NYT’s Brooks: ‘Don’t Know If’ Gun Control Would Prevent San Bernardino, ‘Nonetheless, It Couldn’t Hurt’

Friday on PBS’s “NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks reacted to last week’s San Bernardino, CA mass shooting in his regular segment with syndicated columnist Mark Shields.

Brooks first took on the idea of gun control as a measure to prevent these shootings in the future and was skeptical of that as a possible solution.

“I don’t see why it’s an either/or thing. It’s additive, not alternative,” Brooks said, responding to a question from anchor Judy Woodruff on whether it was a gun issue or a terrorism issue. “The guns, you know, I don’t see why people need to be carrying these kinds of guns, the guns that were used in this kind of attack. And so it seems to me some sensible legislation, I don’t know if it will help prevent this. As I have said all along, there are 250 million guns in this country. It’s hard to control gun usage. Nonetheless, it couldn’t hurt.”

Brooks went on to add that another part of the solution would be to defeat ISIS on the battlefield, which would demoralize the terror organization much like al Qaeda in Iraq was.

“It what’s unique about this is that it was sort of ISIS-inspired, not ISIS-run, but sort of ISIS-inspired. And that leads to two conclusions. First, ISIS has charisma. If you are a certain sort of person with some sort of mentality, suddenly, you want to latch on and swear allegiance to ISIS, apparently, and then go out and kill people. And so giving — taking away some of ISIS’ charisma by handing them some defeat on the battlefield, the way we did to al Qaeda in Iraq, seems to me an important task.”

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