mental illness than anywhere else. the profile of the shooter in florida and newton existed in every industrialized country, it's only here in the united states where thoughts that are

spiraling in these very damaged minds end up in this person taking a military-style assault weapon into a school. first, get these weapons off the street. these are copy cat killings, and these weapons kill more people than other weapons. second, send a strong message that we are going to do something about this cultural sell bra tory violence. when we do nothing, when we're silent, we are offering a kind of unintentional quiet endorsement to these murders and they listen to what the highest levels of government say. when we say nothing, it is part of this bizarre perverse calculation that leads them to green light themass slaugters. >> what's stopping us from doing something? >> well, it is really a matter of political power.

and i wish it were more complicated than this, but the gun lobby has owned washington for the last 30 years. the anti-gun violence movement, it's really only about four years old. it really only began after sandy hook. it while to clear out of congress the members who are bought by the gun lobby and replace them with people who want common sense change. it is happening, but very slowly. and much slower than i would like. but it is really a question of political power i think. >> lots of lawmakers tweet their thoughts and prayers are with the victims of agiven -- any given victims. and the florida senator called it a terrible day and his campaign benefited from $3.3 million in funding and opposition attacks thanks to the nra. senator cory gardner tweeted his heart breaks for the situation and prayers for first

responders. columbine and aurora both happened in his state. 3.9 million in funds to him. president trump is going to parkland and the nra spend $21 million supporting him in the election and $10 million on ads and other pro-trump material. i was with the president when he visited the nra and spoke at their convention in 2016 and the images around it were all very, very scary, senator. the people were coming to get you. you need to protect yourself. america is a dangerous place. and the government, if you allow democrats to be in power, want to take your guns away. how do you combat that sort of apocalyptic messaging. >> well it's really a creature of a changed gr-- gun industry. they would sell one or two weapons to the majority of households in 1980 but that number is decreasing today. only about 35%.

and so the gun industry can only make money if they sell a bunch of expensive weapons to a smaller group of people. and so this paranoia about government, that it is going to come and take your weapons, that you need to arm yourself against your enemies feeds a changed business model for the industry. we need to get the fakes out there a -- the facts out there and they areir refutable, if you have a gun in your house it will be used to kill you than an intruder by a magnitude of degrees. people are not safer with these weapons. especially these dangerous weapons. no matter what the nra and trump may tell you. the but the nra has to say no law could protect you except a gun because they need to sell more guns. that is what is happening. >> voters will vote along that line no matter what other issues a lawmaker might be in support of or opposition of. they are all about gun protection. the voters on the other side who

believe gun laws should be stronger or even tougher than having guns in this country, they are not single voter issues so they are not voting in people who are promising to roll back these laws or regulate guns because they don't have the same sort of emphatic beliefs in them, beliefs in controlling guns that the voters have in beliefs in not controlling guns. is the issue here that you need to find single voter anti-gun voters? single issue anti-gun voters. >> i think you are right, historically the problem is a difference of enthusiasm and especially when members in the republican and democratic party are concerned about primaries. you pay attention to the most enthusiastic of your voters. but i would argue that is changing and i would point you to the exit polls in virginia. where 19% of republican voters listed guns as their top issue.

18% of democratic voters listed guns as their top issue. second only for democratic voters to health care. that would have never been the case two or three years ago. and so increasingly you have equal levels of in th-- of enthusiasm on the nra and anti-gun violence side and you may see that play out in the 2018 elections. democrat have consolidated around the idea of stronger gun laws and republicans will pay a price. you diagnosed the problem, but i would argue it is less of a problem. >> senator, what do you want to see change? >> this is such a unique issue. the vast majority of the american people are for change and we know it works. it is not a mystery as to what interventions work and what don't. it is not a coincidence that these mass slaughters have started to mount after the expiration of the assault weapons ban. get that weapon off the street. it is designed to kill people more efficiently. it has no role in civilized society beyond law enforcement and the military. second, universal background

