Jake Tapper Absolutely Ruins Cory Booker Over Gun Control: ‘I Hear You Not Talking About This Specific Massacre’

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), speaking at California’s Democratic state party convention a day after the horrific shooting in Virginia Beach, told the audience that America is “not helpless” to stop gun violence and that the “uniquely American problem” must not be allowed to go on.

On Sunday, Booker was interviewed on CNN’s State of the Union, and host Jake Tapper pressed him on exactly what it is that should be done that might have prevented Friday’s shooting.

“You said yesterday that mass shootings in America — quote — ‘cannot just go on in our country.’ And you have unveiled a comprehensive gun reform plan,” said Tapper. “Now, ATF says that the two weapons used in the attack were handguns, not semiautomatic assault rifles. And they say that they were purchased legally. How would your plan have stopped this tragedy, if at all?”

“Well, Jake, again, this is a tragedy today, but you know that every single day in the United States of America, in the aggregate, we have mass shootings that go on in neighborhoods like mine,” said Booker non-specifically. “I live in an inner-city black and brown community. You were there yourself. Moments after you left, we had another shooting in my neighborhood.”

Booker then addressed his remarks from Saturday by repeating them.

“We are not helpless to stop this. This is a uniquely American problem,” he said, the very remark about which Tapper had asked for more specifics.

“We have carnage in our country at levels that no other nation sees,” Booker continued.

“[S]o this idea that we are helpless to stop this is — the evidence points differently,” said Booker. “We know that everything from licensing, like that Connecticut did, dropped gun violence in their — in their state by 40 percent, suicides by 15 percent. We know that there are communities like Oakland that did things by treating gun violence like a public health problem and by investing in communities, empowering them. They were able to lower gun violence.”

Continuing his basic speech, he stated that he has a specific plan without saying any parts of it or how they might pertain to the specific incidence of violence last week. “I have a comprehensive plan that people say is bold,” he said. “But I will tell you that — I will tell you what. It’s not bold. It’s common-sense, evidence-based things that we can do to lower gun violence.”

He tried to go on but Tapper cut in, and after some crosstalk, asked, again, his original question.

“But you keep saying — I’m sorry to interrupt, but you keep saying, we’re not helpless. So I’m saying: what would have prevented this tragedy?” he asked again. “I mean, I think that’s one of the issues that people wonder about when there are these horrible tragedies. What steps specifically would have stopped the massacre in Virginia Beach?”

“And you have taken a look at the 16, 17 things we have in my plan that would drop the levels of violence overall, from one-handgun-a-month laws, all the way to investing in the kind of mental health and the kind of community empowerment strategies that would do something about it,” said Booker, not relating any of the sixteen or seventeen (he wasn’t sure) things in his plan to the question.

“In the aggregate, we can do things that dramatically lower the levels of violence in our community,” he went on, and turned the attention to the “gun lobby” rather than answering the question.

He continued with a few more of his oft-repeated talking points as Tapper patiently listened. Eventually someone did bring up a specific item, but it was Tapper not Booker.

“I hear you not talking about this specific massacre, but talking about gun violence in general,” Tapper said, in the calmest burn you’ll see today. “So let’s talk about your proposals in general.”

Tapper then brought up Booker’s plan for national gun licenses and fingerprinting, and suggested that current 2020 front-runner and Booker competitor, former Vice President Joe Biden seemed skeptical. He played a clip of Biden saying “gun licensing will not change whether or not” people buy weapons or what kind they buy.

“What’s your response?” Tapper asked. “Is Vice President Biden correct that gun licenses aren’t what ultimately is going to help here?”

Booker replied that states which have done so have seen “precipitous drops in gun violence” and added that he thinks we “need to start looking at the things that work.”

He went through another litany of lines from his stump speech before saying “you have your choice in this presidential campaign of a lot of folks. If you want someone who’s going to take a fight on this issue, take a fight to the corporate gun lobby, take a fight against apathy and indifference, take a fight against the NRA, then I’m your person,” which was essentially directed at Biden without mentioning his name.

“So, you didn’t specifically criticize Vice President Biden, but it sounds as though you’re saying that you would fight more than he would,” Tapper correctly observed. He followed-up with another low-key devastating one-liner.

“But let me ask you, because the Obama-Biden administration,” said Tapper, “you’re proposing something very bold, in your words, perhaps far-reaching, certainly…”

Yeah, “something very bold, in your words” is TV gold.

Trying one more time for specifics, Tapper said that Obama and Biden were not able to get gun control through Congress, and asked how Booker would do it.

“How are you going to do it? Even if you’re elected president, you might not have a veto-proof majority in the House and the Senate,” Tapper said.

“How will you be able to get something passed, where Obama and Biden were not able to?” Tapper asked.

Booker again cast himself, in obvious but unspoken contrast to Biden, not to mention former president Obama, as the person with the “grit and fight and will” to get it done.

This wasn’t Tapper’s first time wrecking a politician over specifics on gun control. At a press conference following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, Tapper went after then-President Obama on the issue.

Watch the clip above, via CNN.