2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley disagrees with President Biden’s approach to gun control, saying to treat mass shootings as strictly a “gun issue is the lazy way out.”
“My heart fell like everybody else’s when we heard about Nashville,” the former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor said at a town hall in Salem, New Hampshire on Tuesday. “I’ve been through my share of tragedies in South Carolina when I was governor. We don’t want to see that happen. How much longer is this country going to ignore mental health. It is a cancer, and it is killing our kids.”
“We need to focus on what really matters. Mental health is the cancer that no one is talking about. One in four people have a mental health issue,” Haley emphasized minutes later, in a national exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. “But if treated they live a perfectly normal life. It is horrific what happened in Nashville. It’s clear that that woman needed help. And so, we’ve got to make sure we’re doing that.”
Meanwhile, President Biden is pushing for Congress to pass his assault weapons ban.
“We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart,” the president urged in a statement from the White House. “I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban.”
Haley disagrees.
“To sit there and say that it’s just a gun issue is the lazy way out,” Haley said. “We need to acknowledge the whole issue. And the whole issue is she [the shooter in Nashville] was struggling and there was nobody there to help her.”
Watch the clip above.