Local

Your representatives' positions on gun control

There's now a national discussion on gun control after the Newtown school shooting, and we called some of our local representatives to see where they stand.

Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown said we don’t just need a school solution.

“It’s a family solution,” Brown said.  “It’s a community solution.  It’s a church solution.  We all gotta do more.”

Two things she said we can do right now to prevent future shootings are to improve school security and close what she calls the gun show “loophole.”

“There should be a background check,” she said.  “A person just coming out of a mental institution….a terrorist can buy an automatic weapon without any checks.  That’s unacceptable.”

She also mentioned how the government has cut funds to certain mental health services.

"When Ronald Reagan was the president we closed a lot of the mental health institutions, but we did not take some of that money and put it in community services to make sure that we have these programs and services available in the community."

Brown she voted for assault weapons bans in 1994 and 2007, and she’d do it again.  She said she doesn’t understand why we would want to “outgun” law enforcement or the military.

She pointed out that someone can walk into a bank and withdraw ten thousand dollars, setting off a trigger to law enforcement.

“But yet you can buy six hundred bullets and no one knows,” Brown said.

Republican Congressman Ander Crenshaw said it’s a “pretty complex issue,” but there’s “no reason” we shouldn’t look at everything.

One thing he says we can do is teach people about the warning signs of mental illness.

“We need to do a better job as a society,” he said.

On gun control, he mentioned assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

“That’s something that ought to be looked at,” Crenshaw said, later adding that there’s “maybe something we can do.”

“I think we’re gonna have to have this national conversation and try to decide what we’re gonna do,” Crenshaw said.

“I’m gonna do what I think is best regardless of what my party does or what other people think,” he later said.  “I got elected to do what I think is right.  That’s what I’ve always done.”

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