Seth Moulton debates Republican congressman on gun reform on ABC’s ‘This Week’
Many households try to keep political debates away from the kitchen table. In an appearance Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Reps. Seth Moulton and Scott Taylor did the opposite.
Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Taylor, a Virginia Republican — both of whom are Iraq War combat veterans — sat down at the kitchen table of This Week host Martha Raddatz for a discussion on the country’s gun laws in the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Despite their common experience in the military, the two congressman had stark differences in their views on how to address the country’s problem with gun violence. Moulton called it an “American epidemic” and “public health crisis.”
.@MarthaRaddatz sits down with two Iraq War vets, now Congressmen, for a rare bipartisan discussion on gun control. https://t.co/xIfDrWWi4d pic.twitter.com/eEHFdNdrBy
— ABC News (@ABC) October 8, 2017
The second-term North Shore congressman argued there are reasonable measures within the Second Amendment that would make communities safer from gun violence and pointed out that the government already bans certain “weapons of war” for civilians.
“We don’t allow families to own tanks,” Moulton said. “So we have reasonable restrictions that are perfectly respectful of the Second Amendment, and we know from experience that restrictions like this, that common sense reforms will help.”
Taylor countered that it’s up to elected leaders to find “clarity” in such times of emotional chaos, rather than necessarily pushing for restrictive legislation.
“It is a high, very high bar, to be able to take some folks’ rights away to try to enact policies that may take their rights away, but not really do anything,” he said, arguing that the majority of gun deaths are not from mass shootings and that measures such as banning certain weapons or universal background checks would not deter a motivated killer.
Moulton argued that those reforms would at least reduce gun violence.
They did find some common ground.
Taylor said he thinks the government should “reevaluate” bump stocks, a device used by the Las Vegas gunman that allows semi-automatic weapons to fire at a rate fully automatic weapons, which are banned. The stringently anti-gun reform National Rifle Association has also suggested openness to “additional regulations” on bump stocks.
Moulton is cosponsoring a bill with Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican, that would ban bump stocks.
“Look, the gun manufacturers are smart,” Moulton said Sunday. “They figured out a way to get around the law. It’s the job of Congress to then step in and say, ‘That was not our intent.’ We did not want to provide this loophole in the law, so we should fix it.”
