He was shot at point-blank range, in front of huge holiday crowds of tourists, and died immediately.
It follows an obscene few days in which a four-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his younger brother with his father’s handgun in Minneapolis, a seven-year-old boy shot his sister in Philadelphia, and another seven-year-old boy was shot and killed when his father’s gun went off in the car park of a Pennsylvania gun store.
The sheer regularity and randomness of death by guns in America is what I find so startling. It’s relentless, and filled with as much unspeakable tragic accident as cold, callous, criminal murder, mass shootings and gang violence.
Bob Costas was my special guest tonight, and I asked him to name the biggest problems with America’s gun culture.
‘Forty per cent of all the firearms purchased in this country are purchased without a background check,’ he replied.
‘There is no federal ban on assault weapons like AK-47s, or high-capacity ammunition magazines or a 50-calibre sniper rifle, which can literally pierce an airplane fuselage, or the side of an armoured limousine.
‘There’s no purpose for anyone outside the police force and the military to have weapons like that. And while there are tight gun controls in some areas, it’s ridiculously easy for someone to purchase a gun online or multiple guns or at a gun show and then those guns wind up in the hands of people in Washington, D.C., or New York, which may have stricter gun controls, but it’s so easy to get around the gun controls.
‘You could literally be a felon, walk out of jail, and it would be very easy for you to purchase a weapon without any kind of a background check. You could be on a terrorist watch list, a no-fly list, but you could still acquire a gun in this country.
‘George Zimmerman had an arrest record and he had a restraining order for domestic violence taken out against him in his past.
‘I’m not commenting on the exact whys and wherefores that will play out in the court of law about what happened between him and Trayvon Martin, but what does common sense tell you about the likelihood of that confrontation ever taking place in the first place if George Zimmerman was not carrying a gun?’
‘President Obama has flirted with banning assault weapons,’ I said. ‘Is it time for him to show some proper moral leadership here?’
‘I would like him to, yes. I think people on both sides of the aisle cower before the gun lobby. The laws that govern us and the steps we take ought to be geared towards the larger public good. There are obviously some people out there who have some apocalyptic vision that the government is going to lean towards tyranny, and they’re going to be holed up somewhere with their munitions plant and resist it. I don’t think people with that mindset ought to be having any undue influence on our national policy.’
TUESDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2012
I sat down this afternoon with three of the most experienced senators in America – John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.
And I quickly got into a heated exchange with Graham about guns.
‘The Second Amendment came about because of your country,’ he said accusingly.
‘You’re going to blame the British?’
‘Absolutely. When in doubt, always blame the British!’
‘If you’re worried about us invading again, I can probably relax you on that score.’
‘Why did we decide as a nation that individuals can have the right to bear arms? Because in England, the individual didn’t have a whole lot of rights about religion or freedom of speech. I own more than eight guns. Why should my constitutional rights be limited because you don’t understand why I want eight guns?’
‘Why do you want eight guns?’
‘Because I enjoy shooting. I hunt. It’s something me and my dad did together. In the South, it’s part of growing up. We are who we are as Americans, and we have our faults, but the Second Amendment is ingrained in our culture. Ninety per cent of the football fans at South Carolina or Clemson home games probably own a weapon. And I really do believe it’s how you act as a person that determines your fate, not the sensibilities of someone else. Because if my individual rights under the Constitution are limited by the sensibilities of others, I don’t have a whole lot of rights.’
This is, I’m sure, a mindset shared by tens of millions of Americans.
Their ‘rights’ supersede anyone else’s ‘sensibilities’.
The Obamas hosted a Christmas party tonight for media types.
I went with Jonathan and, when our time came, we lined up for a photo with the President and First Lady.
‘How many of these things do they do?’ I asked one of the Secret Service agents as we edged towards them.
‘There are twenty-four parties like this in December,’ he replied. ‘And they pose for over three thousand photographs.’
‘That’s a lot of standing around!’
‘Yes, Mr Morgan, about thirty-two-and-a-half hours standing around to be precise.’
Incredible.
The American economy’s in turmoil, war in Afghanistan still rages and the Middle East is blowing up in flames. But amid all this, the President and First Lady – as is the tradition for all their predecessors, apparently – spend more than an entire day standing to say hello to mostly complete strangers, and pose for photos.
You get about thirty seconds with them.
‘Mr President,’ I said. ‘We meet at last!’
He smiled in a slightly bemused way – suggesting he hadn’t been waiting for this historic encounter in quite the same breathlessly excited manner that I had.
‘Lovely party, thanks for inviting me!’ I babbled on like a hyperactive One Direction fan finding himself in a lift with Harry Styles.
‘My pleasure, great to have you here.’
They both then automatically slid their arms around my back, pivoting us as a threesome to the cameraman waiting a few feet away.
‘Do we say cheese?’ I asked.
Neither of them replied, which meant that either they didn’t hear me, or they were silently wondering why this crazy British guy was shouting about cheese.
Later, I adjourned for dinner with a few of our team to a local D.C. restaurant.
Halfway through, news broke of another horrific shooting – this time at a shopping mall in Oregon.
