Moyers & Company; 217; The Sandy Hook Promise

Please subscribe! This week on Mortars & Company, why don't we find a way to not debate and fight about what you believe guns are and what I believe guns are. Let's come together and figure out a way to make them safer.

In every major social movement toward equality in the arc of the universe bending toward justice, there has been some kind of a tipping point, and perhaps this is one. We will not be defeated in our effort to transform this moment of sadness into a moment of togetherness and affirmation. Funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. The Colbert Foundation, Independent Production Fund, with support from the Partridge Foundation, a John and PolyGuth Charitable Fund, the Clements Foundation, Park Foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. The Herbalpert Foundation, Supporting Organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The Bernard and Audrey Rappaport Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

More information at macfound.org and gumowitz. The Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, the HKH Foundation, Barbara G. Flashman, and by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America, designing customized individual and group retirement products. That's why we're your retirement company. Welcome. You will remember that three weeks ago, a group of parents and others who lost loved ones in the Newtown, Connecticut school killings went to Washington. They walked the halls of the Capitol, meeting with senators and urging them to vote yes for an amendment that would expand the use of background checks for people buying guns. Although a majority favored their legislation, they fell six votes short of the 60 votes necessary under current Senate rules for passage. But the Newtown families, friends, and neighbors do not intend to quit. Their part now of a nationwide movement committed to changing our gun culture.

They call it the Sandy Hook Promise, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School where the 20 children and six educators were shot and killed. Their mission statement reads, America is in desperate need of a new path forward to address our epidemic of gun violence, and then comes the promise. This time, there will be change. Francine Wheeler, one of the Newtown parents who has made that promise, is with me now. She is the mother of six-year-old Ben, a Sandy Hook first grader who was one of those slain in December. You may have seen Francine a few weeks ago when President Obama asked her to deliver his weekly radio and internet address, or you may have watched her on 60 minutes with her husband, David, a graphic designer who will join us later in the broadcast. But first, Francine and I are with Peter Yarrow, the folk singer and activist. You know him from Peter Paul and Mary, the celebrated trio who entertained and moved

us with their music while tirelessly campaigning for peace and social justice. In February, Peter was asked to come to Connecticut and appear in a concert to give those still grieving a sense of comfort and solidarity. Francine Wheeler, who is a talented singer and music teacher, performed too, as did her husband, David. Francine and Peter, welcome to you both. The Sandy Hook promise talks about turning tragedy into a moment of transformation. Was there a moment like that for you after Ben's death when suddenly you realized there was something you had to do? Yeah, but it was very gradual for me. It wasn't that way for everyone. For me, it was a voice inside of me that said, because I didn't want to live, okay? And I felt I had to ask myself, how am I going to live?

How am I going to get up and raise my other child and be a partner to my husband? How am I going to do that? And it just gradually organically happened where I said, you know what? I'm going to talk to people. I'm going to tell them about my son. I'm going to tell them what it's like to be a mother, and I'm going to tell them what it's like to find a conversation about change that is love. I'm going to do it without fighting them. And I knew it. It just came to me and I had a hope. And standing up promise was a group of people who were helping some of the families who wanted to get this message out. And that's what you have. You have many different people in this community who are in such pain. And you know, we didn't ask to be in this club together, but we are.

You said without fighting them, what do you mean without fighting who? Well, when you have 26 victims, you have 26 different families. When you have this country, you have 50 different states. You have people who have different values, different lives that are very different from mine. And different positions on guns. Different positions on guns. Different positions on mental health. Different positions on the security of our schools. So I had to talk to them. And I still do talk to them because their parents, their kids go to school, their grandparents, their brothers, their sisters, their aunts, their uncles. So they have their perspective and they want safety. And I think there's a misconception that Sandy Hook Promise is just about the gun debate. It is not. Now, one of your mission statements is to help the community heal. Of course.

