A day after a gunman opened hearth on a college with a military-style rifle, Senator Mike Lee steered that fatherlessness and household breakdown is the foundation reason for mass shootings and never lax gun management legal guidelines.

The Utah Republican made the remark throughout a Senate Judiciary Committee listening to Wednesday, a day after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 kids and two educators at an elementary faculty in Uvalde, Texas. The taking pictures has reignited the continuing debate on the best way to forestall future mass shootings. The controversy has once more fallen on well-tread strains, with Republicans arguing that tightening gun legal guidelines will not resolve the issue.

"Each time considered one of these tragedies happens, I feel we, for a lot too lengthy, fail to look again on the root causes of rampage violence," Lee stated through the listening to.

"Why is our tradition all of the sudden producing so many younger males who need to homicide harmless folks?" Lee continued. "It raises questions like, might fatherlessness, the breakdown of households, isolation from civil society or the glorification of violence be contributing components?"

Senator Mike Lee at Hearing
Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, this week steered that fatherlessness and social breakdown could possibly be the reason for mass shootings. Above, Lee speaks through the affirmation listening to for Supreme Courtroom Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 21, 2022.J. Scott Applewhite/Getty Photos

"There aren't any research that clearly assist the argument that fatherlessness is guilty for gun violence," the Nationwide Council on Household Relations concluded in a 2019 report.

Tuesday's bloodbath is the deadliest faculty taking pictures for the reason that 2012 Sandy Hook taking pictures in Newton, Connecticut, which left 20 kids and 6 adults useless. Following Sandy Hook, the Senate voted down a bipartisan invoice increasing background checks on all gross sales and transfers of firearms within the nation.

The gunman in Tuesday's bloodbath reportedly bought two military-style rifles after turning 18, the state's authorized age to purchase lengthy weapons, together with shotguns and rifles.

Within the taking pictures's aftermath, Republicans have once more resisted Democrats' renewed push for gun management, as an alternative calling for prayers or for hardening faculties' defenses in opposition to shooters.

Talking through the committee listening to, Lee criticized "the left" for eager to "crack down on law-abiding People" as an alternative of "armed criminals." He known as out New York nonprofit Everytown for Gun Security for sending out fundraising emails after the taking pictures, saying they performed on peoples' feelings.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy countered Lee in a response.

"It is nearly a case of blaming the sufferer and never blaming the one who is ready to stroll in and purchase a weapon that needs to be used on a battle zone, not in a college zone," he stated.

He stated that lecturers needs to be instructing, "not carrying weapons," as some Republicans have steered.

"We're the one civilized nation on Earth that watches our residents, our kids gunned down, and we do nothing to forestall it from taking place once more," stated Leahy.

For the reason that Sandy Hook taking pictures, the U.S. has skilled greater than 3,500 mass shootings, based on the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence.

Newsweek has reached out to Lee and Everytown for Gun Security for remark.