Sen. Sherrod Brown on Tuesday pushed for Senate leaders to call members in from their recess to work on passing bipartisan legislation on background checks already approved by the House, saying measures could be passed in just one afternoon.
"That's a first step and an important step," the Ohio Democrat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," while also calling for lawmakers to reinstitute a ban on assault weapons.
The time for the ban has finally come, said Brown, but he's concerned about the millions of dollars the National Rifle Association spends to "punish their enemies."
Brown noted that in Dayton, it only took a shooter 30 seconds to kill nine people and injure dozens more before police rushed in and killed him.
He said he and wife Connie Schultz visited Dayton on Monday, where first responders told them the scene of the bar district shootings early Sunday morning was like a war zone because the magazines the shooter used allowed him to fire off dozens of rounds in a minute or two.
"That's why many police officers say to me, those civilians cannot have those kinds of weapons," said Brown. "They are weapons of war."
Polls show 97 percent of Americans want background checks of some kind, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell puts the matter off, said Brown.
He added that it is "not fair" to blame mental illness for the shootings, particularly in El Paso.
"White supremacy is not mental illness, it is a choice," said Brown. "Most people who are mentally ill don't hurt others. They are likely to hurt themselves. At the same time, the same crowd says this is about mental illness and want to cut funding for treatment of mental illness."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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