Florida Gov. Rick Scott defended the right to bear arms in the wake of the Orlando shooting by saying the Second Amendment shouldn’t be blamed for killing anyone.
“Nobody would think that anybody on a terrorist watch list should have a gun,” Scott said in an interview on CNN Friday morning. “We all can agree that, you know, we don’t want somebody that’s gonna do something like that to be walking around with any weapons, but the Second Amendment didn’t kill anybody.”
On Sunday, 49 people were killed and 53 others injured in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history at a gay nightclub in Orlando. But Scott said it was the Islamic State that caused those deaths, and said the U.S. should be more focused on taking out the terror group.
“This is ISIS. This is evil,” he said. “This is radical Islam. I’m tired of what’s going on in our country. We’re not focused enough on ISIS.”
“Let’s remember, the Second Amendment has been around for over 200 years. It didn’t, you know, that’s not what killed innocent people,” Scott added. “Evil killed innocent people. There’s gonna be a time to have a conversation about what we do to make our state or city, our country, safer again. But let’s have a conversation about how we destroy ISIS. Where’s that conversation?”
The shooter in Sunday’s attack, Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen born in New York to Afghan parents, had pledged his loyalty to the Islamic State. Mateen died in a shootout with police.
Scott met with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in Orlando Thursday. Despite Obama calling on Congress to pass gun control in remarks Thursday, Scott said the two never discussed guns.
“Yesterday wasn’t about politics,” Scott said.