checks. the shooting in lakeland was the only shooting yesterday. every day 90 people die from guns, about 30 or 40 are one-off and many of those who shouldn't have the gun. and then in connecticut have local law enforcement issue a permit in addition to the background check. maybe the shooter would be denied if he to go and look a local law enforcement in the eye before he got a gun. we require that in connecticut and studies show it has reduced our homicides by 40%. >> what do you say to voters who say democrats aren't going to take care of this issue. not to long ago they were in power and didn't take care of this issue. it is not a republican or a democrat thing, it is a lawmaker thing, period. >> well, that is -- the facts belie that argument when the democrats were in power, we had 50 votes to pass universal background checks. it was republicans mounting a filibuster that stopped us from passing that legislation. so democrats, which frankly used

to have a little bit more diversity on these issues, today by enlarge are all supportive of background checks. 90% of americans support background and 90% of congress and only 5% of republicans support background checks and that tells you where the problem is. >> connecticut senator chris murphy. thank you for being here and talking to us about this. we appreciate it. >> thanks for focusing on this today. >> and throughout the day we've been speaking to the survivors of the latest school shooting. whether they are students, teachers or parents, they've been open about what they saw yesterday and how it impacted their community and the hope it never happens again. >> when i was in there, i was freaking out because i was hearing gunshots and i didn't know what was going on and i was just hearing on the walkie-talkies code red. >> my first thought was fireworks. so i get on my -- i why are there fireworks and the baseball coach are like, those aren't fireworks,

fireworks. >> i called my mom and text my brother, daniel, i love you, if i don't make it home, i love you and thank you for everything. and i called my mom and i said there is a school shooter, i don't know if i'm going to make it out. i'm hiding behind a desk. i never thought i would say that to me mom. i thought i wouldn't make it out. >> she was sending us texts saying i love you, i'm sorry and all of that because she didn't think she would make it. >> some of my classmates, my sister from -- my sister had two of her best friends die in this horrific incident. and it's been awful for her. and that is why i'm speaking out, because i don't want something like this to happen again. i want us to take action and i don't want this to just be a mass shooting, i want this to be the last mass shooting. >> the most frightening part is they asked us to get into the auditorium and what was most frightening is watching kids texting their parents, telling their parents that they love

them. crying and trying to comfort them and at the same time -- >> figure out how to stay alive. >> fearing for myself and thinking about my own kids. >> if you were to speak to president trump, what would you say to him? >> enough with catering to the nra. we need to do things to keep regular american citizens safe. i don't hunt, i don't own a gun. i'm a high school english teacher, i'm a journalism teacher and year book adviser and a i'm a mom and someone's sister and daughter and i should be able to feel safe in my school and know that i'm going to go home at the end of the day. >> i believe it is t starts with the politicians and with the nra. all of the politicians will come out right now, you see the city, it is mayhem between the cops and the helicopters and the politicians and probably the president who will fly in and give us words of condolences which are irrelevant and empty because the action that needs to take place -- >> and after all of these shootings, a vigil starts to form and this is a live look at

the vigil that is starting to form in the city of parkland. we often call it a makeshift me memorial. it is a miss -- misnommer. they are all memorials whether they were made with an in tension for the future. my pet peeve. one more thing before we go. this is not a new issue. 30 years ago in 1991 warren burger, the former conservative chief justice of the supreme court decried what the gun lobby was doing to america. >> this is been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud -- i repeat the word fraud on the american public, by special interest groups that i have ever seen in my lifetime. >> today it is not just the gun lobby that you have to contend with. wired is out with an article just know, probe gun russian bots fled twitter after shooting. when you go online be aware of

what you are seeing and who might be trying to sew division. ali velshi picks things up live from florida. >> good morning. i'm ali velshi. in parkland, florida at the scene of another one of america's deadliest school shootings. this is the 18th school shooting in just 45 days. 17 people were killed, at least 14 injured as a result of 19-year-old suspect nikolas cruz walking into the majory stoneman douglas high school and opening fire using an ar-15 and we heard the voice of nikolas cruz for the first time. >> are you nikolas cruz. >> yes, i am. >> you are charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. >> investigation is ongoing with the ultimate question still unanswered. why? as officials try to piece together what happen. we've been hearing students and faculty and parents recount the ho