Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC), who was selected to succeed outgoing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) earlier this week, said Wednesday that the best response to last week’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. may not necessarily come in the form of “new legislation” on gun control, but instead a hard look at mental illness and the country’s “culture of moral decay and of violence.”
“I think the solutions are not necessarily in new legislation. Perhaps the solution starts with us examining the mental condition of the person and the persons in the past that have had the desire to create the atrocities that we’ve seen recently,” Scott told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. “So mental illness should be a major part of the conversation going forward. We should also look at an opportunity for us to engage this entire culture of moral decay and of violence. So when we start looking for solutions as a response to the crisis, I think we’re starting in the right place. If we draw conclusions quickly, we may draw flawed conclusions.”
