Mika to Santorum: Forget Muslims, What About 'White Men With Guns?'

Muslims are not doing enough to "confront the cancer" of Islamic extremism, GOP candidate Rick Santorum said Monday, but MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski wanted to know why he isn't "working on white men with guns" when it comes to mass shootings.

"You know better," she told him during an interview on the morning show. "You're a smart guy. You're telling Muslim Americans they all need to come out and talk about the tiny percentage of their community that has, kind of frankly, wreaked havoc. Yet, you look at the data of white men with guns wreaking havoc on this country. Why don't you call on them to do that?"

Santorum insisted to Brzezinski that he is doing a lot of things about trying to solve gun violence," and insisted that if one looks at many of the folks causing crime in America, "almost every single one of them . . . 85-90 percent of men in prison grew up without a father in the home."

And the "real root" of the problem is "a breakdown of society based on the breakdown of the family," he said.

Guns are not the problem, Santorum insisted, but instead "the problem is people are being raised in a society without proper leadership in their home."

The exchange came while show host Joe Scarborough was questioning the former Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate about his call for Muslims to police their own on terrorism, asking if "95 percent of Muslim Americans" are to police the actions of the others.

"No one's suggesting that," said Santorum. "The bottom line is this: There are Muslims in this country who are doing that and going out and trying to establish a reform Islam."

However, there are still "lots of Muslims out there that have tried to confront the cancer and the bottom line is most of them are not, and that's a problem," he continued.

He also accused President Barack Obama of not being truthful about the threat being faced from the Middle East.

"We have never heard the president talk about who Iran is and what their objective is and why they're pursuing a nuclear weapon," said Santorum. "None of that is discussed. The same thing with ISIS. The fact ISIS has established a caliphate. How would you defeat a caliphate? All these things are ignored by the president."

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