The Senate’s failure to address mental health in last week’s proposed gun legislation weakened it, Rudy Giuliani said Sunday
on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“If we’re really going to improve here ... and attempt to do something to prevent another Sandy Hook, you’ve got to do something about how secretive these mental-health records are,” the former New York City mayor said. “I think that would have made a much more difficult vote for those people who voted against it.”
However, Giuliani said that addressing mental health in a gun-control law would not have prevented Adam Lanza's shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six educators dead on Dec. 14.
Latest: Do You Support Background Checks on Gun Buyers? Vote in Urgent Poll
“If this law had been passed, would it have prevented Adam Lanza? The sad answer to it is no,” he said, “because Adam Lanza was not in any database indicating that he had a mental illness. It's kept very confidential.”
But Giuliani said the vote brought the nation closer to addressing the problem of gun violence in America.
“Just having the debate was a lot better than in the last 10 years where this debate has been suppressed,” Giuliani said.
The former mayor also said he would have voted for the background check amendment despite the fact that it did not address the lack of mental-illness records in the national database.
“It's one thing to say you have a background check and a database; it's another thing to say the information is not in the database. So you've got to deal with both parts of it. I would have voted for it in any event, but I think it would have made it a more difficult vote,” he said.
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.