Senate vote starts gun control debate

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," April 11, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And welcome to "Hannity". Tonight, the democratic-controlled Senate took the first step today in their brazen attempt to limit your Second Amendment rights. So, in a moment, I'll be joined by the always outspoken Ann Coulter.

But first, here's what happened on Capitol Hill. Earlier, the Senate took up a procedural vote to start debating the controversial gun control legislation and cloture was invoked.

And now, we move on to the amendment and see which lawmakers, who say they oppose the Second Amendment assault, are they willing to stand up for law-abiding gun owners in the country? Now, just a few hours ago, the first amendment was filed on the floor, it's a so-called bipartisan compromise from senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey that expands universal background checks to gun shows and internet sales.

But this amendment is already being met with stark opposition, because earlier, prior to the cloture vote, Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, they released a joint statement explaining quote, "It is expected that the Toomey-Manchin provision announced yesterday will replace the current language regarding background checks, yet as of this morning not a single senator has been provided the legislative language of this provision, because the background check measure is a centerpiece of this legislation, it is critical that we know what is in it before we actually vote on it." That seems pretty reasonable to me unless you have to read it to find out what's in it.

Joining me now, author, columnist, provocateur. How are you?

ANN COULTER, AUTHOR, "MUGGED": I'm fine. Thank you. How are you?

HANNITY: I don't have to say your name. Everyone knows who you are.

COULTER: You know, I was glad to hear you say that they hadn't distributed the language because I was online today trying to find it. And I thought this was so strange. This is a bill everyone is talking about, and we can't find the Toomey-Manchin compromise.

HANNITY: You know, compromise, you know what bothers me the most in this? You look at Aurora, and you look at Newtown, there's nothing has been proposed here, not a single thing that would have prevented the tragedy.

COULTER: Right. Right.

HANNITY: I have a solution. I would put retired military, retired police, in every school in the country, just like we protect presidents, politicians, Hollywood liberals, sports stars and our money.

COULTER: Right.

HANNITY: Why not do that?

COULTER: Well, as you know, I'm not a huge fan of that but at least your proposal isn't actually counterproductive as the Democrats' proposals are. I think what you need is extensive concealed carry laws. I mean, we know that from the studies, that's what the evidence shows. And also, something that isn't only related to guns, but it's certainly related to every one of these mass shootings going back to Virginia Tech is, we have to roll back the deinstitutionalization movement.

And I know, I'm getting to be like a broken record, but that is the only thing that's going to make a difference. It's been talked about for years. We knew about it before Newtown. Every one of these killers, it's not a problem of guns, it's a problem of crazy people, and especially a problem with schizophrenics, and certain brands of psychosis.

HANNITY: And by the way, and kids on psychotropic drugs, nobody ever wants to talk about them.

COULTER: Well, the combo platter of various drugs with schizophrenia, it's very, very bad, three times, schizophrenics -- people with similar disorders, are three times more likely to commit violence. Apart from the fact, I mean, just look at downtown L.A., Giuliani cleaned up most of New York, so I can't really put point to New York anymore, but there was the Billie Boggs case. I mean, it's not good for the schizophrenics.

They are crapping their pants on grates. They are more likely to be victims of violence than they are to commit violence. But they are more likely to commit violence. That's what happened in Aurora, it's what happened in Tucson, it's what happened in Virginia Tech. It looks like this is what happened in Newtown. And Democrats know that's the answer, but they will exploit and play with these victims and say that their gun laws are going to do something. No. Their gun laws are going to hurt the defense of the innocent.

HANNITY: Listen, I have to tell you, it's more than that. It's naked exploitation of dead children and grieving families. It's play- acting. It's feel good-ism. And I got to tell you something. The whole thing is grotesque because not one of their proposals would have prevented what happened. So this is all an effort to --

COULTER: Worse than that. It will lead to more parents weeping over their children when there is no one. I think you've interviewed her, I think her name is Suzanna Hupp, the woman in Luby's Cafeteria in Texas, and she had to watch when some again, some crazy man drives his truck into the Luby's Cafeteria and starts shooting people. He's able to stop and reload. Suzanna Hupp, I think that's her name, had her car, she had a license to a gun, but she had left it in the trunk of her car because she wasn't allowed to carry it into the Luby's Cafeteria.

She watched her parents be gunned down. Conceal carry protects the innocent. We should be subsidizing them, we shouldn't be taxing them and making it difficult for them to get guns. These background checks provably--the way women who are being stalked, who have the risk of being raped, when there are intruders and burglars on the loose, to ask a woman to wait three days, to wait through the weekend, perhaps a week, if there's a false positive on the background check, which happens a lot, more than 95 percent of the cases, are false backgrounds -- or false negatives, you're allowing women to be utterly defenseless there. Sometimes you need a gun quickly, is my point. That's why I'm mentioning women.

