Bratton: ‘An Assault Weapons Ban Isn’t Going to Help’ – Red Flag Laws, ‘Background Screening’ Can and Have Support

On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN Tonight,” Homeland Security Advisory Council Co-Chair and former Police Commissioner of Boston, Los Angeles, and New York Bill Bratton argued that “Guns are here to stay.” And “An assault weapons ban isn’t going to help us.” Bratton also stated that red flag laws and “background screening” are areas where agreement can be reached and that can help.

Bratton stated, “[G]oing forward, we need to try to find things that do work that can minimize this…in Florida, the red flag law that they passed down there, there evidently have been 5,000 uses of that law in just recent years. That’s 5,000 times that that law has been used to prevent something like we just witnessed today. The good news is, there seems to be, by and large, bipartisan support for red flag laws around the country. We don’t have too much bipartisan support for anything in this country anymore. So, let’s focus on things that apparently are working and see if we can expand that.”

He continued, “Guns are here to stay. There [are] 500 made in this country, we’re making a million or two million more every month. We have 13 million assault weapons. An assault weapons ban isn’t going to help us. The reality is that we need to find where can we collaborate, where can we work together on — background screening is one area that we might be able to get some bipartisan support. Red flag laws, apparently, an issue that can be exponentially grown. So, while we are all dismayed by the rapidly increasing rate of crime and disorder and fear in this country, in the midst of that darkness, in the midst of that horror, let’s try to focus on things that are showing themselves capable of preventing a lot of these incidents from happening.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett