House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., Sunday called it “ridiculous” to blame President Donald Trump’s rhetoric as responsible for the El Paso, Texas, mass shooting.
In an interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” Scalise pointed out the shooter had admitted in a screed that he wanted to target “Mexicans” who were “invading” Texas.
“To try to assign blame to somebody else I think is a very slippery slope,” he said. “The president's no more responsible for that shooting as … [Vermont Independent Sen.] Bernie Sanders, is for my shooting…”
Scalise was shot and critically wounded on June 14, 2007 by a man who volunteered for Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign — and Sanders condemned the shooter’s “despicable act” on the Senate floor the same morning.
The Republican lawmaker also decried ““this ridiculous assessment of blame to somebody other than the person who's responsible…”
“Let’s try to identify the shooters in a better way. let's put more emphasis there,” he said.
“What we need to do is to find out those people who have slipped through the cracks, let’s make sure these background check systems work properly and are rooting out the people who shouldn’t be able to purchase a gun,” he said.
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