CNN’s Jim Acosta questioned Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) on Saturday over why he can’t “get together with the Democrats and get it done” in response to acts of gun violence across the country.
Acosta played a clip of the Tennessee Republican’s “we’re not going to fix it” response to gun violence after three children and three adults died in a school shooting in his state last month.
The CNN anchor brought up this weekend’s deadly shooting at a Texas home and picked apart Burchett’s claims about lawmakers’ inability to address gun violence.
“A lot of people listen to what you just said and said, ‘Wait a minute, it is your job to fix this and it’s unacceptable to have mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting.’ Why not fix this? Get together with the Democrats and get it done,” Acosta said.
Burchett, in response, reiterated his call for a Christian “revival” as a potential solution.
“I was probably speaking more from a Christian perspective. I also went on to say we need real revival in this country,” Burchett said of his past statement.
“There’s Christianity in other countries and they don’t have mass shootings,” Acosta noted.
“Well, they don’t have our freedom, either, they don’t have the Second Amendment,” replied the Republican, who warned about the use of 3D printers to make guns.
The five people killed in the recent Texas mass shooting join a list of 13,819 people who have died as a result of gun violence in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
There have been 176 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2023, as of Sunday, the site noted.
Twitter users slammed Burchett over his response to Acosta and questioned “what freedom” the U.S. has compared to other countries.