Yes, that's where Peter came in and just helping us to start to heal. And that's so important. You've been in many concerts before, but when I watched the first round of this one on tape, I realized there's something different about Peter Yarra in this. Oh, it's true. I was back in the place that I was when I sang at the March on March 10, 1963. Where Martin Luther King delivered the Ivan Dream speech and Peter Paul Mary sang, going to the wind and I for the hammer, I sometimes say that it was so thick in the air, the love and the sense of determination with pain, somehow transforming the pain into love that you could literally pick it up and eat it for lunch. Yes. I was there for the March on March and I heard you all sing with Martin Luther King's speech. You and David and Peter sang many of the songs from that era, including this one that gives a sense of power in mass action.

How many times must the cannonball spline before they're forever banned? Sing it to us now, my friends. The answer, my friend, is going in the wind. The answer is going in the wind. Was the concert the first time you had sung publicly since Ben died? Yes. Yes. And that concert was very difficult to do, but, and by the way, I was in bed for a couple days after that, it was tough, it was hard, yeah, no, it was hard. But the music helps me prayer community, my church, my family, my friends, and playing. I'm going to sing in a couple of weeks again, you know, I mean, I don't know all the answers,

I don't know how I'm going to do this, I take it each day and today, the answer is music. An act, an act of positive movement forward is singing together. This is not a benign thing. Wittigah III had his guitar and said, you know, this machine kills fascists. This is not something, oh, let's bring on the entertainment, hardly. This is so powerful a tool that when you galvanize people's hearts together and they create that movement by moment by singing together, you're not saying, oh, look how prickly I can sing. They are making that moment together singing as Francine did and it just created a moment of a catharsis when she said, how many times can the cannonballs fly before, therefore Ben, we were not talking about war, we were talking about the war that we have to stop,

which is the injury to our children that allows them to become violent against themselves or others. And when that was understood, in a totally different context from the anti-war movement from that audience roared with a sense of commitment, thought that is activism in and of itself. You need to create that spirit of determination. The Sandy Hook promise pledge talks about being open to all possibilities and having conversations where even those with sharply opposed views, I'm quoting, can debate in goodwill. Now the debate we've been having has come down to the NRA versus gun control, and the guts.

Do you really believe that you can have a debate with the NRA? Well, I don't think that Sandy Hook promise is trying to debate the NRA. I think that what Sandy Hook promise is saying, and forgive me because I'm not a politician I'm coming from, a parent's point of view is, we're trying to say, okay, you own a gun, you don't own guns, I've never owned a gun, I don't know what it's like to own a gun, but there are a lot of responsible gun owners out there, some of whom are NRA members. And they want safety for their children and for their grandchildren. So the common sense, and what we're talking about is, hey, why don't we find a way to not debate and fight about what you believe guns are and what I believe guns are. Let's come together and figure out a way to make them safer. Why don't we do that? Why don't we take them out of hands of people who shouldn't have them, like background checks, common sense, and you know, that's, we're talking about the bulk of the Americans who

believe this, whether they own guns or don't. I mean, we had a number of families go to Washington and have, in my opinion, quite wonderful discussions with a lot of people, a lot of senators who, by the way, were respectful, kind, innocent, and took the time to listen to me talk about my son. In private? In private, but they did. And that's change. But then, of course, you lost the bill. The bill was a positive step forward, wasn't it? The bill that was introduced in the Senate, it was one of the sort of specific actions that you were hoping for. Senator Manchin and Senator Tumey, I have to point them out because they took the courage to say, yeah, I'm from West Virginia, a lot of gun owners here, I'm from Pennsylvania, a lot of people have passionate feelings about this.

And yet they were willing to stand up and say, you know what, I'm a human, I'm a person, so were you, I'm a father, I'm a grandfather. And yet a minority of senators defeated the bill. Well, this time, but, you know, I already had a gut feeling the vote was not going to pass that day. I called that day, I called about 25 senators who had, some of whom had already publicly said they were going to vote no. And I spoke to a lot of their staff, and I spoke to a couple of senators on the phone. They knew in that moment, even though they were voting no, they knew I wasn't going to go. They knew that I believed in this, and that I have hope, and I do have hope. And I heard Ben's voice that day, and he said to me, don't worry Mama, there is hope and love here. So what? Don't feel discouraged.