HANNITY: Listen, Obama didn't do anything the whole first term if this was such an important moral imperative. Chicago has now for well over a year, been going through incredible gun violence. Hand gun violence. If he wanted to propose what he wants which is to ban all guns, confiscate all guns. And he's only doing what he thinks is politically viable, just like gay marriage, he's for it, he's against it, he's neutral, then now he's for it.

COULTER: Right. Well, they're very cocky these liberals right now, which is why I have a sort of heartened by liberals secretly taping Senator Mitch McConnell. Maybe they're not quite as cocky is they're acting, is they're so worried about Mitch McConnell.

HANNITY: And Ashley Judd. Yes.

COULTER: He's going to get re-elected. But you know, another big thing in addition to -- this compromise bill, where they tell us what it's going to do, but won't let us read the bill. And I think this can't be said often or not and that is this fake poll about 90 percent supporting these idiotic counterproductive gun proposals of the Democrats that will make it more difficult for the law-abiding protecting the innocent to get guns.

I mean, where is that poll? Can we see that poll? They lie to people in polls. A universal background checks, 40 percent of guns aren't subject to a background check. That is a lie, that has even been said to be a lie by The Washington Post.

HANNITY: The single biggest--

COULTER: All guns sold by a licensed gun dealer, including guns at gun shows, more than 90 percent of guns at gun shows probably all are sold by licensed gun dealers. They're all subject to background checks.

HANNITY: You know who's been the biggest advocate and has helped the gun industry sell more guns, more than any other person?

COULTER: Oh, yes, I do.

HANNITY: That would be Barack Obama.

COULTER: Salesman of the year at every gun show.

HANNITY: Alright. By the way, let me tell you, there is an answer, in New York, for example, under Mayor Giuliani, violent crime dropped 56 percent, murders went down by two-thirds, robberies fell 67 percent, aggravated assault. Everything went down.

(TALKING OVER EACH OTHER)

COULTER: Not only that, there are different categories of guns -- there's straight gun crimes, you need somebody like Giuliani and tough on crime -- what we're talking about now, the urgency, we have to do something, the children, the children. That is because of mass shootings by crazy people. And Democrats refuse to do anything about crazy people because their friends in the ACLU get upset.

And according to, we haven't read the bill yet, but according to what they've said about the Toomey-Manchin compromise, it has this completely insane provision that cannot be constitutional where a shrink could privately tattle-- you know, call in the name of one of his clients and put him on the no buy list.

HANNITY: Yes. Let me ask you --

COULTER: Can you imagine a private citizen being able to stop someone from exercising a constitutional right? You know, people have been thinking about this for such a long time, I keep citing -- quoting the insanity defense trying to roll back the deinstitutionalization movement for crazy people who harm themselves and harm others. And he has specific ideas. Have a family member, roommate, law enforcement officer and a shrink testify before a judge that this person should not be on street.

HANNITY: Alright. Let me talk about your recent column. By the way, Ann Coulter got in trouble again. These are comments that you made. You talk about Republican senators need to have a member of their families killed, Martin Bashir said that.

COULTER: No, no, no. I did not say I am saying that.

HANNITY: But you didn't say. Alright. Martin Bashir, you are quoting him.

COULTER: Martin Bashir on MSNBC said that Republicans need to have a member of their family killed to support the democratic --

HANNITY: And then you wrote, let's start with Meghan McCain.

COULTER: Exclamation point.

HANNITY: Exclamation point. OK. Now, wait a minute. This is the daughter of a prominent senator, young girl, and people are saying, why would Ann Coulter say --

COULTER: Tell a joke. Yes. Why would Ann Coulter tell a joke? For one thing, gosh, you got a lot more press than that heinous thing Martin Bashir said, nobody knew about that until I added a joke, which is known as hyperbole. I mean, name a child of another Republican. Ronald Reagan, Jr.

HANNITY: Yes.

COULTER: I made a joke about him last week. I don't want it to be overkill. I mean, you have to come up with a child of a Republican. It was Martin Bashir who was not joking when he asked rhetorically, are we going to have to have a child of a Republican senator killed to have them support this gun bill as if the Republican position is, no, we don't mind dead kids. No, our position is, your proposals are going to lead to more dead kids. Our proposals will stop dead kids. And I'm really fed up with this idea that, oh, if we only listened to the families. Well, I'm quite sure some of the families are not --

HANNITY: Wait a second. There was one father of one of these children, that got killed at Newtown, he didn't get to fly in Air Force One because he doesn't take the position of the president.

COULTER: No, I'm sure there's more than one. This is the Jersey girls all over again. Find the victims who agree with us, and send out weeping women to argue with the Republicans so that we can push very dangerous policies, which is what the Democrats' gun proposal want.

HANNITY: I'm glad you hear you don't want to see children killed. You were being sarcastic.

COULTER: I think the exclamation point made it clear, and the fact that everyone laughed when they read it.

HANNITY: Alright. Thank you, Coulter. Good to see you.

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