been disclosed. he had obviously caused problems in the air force and also had a domestic violence issue. and this was never disclosed in the background check, it was never provided to the background check system and it should have been. is tot of the fix nix encourage estates to provide information. some states are good with it and others are not, but also to force federal agencies like the military branches, to report personnel who clearly should not have been able to purchase a firearm. the: it strengthens background check system, but would it expand it, covering purchases at gun shows? guest: it does not do that, but what it does do is, keep in mind the existing system was greatly expanded to include mental health a number of years ago, and that has resulted in close to 200,000 people being denied a purchase of a firearm because of a mental health issue. so much of what that system is today is working fine, but there are gaps. one of the obvious gaps i see in relation to the shooting on valentine's day in florida, was this young man had multiple times, some say over 30 occasions, where people or police were called to his home because of violence or other threatening issues, yet the fact that this young individual, that i had never been adjudicated, meant it had never been reported. we have to protect people's personal liberties and due process and we have to figure out a way in which someone who presents a multiple and n hisnued threat i -- i school, he had a violent incidents in his school, relatives called police to his home because of what he was doing -- this individual should not have been able to buy a firearm, he should not have been able to buy abb compared we have to figure out -- a bb gun. we have to figure out a way were certain people, people who are clearly disturbed and a troubled as this young man was, where those people are also flagged as not being eligible to purchase a firearm. host: explain the legislative the act was passed in december in the house? guest: it was passed. it went through with legislation, which many on the left opposed. i supported the legislation. i supported district where many sportsmen and firearm owners are troubled by the fact that they could run afoul by crossing a state line. they would still have to obey thelaws in that state, but mere possession and crossing the state line would not be a crime. that was contained within the legislation that contained concealed carry. as far as i am concerned, because of the situation we are dealing with today and because of the overwhelming public response, we should -- that is what this letter says that i and other republican signs -- we should move forward and address this particular issue, and do it quickly. host: it would be a standalone -- guest: correct. host: did you get a response from the speaker? guest: not yet. we just got back last night. a senator of the legislation in the senate, it is a bipartisan bill with senator murphy from connecticut, he said, there was a newspaper report that he is doubtful it could pass the senate given the 60 vote threshold if the concealed carry piece was contained within it. so therein lies the rub and we have to figure out a way to come up with a copper mines. ast: john faso with us, republican with us until about 8:00 a.m.. if you want to join the conversation republicans, , 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. and you can start calling in. and the wall street journal this might, noting on the bill that some democratic lawmakers may hold back their support for this legislation out of concern that more will not be done, that republicans will leave it at that. is there more to be done on this issue of gun control? guest: i think we have to look at the issue of somebody like the shooter in florida, who clearly had emotional and other behavioral problems, that he was never agitated, the police never filed charges against him, and yet he clearly indicated, as evident by violent behavior in school that caused his expulsion, he indicated that he was severely troubled. he should not been able to have -- he should not have been able to buy a bb gun, let alone an assault rifle. said wer piece i have should consider is move forward and make the age 21 for a semi automatic firearm, not talking about a deer rifle or a shotgun, obviously you can have semi-automatics there as well, but the fact is 18, 19, 20-year-old young men in this social media age are often not fully mature enough to handle a firearm with that capability. i do think this is something that we should look at. i know that there are arguments on both sides of the question, but i think that is something that we should seriously explore. host: should congress look at allowing more adults in schools to carry weapons? guest: this is mostly a state issue. in some instances, i have spoken with local sheriffs, in my area i represent a rural and semi rural area in new york, there are many people in our community, including who work in schools, who are licensed pistol permit owners, retired military, etc., but that does not mean they are qualified to deal with a situation like this. you need intense training in order to carry a firearm in a very charged and difficult situation, like you might confront in a school shooting. it so i do not necessarily think that this is the matter with the federal government is going to lead, i think you will see states and localities and individual school districts. what makes sense in upstate new york or wyoming, may not make sense in new york city or the bronx. dowe have to be able -- i not think there is a one-size-fits-all answer. host: in the washington