On Tuesday House Speaker Paul Ryan said Congress needs to figure out how to prevent more school shootings but also make sure to not infringe on constitutional rights.
Many lawmakers have called for stronger gun control after the Parkland shooting, which resulted in 17 deaths and 14 injured. Ryan made sure to note that there were several systematic failures that allowed this tragedy to happen.
.@SpeakerRyan: “We shouldn’t be banning guns for law-abiding citizens, we should be focusing on making sure that citizens who should not get guns in the first place don’t get those guns.” pic.twitter.com/9P1gcyiQw9
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 27, 2018
Per Daily Caller:
“We shouldn’t be banning guns for law-abiding citizens, we should be focusing on making sure that citizens that should not have guns in the first place don’t get those guns. And that is why we see a big breakdown in the system here,” he told reporters. “In this particular case, there were a lot of breakdowns, from local law enforcement to the FBI getting tips that they didn’t follow-up on to school resource officers who are trained to protect kids in these schools and who didn’t do that — and that one is probably the most stunning one of all.”
Ryan said that he hope that the new bill passed by the House in December, which will strengthen the background check will be passed by the Senate and help prevent mass shootings in the future.
Speaker Ryan stressed how it's important for lawmakers to find common ground between protecting children from violence int he future.
“Of course we want to listen to these kids, but we also want to make sure that we protect people’s due process rights and legal constitutional rights while making sure that people who should not get guns do not get them — this kid was clearly one of those people,”he continued.
“I think this speaks to bigger questions of our culture — what are we teaching our kids, look at the violence in our culture, look at what they are getting as far as a culture that is provided to them,” he continued. “There are bigger questions here than a narrow law. What about law enforcement? What about school resource officers? What about the FBI? What about background checks? Those are all things we need to get answers to get answers to.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy agreed with Ryan while calling on the Senate to take up the Fix NICS universal background check, which has already been passed by the House.
“We are learning more and more about the failures, the inaction and the ignored warning that ultimately gave way to this horrific act,” he said. “As the investigations continue to look into how this happened, even after all the warning, important debates are happening to ensure nobody like this deranged Mr. Cruz person can get their hands on a firearm again.”
President Trump has suggested that teachers should be armed to keep schools safer. While Ryan thinks that is a "good idea" he thinks it is best to leave that up to each state to make the decision.
Leave a Reply