Fox News Anchor Pushes GOP Senator on Background Check Effectiveness: ‘Doesn’t Mean There’s Nothing We Can Do’
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) told Fox News on Monday that potential gun control measures like expanded background checks will not stop a “determined criminal,” but that doesn’t mean they are not worth pursuing.
Toomey is working on potential new gun laws with other lawmakers, despite heavy resistance to sun legislation within his own party. He told CBS News over the weekend that expanded background checks are “on the table” for the legislation.
America’s Newsroom co-host Bill Hemmer pushed back on Toomey’s idea of all “commercial” firearm sales requiring a background check, saying such a law would not have stopped the shooting last month in Uvalde, Texas.
“Okay. If you expanded your criminal background checks, Sandy Hook could have still happened. If you expand criminal background checks, what happened in Uvalde, Texas, still could still have happened,” Hemmer said before the senator jumped in with a defense.
No one thing, Toomey argued, will prevent any mass shootings, but that doesn’t mean new legislation is not worth pushing. The senator admitted determined criminals will still be able to get guns, but it needs to be more difficult for the “dangerously mentally ill” to have access to firearms.
Let me be very clear. There is no panacea here. There is no one thing that will prevent mass killings. All we can hope for in my view is on the margins make it more difficult for someone who is dangerously mentally ill or someone who is a violent criminal to buy a firearm and hope there is some kind of intervention in the meantime. A Determined criminal is going be able to eventually get a gun. I understand that. That doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do to make it harder for that person to get a gun.
Toomey provided no timeline for the new gun measures but said there could be “a framework” by the end of this week, with senators working on an “ambitious” timetable.
“I doubt very much we’ll have a vote by the end of the week but it is possible that we would have a framework that could lead to specific legislation,” he said. “That is still an ambitious timetable. But it’s very hard to predict how quickly it will come together.”
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