Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) Kentucky Won't Call Republicans Back To Debate Gun Control
HARLOW: Welcome back. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York, and more than a week after two more mass shootings and lawmakers have taken no action on gun control. Right now, it is weeks before either the House or the Senate will be back in session. More than 200 Democrats in Congress have signed a letter calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring the Senate back right now. McConnell has yet to commit to any proposals and Trump has waffled on measures like universal background checks that he has previously said he would support. Let's talk about this with Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania. He is one of the Democrats who signed that letter to McConnell. Thank you for being here.</s>REP. BRENDAN BOYLE (D-PA): Thank you, Poppy, for having me back.</s>HARLOW: Of course. Look, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said that this issue, gun control, will be front and center when Congress comes back into session. Let's wait. Let's see if anything is different this time. You've signed this letter. Your fellow Democrat in Congress in the House, Al Green, said on this program to Jim just last week that it's a mistake for you guys not to be in Washington right now. Is it a leadership mistake in the Democratic Party not to bring the House back to session right now to be on the floor debating this?</s>BOYLE: Well, certainly when it comes to background checks legislation, bear in mind in the House, we passed that legislation exactly six months ago. Every single Democrat voted for it --</s>HARLOW: I understand, HR-8 and HR-11, 12.</s>BOYLE: -- and several Republicans. Yes.</s>HARLOW: Yes. No, I hear you, but should you be there --</s>BOYLE: The first thing --</s>HARLOW: Go ahead.</s>BOYLE: Yes. The first thing is for Mitch McConnell to call back the Senate and move our background checks bill, which I believe does have a chance of passing the Senate, maybe not the 60 votes, but certainly clearing the 51 vote threshold. So that's really the first thing and has been the main focus. I would be willing to go back to the House. I'm from Philadelphia where, by the way -- and I know you brought up the mass shootings that happened in El Paso and Dayton, and understandably. So let's not forget that right here in my home town of Philadelphia where I represent, 12 people were shot over this weekend. So the Philadelphias of the country, the Chicagos, the other places where we have a slow-rolling mass shooting every single week also need attention, which is why Washington needs to act. Now, as far as my willingness to go back to Washington, yes, I would be willing to go back. But let's not allow that to delve into some sort of false equivalency. Mitch McConnell has been in the pocket of the NRA for far too long doing their bidding. He needs to stop blocking the background checks bill and to bring back the Senate, move it so that way we can finally put it in front of the president.</s>HARLOW: Okay. Let's talk about specifics here quickly. I would like to get through two proposals. First of all, would you vote for a standalone red flag law?</s>BOYLE: It would depend on what exactly that means and is in it. I do get -- I would support red flag legislation. However if that is suddenly the beginning and the end of the gun control conversation, that would concern me deeply.</s>HARLOW: So listen to this. From your fellow Democratic, former member of Congress now running for president, Beto O'Rourke. Here's his exchange with Jake Tapper this weekend.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: You were asked in May whether you supported a plan for federal gun licensing. You said it might go too far. I'm wondering what you think now after the El Paso and Dayton massacres if you feel the same way or if maybe your mind is opening about that. That's a proposal that Senator Booker and some of your other rivals are out there talking about.</s>FMR. REP. BETO O'ROURKE (D-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We should do it. We should have a national licensing program in this country.</s>HARLOW: Do you agree with him?</s>BOYLE: It's an interesting idea. I mean, I happen to be a co- sponsor, I think, en Every gun control legislation that is out there, was as a state legislator and had been for the last five years in Congress. That is not one that has been really on the forefront of the agenda. We do license every single automobile vehicle, though not at the federal level, at the state level. So it seems to me if something like an automobile is licensed, there shouldn't be any problem with some sort of database in terms of guns given the danger they present. That said though, would it be the most effective way to reduce gun violence? Probably not. I think there are other measures. We talked about background checks, limiting magazine clip size. The fact that these shooters had been able to get off two rounds a second, the ability to shoot over 20 people within one minute, just one minute of damage, can cost us about two dozen lives.</s>HARLOW: Look, we saw that image.</s>BOYLE: That's something that we really need to address. Yes. We saw it in Dayton.</s>HARLOW: Look at the images, exactly. So on the rhetoric, on the issue, on what we saw in the manifesto from the shooter in El Paso, a number of your Democratic colleagues, as you know, in the last week have gone so far as to call the president a white supremacist. On July 16th, you Tweeted the president is, quote, a racist. Do you, Congressman, also think that the president is a white supremacist?</s>BOYLE: This is something that I've really wrestled with, because I think language matters and we have to be careful with how we address these things. When it comes to specifically the El Paso shooter, ultimately, the responsibility is borne by that person who picked up the gun and squeezed the trigger and killed those people. However, I do believe responsibility also lies with the person who inflamed the shooter, who gave him his cause in life that he was looking for. The fact that you had this mass murderer out of El Paso quote almost verbatim lines that President Trump has used, the fact that he drove the length of Texas, about a ten-hour drive, to go to an overwhelmingly Hispanic city because he purposely wanted to murder Hispanics, and he was using the same rhetoric that President Trump has used. Yes, I do believe that President Trump bears some responsibility for that action. All of us as leaders have a deep moral responsibility to be the sort of leaders in society that model good behavior and that bring out the best in our people. And when we don't have that at the very top, it leads to the sort of consequences that we're now dealing with.</s>HARLOW: A number of Republicans and the president's defenders have pointed to the language used by the shooter at the congressional baseball game, a Bernie Sanders supporter as well, and have said, look, Bernie Sanders is no more responsible for that than President Trump is for this shooting. What do you say in response? And just also an answer to my question about whether you agree with your fellow Democrats who have called the president a white supremacist.</s>BOYLE: Well, first, what happened to my colleague, Steve Scalise, and I was on the Democrat's congressional baseball team at the same time, it was absolutely horrific. I think all of us have to be careful about our language, anyone who has a megaphone. The greatest megaphone of all, of course, is the bully pulpit of the White House. That being said though, again, let's be clear not to delve into some sort of false equivalency. Bernie Sanders has never used the kind of language or attempted to stigmatize a group of people the way President Trump has with the minorities and with others who are the, quote, unquote, other in society. In terms of your question though about the president being a white supremacist, there is no question that he has used the language of white supremacy and white nationalism to attempt to inflame things. So he either truly believes it or doesn't believe it but doesn't really care and is willing to use it in a cynical way to gin up support either is wrong and deeply immoral.</s>HARLOW: Congressman Brendan Boyle, thanks for your time this morning.</s>BOYLE: Thank you.</s>HARLOW: Ahead to Iowa, we go to Democratic hopefuls barnstorming the state this weekend. In a few minutes you're going to hear from California senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris. She will be live from Iowa right here.