Gun Questions Prove Awkward for Walker

Senate candidate has attributed past accusations to mental illness
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted May 28, 2022 2:30 PM CDT
Gun Questions Prove Awkward for Walker
U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks to supporters during an election night watch party on Tuesday.   (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Questions about gun legislation have increased since Tuesday, the day Herschel Walker became the Georgia Republican Party's nominee for US Senate. He's had a hard time handling them, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports; guns have been an issue in the former football star's past. Asked Tuesday whether the Texas massacre could bring about new gun laws, Walker's entire answer to CNN was, "What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff." Asked Thursday on Fox News, he said, "What about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women, that’s looking at social media?"

Later, Walker added: "The way we stop it (is) about putting money into the mental health field. It's about putting money into other departments rather than a department that just wants to take away your rights." His campaign later issued a statement calling Walker "a strong supporter of the Second Amendment." A judge temporarily took Walker's guns away from him in 2005 after his ex-wife said he put a gun to her head and threatened to blow her "brains out." Police called to his home in 2001 reported that Walker "has talked about having a shootout with police." He wrote in his 2008 memoir about wanting to shoot a man who was late delivering a car and discussed playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun.

Walker has attributed his behavior to mental illness and says he's been treated for it; he's said he's afflicted by dissociative identity disorder. Among the legislation being debated again since the Uvalde, Texas, killings is red-flag laws, which call for judges to order weapons to be taken temporarily from someone deemed dangerous. Such laws are on the books in 19 states, per Axios. Had they been in existence at the time, per the Journal-Constitution, they might have been used in Walker's case. (More Herschel Walker stories.)

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