Flake says Congress should and will make gun law changes after Texas
"We haven't fully found out the information from yesterday, and what it means, and where we can make an impact," Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said of Sunday's deadly mass shooting at a Texas church. Speaking in a CNN interview Monday morning, he continued: "I think what will come to light is we need better information sharing, if nothing else, in terms of criminal convictions or the background check issue," because "we don't have a good system now, the mixed system. We don't share information like we should between local and federal agencies."
Flake went on to say Congress should and "will be exploring" changes in those areas of gun policy as a better picture of what happened in Texas emerges. Still, he added, referencing his own experience of the congressional baseball practice shooting in June, political action is not the sole solution. "Sometimes there are things that would matter in terms of what Congress does," Flake said, but "sometimes it's more of a cultural issue or just a matter of discourse and how we treat each other." Watch his comments in context below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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