CNN’s Dana Bash Confronts Rep. Dan Crenshaw With Stat Showing Guns Outnumber People in US: ‘You Don’t See That as a Problem?’

CNN’s Dana Bash grilled Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) on whether the prevalence of firearms in America warrants reflection in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting.

Bash interviewed Crenshaw on Sunday for State of the Union — where she pressed him for a gun violence solution as she grimly wondered whether “nothing’s going to change” despite the massacre. Crenshaw recommended increased security for schools, while arguing with Bash on whether restricting gun access would infringe on the core tenets of the Second Amendment.

“A lot of these policies that I think the Democrats often propose that are gun control policies, they do two things,” Crenshaw said. “One, they infringe on the rights of million and millions of gun owners. Two, they probably wouldn’t have the outcome you’re hoping for. So if you’re not going to get the benefit you want but it’s going to come at great cost, it generally means it’s not a very good policy.

“How can you be so sure?” Bash asked.

Crenshaw answered by insisting the correlation between gun ownership and gun violence “is not very strong. It’s not as strong as a lot of people tend to believe it is.”

“It sounds like you’re saying guns in this country are not a problem,” Bash remarked. “Is that what you’re saying? I mean, there are 300 something million people, 400 million guns. You don’t see that as a problem?”

To put Bash’s figures into exact perspective, the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest projection on America’s population put the country at an estimate of 332,403,650 people at the start of the year. As for gun ownership, the Small Arms Survey assessed in 2020 that America had over 393 million civilian-possessed firearms, and gun manufacturing has been trending upwards for years.

Crenshaw rejected Bash’s premise, returning to his right to self-defense argument as he said “I don’t think it’s a problem that I own guns.” As he spoke of how guns can be used to protect others, Bash interjected to point out “there were 19 people who were highly trained in the hallway and they didn’t — they couldn’t save these children” in Uvalde.

The conversation continued with Bash and Crenshaw engaging each other on whether America’s founding fathers intended for citizens to have access to “weapons of war” when they came up with the Second Amendment.

Watch above, via CNN.