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Police Officer; El Chapo Recaptured; Muslim Woman Ejected From Trump
Rally After Staging Silent Protest; Trump Using Bill Clinton's
Infidelities To Combat Hillary; State Of Emergency Declared For
Thousands Living in Michigan.
Aired 3-4p ET - Part 2>
These are the type of Clinton scandals that people remember from the 90s that makes them tired. And so, I think she just wants to avoid any relationship to scandals, whether they're sexual, whether they are dealing with her handling of classified information or anything in between.
HARLOW: Certainly out there, and at the floor right now.
Mollie, thank you. Appreciate it Molly Hemingway of "the Federalist."
Coming up next, we are going to get back to the gun debate. Guns could actually lockout criminals and young children.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, think about your kid going in and finding the gun and playing around with the gun. That's what you want to expect.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: We're going to take a closer look at the technology behind those smart guns and why not everyone thinks they're necessarily a great idea. Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:34:48] HARLOW: All right. I want you to take a look at something. Let's play this video.
(VIDEO CLIP PLAYING)
HARLOW: What you're looking at in a moment is a so-called smart gun. These are guns that basically lock unless the intended user as the one using them. They can be run by remote watches, the trigger can be stopped from being pulled in a child picks it up or a criminal who is not supposed to have it.
And when you look at smart guns, they're really not sold anywhere in the United States. According to the law, all handguns sold in New Jersey must be smart guns within 30 months after the first smart gun is sold nationwide. That is a new law proposed.
Critics say that this law would effectively ban the sale of conventional handguns in New Jersey. This is way back. This was 14 years ago now. And so, it was never really implemented. Well, two stores tried to sell smart guns in the United States and they were flooded with angry calls. One store owner said that he received death threats, both stores gave up on plans to sell smart guns.
But now, there is new law on the table, it is a bit different, but gets at the same issue. I want to bring in the New Jersey state Senate majority Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat. She sponsored the smart gun law 14 years ago now.
LORETTA WEINBERG (D), MAJORITY LEADER, NEW JERSEY STATE SENATE: I guess that's how long, yes.
HARLOW: Thank you for being here. You are back with to talk about that, but also with what is on the table right now. Walk us through why you think this basically -- I mean failed. You got it passed and then it never worked. No one could tell smart guns, because the guns store owners said they were flooded with calls of people saying why would you do that?
WEINBERG: The law was originally passed some 14 years ago in 2002, in order to spur the technology. We've had one of our universities in New Jersey, New Jersey Institute of Technology, just really getting close to developing this technology. What happened is the pro-gun lobby, the NRA, seemed to stand in the way of moving forward on the research and development. And they kept on using the New Jersey law as the reason. If such a gun comes on the market in New Jersey, it will be the only kind of gun you can buy. HARLOW: Well, because let's be clear. What the previous law did was once this smart gun technology is widely available, then 30 months after that all guns sold in New Jersey have to have the technology.
WEINBERG: Once the attorney general deemed that it met our standards, very important, OK. In recognition of that I put in a new bill, which says no, there will be no mandate that you must buy a smart gun, but once the technology is developed and the attorney general says it meets our standards, then retailers must offer one model for sale. Hopefully that bill has gone through the Senate.
HARLOW: Do you think that's going to be voted on this week.
WEINBERG: On Monday in the assembly.
HARLOW: Do you think it will pass?
WEINBERG: I do believe it will pass. It came out of committee in the assembly. It has already passed the Senate.
HARLOW: Let me read what the NRA has said. We have never had a problem with smart gun technology. Our only issue with New Jersey was the mandate that would require firearm dealers to only sell smart guns. The choice should be left to the marketplace.
Let me push back and ask you this. If the marketplace demanded it so much, don't you think they would be out there already more? There is some Silicon Valley D.C. (ph) money flowing into this technology for sure. But what do you make about what the NRA says?
WEINBERG: First of all, the law, the new law will not say that that is the only kind of gun you can sell. It will say you must offer.
HARLOW: At least one.
WEINBERG: At least one of those models. So that's an incorrect statement that the NRA made. But they have stood in the way by threatening people, making people afraid of moving ahead. Now, the president included the idea of research and development in his latest.
HARLOW: Executive action.
WEINBERG: Executive order on gun safety, which really I was delighted to see it. Something I have been kind of lobbing the White House on over the past year so through the legislative exchange, a group of progressive legislatures. And I'm looking forward to seeing this passed on Monday in the assembly, reaching the governor's desk, and with the support of the White House by moving some funding through the department of justice and through the department of defense into getting this research and development, moving ahead.
HARLOW: But the technology is out there. I mean, they know how to make these. The technology has been out there for more than a decade.
Let me ask you this. You got about 300 million guns in the United States right now. Would you want them to be, or would you consider mandating at least in New Jersey that those guns be retrofitted with this smart gun technology? Is that realistic?
