'All due respect': Andrew McCabe torches House Republican's 'ridiculous' dismissal of gun violence

Senior CNN law enforcement analyst and former Federal Bureau of Investigation Acting Director Andrew McCabe weighed in on the latest national discussion about gun violence on Tuesday in the aftermath of Monday's mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Three students and three staffers were killed in the attack by a female assailant wielding multiple weapons similar to the infamous AR-15 semiautomatic rifle – one of the most popular firearms in the United States and the most commonly used in American massacres.

Predictably, as guest anchor Abby Phillip pointed out to McCabe, Republican lawmakers began trying to shift the conversation away from guns almost immediately following the assault in Tennessee.

READ MORE: Guns don't kill Americans, Republicans do

"I want to ask you one more thing. Just take a listen to, this is Congressman Byron Donalds, responding to just the raising of this issue of the type of weapon that the shooter had, an AR-15. Listen," Phillip said before playing a clip of Donalds, who represents Florida in the House, coyly brushing off the issue to CNN's Manu Raju.

"If you're going to talk about the AR-15, you're talking politics now. Let’s not get into politics, alright? Let's not get into emotion, because emotion feels good, but emotion doesn’t solve problems," Byron stated.

Phillip had questions.

"Andrew, from a law enforcement perspective, in Uvalde [Texas], it almost seemed that the officers were afraid to go in because the gunman was so heavily armed. And here, they weren't hesitant, but the weaponry that was used against them was so powerful. What is your response from a law enforcement perspective?" she asked McCabe.

READ MORE: The GOP won't act because mass death is a means to an end

McCabe blasted Donalds' for his 'ridiculous' remarks:

Well, I mean, all due respect to the congressman, I mean, that response is ridiculous. It's not politics, talking about the weapon, the incredible military-grade lethality that shooters are bringing literally to our schools, repeatedly, every year. This is not about politics, it's about life and death in America. And the fact that we send our kids to school now, reasonably thinking that they might get shot there someday, by a gunman toting an AR-15 or something else.

The fact is that we are awash in guns in this country, and that simple fact makes all kinds of issues that we struggle with worse — the fact that we have mass shootings, the fact that we have higher violent crime rates here than anywhere else, the fact that people kill themselves with firearms in the United States at an alarmingly high rate, higher than any place else, any other comparatively developed country – so, at some point, we need to address the issue that connects all these problems, and that is that it’s very, very easy for anyone to get heavily armed quickly in this country.

Watch below via Media Matters for America or at this link.

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