Mike Wolanin | The Republic Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indinaa, in blue, talks with Rep. Ryan Lauer, R-Columbus, from left, Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop, Bartholomew County Treasurer Barb Hackman and Columbus Clerk-Treasurer Luann Welmer during his visit to Zaharakos for a roundtable discussion with community leaders in Columbus, Ind., Friday, June 3, 2022.
Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana, said it’s important to be pragmatic and seek a solution to gun violence and mass shootings that actually has a likelihood of being passed in Congress, and that it may be best to let states make their own decisions about how to respond.
Braun visited Columbus Friday, briefly touring Zaharakos and eating lunch with leaders from the city and state, as well as local entrepreneur Tony Moravec.
President Joe Biden made an impassioned plea Thursday night in a speech to the nation for senators and representatives to “do something” in response to the Uvalde, Texas school shooting, the Tulsa, Oklahoma medical office shooting and others that have shocked the nation over the past month.
If legislators fail to act, he warned, voters should use their “outrage” to turn it into a central issue in November’s midterm elections.
“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” Biden asked after last week’s shootings by an 18-year-old gunman, who killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and another attack Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a gunman shot and killed four people and himself at a medical office. “Don’t tell me raising the age won’t make a difference,” he said.
The most recent shootings came close on the heels of the May 14 assault in Buffalo, New York, where a white 18-year-old wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, killing 10 people and wounding three others in what authorities described as “racially motivated violent extremism.”
“This time we have to take the time to do something,” Biden said, calling out the Senate, where 10 Republican votes would be needed to pass legislation.
“Every time it occurs, it’s horrific, of course,” Braun said Friday. “The issue is embedded in a constitutional right and culture. And it’s so complicated, it’s so intertwined. But I always, as a practical individual, look at what’s the thing that you can do that’s the lowest-hanging fruit that can get 10 votes in the Senate, if there’s going to be a federal solution to it.”
He also noted that support for certain measures, such as expanding background checks, likely varies by state. He added that lowering the legal age to buy assault weapons has also been discussed.
“It’s a question, though, of what you can get done, and does it require a solution across the board?” said Braun. “I’m a big proponent that you find out maybe what the best combination is by not trying to do it from the top-down, let states maybe wrestle with what makes sense for them, see what works.”
He pointed to Indiana’s “red flag law” as something that has benefited the state. “Red flag” laws allow police or courts to seize guns from people who show warning signs of violence. Indiana was one of the first states to enact a red flag law, after an Indianapolis police officer was killed in 2004 by a man whose weapons were returned to him despite his hospitalization months earlier for an emergency mental health evaluation.
However, the law came under scrutiny last year after a former employee shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis..
The attacker, Brandon Scott Hole, never appeared before a judge for a hearing under Indiana’s “red flag” law, even after his mother called police last year to say her son might commit “suicide by cop.”
Police seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole, then 18, in March 2020 after they received the call from his mother. However, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said authorities did not end up seeking such a hearing because they did not have enough time under the law’s restrictions to definitively demonstrate Hole’s propensity for suicidal thoughts, something they would need to have done to convince a judge that he should not be allowed to possess a gun, according to wire reports.
The following month, a judge in Indianapolis who oversees the filings of red flag cases in Marion County issued new guidance. All such reports will now go straight to her courtroom instead of the prosecutor’s office. Indianapolis police will have 48 hours to submit those filings, and two judges will then decide within 14 days whether to hold a hearing.
Braun pointed to mental health as an issue that should be part of the conversation around gun violence prevention and “red flag” laws.
“We’re also zeroing in on a demographic that’s creating most of the havoc, too,” he said. “When they’re telegraphing that on social media from texts, emails and even manifestos, that can’t be just dismissed. When we see that, we’re going to have to do better at how we take that seriously, because we always find out about it after the fact.”
He believes this is an area where political parties will find “common ground.”
When asked for his personal opinion on changing the legal buying age from 18 to 21 on certain firearms, such as assault weapons or semiautomatic rifles, Braun said he’ll listen to everything that’s presented.
“I’ve been on record saying already, we need to make sure we harden soft targets, especially schools,” he said. “Making that to where it’s not much money to do it, and really look at the red flag laws that are working and bring the mental health component into the discussion. Any of the other stuff, I have no comment. I have to learn more about what might make sense. And I think that we’d know that with a little more certainty if we didn’t rush into a federal solution.”
When asked if Congress should play a role in addressing inflation in areas such as grocery items, Braun said the federal government “has probably done enough there.”
“If you want to go back and find out what would work, look at what would work pre-COVID,” he said. “It wasn’t perfect. Wages were rising in the toughest places, and it was all done with markets.”
He added that he wishes there was better communication, at the federal level, with “main street” entrepreneurs, not just larger industry lobbyists, as smaller businesses tend to be harder hit by these economic woes.
Braun said that once inflation escapes the “Pandora’s box of economic evils,” it is hard to put back in.
He also noted that, in the early 1980s, the solution that was implemented was to raise rates in areas such as home mortgages.
“I don’t know that there’s much that we can do,” he said. “I certainly don’t buy that we need to spend more money, —which has, to me, been behind it. And we borrowed every penny of it, too. So that’s not a good long-term business plan.”
This story is by Jana Wiersema of sister paper The (Columbus) Republic.
