Former Sen. Jim DeMint says he doesn't "pretend to have the answers" about how to address gun violence in the aftermath of the Connecticut school shootings, but wants to be part of the solution and not just the political reaction.
The South Carolina Republican, who now heads the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the answer to protecting the nation's children and preventing more mass killings must be a "comprehensive plan" that includes local, state, and federal elements.
"The more you talk about it, the more you realize how complex the issue is," DeMint said Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
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"It involves cultural issues, it involves mental health issues, and certainly the violence and the tools that are used for it.
"To jump strait to a solution is really just political pretense," he said. "We need to do something to make our children safer, our schools safer, but we can't do it with just knee-jerk political reaction. We've got to do it with discussions like you're having this morning."
DeMint, who resigned from the Senate last year frustrated with the dysfunction of the institution, said Heritage plans to release a "discussion paper" this week that will begin to address some of the issues related to gun violence and the impact of the Dec. 14 Newtown, Conn. school shootings that left 20 children and six educators dead.
But he took issue on the program with NBC's Tom Brokaw, who suggested the country had not experienced the kind of mass gun violence in schools and elsewhere that seems to be so prevalent today.
"Actually, mass shootings peaked in 1929, and certainly assault weapons were involved in that. A lot of that was in Chicago with organized crime," DeMint said, apparently referring to the gangster violence that dominated big cities during the Prohibition years.
"This is not a new phenomena," he noted, adding: "Last year we had a peak in the number of people who were killed in different incidences, but it's certainly not at an all time high right now."
Still, DeMint acknowledged that the massacre of children in Newtown at the Sandy Hook Elementary School was different and should stir the nation to do more to address gun violence.
"It is a problem we have to deal with," he said.
Asked about the National Rifle Association's response to Newtown and
whether they could have played a better role in the "conversation" about gun violence, DeMint shied away from direct criticism of the gun rights organization.
Instead, he said "all players" could have responded better in the debate.
"Folks immediately jumped in on the left and the right saying, 'Here's what we have to do, here's what we can't do," he said.
He called on everybody to "step back and dig down" to understand the root causes of Newtown and other acts of mass violence and how to create a safer country.
Turning to the gridlock in Congress, DeMint said one of the reasons he decided to leave after serving eight years, was because he felt nothing was getting done, partly because the nation's lawmakers weren't open to new ideas and solutions to problems that work at the local and state level.
"I don't think anything good is gonna come out of Washington in the next few years," he said. "And the problem is . . . we too often try to have national solutions when the solutions need to be at the community, the state level. The national government should focus on those things where there's a consensus nationally, where there's agreement."
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Now, as head of Heritage, he said he hopes to be part of "a national discussion about positive, optimistic ideas that solve problems.
"I want to take that message directly to the American people. I want to showcase successes at the state level that already are working.
"That puts pressure on Washington," he said.
"As Ronald Reagan used to say, 'If you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.' And I want them to feel the heat from the American people."
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