Warner: ‘Reasonable restraints’ possible without ‘dramatically interfering’ with Second Amendment rights

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said following a deadly school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, that “reasonable restraints” are possible without “dramatically interfering with people’s Second Amendment rights.”

“This epidemic seems to have gotten much worse in the past 10 years,” Warner said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” after 10 people were killed in a mass school shooting Friday in southeast Texas.

“We have these tragedies, it feels like, once a quarter. There’s a few days of mourning, with the exception of what happened after Parkland, where there seemed to be a moment,” he added, referring to the Feb. 14 shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that left 17 people dead.

“My hope and my appeal to everyone is — let’s do an ‘all of the above,’ ” Warner said Sunday.

{mosads}“But please, for those folks that I work with in the Congress, take a moment and let your position evolve. There are ways that we can put reasonable restraints without dramatically interfering with people’s Second Amendment rights.”

Warner said in March after the shooting in Parkland that it was time for a “legitimate debate” on a ban on the assault-style weapons that have pervaded a number of mass shootings in the U.S. in recent years.

“I think it’s time to change our positions and reexamine them,” Warner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I think it’s time for us to have a legitimate debate about restrictions on gun magazines and assault weapons.”

While an assault-style weapon was used in the Florida shooting, the suspect in the Texas shooting reportedly used a shotgun and revolver.

Warner was among a handful of Senate Democrats who voted against a ban on assault-style weapons in 2013 following a deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.