Former Hennepin County, Minnesota, Sheriff Rich Stanek pushed back on calls for gun control in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis, saying the focus should instead be on the "mental health issues" that may drive these incidents.
A lone attacker on Wednesday morning opened fire at Annunciation Catholic Church with multiple weapons, killing two children and wounding 18 others, before committing suicide.
Following the attack, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement, "We need a statewide and a federal ban on assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines "so the next go-around, there is not another city two months from now that is saying the same damn thing. Let's stop this from happening."
Stanek, in an interview with Newsmax's "Wake Up America," dismissed Frey's calls for a statewide and federal ban on assault weapons, saying, "I'm surprised it took Mayor Frey only a couple hours to come out with this, usually he does it immediately" after a mass shooting takes place.
"It's an old line story from him," Stanek said. "Mental health issues are really important. They are going to find, with this individual who did the shooting, that there were all kinds of issues and red flags, that people should have said something, maybe the mother, maybe relatives and friends, maybe an employer. But you got to ask yourself, nobody in their right mind does something like this."
When asked if the shooter's mother could face charges, Stanek said, "that depends on what the investigation finds," but he noted that "it appears early on that the guns were purchased legally, that the individual who did the shooting was a legal adult here in Minnesota."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.