post, of our main teachers is nothing more than a distraction employed by the gun lobby to buy time. did not get sidetracked, keep the focus on keeping military style assault rifles at of civilian hands. the national rifle association, the reppo can party, would like you to exhaust your outrage on the possibility that this is impossible. guest: the language mr. robinson uses in that column is misleading, because the very features that are contained in a semi automatic firearm are contained in certain firearms that are not classified as quote, unquote "assault weapons." are usually deals with cosmetic parts of the gun, as opposed to the functionality of the weapon. that is where i think many people who are not accustomed to firearms, they do not understand, the semi automatic issue, they will rush to claim that they are assault weapons but in actuality there are firearms that have the same characteristics of what some defined as an assault weapon, have the exact same capability, but would not be defined as an assault weapon. that is the problem with the broad generalization you see in a story like that. host: we have some callers. chase in maryland, good morning. caller: good morning. i want to thank the congressman for being on this morning. holisticallyntrol as a system of systems, in which we talk about the background checks or the mental health up backgroundfing checks, for me that is only a band-aid put on a festering wound. we are talking about, one person earlier mentioned the cultural aspect and educational aspect, i mean, we have looked at the issue in florida and there were signs that this person was giving off that people could have realized, and rightfully a number of them did, that is an educational aspect. what is congress doing to ensure that culture and gun violence is being educated to the people of america, to are citizens, rather than simply smacking on the stigma of mental illness, or background checks, let alone not doing anything as it relates to gun shows? to really make this more of a holistic approach? guest: i think that you raise a good point, but i think some of this is really a cultural phenomenon, some of it is dealing with social media, most of us when we were growing up did not exist. the shooter in florida became fascinated with weapons and firearms. he was focused on social media. he uploaded a video of himself talking on social media, apparently, that raised alarm by other people, even using his own name. so i think that this is a larger issue and frankly something that i am not sure you will get a solution from congress on, on that question, but one of the fundamental things we have to look at, the fbi had two specific warnings about this individual from members of the public and yet nothing was transmitted to the local fbi field office. congress needs to get to the bottom and hold accountability for those who missed the obvious warning signs. what i mentioned before, over 30 times where the local police agencies were called the deal with the issue, where the man was kicked out of school because of violent behavior, that person should have been gone through some process where he wound up on the background check system, so he did not pass a background check. again, lastly i think that unfortunately many 18, 19, 20-year-olds are not mature enough, and unfortunately a violent fr arew are not mature enough for a weapon of this type, so we need to look at that as well. host: new jersey, harold. good morning. caller: i am a 95-year-old republican, a veteran of world war ii and in our division we had 9000 casualties. the people have said culture, of course it is the culture. why our young people killing each other? and why our young people killing themselves? they are killing themselves with drugs, with auto accidents, and we are not changing our culture. we have a culture of hate. it should be a culture of love. we should return to our founding documents of what those people did. they made great sacrifices to start this country. we do not honor george washington and our leaders, we do not follow their example. clearly what we should do is follow the golden rule, do unto others. i was in a war that never should have been fought. god has tried to stop every war. god is trying not to stop the war, god is love. god's name is love. america, return to the commandments. guest: well, thank you for your service. god bless you and god bless this great country and thank you for what you just said. i think it is a very profound and meaningful statement. and i do think that we have to go back in our communities, our schools and our families in particular, and think about and nurture our children and love them and teach them the golden rule, as you said. obviously it is not going to work everywhere, this young man had been adopted. i know that his adoptive mother passed away of the flu this past november. i do not know where the father was in this process, but clearly this young man was disconnected from his family and community and from society, and he was extremely troubled and the warning signs were there. the warning signs on this young man were clearly missed on multiple levels and on multiple fronts, so people of goodwill on the left and right,, on either side of the issue need to focus on how we avoid situations like this in the future, find the areas where we can find common ground to fix the problem, not sweep it under the rug, but try to fix the problem. that is what i am committed to do. host: mary, intimate cap. caller: good morning -- mary, a democrat. caller: good morning. theree that we need to fix problem and i absolutely agree that the mechanism