Republican Sen. Jeff Flake acknowledged that there is something wrong with the current system to keep guns out of the hands of known dangerous people, telling CNN's "New Day" on Monday that lawmakers will look into how the shooter in the massacre at the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas could have obtained a weapon.
"I do think that in this case . . . what will come to light is we need better information sharing, if nothing else, in terms of criminal convictions or background check issues," the Arizona senator said. "We don't have a good system now. We don't share information like we should between local and federal agencies."
Asked by CNN's Alisyn Camerota how the suspected gunman, Devin Patrick Kelley, could buy a weapon given that he served a year in jail for assault of his wife and child and was kicked out of military service, Flake said, "we'll be exploring that, I'm sure."
Camerota pressed Flake further in an attempt to receive a more definitive answer, stressing that mass shootings have become a frequently occurring event in the United States and that Congress never appears to do anything practical about it.
She also pointed out that Flake himself was present in June when a man began shooting at Congressional Republicans at a baseball practice in Virginia, severely injuring Rep. Steve Scalise, asking "Don't you have a feeling that enough is enough?"
Flake answered that "There's no way you can experience something like that, and see bullets pitching right in front of you and not figure what can we do? We've got to do something more," he said.
But he emphasized that Congress is not the only culprit.
"We have to have a change in attitude and behavior," Flake said. "This person who fired on a baseball field had a legally possessed weapon and he would not have shown up on any [lists of dangerous people]. Sometimes there are things that would matter in terms of what Congress does, sometimes it's more of a cultural issue or just a matter of discourse and how we treat each other."
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