Warren: Treat Gun Violence Like a 'National Health Emergency'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said gun violence is a “virus that’s killing our children” and should be treated like a “national health emergency in this country.”

“So what can we do? We can do the things that are the sensible. We can do the universal background checks. We can ban the weapons of the war but we can also double down on the research and find out what really works,” she said on Wednesday during the Democratic presidential primary debate on NBC. “We can treat this like the virus that’s killing our children.”

Warren was asked how she would deal with the guns already sold in the U.S. In response, she said the issue needs to be treated like a “serious research problem.”

“We can’t treat this as an across-the-board problem. We have to treat it like a public health emergency, that means bring data to bear and make real change in this country whether it’s politically popular or not,” she said.