Sen. John Kennedy: 'We do not need more gun control, we need more idiot control'

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Sen. Kennedy: We don't need more gun control, we need more idiot control

Louisiana Republican hits back at Democrats proposing ban on assault weapons on 'Fox News Primetime'

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., joined "Fox News Primetime" Tuesday to discuss his Democratic colleagues' calls for gun control after a mass shooting at a Boulder, Colorado grocery store killed 10 people, including veteran police officer Eric Talley.

KENNEDY: These killings were terrible. They were horrible. I'm reminded, though that, you know, America is a big country. We're free and one of the prices we pay for that freedom is that you're always going to have some people who abuse it. Freedom is risk. What we have got to concentrate on is how to control that risk. You're not going to stop the killings until you stop the killers. But you don't stop drunk drivers by getting rid of all sober drivers, which is what many of my Democratic friends want to do with respect to the Second Amendment.

In my judgment, we do not need more gun control, we need more idiot control. How do we do that? We have already tried, the Republicans have. Senator [Chuck] Grassley, Senator [Ted] Cruz had a bill to strengthen our national database. We regulate gun ownership in America. If you're convicted of certain crimes, if you have a tendency to violence, if you're mentally ill and you want to buy a gun, your name has to run through a database. 

The problem is that the database has huge holes in it. And many federal agencies and state agencies are very cavalier about sending in the names. Grassley and Cruz's bill, which I support, would have tightened up the database and it would have cracked down on people who have guns who shouldn't have guns. Do you know why the bill didn't pass? Many of my Democratic colleagues filibustered it.

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