contributed to that, or is it just mental illness? well, mental illness isn t always the problem. let s go a step further. it wasn t just the glock .45 he had, he had something that looks like a tommy gun that attaches to the bottom of it that no one should have a reason to have. i m getting so frustrated with the training and tactics sessions across nation because over the last few years it was let s make police departments softer. as you see this morning, a houston police officer is killed. killed. do you think the bad guys are going out there and making it softer and treating communities safer? no. they re becoming more violent. it s not only mental illness, it s people that don t care, people that believe they can go out day in and day out and do whatever they want and cause chaos. let s get back to not worrying how the criminal feels and get back to every single victim around this nation, and from there we can move forward and make a positive change. erin everything what causes
requirements work for gun shops or pawnshops to do the reporting, or for police departments for that matter. we have a very disjointed system in the databases. in this case he was involuntarily committed in georgia, but when he went to alabama, they don t know that. so he goes to a pawnshop and they legally sell him the gun. and don t know. and they re not required to do any major background check. they re required to check into the system. some states use their own system. many states use the fbi s system. and in that background check, it s only going to be as good as whatever s put in the system in the first place. if this kind of data about his mental illness isn t loaded in the system nobody s going to find it when they do these checks. i know also the state of alabama, where he did buy the gun, in alabama there s no waiting period for gun purchases. do you think that awaiting period would have mattered in a
national focus on access to guns is the most important thing we can do to reduce the, you know, the outlier that the u.s. is in terms of gun violence compared to every other advanced nation. having said that, if you care about the mass tragedies which we have opposed to urban gun violence we see on the streets of chicago that the president is equally and rightly concerned about, it s hard not to look at an agenda for mental illness and i think what the governor in colorado is trying to promote on that side may point the way in a right direction. but also may be that there aren t full answers in a society to these problems but i think we got to try. i think an agenda for mental illness isn t just about preventing violence. it s also about better care for people who are mentally ill. you have a lot of republicans now who are talking about mental health and how that s the real issue that needs to be addressed. sort of as a way to get around having a conversation about