Kasich: ‘I Don’t Think the Lack of Gun Laws’ Is Responsible for Mass Shootings
BLITZER: “Let’s talk about guns in America. Would you support ending that loophole, so people can’t go to a gun show for example or a private distributor and start buying guns without any background check at all?”
KASICH: “You know, you’re supposed to be held accountable if you are involved in a private sale, but I don’t know how you’re going to regulate private sales. What I do think we need is a good database.”
BLITZER: “It’s done with automobiles.”
KASICH: “But it’s a different situation, to me, and it’s not that simple. Look, the problem is, I don’t think, the lack of gun laws, I think the problem is we have a society where people become increasingly isolated. They become estranged, they have no family, they don’t have much community. This is kind of a breakdown in what we grew up with Wolf, which was a community where we all cared about one another. I, as you know, I’ve been involved and invested a lot to help the issue of mental illness in Ohio. It’s one of the reasons I expanded Medicaid, so the communities are stronger. It’s those kind of things, because if you focus on the guns, you’re missing the bigger picture, which is the fact that people have been isolated, estranged, and to try to take away guns, I don’t think is going to solve the problem.”
BLITZER: “Because if buy a gun from a gun seller, licensed gun seller, you need to go through a background check. But if you buy a gun at a gun show, you don't have to go through a background check. There’s a problem it there, right?”
KASICH: “But there’s a private issue here, Wolf, I mean, if I’m going to sell you a gun, do I have to go through the -- through all this checking? I mean, there’s -- I’m supposed to have some responsibility, as they are at the gun show, and they should exercise that responsibility. But I don’t think more laws are going to fix this.”
BLITZER: “So how do you stop these kind of violence, these mass killings that we have seen in Oregon this week and what's going on in general?”
KASICH: “Every one of these folks have been people who have been estranged, isolated, with a family that doesn’t know what to do with them. And just reading about the mom of this latest mass murderer, what you see is, she felt that she couldn’t control her son, there was no way for anybody to intervene. That’s what we have to get to, the root cause of this. We need to love our neighbors, and be there to help them. And I think sometimes people feel lonely, estranged, they’re outcasts, and then they take action. That’s what we need to get to the root [of in this country].”