And I honestly, I'm not going to speak for any other parent, but for me, I didn't really lose hope that way that day. I felt like it was, it was a good step. So you're not finished with this? Our hearts are broken, our spirit is not, and as Mark Barton said in the Rose Garden the day that he's one of the dads, I love him. He got up there and he courageously said, we're not going because where am I going to go? I have to live without my six year old here anymore, for as long as I'm on the earth. So what am I going to do? I have to still parent him. I have to still honor him. I still have to be there for him. So you're in this, I won't use the word fight, you're in this transforming struggle. Movement? Movement? Change. Movement, that's an interesting word. This is a movement you've started, that has been started, right? And where is it going to take us in your mind? I think it will take us to a more loving and safe place, generally.

I mean, that's the quick answer, specifically, maybe it will help communities to be able to be more aware of each other and supportive of one another. I think one of the regrets that a lot of us in Newtown have about this tragedy is that we didn't know, we didn't know that this man was troubled, we didn't know. So that's a problem, we have to change that, we have to know. To me, the real power that made the civil rights movement happen is going to be the power that makes this Sandi Hook promise take place. And I just as I dedicated it myself to, it shaped my whole life being at that, that March on Washington.

I dedicated myself to not only eliminating that horrific unfairness, but other unfairnesses and celebrating the wonderment of what happens when you do confront it. What will change this country are two things. Number one, it's not just the passage of a bill. If people don't have it in their hearts, if we don't believe in ways that you've been talking about, that we care about each other and we can find a common ground and we can reach across the divide, then we're not going to get there. We need to build love and, frankly, in the adults, that's a tough thing to do. But if we concentrate on our kids, giving them a loving environment, I'm telling you something, this Sandi Hook promise is going to be fulfilled.

There is one song in the concert, family. Can you talk about that moment and then I'd like for my audience to hear it. Family was the moment of catharsis for me at the concert. It was astonishing. And then, you know, Ben was there. Ben was there. You know, I've listened to Dar Williams for, I don't know, 15 years. And I had never met her before the day of the concert. And she said through Peter, you know, what does Francine want to sing? And she suggested Pierce Pettis's song, Family. And when I listened to it after I cried for a while, I realized it was the perfect song. I mean, the word I say in the second verse is, we stood outside in the summer rain, different people with a common pain.

And that's what you have. And it also says, there's a line, he's just a child, that's all. It is, to me, such a powerful line, it's a child, he's, you know, in a box in the cold side. He's just a child. That's all we're not talking about sophisticated political dilemmas. Can we just have some empathy for that child? It was gone. We're the teacher that was trying to protect that child. Absolutely. We will play that song for our audience, as we say, farewell. Francine Wheeler and Peter Yarrow, thank you very much for joining me and thank you very much for your witness. Thank you. It's a broken heart, it was fine, but it just fell apart.

It was mine, but now I give it to you, because you can fix it. You know what to do, let your love cover me, like a bell of angel rings. You are my family, you are my family, we stood outside in the summer rain, different people with a common pain, a simple box in that hard red clay, it's where we left him to always remain, let your love cover me, like a pair of angel wings.

You are my family, you are my family, and a child who played with the moon and stars, waves a snatch of hate in a common ball, hill a lonely house of atoms for lies that child is just a child that's all crying, let your love cover me, like a pair of angel

wings, you are my family, you are my family, you are my family, you are my family. You are my family, you are my family, you are my family, you are my family. As we speak Peter Yarrow's only way to yet another performance, Francine and I are joined

by her husband David, David and Francine Wheeler, I'm grateful to you for being here with me. The Sandy Hook promise says this time there will be change, but there was no change after Columbine, Virginia Tech or Aurora or Arizona, how many more deaths is it going to take before change happens? Well, hopefully none, but that's not realistic, this is going to happen again. And the number of deaths at the end of a gun since Ben was killed is an astonishing number. So what we're trying to do in our small way is approach this in a way that it's never been approached before. I think the numbers that people are hearing about percentages of the population in this

country that approve or support the idea of something like an extended, expanded universal background check system, for instance, leveling the playing field for all commercial firearm purchases, those numbers, those approval numbers, those numbers of people in this country that support that, are so very high that it becomes a question of how many voices can we raise and how many people can make their opinions known so that eventually our systems of government that are intentionally designed to do nothing very quickly will respond. So that's where we are. Can you remember what you were thinking is that what you call common-sensical gun bill in this Senate went down to defeat from a minority of Senator? Well, sure.

