WASHINGTON – Today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed the Highland Park, Ill. shooting and how focusing on just the weapon can lead to missing potential solutions to these tragic events. Excerpts are below, and video can be found here. 

“As horrific as these incidents are, one of the abject lessons, I think, of what happened in Highland Park is the strictest gun laws in the nation did not prevent this terrible act. And I think if we focus just on the instrumentality, on the tool, on the inanimate object, and divert our attention from these other contributing factors to these terrible crimes and terrible acts, that we are missing a possible solution to the problem.”

“I worry that if our focus is simply on the instrumentality – on the firearm itself, an inanimate object – to the detriment of these other contributing factors, that we will have missed the point. Maybe we will have stayed on our talking points, but it will not allow us to reduce the carnage that we’re seeing in cities across the country and regions across the United States.”