Senator Steve Daines was the featured guest at the monthly City Club luncheon meeting on Monday at the Doubletree Hotel.

Daines was asked about the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton Ohio and his position on more extensive gun control legislation.

"What you see in almost every one of these mass shootings is that more gun control would not have prevented these horrible tragedies,” said Daines. “Here’s the bottom line; law abiding citizens will abide by the law while these folks who are hell bent on committing these evil acts, they bypass the law, and consequently we’ve got to look at something that is deeper, into particularly what’s causing particularly these young men in our society to commit these very evil acts.”

Daines contrasted the Parkland, Florida mass shooting with an event in Montana that was prevented by proactive school and police work.

“During the Parkland shooting in Florida everybody knew who the shooter was,” he said. “Once the shooting started everyone knew who the shooter was and that the guy had a track record. There’s a great example right here in Montana where a young man made some threats of a very violent nature against some teachers, the administration and some students and they acted upon that and notified law enforcement and Sheriff Holton in Ravalli County went down and arrested that young man and may have prevented a tragedy.”

DAINES PROTEST LWCF
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There were dozens of protesters outside the hotel in anticipation of Senator Daines’ visit holding signs demanding the full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a subject Daines noted he has championed in Washington, D.C.

“I’ve been one of the champions of the Land and Water Conservation Fund,” he said. “We need to absolutely fund it at the $900 million level. We passed an incredible lands package thanks to bipartisan support, working with Nancy Pelosi, working with President Trump, working with Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer to pass one of the best land packages we’ve had in years.”

Following Daines’ address to City Club, each table submitted a question for him to answer for those who attended.

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