Kirsten Gillibrand tells Stephen Colbert how to break the NRA's 'chokehold on Congress'

Stephen Coblert's guest on Tuesday's Late Show was Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and after discussing what they gave up for Lent, Colbert turned to last week's school shooting in Parkland, Florida. "You've been in D.C. since 2007, why can't there be any meaningful reform — or even meaningless reform?" he asked. "Congress has done nothing," Gillibrand agreed. "And they don't get anything done because the NRA has a chokehold on Congress. The NRA is concerned only with gun sales — it is literally all about money, it is all about greed, it has nothing to do with the Second Amendment — and we've seen death after death after death. And it has to stop."

Colbert prodded a bit, asking if lawmakers are beholden to the NRA's campaign cash, its firing-up of single-issue gun voters, or its threat to fund primary challengers. Gillibrand said all of the above: "It's the power of money, it's the power of communications, it's the fear they instill in members, and it's wrong." She ducked a question about the NRA and Democrats but offered her solution: "Listen to these kids" in Florida who are "speaking truth to power."

Listening to parents and children who lost loved ones to guns changed her mind, Gillibrand said, accounting for her drop from an NRA A rating to an F. "I think this whole conversation has a chance of changing because of these kids," she said. Colbert noted that it isn't just guns — large majorities of both parties also support protecting DREAMers, and Congress does nothing there, either. Gillibrand blamed "dark money" from corporations.

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"You need to take away the voice and the outsized influence that corporations have over members of Congress, and the NRA is one of the worst offenders," she said. They ended by talking about ongoing Russian efforts to sway U.S. elections and what she said, as the "#MeToo senator," to her former colleague Al Franken. Watch below. Peter Weber