When we went to Washington and we met over the course of a little over 48 hours with over a quarter of the entire United States Senate individually, and in one meeting we had we're speaking to two senators together. Most of them Democrats, Republicans, most of them A-rated NRA senators. I remember thinking when that happened, we have had excellent conversations with these people. We have had Frank open and honest discussions about their support of the idea of background checks and other common sense solutions we were talking about. And I remember thinking, well, we have these relationships. We can go back and we can talk to them again. And we can open up this communication again for the next time the legislation is brought up. Now, ultimately, we didn't get 60 votes on a background check amendment, on a mention to me amendment. But when we arrived in Washington on Monday, everyone in government was telling us, we see no clear path to even get to cloture, to even get this bill discussed.

To begin the process, the democratic process, the enshrined democratic process of discussion that is the basis and the foundation of our government. And they're still discussing it. Yeah. It's still being discussed. The vote was sort of worse. So we didn't see a path to even ending the initial filibuster to introduce the bill. Which would allow debate on the floor. When we finished, it passed overwhelmingly. I don't mean to sound boastful. But I would think that anyone observing this would say, well, that was fairly effective. What is your next step then? What are you planning to do now in regard to Washington? Well, remember that I'm not a professional about activist by any means. And I have to confess that my experience of the city of Washington and our national government was very, very limited. I had not visited the city many times as a child or as a young adult. I just had never been. So in terms of next steps, we will just continue this.

We will just continue. On December 13th, on December 13th, I was the father to two boys. And I'm still the father to two boys. I still have two sons. And I will continue to help in any way I can to do what I believe as a father is the right thing to do to make our country safe for our children. It is not simply a matter of this country's relationship to firearms, which is complex,

a long history, a very difficult history. Without even opening the door to a conversation about constitutionalism or the meaning of any particular amendment, it is a very complex topic. Other elements of this piece, other elements of this situation are as important if not more so than that part of it. We are choosing to work with the Sandy Hook Promise and allow them to support our voice being heard because of their holistic approach, holistic, absolutely, absolutely. Sandy Hook Promise, Saturday the 15th of December, a number of our friends and neighbors went out into the woods on this walk and they hiked up to the top of one of the highest hills

in Newtown and they stood there and they said to each other, and this is all by way of secondhand, I wasn't there, but I'm told they said to each other, how can we approach this in a way that will change things enough already? And they looked at the history of the activism in this arena and activism relating to other elements of this situation and they realized that in many ways the common approaches of the last 25 to 30 years have not been effective. So a new idea had to rise, a new approach, a new concept had to come to the fore and you simply cannot demonize or vilify someone who doesn't agree with you because when you do that, the minute you do that, your discussion is over, your constructive conversation finishes, it's over.

When you have demoness, when you disagree, exactly and you have nothing left to say but goodbye, so you cannot do that and we cannot do that any longer. This problem is too enormous, it's too big, it's too important. But here's what you're up against. There was this Minnesota radio talk show host who actually said on there to tell the Newtown families to go to hell. I'm sorry that you suffered a tragedy, but you know what? Deal with it and don't force me to lose my liberty, which is a greater tragedy than your loss. I'm sick and tired of seeing these victims, trotted out, given rides on Air Force 1 hauled into the Senate well and everyone is just afraid they're terrified of these victims. I would stand in front of them and tell them they're being you go to hell. Have you heard about that? I hadn't, but I'm not at all surprised. So if he were here, what would you say to him? I think I would, I'd ask him why he feels it necessary to, I mean I don't know that

