In the wake of a mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 59 and injured more than 500, Oklahoma’s congressional delegation is not in a rush to take action.
Authorities said Stephen Paddock used a bump stock to effectively make his rifles fire like automatic weapons. Rep. Tom Cole said he wants to look at the legality of such gun modifications, but he is not in favor of doing anything to otherwise limit the number or kind of guns people can own.
Cole stopped short of saying mass shootings are a price of preserving Second Amendment rights.
"But, yeah, I am very fierce about protecting the Second Amendment, and, again, I know most of the people that own these weapons — I mean, like, 99.99 percent — aren't a threat to anybody," Cole said Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Cole also said he favors increased mental health spending as a defense against mass shootings. He is not, however, interested in any new gun bans.
"We have 300 million guns in circulation legally now. You're going to go back and reclaim them all?" Cole said. "There's not an easy legislative fix here, and I think people that suggest there is are not very persuasive in that regard."
Paddock had 23 guns in his Mandalay Bay hotel room and owned more than that. Sen. James Lankford said gun ownership is not the issue.
"Any house that you look at, anywhere in Oklahoma, there's a gun inside of it. Gun ownership is extremely common. A lot of people have multiple weapons in their own homes," Lankford told Fox News Radio on Wednesday. "We have a very peaceful society, so the presence of a gun doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have people doing mass shootings."
Lankford said proponents of gun control measures are acting out of a sense of obligation before all the facts are known. Sen. Jim Inhofe told the website Vox mass shootings are a cultural problem partly to blame on sanctuary cities.
