Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said Monday it is "absurd" to link gun control to immigration policy after President Donald Trump suggested doing so following two mass shootings over the weekend.
Trump said Monday morning that both parties should work to "get strong background checks" passed and suggested linking them with immigration reform.
"It's absurd," Gillibrand, who is also a 2020 presidential candidate, told CNN's "New Day." "Again, this is part of the problem. He's linking [the] issue of basic, common-sense gun reform that we should be going back into the Senate today to vote on with this issue of immigration."
She added, "Because again, he continues to try to demonize people seeking asylum, people needing our help."
The senator said she would "for sure" vote for legislation that expands background checks on gun purchases and increase the time that gun sellers must wait to get the results before they can sell the weapon.
"We should ban the assault weapons, and we should ban the large magazines," she said. "We should have a federal anti-gun trafficking law as well as universal background checks."
Gillibrand went on to accuse Trump of "inciting" hate and violence, saying, "If I was president, I would use my Department of Justice to actually investigate white supremacy, to make sure that we knew what these groups were doing. I would make sure we'd infiltrate these groups to make sure we stop these kinds of terrorist attacks."
"This is what domestic terrorism looks like, and we should be using our resources, the Department of Justice, our investigative arms with the FBI to actually root out this kind of terrorism at home," she said.
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