During Wednesday’s MSNBC broadcast of “Morning Joe,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) pushed back against the notion that mental health was the leading factor in the nation’s mass shootings.
Murphy argued that there was “no more mental illness in the United States than any other nation.” He said the difference was that someone with mental health problems in the country could “easily” get their hands on “a weapon of mass destruction.”
“I absolutely think our partners are negotiating in good faith,” Murphy said of the bipartisan effort to strengthen the nation’s gun laws. “You know, Senator Cornyn is a friend. He has been moved as anyone would be by what has happened in his state. And what we’re looking at is, you know, a proposal that is both an investment in our mental health system and changes in our gun laws.”
“I don’t believe our mass shooting problem is first and foremost a mental health problem,” he continued. “We have no more mental illness in the United States than any other nation. It’s just in this country, if you’re having homicidal thoughts, you can easily get your hands on a weapon of mass destruction, as opposed to every other high-income nation in the world. But I do think our partners understand that we’ve got to do both. We’ve got to invest in mental health, and we’ve got to make some commonsense changes to our gun laws that are completely consistent with the Second Amendment to just make sure that dangerous people don’t get their hands on weapons.”
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