White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was grilled on ABC’s This Week Sunday morning over the Trump administration’s response to several mass shootings that have occurred during President Trump’s term.
This Week host Jonathan Karl rattled off a list of mass killings that occurred in the last two years and also discussed the two shootings this weekend that left 29 people dead and dozens more injured. He then directly asked Mulvaney what Trump planned to do to stop the killings from happening again.
Mulvaney responded by saying that guns are not the only issue when dealing with mass shootings.
“This cancer, this difficulty that we face as a nation, predates this administration by many years,” Mulvaney said. “We’ve given a wide audience to these people. We’ve made them celebrities. We’ve allowed them to spew their hate without any restrictions.”
“To think that this is just a gun issue that many people make it out to be is not right,” Mulvaney continued.
But Karl pressed harder on Mulvaney, noting that Trump considered stricter gun control laws after the Parkland shooting and ended up walking back his comments after meeting with a lobbyist for the NRA.
Mulvaney then cited the administration’s decision to ban bump stocks and sign legislation for stringent background checks.
Regarding whether Trump was reconsidering banning assault weapons, Mulvaney pivoted to say authorities still do not know if the shooters obtained their guns illegally or not.
“I think we all agree that sick people who are intent on doing things like this should not be able to buy guns legally,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney then attacked 2020 presidential candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying no one blamed either politician after the 2017 congressional baseball shooting or when a man attacked an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, last month.
“There’s no benefit here to try to make this a political issue,” Mulvaney went on. “This is a social issue.”
