Mass Shootings ‘Absolutely’ Are a Security Threat, Homeland Chief Says

(Bloomberg) -- Mass shootings in the U.S. “absolutely are a homeland security threat” that are getting increasing attention within the federal government, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan said.

McAleenan spoke on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, a day after a gunman in Texas killed seven people and wounded at least 21 more after a traffic stop gone wrong -- the state’s second mass killing in less than a month besides a shooting in Dayton, Ohio.

The attacker in Saturday’s daylight, drive-by shooting fled police and hijacked a U.S. Postal Service truck, opening fire on people between the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa. He was shot dead by police and so far hasn’t been identified, but he is believed to be a white man in his 30s.

“They absolutely are a homeland security threat,” McAleenan said of such mass shooters. “In our counterterrorism strategy and approach, domestic terrorism has taken a front line focus for us.”

Since April, he said, the agency has set up a new office to target violence and terrorism prevention, with an explicit focus and balance on domestic terrorism -- including racially motivated violent extremism.

Still, regarding the West Texas shooter, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that it was hard to identify a motive because the suspect is now dead.

Lawmakers’ response to the Texas shooting fell along predictable lines, with Democrats calling for gun-control measures and Republicans pushing back.

“If we’re not able to speak clearly, if we’re not able to act decisively, then we’ll continue to have this kind of bloodshed in America, and I cannot accept that,” said former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who briefly suspended his campaign after the mass killing in El Paso, his home town, in early August.

O’Rourke, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” called for universal background checks, so-called red flag laws, and a ban on the sales of “weapons of war” such as high-powered automatic rifles. Doing nothing, he said, was being “complicit in the continuing carnage.”

Fellow Democratic presidential candidates also spoke out about the need for reform on the campaign trail and on Twitter after the latest incident. “We’ve already lost far too many to gun violence -- Congress must act now,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in a tweet.

Senator Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican, said on CNN that he didn’t support an assault weapons ban. He put the focus on mental health and societal issues, similar to comments made recently by President Donald Trump and others.

“What we ought to be doing is saying OK, we have a problem,” Scott said. “Young men are doing things that when I was growing up, nobody even considered. Something has gone wrong.”

Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania who’s urging the president to support the background check legislation that he and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia crafted in 2013, said on ABC that he’d “spoken with the president repeatedly and recently.” While Trump was “interested in doing something meaningful” to expand background checks on gun sales or other measures, he hasn’t endorsed a specific bill and “I can’t guarantee an outcome,” Toomey said. “I’m not sure where this all ends.”

Trump appeared to back-peddle on support for any fresh actions on gun control after a mid-August phone call with Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association, that followed deadly shootings on Ohio and Texas.

“We have very, very strong background checks right now,” Trump said after the NRA call. “I have to tell you that it’s a mental problem.”

Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to congratulate the work by Texas law enforcement and first responders “in handling the terrible shooting tragedy” in what he called “a very tough and sad situation,” but he didn’t mention gun control.

In remarks to reporters outside the White House Trump called the shooter “a very sick person” and that background checks “would not have stopped any of it,” referring to recent incidents.

Later, during an appearance at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, Trump suggested “strong measures to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous and deranged individuals, and substantial reforms to our nation’s broken mental health system.”

--With assistance from Josh Wingrove.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hailey Waller in New York at hwaller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Mark Niquette

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