Just hours after the mass shooting at Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousands Oaks, California, Senator-elect Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) appeared on Fox News and reinforced her Second Amendment bonafides.
“What can we do?” Fox host Sandra Smith asked Blackburn. “This was the deadliest shooting that we’ve seen in this country since Parkland. I mean, what do we do?”
According to Blackburn, the protection of gun rights should remain front and center.
“What we do is say, how do we make certain that we protect the Second Amendment and protect our citizens?” Blackburn replied. “We’ve always done that in this country. Mental health issues need to be addressed.”
Sen Marsha Blackburn on Thousand Oaks: “What we do is say how do we make certain that we protect the Second Amendment."
The @NRA contributed more than $1 million to Blackburn’s winning campaign.pic.twitter.com/B6nJ7BAtfk
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) November 8, 2018
Blackburn’s mentioning of mental health issues is a standard response of the gun rights crowd on the wake of mass shootings. But as Vox points out, other countries with similar rates of mental health problems don’t come anywhere close to America’s level of gun violence. The problem comes down to easy access to guns.
The incoming Senator from Tennessee is a favorite of the NRA. The Trace reports that the gun rights group spent $1.25 million to help her win her race in the midterms. That being said, the NRA’s spending was down this year after it was targeted by viral gun control ads in the wake of the Parkland school shooting.
David Long, the suspect in the Thousand Oaks shooting, legally obtained the gun he used to kill 12 people and then himself even though he had a history of mental illness.
Featured image via screen grab/YouTube