I'm sure that in his quote or in his speech he gave a reason for that opinion, I didn't hear that part of it, I haven't yet heard, he probably gave some sort of a reason that he holds that very strong opinion. So I'd be interested in hearing about the underpinnings of that opinion because I'm fairly certain that in the course of a reasonable conversation with this man, assuming it's possible that we would find at least one small point where we could agree on something. But I think there are some important elements here. I think people toss around the word the phrase tipping point. You've heard that before. These things happen socially. There were tipping points in the civil rights movement. There were tipping points in the women's suffrage movement. There were tipping points in every major social movement toward equality in the arc of the universe bending toward justice.

There has been some kind of a tipping point. And perhaps this is one. I know it's only been for much and the Sandy Hook promise is just really getting up and running. What are some concrete things that the folks out there listening to three of us right now? What would you like to see some? See them do. Well, one of the things they can do is if they have a representative who voted for the mansion to me amendment, they can call them and thank them. And if they have a representative who didn't, they can call them and say, would you mind telling me why? The president has said it at least a half a dozen times now. Nothing is going to change until the people demand it, until the people ask for it. He said that on December 16th. He did? He did. And the people, the senators who voted against it, one of the things they said in their defense was, well, it was a three to one call from constituents who did not support this bill.

Or four to one. Six to one. And so they were listening to those phone calls. So I would say, you know, get on the phone. If you support background checks and you support your senator to. We know how well-financed, we know how well-organized and we know how effective the other side of this particular part of this debate is. So it's an uphill struggle. There's no denying that. But does that mean it's not worth doing? All right. David, suppose that I were Wayne LePierre, totally the opposite side from you and I were sitting here. How would you try to connect with me? I would say, you know, it's well-documented that he supported background checks in the past. That's not something that can be run away from. The importance of being honest and truthful and not pervericate in any way to the people who listen to him is cannot be overstated.

You know, he has a family. There has to be no matter who is sitting in the chair opposite me. There have to be points where we can agree on something. Well, you say that there are some things we agree on. What are some of the things you think we agree on regarding guns? I think we can agree that responsibility is tantamount, that nobody wants to be irresponsible in any way on either side of this debate. I think everyone can agree that the kind of loss of life that this country has experienced is unacceptable. I don't think anyone would argue in their right mind that that is somehow the price we pay for our freedom here. I just don't think that's a rational explanation. So if someone has a reasonable approach to this issue, I think those are points where we can certainly find common ground.

Suppose Wayne LePierre said to you, do you think a background check would have saved Ben? That's not the point. It's a lovely diversion and an interesting rhetorical tactic, but that's not the point. What's the point? The point is there are a tremendous number of firearms in this country, sales through the roof. Very responsible people are the majority of the owners of those firearms. Very responsible, respectful, safety-oriented, very conscious people, good people. Our job as a society is to try to keep those tools out of the hands of the people who don't have the capacity to use them in a safe and rational way. We do it with almost everything else.

Do you think the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment carries the right to own an assault weapon? And if Adam Lanza had not had an assault weapon, do you think Ben would be alive today? The Supreme Court has affirmed that there are limitations and restrictions to the type of weaponry they can be owned by the public. The intended purpose of a firearm is to shoot a bullet out of the front of it and at the highest possible velocity for whatever reason. Now if you want to buy a weapon for target practice and for shooting on a range, of course that's fine. And obviously, the extension of this technology into the forces of our civil defense aren't incredibly important. No one's denying that.

But you and I, could we afford it, could go and buy an open wheel Formula One race car right now. And we could go out on Interstate 95 and see how far we could get before someone pulled us over and said, you really shouldn't be driving that car here because it is a public safety issue. So what I'm getting at is that's a technology discussion. The concept of lethality is a very difficult one to pin down and people have been working on this problem for a hundred years. But it appears to me, in my opinion, that the one thing that makes a weapon lethal is the number of bullets you can get out of the front of that weapon as quickly as you can. That's why machine guns were banned in 1934.

