Brown: McConnell should bring Senate back into session to pass background checks

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bring the upper chamber back into session to pass a universal background check bill in the wake of two mass shootings that killed at least 29 people in less than 24 hours.

“We wake up to grief and sadness about these victims and these families, but it pretty quickly turns to anger that our government hasn’t done anything,” Brown told CBS’s Major Garrett on “Face the Nation.”

“Mitch McConnell should bring us back into session on Monday. … The president needs to sign this bill,” Brown said. “We know that background checks worked. We know that a ban on assault weapons worked. … Those are the first two things we should do.”

At least 20 people were killed and 26 others wounded when a gunman reportedly espousing racist views opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday. Early Sunday morning, a shooting in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killed at least nine people.

{mosads}When Garrett asked Brown about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) support in the wake of the shootings for so-called “red flag” bills, Brown said such measures were insufficient without background checks and an assault weapons ban, adding, “Of course people who have stood with the NRA in their careers will start to deflect into something else.”

Garrett asked Brown how he would respond to those who say the measures he supports would not avert all or most mass shootings.

“They’re not going to stop every one of those. No one’s ever contended they will,” Brown said, adding, “Background checks work. We know that.”

He also noted that the shooter in Dayton was believed to have killed nine people in less than 30 seconds before he was shot by police.

“That says that the police of Dayton are terrific,” Brown said. But it also indicates “he had enough ammunition to kill potentially a hundred or 200 people, and that’s why you ban the assault weapons.”