During a conversation about the mass shooting in Los Angles that took place late Saturday night and claimed at least ten lives, CNN "State of the Union" host Dana Bash called out at GOP lawmaker who attempted to brush off the need for new gun laws by pointing out gun violence in Chicago -- a favorite rightwing talking point.
Sitting down with McCaul to discuss what to expect now that Republicans have majority control of the House, Bash first asked about the latest gun-related bloodshed in California.
"I was a counter-terrorism federal prosecutor and I was chair of Homeland Security," the Texas Republican replied. "Chicago has probably some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, yet the highest murder rate. The way I look at it is we need the intelligence, we need information sharing, we need to connect the dots."
"Every one of these cases, and I guarantee you'll see it in this one as well, the shooter had warning signs along the way," he continued. "We just didn't respond or pick it up. In my judgment we can create a system. I introduced a bill that we can take published information on the internet, have an algorithm to stop the threat before it happens. That is a smart approach rather than violating Second Amendment rights. So, look, I hope we can get that passed -- we're seeing this movie way too many times."
"What about a red flag law? A federal red flag law?" Bash asked.
"In a way what i'm talking about are red flags," McCaul replied before adding, "Chicago, Illinois has red flags --"
"You keep bringing up Chicago, which I understand," the CNN host interjected before adding, "But the guns in Chicago come in from other places because there is a patchwork of laws across the country, there's no federal law."
'Right. Again, we stopped ---," he backtracked. "I saw it when I chaired Homeland, so many terror attacks because we got the threat information in advance and we stopped it. We can use the same formula here domestically, although it's a little different. The Constitution didn't apply overseas, but we can do that here and stop these threats before they happen."
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