‘This is happening all the time,’ I said. ‘When will anyone do anything about it?’
None of my American colleagues seemed to share my exasperation.
They care, don’t get me wrong. They just don’t seem as enraged as I am, and I’m sure it’s because they have grown up in a culture of guns, so have become almost immune to the shock of these events.
More than thirty-five Americans get shot dead every single day; another fifty kill themselves with guns. And this slaughter has been going on for decades.
I just can’t stay as calm about it as they do, and I’m not even American! Or maybe it’s because I’m not American.
WEDNESDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2012
Details of the Oregon mall shooting are horrible.
A twenty-two-year-old gunman called Jacob Tyler Roberts ran inside and fired off sixty shots with an AR-15 assault rifle at random strangers.
He killed two people, seriously wounded a third and then shot himself dead.
Police said he didn’t seem to have any real motive; he just wanted to kill as many people as possible.
I started tonight’s show by telling viewers: ‘Here are statistics that you may find as shocking as I did. There are more than 129,000 federally licensed firearms dealers in this country. That’s according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. To put that number in perspective, there are a mere 36,000 grocery stores and 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants. Far, far more places to buy guns in America than groceries or burgers.’
Sandy Phillips, who lost her daughter Jessica in the Aurora massacre, appeared on the show tonight.
‘It must take you right back to the nightmare that you
went through?’ I said.
‘Yes. Absolutely. Not only myself, but my husband and the other eleven families that lost a loved one in Aurora. We were all texting back and forth last night and all of us were shaking and some of us were crying and we understand the pain that those families that lost loved ones are going through.
‘It’s a horrible state of affairs that we’re in in America right now and it really needs to be addressed. And when we have leaders like Lindsey Graham, who was on your show the other night, saying, “We’re not going to do anything about it because we believe in the Second Amendment,” it makes you even more curious as to where this country is heading.
‘Because I too believe in the Second Amendment. I too am a gun owner. So is my husband. And to not address these issues is ludicrous.
‘When 40 per cent of the guns that are bought and sold in America are bought and sold without any background checks, we’ve got a problem.’
Another guest was Alan Gottlieb, founder of an organisation called the Second Amendment Foundation, and I asked him about the AR-15 used in the shooting.
‘Why would anybody in America who is not in the military or the police force need to ever have one of these weapons?’ I asked him.
After downplaying the power of the AR-15 – ‘The weapon isn’t that sophisticated’ – he cited the L.A. riots of 1992, and how Korean shopkeepers used AR-15s to defend themselves, as an example.
‘You’re talking about a riot that was twenty years ago,’ I replied. ‘Unstable young people in America are able to walk in and buy AR-15 semi-automatic rifles and go into shopping malls and to cinemas and to blow away as many Americans as they possibly can, using these magazines which can carry up to a hundred rounds a minute …’
‘They don’t do a hundred rounds a minute. It only shoots one round. I want you to be factually correct.’
This was nonsense. I’ve seen people firing AR-15s on ranges, and they can easily fire a hundred rounds a minute in experienced hands.
I quickly got angry. I find it impossible not to, when confronted with people who seem to value their right to have guns over the right to life.
At one stage, Gottlieb even started laughing as he tried to insist I had called for all guns to be banned – which I never have. It’s just not a practical solution to America’s problem, as there are simply too many guns in circulation.
‘It’s not funny,’ I snapped. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Because you’re not telling the truth, that’s why I’m laughing.’
‘Well stop laughing, it looks creepy, right?’
Jonathan sighed in my ear. ‘Keep calm, debate him, don’t lose your temper, don’t be rude,’ he said.
But I carried on bickering with Gottlieb until we ran to a commercial break.
‘Sorry,’ I told Jonathan. ‘I can’t keep calm with these people.’
‘Just remember that many of our viewers agree with these people.’
Later in the show, I spoke to Mark Kelly, Gabby Giffords’s husband.
‘When I have this debate,’ I said, ‘a lot of Americans say to me, “Listen, it’s the Second Amendment. It’s our Constitution. We have a right to bear arms.” Do you empathise with that?’
‘Well, I personally believe that people have a right to have a gun to protect themselves in their home, and their family. But I also think that we have an issue with the access that people have to guns, that it’s so easy to buy a gun, especially in certain states. And in certain circumstances, people that are mentally ill can acquire a gun or even, in some cases, a former felon can. So these are problems that I think need to be addressed. You know, we elect some smart people that should be able to work out these issues. They’ve just – they’ve just neglected to do it on this particular case. And there are reasons that politicians tend to ignore this issue.’
They ignore it because the American public doesn’t care enough to force them to do anything.
And I can’t for the life of me understand why.
THURSDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2012
I interviewed Rudy Giuliani tonight and quizzed him about President Obama’s lack of effective action on guns.
‘Don’t you have to try and make it harder for people like this Oregon gunman to get a gun when you’re running a country with so many guns already?’
‘There’s no question about it. I think I probably – with [New York police chiefs] Bill Bratton, Howard Safir and Bernie Kerik – seized more guns in New York City than any mayor in history.