So let's not get caught up in specific, you know, a general terms of what, how we describe a gun. Let's talk about what the military needs to do their job in a firefight and what sportsman end, end, end, end, end, enthusiasts and target shooters and gun, what they need. Because those needs are not the same. And the vast majority of people who own and use firearms in this country understand that. They get it, and yet, and yet there is an element that is powerful, well-financed, historically entrenched with its hands on the levers of power that is not necessarily concerned with lethality, not really.

I read in the promises mission statement that you've launched an innovation initiative to foster new technologies that can reduce gun violence, one kind of new technologies. I wasn't at the San Francisco Initiative launch, but from my understanding we're talking about technologies that would make it very difficult for someone who does not own that weapon to fire that weapon, whether we're talking about some kind of a palm or fingerprint technology, whether we're talking about a smart gun lock or whether that lock could be on some sort of a storage case or on the trigger lock itself, that kind of thing. And you know, there's a lot to be done there, and it can be done now, but I think there is a larger issue here. And we have to find a way as a society and a culture, and this is going to take time. We have to find a way to release ourselves from the grip of fear.

Fear of what do you see the fear is, and did you see it before the 14th of December? Yeah, I did see it before Ben was killed, men in his classmates and his teachers. I did, you know. The minute there is an economic downturn, we all talk about uncertainty, those kinds of things can foster this fear or a type of fear. The world is a very complex place, and yet now because of technology everyone has the same size megaphone, so that can engender this kind of fear. There is a certain media sensationalism, and often people refer to it, and we've heard this in this discussion from time to time, people talk about the culture of violence, that is certainly related to this. And that, there has to be some way that this darkness can be banished with light.

Well, I noticed it in the Sandy Hook promise. In some sense is modeling itself on mothers against drunk driving, you know, that program on designated drives has probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and I, if I hear you correctly, you're looking not only for legislation like the Senate bill that was defeated, but for non-legislative, voluntary efforts like that. This is very important to be clear about. The idea that cultural change is what's required is I think that that's the kernel of success in there. It's a cultural shift to change the way people think about something they do regularly. The way mothers against drunk driving did. The way we've changed our relationship in this country to many things, many, many things that used to take many lives and still do to some degree, but certainly, you know, we've

made life better in many ways. How do you move from the grieving and from the respect for each other's individual needs at this moment of catastrophe to the kind of political action that can win 51% of the vote, whether it's background checks, salt, weapons, ban or whatever. You have Columbine people, Aurora people, Tucson people, we've all gotten to know who are still working together. So if that's the path that you're choosing to take, and I'm not even saying that this is, I don't know where our paths are going with this, but we work with a whole bunch of people from different tragedies, urban, you know, city people too, who are in common grounds with this, who can work together like this. So it's not, you know, I'll get text from one mom from Aurora who says, you know, hang in there one day, just a text hang in there, thinking of you. That's what it's about, right?

So our system is set up in such a way that the change is going to take time. What would you say to a community listening to us right now that has not experienced the tragedy and the catastrophe that death came to the new town? What would you have that community do? What would you urge them to think about? We have the church that we belong to, Trinity Episcopal Church that has started a community-based group called Ben's Lighthouse Fund, Ben loved Lighthouses. It was an honor of Ben, his name, but it really speaks to the youth in the community. It's an outreach program. It's an outreach program for everyone, religious, non-religious, a place for kids to go that can be listened to, activities, people to counsel. It's a place of it's safe for them to talk or to celebrate together. And that's a positive thing, it's hugely positive. That is also part of the promise.

We have to remember that a lot of this change from what we experienced listening to Peter talk on the concert, I have to remember when I have my angry days, it was positive change. Ben tells me, you know, mama, there's positive things. Remember, love wins. That's right. Tell me about your angry days. We have gone to a grief counselor and other counselors who talk about, you know, it's not you're sad, then you're angry, then you start to get over it or whatever. The seven stages. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't really apply to our situation. It's all mixed up, right? So one day, I'll tell you that happened last week. I saw one of Benny's good friends and they were like brothers and I saw him as mom. I couldn't for like three months see him because it was too hard and finally I said, you know, bring him over.

