GREENSBORO — U.S. Rep. Ted Budd told his Rotarian audience Friday that banning assault weapons was just a “feel better” strategy that ignored the nation’s real ills and would not solve its persistent problem with mass killings.
People have an ingrained tendency to “blame the device” behind tragedies while ignoring the root causes of America’s recurrent spate of killing sprees, said the first-term Republican congressman from Advance during a luncheon address.
“You have to look at laws that don’t just make us feel better in the short term, but laws that actually make a difference — and we have to deal with mental illness,” Budd said. “There are two sources of these mass shootings: One is mental illness — that’s probably the biggest — and the other is radical Islamic terrorism.
“So we don’t have a device problem; it’s easy to blame the device,” Budd continued. “What we have is a violence issue.”
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If assault rifles are banned, deranged killers will simply move on to other weapons, he said.
“What are we going to do with the pressure cooker at the Boston Marathon and its shrapnel? What are we going to do with the vans that are rented and get driven down the crowded streets of Paris and kill 80 people?” Budd asked rhetorically.
Budd is running for re-election and has yet to attract a Republican primary opponent. Two Greensboro residents, Kathy Manning and Adam Coker, have filed for the Democratic nomination in the 13th District that Budd now represents.
The district includes all of Davidson and Davie counties, much of Iredell County, a small piece of Rowan County, the city of High Point and much of Greensboro.
Nine days after an assailant killed 17 students and educators at a high school in Parkland, Fla., Budd spoke to the Greensboro group using his background as owner of a gun shop and firing range in Rural Hall to tutor the audience of about 75 on the lengthy history of rapid-fire rifles, compared with the relatively recent emergence of the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle as a weapon of choice for mass killers.
“And this is a design — because I understand this industry — this is a design that has been available to the public since the 1950s,” Budd said of the AR-15. “AR does not stand for ‘assault rifle,’ it stands for Armalite ... The semi-automatic function has been around since John Browning invented it in 1911, so 107 years.”
He said America’s epidemic of armed mayhem stems from a variety of sources, such as the traditional family’s breakdown, infatuation with violence and the removal of religion from public schools.
Budd spoke for about 30 minutes to the Summit Rotary Club gathering at Starmount Country Club.
The first-term Republican congressman from Advance delivered off-the-cuff remarks initially aimed at less visceral topics such as the improving economy and immigration reforms that would include a border wall spanning hundreds of miles.
But he acknowledged gun violence was “the question of the day” when the floor was opened for audience members to ask whatever they wished, and their topic of choice was finding some way to end the violence.
Audience members quizzed Budd on the progress of any plans to combat armed mayhem, the prospects for improving mental health services, and whether it wouldn’t make sense to bring back Amercia’s assault weapons ban that had been in place for a decade until it expired in September 2004.
Budd said he sensed an increased willingness in the Republican-led House of Representatives to put more money into mental health services.
He added that a House-approved measure now under U.S. Senate review would beef up the prospective gun buyer’s pre-purchase criminal background check.
“There’s holes in it that led to a lot of problems, such as Sutherland Springs, Texas, and Parkland,” Budd said, referring to the two most recent mass murders that gained national attention. “We want to fix and strengthen it.”
The Texas attack took the lives of 26 parishioners and wounded 20 others in November when a man armed with an AR-15 carried out the deadliest shooting in an American place of worship in modern history.
For better protection of schools, Budd touted a new, more sophisticated locking system for the individual classroom that he had seen at an Iredell County elementary school, which was installed after an assault there involving a domestic dispute.
