Sen. Klobuchar Calls for Stricter Gun Control, Assault Weapons Ban in Wake of Minneapolis Shooting

CABRERA: “What’s going through your mind right now, this horrific tragedy happening the first week of school in your home state?”
Klobuchar: “Having talked to one of the moms and someone I love dearly, of course, it’s first those families and those kids. You think of every parent remembering putting their kid on the bus or bringing their kid to school and dropping them off on the first day. You think about the teachers and all the people that love these kids and spend their life work really helping them and protecting them and teaching them. And then this was all destroyed from one madman. We don’t know the details about him. As you reported, he is dead, but more will, I’m sure, come out about his motive and why he would commit such a horrific act. It, of course, makes me think about guns and all the work we’ve done to ban these automatic rifles and to do something when it comes to the background checks and everything. And we keep getting thwarted. We were able to pass a limited measure on a bipartisan basis, but not enough to stop something like this. And it just makes you think about that as well without knowing the details about how he got that gun, if the gun was legal, what kind of gun it was, but it was clearly one of these automatic rifles to be able to shoot that many kids so fast.”
CABRERA: “Earlier this year, of course, I think about the attacker who shot two Minnesota state lawmakers in their homes near Minneapolis, killing one of those legislators and her husband’s. We’ve learned this afternoon the City council meeting there in Minnesota and Minneapolis has been canceled. Can you talk about how these types of attacks have had a ripple effect in your community?”
Klobuchar: “Yes, well, Melissa and her husband Mark were loved and also we had Senator Hoffman and his wife Yvette shot eight, nine times each, survived. I was just with Senator John Hoffman this week and he’s doing just extraordinarily well. He gave a speech about what happened and we’ve just gotten through this. And I want to make clear like our community is not alone. The things that have happened have been horrifically tragic and have captured the nation, but we remember that this has happened in nearly every state in the nation, right? Whether it is a school, whether it is a movie theater, whether it is Connecticut, whether it’s Colorado, whether it’s Florida, whether it’s Texas, whether it’s a store, this continues to happen. So right now my thoughts are with the people I know and the state I love, but this is going on all over the nation and has for too long.”
CABRERA: “It is the first week of school. You can’t even get through the first week of school in Minnesota without a school shooting. That’s — that is the reality right now. What do you think needs to happen?”
Klobuchar: “I’ve made this clear and again there’ll be time to talk about this, but we need better laws on the books nationally. It just can’t be in local states. It’s got to be nationally on these assault weapons and that is the first thing. They’re for the military. They should be for the police. They are not for madmen like this person. I also think you’ve got to continue to work on school safety issues. I actually was the sponsor of that bill, but we can do all we can on that. But when you have so much access to guns right now and so many guns out there on the streets, you’re going to continue to see these kinds of mass shootings. So I actually have to go to talk to one of the family members, but I — I really appreciate you having me on.”