House Majority Whip Steve Scalise — critically wounded in a shooting attack last June — argued against more gun control Sunday, asserting the problem is with lawbreakers, not with too many weapons.
In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” the Louisiana Republican harshly criticized Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for rushing to pass to legislation in the wake of the nation’s worst mass shooting in Las Vegas.
The problem, Scalise said, “is not that there are too many guns, it's that there are people that will go out and break the law, whether it's a gun or some other weapon or a bomb.”
“There is no excuse for breaking the law,” he said. “There is no excuse for using any kind of weapon to try to take the life of an innocent person."
Scalise said the effort should be on enforcement of existing laws.
"In the end you have laws that are on the books that aren't being enforced,” he argued. “Go out and focus on enforcing those laws."
He said Pelosi’s rush to ban “bump stocks” — a device used to amp up mass killer Stephen Paddock’s semi-automatic weapon attack in Las Vegas — is “a fallacy.”
"Minority leader Nancy Pelosi already said she wants it to be a slippery slope,” he said. “She doesn't want to stop at bump stocks, they want to limit the rights of gun owners.
“It's a little bit early for people to say they know what to do to fix this problem.”
“A week ago, most people didn't know what a bump stock was,” he added. “To think we're all now experts and know how to write some panacea law, it's fallacy.”