Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., whose bipartisan gun bill with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., is getting new scrutiny, said he and President Donald Trump had a "very constructive conversation" for about 40 minutes and that it was stressed to the president that background checks should take place on all commercial gun sales.
"We all agree that people who are violent criminals and people who are dangerously mentally ill should not have firearms, and they don't have a legal right to firearms," Toomey said on Fox News' "Outnumbered Overtime." "The background check is the mechanism that we use to determine if someone is in one of those categories, and yet we have significant sales that happen without the background checks."
Toomey, who Trump mentioned by name along with Manchin and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn, while discussing gun control questions Wednesday said he told the president that it's important, though, not to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and he said Trump agrees.
"He is very engaged and he would like to accomplish something," said Toomey. "We will continue this discussion and hopefully we will get something done."
Toomey, though, noted that many Democratic presidential candidates are talking about confiscating guns, and are going in the "wrong direction.
"They may not support what we are trying to accomplish, which is background checks on commercial sales, because they want to go much further and confiscate people's firearms," said Toomey. "They are on the fringe. They do not reflect the mainstream of where Americans are. "
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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