WEINBERG: That is not realistic. It is not anything that our law says. It would seem to me that if you were a person who was buying a firearm, a gun to keep in your home for whatever your perceived issues about safety are, that you would want this kind of a gun, a gun that your child can't get access to, or if somebody steels it, they can't use it.
So all we are asking in this bill is let's move ahead with the R&D, let's get this to the marketplace, and in order to stop the kind of threats, let's give the retailers some cover by saying, OK, you have to offer one model for safe.
HARLOW: Thirty seconds left. Do you think that the government should give the private sector some sort of incentive to build these guns? And I'm not just talking about the big gun manufacturers. I'm talking about the small technology companies.
WEINBERG: Yes, there are smaller technology companies, there are entrepreneurs out there. This is a whole new field. And once this is developed, it probably can be used in a lot of different ways that you and I aren't even thinking of right now.
HARLOW: Senator, thank you very much.
WEINBERG: Thank you.
HARLOW: We'll see what happens at the legislation maybe even on Monday.
WEINBERG: It will be on Monday. Thank you.
HARLOW: Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.
Coming up next, we are going to take you to Michigan, a new threat to citizens of the city already on the nation's most dangerous places to live list. It is not because of guns or crime right now, but it is because of what is coming out of the faucet. That's right, water. We will take you to flint next.
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[15:44:26] HARLOW: A state of emergency has been declared for thousands of people living right now in Michigan. This is months after researchers discovered toxic levels of lead in their water supply.
Take a look at this bottle. This is contaminated water that men, women, children, they have been all drinking, and they have possibly filled their body with this increased lead water for more than a year.
Our Sara Ganim is in Flint, Michigan with more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This neighborhood says it all, 15 percent of homes in Flint, Michigan are boarded up. There is a 40 percent poverty rate, high unemployment and it is consistently at the top of the nation's list of most dangerous places. This 33 square mile city doesn't even have a grocery store. And now, they don't have clean drinking water. For 18 months, researchers believe the water flowing through taps across Flint has been tainted with lead.
RHONDA KELSO, PLAINTIFF IN CLASS ACTION SUIT: I'm paying for poison. Paying for water that's a toxic waste.
GANIM: Rhonda Kelso and her 12-year-old daughter Kay Lynn are among many residents of Flint whose blood levels tested high for lead after the city switched their water source.
In an attempt to cut costs, city officials stopped getting pretreated water from the city of Detroit in 2014, and instead, began using water from the nearby Flint River. The problem is that the Flint River is 19 times more corrosive than Lake Huron, Detroit's water source according to researchers at Virginia Tech. And the city wasn't treating it according to federal law. Lead pipes began to corrode, leaching into the water.
DR. MONA HANNA-ATTISHA, HURLEY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: If you were to put something in a population to keep them down for a generation and generations to come, it would be lead.
GANIM: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha at Flint children's hospital.
HANNA-ATTISHA: It is a well-known potent neurotoxin. There is tons of evidence on what lead does it a child. And it is one of the most damming things that can do a population. It drops your IQ, it affects your behavior, it has been linked to criminality. It has multigenerational impact. There is no safe level of lead in a child.
GANIM: After hearing her patients complain about water that looked and smelled and tasted funny, she decide today investigate. Using publicly available data on lead levels in children in Flint, she found that the percentage of lead in kids double, even tripled in some places after the water switch.
HANNA-ATTISHA: When we saw that it was getting into children and when we knew the consequences of it, that's, I think when we began not to sleep.
GANIM: Here is how this happened. The corrosive Flint River water goes from the plant to the water mains, to the service lines to the homes. In Flint, the water mains are made of iron, which turns some of the water brown. And half of the service lines and pipes in Flint homes are made of lead.
HANNA-ATTISHA: We have to think about it that these children were drinking through lead painted straws.
GANIM: For at least a year, city and state officials denied anything was wrong. The former mayor, Dane Walling, publicly drank the water to make a statement. But a 2011 study had also warned that the Flint River was corrosive, and needed to be treated. Is there a good explanation for why they decided not to add the anti- corrosives?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
GANIM: Material to the water?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
GANIM: Nobody has answered that question?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I don't think there is a good answer for that.
GANIM: Experts tell CNN it would have cost about $100 a day. In late September, officials finally recognized what experts had been saying. The water in Flint was toxic. By October, the city reverted back to using the Detroit water supply, but the damage was done.
GOV. RICK SNYDER (R), MICHIGAN: I do apologize for it with respect to our role in the issue.
GANIM: The state's director of environmental quality stepped down and walling lost a re-election campaign that centered around the issue.
DAYNE WALLING, FORMER FLINT MAYOR: In retrospect, I regret all of it, all the way back to seeing the city move to a different drinking water source. You can't put a dollar amount on the devastation to our community, our kids. It was completely avoidable.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GANIM: So Poppy, the question now is who is to blame. People who live here in the city of Flint, they blame the state, because at the time these decisions were being made, the state had control over the city, because of a financial emergency.
