MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

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A new "Washington Post," ABC News poll shows 57 percent of Americans support what McCarthy is proposing. The congresswoman from New York joins us tonight here on THE ED SHOW. Congresswoman McCarthy, thank you for what you"re doing. I think, we may be looking at a situation where the American people are ahead of the Congress again. Do you feel that way?

REP. CAROLYN MCCARTHY (D), NEW YORK: I do that way. And I feel that what we"re going to be doing is a two-pronged approach. My job is certainly to go to the members of Congress, sit down and talk to them, and try to convince them, this is the right way to go. But we also have our grassroots throughout the country and we"ve all come together to fight for this issue.

SCHULTZ: Congresswoman, the National Rifle Association, well known, very strong lobby, lots of money behind them, and of course you"ve already had Senator Schumer over in the Senate say, they don"t have the votes. Where does that lead you tonight?

MCCARTHY: You know, when we do the assault weapons ban, we didn"t have the votes in the beginning either. And it was a long hard battle. And we won that battle and I believe that we can win this battle again. I think when the American people understand that I"m not touching their guns, I am only taking the large-capacity clips, that is reasoning on common-sense gun safety.

SCHULTZ: We"re not having the votes on the Senate, but in your chamber in the House, do you think that there are any Republicans that would break away and vote with you on this? What are they telling you in the holes of the Congress?

MCCARTHY: Well, the members of Congress actually are just starting to come back today. So, I"m going to be sitting number of Republicans on the floor when I go for a vote, and I"ll be talking to a number of them. I definitely going to go after some like-minded Republicans. This should not be a republican and democratic issue, by the way. This is something that doesn"t ask, you know, when you"re getting into those kind of killings, they don"t ask if you"re a republican or democrat.

SCHULTZ: And this clearly is a reinstatement of the clause of the assault weapons ban. Are you going any further than that?

MCCARTHY: No, I"m not. Basically what we did was took what was in the assault weapons ban, because we found all those years that it was banned, you couldn"t buy a large capacity clip, because they basically disappeared. And we believe that by passing this bill, they will disappear in the future and hopefully will save lives.

SCHULTZ: And that was from 1994 to 2004, and that sunset. It was never challenged by the Democrats at the time. Now, we"ve had a number of things happens since then. But do you have numbers that prove that this would save lives?

MCCARTHY: We do have numbers. I mean, look at any shootings that happened, when you have the large capacity clips in my own case, when my husband was killed and my son shot in the head, and five other families lost someone and 20 were injured, Colin Ferguson, he only had clips that had 15 bullets in each clip. When he went to reload, three people tackled him, the same thing that happened out in Arizona. What if that shooter was able to put in another clip with 33 bullets in it? How many more people would have been killed? How many more people injured? That could have been prevented.

SCHULTZ: Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy in New York, thanks for your time tonight, thanks for your work on this.

MCCARTHY: Thanks, Ed. Keep it up, please, we still need to get that message out in the future.

SCHULTZ: I totally agree with you. You are morally for this country doing the right thing. As a gun owner, I can tell you, they don"t need multiple numbers of bullets in a pistol. It"s absolutely ludicrous. Thank you, Congresswoman. I appreciate your time tonight.

MCCARTHY: Thank you, Ed.

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