Banning assault weapons looks like ‘big action,’ but isn’t ‘big impact’: Oklahoma attorney general
Following a mass shooting that killed four people at a Tulsa hospital, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor reacted to proposals encouraging a new assault weapon ban in America on “Cavuto: Live” Saturday.
Noting the ban may seem like a “big action,” O’Connor argued it wouldn’t have a “big impact,” further explaining how the political focus should be on mental health awareness.
OKLAHOMA ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN O’CONNOR: Banning assault weapons looks like it’s a big action, but it really isn’t a big impact. We’re going to dance around all this, Neil, for a long time, but the fact is it’s criminals and people with some type of either long-term or temporary mental illness or depression. That’s the culprit. Only those people shoot people outside of our military.
In America, we discuss things, and I think always we should have these discussions and see where would the outcome exceed the value of the detriment of the imposition of a restriction. So a discussion on this would be a good idea. But again, we can’t dance around the topic of we need to train people to detect mental illness or depression. We need to have easier ways to get people into treatment and care quickly. We need to have easier ways to report this mental health. Honestly, mental health has been the stepchild of physical health forever. And we’re realizing now that every once in a while, somebody with a mental health issue erupts. In my opinion, we should be devoting attention to that.
