Colorado governor on reducing gun violence: ‘Take the best ideas from all sides’

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, whose state suffered a mass shooting at a gay nightclub earlier this month, said Sunday that American society needs to "take the best ideas from all sides that work" in preventing gun violence.

"Of course, it's about mental health. Of course, it's about gun policy. Of course, it's about anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. It's about all these things," Polis, a Democrat, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, which left five people dead, was one of two high-profile mass shootings last week. An employee at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., killed six people with a handgun Tuesday, then killed himself.

Polis said state laws including red flag laws need to be enforced, citing both the Club Q shooting and yet another mass shooting at a Boulder grocery store last year.

"Of course, the answer needs to be national as well," Polis said, adding that some neighboring states don't require background checks to purchase guns.

But gun laws shouldn't eclipse the examination "of mental health issues, of looking at the rhetoric that's used in the political realm and how that can instigate these acts of violence," said Polis, who was the nation's first openly gay elected governor.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) also said he thought there was not one solution to gun violence.

“The reality is that,” he said on “Fox News Sunday,” “we have an epidemic here in the United States that is not being experienced in any other country in the world. And there is a lot of reasons for that. I think people try to oversimplify the problem. The key is to make sure that every single tragedy gets unpacked, and [we] figure out what the problem is with that individual tragedy.”

When it comes to actual legislation, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" there are "probably not" the necessary 60 supporters in the current Senate to pass an assault weapons ban. The 10-year anniversary of the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults died, is next month.

"But I'm glad that President Biden is going to be pushing us to take a vote," Murphy said.

The continued selling of semi-automatic weapons "is sick, just sick," Biden said last week as he called for a ban on assault weapons.

Asked if he would support an assault weapons ban, Polis said he would support an "additional license or background check for some of the most high-powered weapons" nationally, as he had when he served in Congress.

Congress passed a bipartisan gun safety package in June, which included some restrictions on gun ownership targeted at people experiencing mental health crises.