Now, last night there were protests here. People calling for the governor to resign. He did apologize later earlier in the week when he declared a state of emergency here. And you know, there are state official whose have lost their jobs over this. A recent task force found that the blame lied with the state department of environmental quality, that they should have known better. They should have understood better a law. They should have put the anticorrosive agent into the water. But the irony for the people who live here now is they are about 70 miles from the coast of the world's greatest natural water resource, the great lakes.
HARLOW: Yes.
GANIM: Yet, they cannot get clean drinking water from their taps, Poppy.
HARLOW: Unbelievable. Can you imagine your child drinking water with twice the level of lead it can acceptably have. Thank goodness for that doctor you talked to, Sara, who spent her time and energy to get to the bottom of this.
Thank you very much. Sara Ganim, investigating for us in Flint, Michigan.
Up next, the war on ISIS. What the public needs to hear in next week's state of the union address when it comes to President Obama's plan to fight ISIS in his final year in office. Stay with me.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:53:18] HARLOW: The man who fired a loaded handgun into a police car this week arraigned today on attempted murder and other charges. Edward Archer, a 30 year old, started firing and seriously wounded the officer inside that patrol car on Thursday night. He says he did it in the name of ISIS.
A police captain tells CNN that Archer will not say much more other than that he pledges allegiance to the Islamic State. Investigators, though, now trying to get to the bottom of whether or not he really does have a connection to ISIS or to another terror group.
CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier joins me now.
When you look at this, Kimberly, this would mark the fourth time that we have seen a so-called lone wolf or homegrown terrorist attack in the United States in just the past few years. We had the attack on police officers here in New York, you had Garland, Texas. You have this. Where do you think this person fits into that increasing threat of these lone wolves?
KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Unfortunately, he fits right into the group that authorities had predicted would start answering the call, someone who seems disenfranchised, his relatives have told local newspapers that he is mentally disturbed, no one has said that from an official standpoint. But what we are getting is the kind of picture of someone who was easily influenced and radicalized by the constant drum beat of ISIS social media outreach. And one of the things that ISIS has done is say go and attack in your own area. They have said it on twitter to people. All you have to do is leave a note at your home saying that you've sworn allegiance to ISIS and then go attack a figure of authority, like the police or soldiers, and because of that they have made it very easy for fear to spread and their ideology to spread.
[15:55:04] HARLOW: Let's look at the latest polling, because what it shows is that most Americans, and this is not just along partisan lines, most of them, 64 percent, disapprove how the president's handling ISIS. He has one year to turn that around and he addressed the nation Tuesday night in the state of the union address. What are your sources in the military saying they want to hear from this president on this fight?
DOZIER: Well, they would like to hear that there's going to be more of an all-out push. I mean, some members of the military I've spoken to have said they would like to see stepped up clandestine aid, more resources on the ground. Others I have spoken to have said they would like to see the president acting on the intelligence that they are getting. That they are getting a pretty good picture of what's going on in Syria from both technical and human intelligence that they have a pretty good lay of the land in terms of the ISIS network, but that because of fears of civilian causalities, but also because the U.S. doesn't want to put some of the resources you need on the ground to go after some of these targets that the campaign is going more slowly than some would like.
HARLOW: Thirty seconds left, obviously, I should have mentioned at the top the San Bernardino case. I mean, the other prime example of this. What can law enforcement get or what do they want from the federal government to make this a more effective fight here at home?
DOZIER: Well, one of the things that has just happened, the White House announced on Friday was that they have a new office inside the state department, or rather a new chief. The former head of special operations within the Pentagon who is going to take over the messaging campaign to try to stop the message from ISIS that's drawing people and also the department of homeland security and department of justice are reorganizing their counter-violent extremism fight. They have tried to do this before. Let's see if they can figure out how to reach the masses and head off is.
HARLOW: Kimberly Dozier for us in Washington, thank you so much.
We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(Byline: Poppy Harlow; Kimberly Dozier; Sara Ganim Chris Frates; Sara Murray; Nick Valencia; Miguel Marquez)
(Guest: Molly Hemingway; Ioan Grillo; Loretta Weinberg)
(High: Authorities say Edward Archer fired 13 shots at Officer Jesse Hartnett using a 0.9 block that had been stolen back in 2013 from another city police officer. Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was recaptured with five people died in the shootout and six were arrested. Muslim woman ejected from trump rally after she stood up and silent protest during his speech. Trump is using Bill Clinton's infidelities against and Bill Clinton won't answer unless he will be the GOP presidential nominee. The new law proposed that there will be no mandate that you must buy a smart gun, but once the technology is developed and the attorney general says it meets our standards, then retailers must offer one model for sale. State of emergency has been declared for thousands of people living right now in Michigan after researchers discovered toxic levels of lead in their water supply.)
(Spec: Molly Hemingway; Ioan Grillo; Loretta Weinberg; Families; Guns; Police; Polls; Government)