‘Maybe Mike [Bloomberg, the current mayor of New York] and [New York Police] Commissioner Kelly have met that record, I’m not sure. But I was the first one to really seize guns. I believe in it. I believe in getting them out of society, but I don’t believe it really ends crime. Human behaviour is much more important. If you want to do a factor, 75 per cent is human behaviour, 25 per cent is the instrument. Weapons like this where people can kill multiple times very, very quickly, we should have some reasonable restrictions on the use of them.’
This is the sensible voice of the Republican party speaking, but I fear that voice is not getting heard.
FRIDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2012
I was sitting idly around my apartment this morning when Conor emailed: ‘Shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.’
Early reports on this kind of incident, as we both knew from our time working together at the Daily Mirror, are nearly always unreliable and completely contradictory.
It often takes at least an hour or two for any real hard facts to emerge.
At 12.30 p.m. though, the highly respected CBS crime correspondent John Miller tweeted: ‘Preliminary information indicates a couple of dozen shot in CT school.’
Jesus.
A few minutes later, ABC reported: ‘Twelve people, including schoolchildren, dead in CT school shooting.’
I called Jonathan. ‘This is huge.’
‘Yes, do you want to go do the show from there?’
I stopped to think for a moment.
I’ve never done a breaking news show from the scene of a major incident since I joined CNN.
Not because I can’t, or because I’m fearful of it, but because I know we have far more experienced field anchors like Anderson Cooper who do it so well – and because I feel more comfortable doing these big stories from my own studio.
The art of being a successful news anchor is sticking to what you know you do best. Viewers in these situations want anchors who sound and look calm, composed and on top of things.
Jonathan agreed. ‘I think your strength is in the studio.’
CNN showed a live scene outside the school, and my heart sank as I saw frantic parents running towards it.
My mind raced back to 1996, when the Dunblane massacre happened in Scotland. These were almost the exact same horrible images on TV that I had watched then.
Celia came back from a walk and I hugged Elise tightly to my chest.
In three years, she may well be off to an American elementary school like this herself. Newtown is only an hour up the road.
Twitter erupted with shock, anger and outrageous comment – led by conservative political commentator Ann Coulter, who declared: ‘More guns, less mass shootings.’
So incredibly dumb.
Fortunately, there was reason amid the madness, from singer Lenny Kravitz: ‘I appreciate our American rights, but this is, again, why guns should go … doesn’t one child’s life outweigh that right? Wouldn’t you give it up to bring them back?’
I’m not sure the majority of Americans would actually; that’s the problem.
But this horrific incident may be the catalyst for at least some much-needed self-examination among gun lovers.
Maria Spinella, my line producer, tweeted: ‘My family always owned guns, I’ve shot guns. I support gun rights. But America seems awash in guns and something’s gone horribly wrong.’
By the time I went on air at 9 p.m., the full scale of the tragedy was clear. A young man named Ad
am Lanza had shot his mother dead at the home they shared, stolen her gun collection, driven to nearby Sandy Hook school in Newtown, forced his way inside, shot and killed twenty-six people, including twenty children aged six and seven, with an AR-15 assault rifle, then killed himself with a handgun as first responders arrived.
It is the single worst school shooting in American history.
President Obama made an emotional address to the nation, making it clear he intends to do something ‘meaningful’ about this.
I don’t doubt his sincerity, but it’s almost the exact same rhetoric every American president has come out with after every mass shooting in the last thirty years – something that was proved by a viral video on YouTube splicing almost identical clips from various post-massacre addresses by Obama, Clinton and Bush.
As I spoke to CNN’s reporters on the ground, Sandy Hook parents and various politicians, I could feel the fury inside me start to spill over. Those poor kids, they’d gone to school for God’s sake – and had their brains blown out in their classrooms.
We’d booked a pro-gun author called John R. Lott, whose book is More Guns, Less Crime.
‘He fired over a hundred rounds and killed twenty children,’ I told him. ‘Twenty children! At what point do you gun lobby guys say, “We get it. It’s time for change”?’
‘Right, it is time,’ he replied, to my astonishment.
‘Time to do what?’
‘To get rid of some of these gun laws that cause—’
‘To get rid of gun laws?’
He nodded. ‘Look at what has happened, all these attacks this year have occurred where guns are banned. Look at the Aurora cinema shooting …’
Unbelievable. This clown had actually come on my show on the night of this dreadful atrocity to advocate getting RID of existing gun control laws?
‘What the hell has that got to do with it?’ I exclaimed, raising my voice. ‘Seriously? What has that got to do with it?’
I stared at Lott, who has weird pointy, bushy eyebrows, and a permanent sneery half smirk on his face. I wanted to reach across the desk and slap it off him.
‘There are about thirty-five gun murders a year in Britain,’ I shouted. ‘There are nearly twelve thousand murders a year from guns in America. When are you guys going to focus on that and stop telling me the answer is more guns? It is not the answer. Three hundred million guns in America isn’t enough for you? How many more kids have to die before you guys say we want less guns and not more?’
Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney Page 27
