INDEPENDENCE, Mo. – Lucas Kunce joined Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC to discuss the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Full transcript of the interview is below:
Capehart: Kunce is a Democratic Senate candidate from Missouri and U.S. Marine veteran. Lucas, thank you for being here. Let me first get your reaction to what happened this week. You are a father. You have two kids who are not much younger than the kids that were tragically murdered in that school. How does that make you feel?
Kunce: It makes me feel terrible. Listening to Mike talk just brings it all back. You know, when I deployed to Afghanistan, the people who sent us there, they told us that we were there to keep terrorism at bay. They told us we were there to keep our homes, our families, and our children safe, so that only terrorists would be overseas. And now, those same people, because they’re unwilling or unable to act in Washington, are telling me that despite those deployments, I have to come back here, where my kids are doing shooting drills at school. I have to come back. I have to look my six year old and my eight year old in the eye, and I have to tell them that it didn’t work. Their school may become a war zone at any time. It’s absolutely insane.
Capehart: I mean, that’s an excellent point you made, Lucas, about being sent overseas to keep the terrorists over there, so they don’t harm us here. And we’re being terrorized by mass shooting after mass shooting. As a Marine veteran and a gun owner, what goes through your head, when you hear some of the details about what the shooters — the AR-15, a literal weapon of war? He was able to get this gun, and was able to do what he did to innocent children. Why would an 18-year-old need a gun like that?
Kunce: It’s absolutely terrible. You know, when 18 year olds — look, we’re used to 18 year olds getting assault rifles in the Marine Corps, right? It happens every single day, and you just don’t give an 18 year old an assault rifle and a pile of ammo, and tell them to figure it out, and do whatever he wants to do with it. You make sure they go through training. You make sure they go through observation. It goes through all sorts of stuff to make sure that they’re able to safely handle that weapon and not do anything bad with it. It’s unbelievable that we can just roll out here, without even comprehensive background checks in this country. You know, you talk about what people in Missouri want. People in Missouri, they want the exact same thing that people around this country want. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, gun owners, and non gun owners, they all want comprehensive background checks, red flag laws, ways to make sure that these weapons, weapons of war, stay out of the hands of criminals and terrorists.