President Donald Trump reasserted his stance on gun control on Sunday, blaming mental health issues as the leading cause of gun violence.
"It’s the people that pull the trigger. It’s not the gun that pulls the trigger," Trump said.
Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem joined Boston Public Radio on Wednesday to talk about gun reform following the recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas.
"Shame on us for thinking that this was going to be different this time," Kayyem said. "It wasn't different after Parkland, it wasn't different after Sandy Hook."
89 percent of Republicans and 98 percent of Democrats support requiring background checks for all gun buyers, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, yet it's still a partisan issue in Congress, Kayyem said.
"There will be no gun control with a Republican president. And there will be no gun control with a Democratic president who doesn't have the Senate," she said.
Banning assault rifles is the simplest way of preventing extreme acts of violence, Kayyem added.
"I am looking at high-consequence, high-probability events. That's the thing as a security specialist I focus on," she said. "The solution to prevent [these events] ... is to ban assault rifles."
Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
