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Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) joined Fox News on Monday to dismiss the idea of legislation aimed at preventing gun violence, just hours after a gunman killed four people in an office building in New York City’s Midtown Manhattan neighborhood.
Kennedy told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “all you can do in a time like this is be sorry” for the victims of the mass shooting before predicting that some of his colleagues will call for more gun control laws on Tuesday morning.
“We’ve got hundreds of gun control laws, Sean. Maybe thousands,” he said. He later added, “We don’t need more gun control. We need more idiot control. And I don’t know exactly how to do that but I do know this — I don’t want to hear anyone feeling sorry for this guy who did this.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Kennedy entertained the return of a “more aggressive” version of the controversial “stop and frisk” policing strategy in New York City, one that was found unconstitutional in 2013 as evidence showed it was used to frequently target Black and Hispanic people.
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Kennedy has been a gun control opponent and has received a 92% rating or higher from the National Rifle Association since his first successful Senate campaign in 2016, according to the nonprofit Vote Smart.
Kennedy has resorted to his “idiot control” line in response to several instances of gun violence over the years, including the Apalachee High School shooting in 2024, the Boulder supermarket shooting in 2021, and the Parkland school shooting in 2018.
Monday’s slaughter in Midtown Manhattan joins the over 250 mass shootings in the US in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There have been 8,590 deaths due to gun violence in the U.S. so far this year and 15,704 injuries.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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