House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said on Thursday that the United States it was too soon to say whether the mass shooting in San Bernadino, Calif., was an act of terrorism.
He argued that the proper response to mass shootings is to overhaul the nation’s mental health system rather than changing gun laws.
“If your stomach isn’t turned when you see these acts of violence on TV, there’s something wrong with you,” Ryan said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday. “The question is, can we address these issues without violating a citizen’s rights?”
Ryan said that many different factors should need to be examined, such as mental illness and gun safety as well as the possibility of home grown terrorism. But he conceded that it’s “too soon to say” whether the shooting wasn’t an act of Islamic terrorism.
“Well first of all, I don’t want to speculate as what happened yesterday,” Ryan said. “There is a common theme here and that is a theme of mental illness. We have not updated our mental illness laws in decades and that is a problem because mentally ill people are getting guns and committing mass atrocities. So this is the legislation we are working on now, the Murphy legislation, we think that is an important overhaul.”
Ryan added that officials have to work on enforcing gun laws that are already in place. He said legislation that would prevent those on terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns would be unreasonable, because it would mean depriving them of Constitutional rights to gun ownership without due process.
Ryan added, “The last thing we want to do is rush to judgement to do something and then not actually solve anything.”
