Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was injured in a mass shooting, is the founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions, a group in favor of tighter firearm restrictions and appeared on Sunday’s “State of the Union” on CNN.
In reaction to the Oregon shooting, Kelly told host Jake Tapper that the United States has “loopholes” that make it “easy” for the mentally ill and felons to get their hands on guns.
When Tapper asked him what gun laws would have prevented the Oregon shooting or the other recent mass shootings, Kelly explained that there “isn’t a specific law,” but a combination of “some really common sense things that Americans support,” like requiring background checks or identifying the mentally ill.
“You know, with individual events, sometimes there isn’t a specific law that you can point to that would prevent a tragedy like this from happening, but with a combination of some really common sense things that most Americans support, you know, stuff like let’s require a background check before anyone gets a gun and let’s try to get people identified as mentally ill if they are dangerously mentally ill, then let’s get that information to the National Criminal Background Check system, which is managed by the FBI. Often in the case of these mass shootings, if there were a couple components, if we did things better, some of these tragedies could be prevented.”
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