CNN "Piers Morgan Live" - Transcript - Gun Reform and NSA Surveillance
Interview
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MORGAN: Thanks very much. And tomorrow marks six months since the massacre in Newtown. Six months since Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary. You know where I stand on the issue of guns but has anything changed since that awful day?
Joining me now is Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut.
Senator Murphy, thank you for joining me. This is the big question for me. Six month have now gone by, nearly 5,000 more Americans have been killed by guns and it seems to me, let's be brutally honest, absolutely nothing has changed and this prompts the question, if nothing changes when 20 children get murdered, when does it change?
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D), CONNECTICUT: Yes, how can you look in the eyes of the families of these murdered 6 and 7-year-olds and tell them that we can't do anything when the facts are the facts that in Columbine if we had universal background checks those guys might not have gotten the guns.
If we had had limits on magazine clips there'd probably be people still alive in Aurora and Tucson and 20 kids got shot at inside Sandy Hook and all of them died because of the power of that assault rifles. So here's what's changed, Piers, is that there is a political infrastructure now built up around the gun issue. And I will tell you, some of my colleagues in the Senate who went the wrong way back in April are looking for a different path forward because they don't want to go up against Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Gabby Giffords' group, and Moms Demand Action when it comes to elections next year.
That has changed and that may provide us a path back to getting a bill on the floor of the Senate before the end of this year.
MORGAN: I mean, what it needs, it just needs some of guts. And need some of these people to stand up to the NRA. The NRA as it always does has come up with another threatening attack ad, this time against Senator Manchin in his home state, attacking him for a bill that would have strengthened background checks which seems to be the very least that should be happening.
Let's watch the NRA ad.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember this TV add?
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D), WEST VIRGINIA: I'm Joe Manchin, I approve this ad because I'll always defend West Virginia. As your senator I'll protect our Second Amendment rights.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was Joe Manchin's commitment, but now Manchin is working with President Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Concerned? You should be. Tell Senator Manchin to honor his commitment to the Second Amendment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN: I mean, this is what they do, isn't it, Senator? They just bully, threaten, cajole, spend money, try to force politicians on the back front. And unfortunately, it usually works.
MURPHY: Yes, but why does it work? I mean, the fact is that these guys have become pretty miserable at winning elections. In 2012 the NRA targeted 16 Senate seats. They spent money in 16 Senate seats. You know how many of those they won? Three. They lost 13 of 16. You were better off being against the NRA. I would argue now more than ever than being with them and this whole idea about, you know, his commitment to the Second Amendment.
I'm committed to the Second Amendment, too, but there's no constitutional scholar who tells you that the Second Amendment protects 100 rounds of ammunition or dangerous assault weapons. The Second Amendment has limitations. Just like the First Amendment does. And that's why Joe Manchin is a big supporter of the Second Amendment and the main proponent of universal background checks.
MORGAN: Of course he is. And there is an absolutely hypocrisy in the position that many people up in Washington. Let's take an example, Lindsey Graham, who I happen to personally like, but he's very pro-Second Amendment, very pro-gun rights, very anti any new form of gun control or background checks, and yet he's one of the first people to pop up in the last week whole heartedly endorsing the NSA gathering all this date and information about Americans, seemingly oblivious to hypocrisy of that position, when one of his arguments against background check and why should the government have all this information on us?
MURPHY: Yes, you know, it's never made a lot of sense to me. The NRA came out and said, you know what, after Sandy Hook what we should really have is a database of everybody who's mentally ill in this country and we're just going to track them to make sure that they don't do something dangerous.
First of all, that a grievous violation of privacy but second, if you don't have a registry of who has these dangerous guns, what is the information about people who have mental illness do you? The fact is is that there's hypocrisy all over this place, and so long as the NRA essentially strikes the fear into the hearts of lots of senators, it's going to continue.
MORGAN: Just a segue quickly to the NSA scandal. The FBI director Robert Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee earlier today. He invoked 9/11 saying had these programs been in place before 9/11 it may have prevented what happened.
Listen to what he said.
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ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: If we had the telephone number from Yemen we would have matched it up to that telephone number in San Diego. The simple fact that their detention could have derailed the plan in any case, the opportunity was not there. If we had had this program, that opportunity would have been there.
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MORGAN: Senator, you've been briefed on a lot of this stuff. And where do you see the line being drawn? Clearly they're going to get some success with what they're doing in thwarting some kind of terrorist activity. But at what risk and damage to the average American privacy, do you think?
MURPHY: Well, clearly, the information that they've gleaned from this program has led to some bad guys being stopped from doing bad things. I think it's -- probably a little bit of an overreached to say that we would have stopped 9/11 if this program had been in a place. We don't know what people would have done with that information. But to me the issue is this. That I think that the administration needs to give the American people more credit.
I think that we should be having much more public debate about some of these private programs. Not -- not giving out detailed information but leveling with the American public about what kind of information that the administration thinks it needs. My problem is that so much of the war on terror is being conducted behind closed doors, whether it'd be the drone program, or whether it'd be these NSA data collection programs.
And the American public doesn't need to know every detail but they certainly should be part of the discussion.
MORGAN: Senator Murphy, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
MURPHY: Thanks, Piers.
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