They came over and he had a tooth missing and Benny never lost a tooth. So I was angry that he didn't lose a tooth and he kept saying, oh, am I going to get to lose a tooth? I said, soon, soon, soon, soon. So yeah, I get angry. I get angry that my kid's not going to get older, yeah, I get angry. So you're taking action with the promise is that helping you to get over it? Personally, just my path has to do with sometimes helping them with legislative change but it also has to do with me singing through it. So I'm going to be singing through my grief. I'm going to be bringing our other son in these communities like my church has started because that's how I'm going to help change. What are you doing with your grief?

I wear a pendant. It's a locket. It's a bill, it's a locket. It's a vile as does Francine containing some of Ben's ashes. I keep it with me. I don't hide from my grief. There is no way out but through. So I go through and I have amazing friends and family who support me. But I don't deny it. So what do both of you hope for? How do you want us to get to where you want?

Right. Don't stop talking about it among yourselves, among your family, among your community, whether that's your community of faith or your town or your city or your state on the national stage, do not think that this problem will go away because it won't. It hasn't in the four months since we lost our son and it's not going away any time soon. It is an enormous problem. So contact your elected representatives and if they don't give you satisfactory answers then allow them to understand the expression of political will in its most democratic sense. Someone in Washington told me a senator said there has to be something worth going home over.

There has to be a vote that you know in your heart is worth going home over. So on the most basic level as citizens, let your elected representatives know what vote you think is worth going home over. I'm intrigued by what you think of those senators who voted against even a background check. I don't mean it in any punitive way. No, I understand. I understand. How do you read them? I don't harbor ill will toward these people. I understand they have difficult choices to make and I understand that the states that they represent and the constituencies they come from are very, very different than the place where I live and the people that I have in my life. There is a tremendous cultural difference but there are also cultural similarities and I am not willing to give those up, not in a million years.

We are parents, we are caring parents and grandparents. And I think that instead of being angry at them because I don't focus on what other people are thinking about what we're doing, I don't even focus really about that senator that voted no. What I focus on is saying we are here. This is what we believe, this is what we hope for and we're going to continue to talk. It's almost like standing at a doorway and saying, okay, well, you can close the door and then we'll keep knocking and then maybe you'll open it again and they will. They will. Why do you think this is such a difficult problem? Why do these issues involving guns create such emotion, such our very republic? Our existence as a nation is founded in the concept of liberty, a new idea at the time. And I can't think of a human concern or part of our human experience that is more essential

to our survival than the idea of our liberty. Including I assume you're about to say the liberty to own a gun. Certainly, I understand that. But also enshrined at the top of that list is the right to live your life. The right of my six-year-old son to go to school and live his life and get off the bus at the end of the day. It is a thorny, thorny problem. I recognize that, but as a nation, we have to be better than that.

As a culture, as a society, we have to be better than that. David Wheeter, Brent Seane, thank you very much for being here. Thank you. David Wheeter, thank you very much for being here. There have been eight school shootings since Newtown and more than 3,800 gun deaths.

The killing feel that his America never calls a truce. In Kentucky this week, a two-year-old girl was accidentally shot and killed by her five-year-old brother who was playing with a rifle he received as a gift. In Alabama, a 24-year-old mother holding her 10-day old baby in her arms was killed by a stray bullet fired nearby. She fell to a couch by the door, still clutching her child. Hold that image in your head and your heart. It's so emblematic of a country that has taken leave of its senses. And remember all the debt from all the solitary shootings and all the massacres. If as David Wheeler suggests, this is a tipping point for the movement against gun violence, the moment has come to push harder than ever.

So make the promise. This time, there will be change. We'll link you to the Sandy Hook Promise and other groups working in gun violence at our website, billmorears.com. I'll see you there and I'll see you here next time. Don't wait a week to get more moyers. Visit billmoyars.com for exclusive blogs, essays and video features. This episode of Moyers and Company is available on DVD for 1995. To order, call 1-800-336-1917 or write to the address on your screen. Being is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy

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