Klobuchar: I’ve Long Supported an Assault Weapons Ban

HAYES: “Yeah, I saw some of the stories coming out about that heroism and just incredible courage under tremendously insane circumstances. There is something so perverse about the fact that these kids drill for this. And yet it seems that that preparation maybe was useful in this moment.”
Klobuchar: “Yes. So, they knew to get under the pews, they knew what to do. And my friend’s daughter, who’s just, you know, seventh, eighth grader, she actually saw two of her friends shot, one in the stomach, one in the neck. And then when she got out, she had to tell one of their parents what had happened to their own kid. So, these kids did extraordinary things, but they never should have been put in that position in the first place. This was a madman. He was an all-purpose hater, by the way, hated groups left, right, you name it. There’s no way to pin an ideology on this. And I think people should remember this as the facts come out about this manifesto. But what I learned from this once again is that guns — and we’re a proud hunting state, there’s a lot of law-abiding gun owners in Minnesota, but there’s got to be more we can do here. I’ve long supported an assault weapon ban. It won’t help in every case, but it would have helped in Uvalde. It would have helped in Buffalo. We don’t know if it would have helped here, or background checks or some kind of triggers when someone suddenly buys a number of guns, or better backgrounds. This just — we’re not doing enough. And these kids, no matter how many drills they have, they shouldn’t be expected to do that for us. The people in Washington have to have the courage to vote for these bills and to do something that’s actually meaningful.”