that turns a gun into an automatic should be on the table now in congress. guest: i agree. caller: and in all the states, because everybody agrees on that. the second one, absolutely 21 years old. the third one, this young man, the adoption came later. his natural parents, natural mother apparently died and put l ocks and keys on the refrigerator, as we have found out today. where were social services? they started, we start seeing trouble -- so the american people want action. whatever the state can do, if they can up the age limit right away, do it. obviously, all the other folks will stand up. the other thing, i would like also c-span, but people coming thathis is not just flags are needed, the person who killed in texas, that was a dereliction of duty, so the air force was not reporting that. ese people, theh in broward county, all of them should be charged, the police chief, for dereliction of duty. host: congressman? guest: i am not sure there was a question, but i do think that this lady into this caller and others are besieging their governmental leaders to fix what and fix the gaps in the system. congress should get to the bottom of how the fbi, i realize they get about 2000 calls a day, so is the system overwhelmed? do they not have the capacity to deal with this number of calls? those of the questions we need answers to. but i think we have to in our own communities, i have encouraged our local school districts, i see this happening all over the country, they are meeting with parents, local law enforcement, the talk about what they can do to better improve school safety in our communities. that is happening in my district, in the hudson valley and in the catskills and all around the country. host: a headline and a letter to the editor from the daily gazette paper in your neck of new york, the headline, the nra tookes to -- the father $7,950 during the 2016 election, and the letter to the editor from ted miller, calling on you to publicly condemn the nra and return the money that you took during the 2016 election. only through the repudiation of the gun lobby can we have a chance of ending the tear it is inflicting, he wrote, what would your response be? guest: that is just a political smear. the national rifle association is a membership organization, first and foremost, and there are thousands of members in my district and these are law-abiding people who follow the law, who are very into safety and safe handling of firearms, and to suggest that somehow a couple of thousand dollars in a campaign that caused millions is a determining factor on one's position, is really just an outlandish smear. the fact is that national rifle they are strong because they have thousands of grassroots members in districts around the country, who routinely work for our police departments, for our fire companies, for are local emergency responders. in oure deeply meshed community and to smear all those people and to say that they somehow do not care about the school shooting and other incidents of violence is really an outright lie. host: let's go back to new york. richard, independent, go ahead. caller: good morning. how are you guys? host: doing well. guest: good morning. caller: my comment is, why do you guys keep political sizing -- keep politicizing everything? a gun is not a republican or democrat. a bullet does not have no a party. -- no party. whatever kind of ammunition you have. why don't you do something about guns? you said yourself, you sold your soul to the devil, and now we are talking about putting walls on mexico to keep people out. now we have to put walls within the united states to protect citizens from each other. host: congressman? guest: i am not sure how to respond to that one, but i would say that what we have to do, we have to find common ground between the sides here, and between democrats and republicans in washington and in our state capitals around the country, to better secure our thatls, better ensure people who clearly present a danger should not have access to any firearm, of any type. i think that is within our capacity to do. and i do think that it will require compromise on both sides, so one cannot strictly adhere to a one point of view and expect to get any progress in this matter, so i do think that it will be very important for us to work in good faith with people who may not agree with us on the overall issue of the second amendment, in order to address the gaps that have occurred. starting with, why did the fbi miss two clearly defined and specific warnings about the shooter, and we should go from there. host: tom, republican. caller: i feel like i have a simple solution to all the background checks and weapons which of the people in this country are entitled to have under the second amendment. myself am a as a gun owner and a veteran, i would be willing to sell my second amendment right for $1 million. we only have three hegemony of people in the country and the government spends more than $300 million a day on whatever they spend it on. so if you were to offer $1 million to sell your second amendment right, give up all of your weapons, turn them in, then on a background check when it comes to if i was to try to purchase a weapon, i cannot buy because my second amendment right has been relinquished and sold. people wouldt of be willing to give up their second amendment rights for $1 million. host: congressman? guest: i think my rough calculation, i think i may have missed the place of a decimal point, i think that would be $300 billion, so i am not sure it is a practical solution. one thing that is important to recognize is the vast majority