Republican Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, said Sunday he will not support the gun-control legislation being authored in the Senate because it contains loopholes and imposes limits on law-abiding gun owners.
Lee, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said despite the national tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December of 2012, politicians’ efforts to do the right thing have resulted in a flawed approach.
“Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook, Americans have been rightfully focused on how to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future,” he said. “But unfortunately, the proposals we’ve seen would serve primarily to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens while doing little, if anything, to actually prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the future.”
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Lee said he “can’t support” the bill named after Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.
“Toomey-Manchin does contain some carve outs, but we know that today’s carve outs are tomorrow’s loopholes, and that’s of concern to us.”
Immigration is another emotional issue that should not be politicized, Lee said.
“If there’s one thing we learned from the last comprehensive immigration debate we had in 2007, it’s that when we play politics with this area of the law, everyone loses,” he said. “We stalled out further immigration efforts for, effectively, six years.”
Lee said Congress should act first to tackle border security, develop an entry and exit system for immigrants and update the visa system because those issues are less volatile and have more bipartisan support.
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