This is such a sickening habit now that we have in this country. What are you feeling today as we report on this yet again?

The first thing I did was I looked back at an op-ed piece that I wrote back in February of 2018 after Parkland shooting, because on my show, I don't know if a lot of people remember this or not, but I probably had the majority of then Columbine, several of the school victims came aboard the show. I actually went to Sharden after the mass shooting there. I was at Maryville Hoechack in Washington State. I looked into the eyes of those kids and my IPP started with Never Again, Again. That was back in 2018. But it really should be never again, again, again, again, again Number two, I'm sorry, we just found this out right before it came on the air. A year before this happened, that 14-year-old, as a 13-year-old, had the FBI knock on their door and ask their family and ask him if he was talking about something like this. The father said, Well, I do have guns in the house, but he can't have access to them. Really? Well, now it's time to start holding the people for children like this. Let's start holding these parents more accountable. Let's start locking those parents up 15, 20 years.

Then we're going to start seeing at least responsibility in the gun ownership world.

Yeah, there's that part of it. There are so many aspects of this that are just, I don't want to say mind bogged, struggling because in a way, we are seeing the same patterns happening over and over again. But that part of it, the parents' responsibility, law enforcement, when they hear a report somewhat credible with a child who has access to weapons, do they have options? Are they utilizing their options? What's happening here?

It's interesting. The White House, when I was there a couple of years ago, they were very focused on this. President and vice President were able to get a bipartisan, a very small bipartisan gun control piece of legislation passed. But you keep hearing the same refrain. I heard somebody say it today. It can't happen here. We never thought it could happen here. I mean, every community in America now has to wrestle with the fact that it can happen anywhere. And all of us are one second away from getting a phone call that we never want to get. And so it's amazing that a very small sliver of the country that holds this Second Amendment orthodoxy that is so different than where everybody else is, is holding the rest of us in a position where we can't do anything to fix a problem that's really just a uniquely American problem. It's amazing that we haven't been able to figure this out.

I today dropped off my daughter at school. The week before, we had your parents come in and scope at school, talk to the teachers. The very first thing I looked at was the security. She's pre-3. She's pre-3. But that's the very first thing we look at. I agree with Wontel. Something has to change. I don't agree with view is that it's a slim majority or a small fraction of the country believes in the Second Amendment. I think a lot of people believe in the Second Amendment.

No, it's not about believing in the Second Amendment. The question is whether or not we believe that your right to own a gun is more important than my right to live.

I went We went to school where we had metal detectors to get into schools. I mean, this is a long, long, long history that we've had. I mean, I went to school in the late '80s. We had metal detectors. I mean, my parents maybe go to a different school. What did they do back then?

We had 300 million guns in America. Let's start. I understand. I know the president was talking or the vice president was talking about a buyback. We're going to buy back 100 million guns? What happened Then after the Parkland shooting, I did 22 years in the military. I had 16 guns. How many do I have now? Zippity doodah. It's my responsibility to help families like yours so you don't have to worry. It's these people who claimed... I had AR-15s. I had a equivalent to Mac-10s. I had 10-millimetre, 9-millimetre, 5-millimetre. Why do I have those many guns? I love being able to go shoot and plink, plink, But it's now time for us to start looking to the future. Stop looking to the past.

But, Monzo, if you were a responsible gunman- If you were to buy back the guns, then what? What is the solution, Ben?

The solution is, first off, this 13-year-old boy clearly had some mental health issues. If he was writing stories about doing a school shooting a year ago and no one provided him with the services he needed. One of the biggest problems in this country, you're going to hear it for the next four or five days, we need to take care of the people who are mentally We'll start paying to take care of the people who are mentally ill. We have got to address mental illness in this country.

But we're not the only country where we have mentally ill kids. I mean, this whole mentally ill issue that, oh, these kids are mentally ill. Of course, they're mentally ill. But you know where else they're mentally ill? They're mentally ill in England. They're mentally ill in France. They're mentally ill all over the world. And yet this is the only country in the world where this happens. I'm old enough to remember Columbine, where this was front-page news for days, if not weeks, if not months on end. Now we see this on a daily, weekly, monthly and we just shrug.

There are questions about whether or not this is really mattering to the American public. I mean, years ago, when Parkland happened, I thought, Wow, this is it. There's no way we can... I mean, everyone did. No way we can countenance these kids. But look at this polling from just a couple of days ago. This is really fascinating. When you ask Americans what is the most important issue to them, look at where gun violence shows up.

You've normalized it.

It's almost at the very bottom. I mean, that was actually genuinely surprising to me, given that there are so many people in this country for whom this is a very important issue because it's not just the kids who are in school, it's their parents who are dropping them off and their grandparents who want them home.

I think we can all agree that a solution, there needs to be solutions. It's how do we get there? I think many of us at this table very much disagree on how we get there. But there is something that we haven't addressed. This is a Washington Post statistic that shows 86% of mass shootings in gun-free zones. So Montell, you were saying how you used to have a number of firearms.

I mean, it's largely what? Schools? Schools, parks?

I mean, large- 131 plus this year in schools alone.

Incidents of guns, 80 kids. I don't think that that's an indictment on gun in free zones. I think people are not... They're not getting the guns from the schools. They're bringing the guns into schools. Of course.

But I would like somebody who is a responsible gun owner like Montell was to have a firearms and not be sitting ducks where these kids and these adults and parks and other public places.

But we had this in Uvaldi. I'm sorry. We had people in Uvaldi with guns, and guess what happened? They ran from the gunfire.

But they ran away. But that's a failure of law enforcement.

Introducing more guns into this equation is not going to save anybody's life.

Let's be clear, it was a law enforcement school resource officer that stopped the shooting today with a gun.

Okay, but wait a second. Correct. After this kid already opened fire and killed four people and moved down to each other.

That's a trained officer, and a trained officer makes a lot of sense. The question is that I think you're raising is, should we be training or equipping teachers to have guns in the classroom when something like this breaks out? That seems like it's a little bit too far. We ask a lot of the teachers already. Do we want them to not be security guns?