of gun owners in our country are law-abiding citizens who deeply believe in obeying the law and andhe second amendment our constitution and bill of rights. the vast majority of crime that is gun related is committed by people who are illegally possessing a firearm. it is important to put this in perspective in that regard. host: one of the other revolutions that it looks like will be offered is from james clyburn, that assistant democrat leader. he said last night, "filed in the house tonight to bring up commonsense gun reform, including my bill to close the charleston loophole." for those who do not remember, that loophole, this is inside are talking about the bill, talking -- it was the clerical error that led to the shooter acquiring a firearm. the default procedural, allowing federally licensed firearms dealers to initiate a background check and sell the is that something you could support? guest: it's something we should look at but in the south carolina case, this was one law enforcement agency in north -- in south carolina failing to properly receive the notice from another law enforcement agency in south carolina. that's why the church shooter acquired his weapon. he was flagged and i background check. it was not properly transmitted. that's a perfect example of something and we should take a look at mr. clyburn's proposal. think it all has to be considered as part of a package. i think it's important for democrats and republicans to come together to figure out what are the things, not just what one side labels is common sense but what are the things we can agree to to get past and get the president to sign that and get it through the senate? you need 60 votes to pass anything in the senate. host: clyburn still came up as a petition in the house. is that something you would get behind? these i don't support petitions in general but i have to look at it. i will look at every proposal. host: steve, the walkie, wisconsin, independent, go ahead. caller: good morning and thank you for c-span. we have had a lot of discussion about why things have fallen through the cracks in broward county there seems to be a growing amount of information that says some of the criminal activity and the reporting has been racially-based or biased cruz andnikolas trayvon martin -- what's going on with the reporting of crimes by mainstream media, by certain law enforcement agencies that would then allow this particular individual, 30 sometimes , contacted on facebook the month before, to be totally ignored because they are to trying to skew just -- they're trying to skew statistics? thank you. host: you think the media should have been reporting on the 30 times the police went to his house before the shooting happened? i think we lost him. guest: i wasn't quite sure. i think the media would not have any way of knowing that the police went to this young man's home and they would not have any way of knowing about the basis of the expulsion from school. colleagues in the house told me it was based upon a violent act against a teacher in school is why he was expelled. there were multiple warnings about this individual on the ground in florida. there were two discrete warnings where citizens called into the fbi that were not followed through on and given to the local field office. i think we need to get to the bottom of those issues in this particular case. in the aftermath of any of these tragedies, the worse thing is when people rush to judgment and they know the answer to what we should be doing legislative or otherwise and seeking to gain political points in the aftermath of this tragedy. i think that's unbecoming. both sides tend to do it and we shouldn't. host: last call in everett, washington, go ahead. been so many have shootings. it's not just the schools. in churches come in movie theaters, everywhere. nobody is safe. gun owners are the ones that are doing these crimes. it's not people like me that don't own weapons. it's gun owners that are the killers. using guns. host: you got up early if you are in washington state. that's about 5:00 in the morning i guess so good morning to you. i think it's important to recognize that yes, we have had these tragedies but overall, the decline of firearm related deaths in our country has declined in recent years. recognize need to that we do have a second amendment. we have a legal right to bear arms. the question is, what measures can be put in place that are logical, that adhere to due process and the constitution but would fly people who clearly should not have the capacity or ability to own a firearm. of these instances, whether it was columbine or sandy hook or the south carolina church shooting, whether it was the sulfur springs, texas church shooting and they missed one, the orlando nightclub. all of those instances, there were clear examples of neglect or negligence or gaps in our system on background checks that we need to fix. the background check system has ported hundreds of thousands of people over the last number of years who should not have been able to purchase firearms and that's good. because we have had that success, when you have something that happens like the south carolina church shooting or in texas or here in florida, it means we have to do better. that's what we should be trying to do. there is no one magic solution to this issue. there is no magic wand we can way. or stateer of congress legislatures but that does not mean we should not try and that's what i intend to do. host: we >> on capitol hill the house expected back for vose in about five minutes or so. the first vote

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