Coming up with a politically expedient solution on gun control is the wrong path to take if the laws that are created don't solve the problems, Sen. Tim Scott said on Wednesday.
"One of the ways we should take a look at this overall issue of gun violence is to recognize that 33,000 Americans lost their lives to gun violence last year," the South Carolina Republican told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Sixty-five percent of those folks were suicides."
This, and the people involved in a spate of mass shootings, with the latest one this past weekend in Odessa, Texas, point to mental illness being behind the incidents, while the states with the most stringent laws like in California and Washington state marking the highest number of mass shootings, said Scott.
"What we should do is take a deeper dive into the homicides and we'll find out that (they) have a lot in common," the senator added.
The Odessa shooter was not able to pass a background check to purchase his gun, so he bought it through a private seller, leading to calls for further constraints on such sales, but Scott said the answers to that question are "more elusive than we think."
He said he's not trying to avoid the answers on private sales, but he also doesn't have enough facts to address that issue.
"I'm willing to do whatever we can to keep people safe," said Scott. "I am not willing to politicize this issue and in hopes of finding a solution that may be more elusive than we want to have."
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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