“Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker pushed back at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in a fiery interview over gun laws after shootings in Maine left 18 people dead last week.
Welker pressed the Republican presidential hopeful on the matter Sunday after he asked why there wasn’t “more done” in response to the massacre’s suspect, U.S. Army reservist Robert Card, who was committed to a mental health facility over the summer after reportedly “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” a military base. Officials found Card dead on Friday after a dayslong manhunt.
The “Meet the Press” moderator said that police across Maine received a statewide alert last month to be on the lookout for Card due to his threats against his base and fellow soldiers. Despite the warning, law enforcement couldn’t locate him.
“Yet he was able to, in the days before the attack, walk into a store and buy guns,” said Welker before asking about “red flag” laws designed to limit access to firearms to people deemed a risk to themselves or others.
“So, if you can’t find someone to institutionalize them, as you have called for, why shouldn’t there be a final line of defense in the form of a red flag law or some other blaring red sign that says to gun sellers, ‘Don’t allow this person to have a gun?’” she said.
DeSantis, who recently argued on CNN that an “involuntary commitment” would have “done the trick” in preventing the shootings, replied that he doesn’t think “you would even need a red flag.”
“If somebody has a mental involuntary commitment and adjudication of that nature, that usually would go into the system, and that would be on a traditional background check,” he said.
Maine has what’s known as a yellow flag law where law enforcement “can detain someone they suspect is mentally ill and poses a threat to themselves or others,” the Associated Press reported.
It’s different from a red flag law, however, because it requires police to first “get a medical practitioner to evaluate the person and find them to be a threat” before police could petition a judge for a firearms seizure.
Critics have argued that the Maine law is “woefully weak” and creates an undue burden to remove firearms from people.
DeSantis continued by bringing up his belief in due process and constitutional rights before Welker pounced back at him on red flag laws.
“And if you’re somebody that is not, that can’t conduct themselves in society because of mental illness, then that absolutely should be taken into account,” DeSantis said.
“But if you can’t conduct yourself in terms of mental illness, shouldn’t there be a law in this case?” asked Welker, noting that Maine officials have said a red flag law “could have made a difference.”
“It would have empowered authorities to raise that red light to gun sellers all across the state and say, ‘This is someone who should not be able to own a gun,’” she continued. “That final line of defense never kicked in because it didn’t exist, governor.”
You can catch more of Welker’s interview with DeSantis, which continued into a back-and-forth between the two, below.