Rep. Gosar: Society is the problem, not guns

While high school students across the country walk out of school to protest gun violence, lawmakers like Rep. Paul Gosar remain vehemently opposed to any legislation surrounding gun control.

The debate on gun control was sparked again by the school shooting that took place in Parkland, Florida, that took the lives of 17 people, most of them students.  The 19-year-old gunman had already been reported several times before the incident. The massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School  was the fifteenth school shooting in 2018.

“There were warning signs that everybody missed from local law enforcement to the FBI,” says Gosar.  “There were warning signs here all the way across the board. Do we take guns away? Do we take automobiles away? There’s obviously more kids killed in automobiles than they are with guns.”

Gosar believes the issue isn’t with guns, but what he calls the “breakdown of family, the breakdown of communication, [and] the breakdown of leads that were clearly there.” If complaints on the shooter in Parkland would have been addressed, Gosar says he wouldn’t have been able to purchase a weapon.

“I believe the general public should have access to AR-15s,” says Gosar. “When you start looking at the aspect of the Second Amendment, once again it’s ‘guns don’t kill, people kill.’ We have a problem in our society. There were warning signs going over and over to intercede. When we didn’t, that’s the failure all the way across the board.”

President Donald Trump recently passed the ban of bump stocks which is a gun accessory that makes them more of an automatic weapon. Gosar doesn’t believe that will make much of a difference, saying the bump stocks were a “sacrificial lamb, but it really doesn’t mean much.”

Trump has also talked about arming teachers with guns so they can protect themselves and the students in these situations, and Gosar agrees. The Republican congressman points out that mass shootings occur in gun-free zones like schools, movie theaters and churches. He says if the someone on campus were armed, the gunman would have been brought down immediately.

“These are precipitating in gun free zones so you’re waiting to be slaughtered there,” says Gosar.

Gosar says there is always a great opportunity to review our background checks. Felons are at the top of the list for those who are not allowed to own a gun. He says the mentally ill owning a gun is a gray area because you have to consider who declared them mentally ill and if they’re taking medication. All in all, he pressures that it’s society that needs to change, not the law.

“Freedoms and liberties aren’t free. There’s always a cost,” he says.