Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) said Thursday that "due process is what's killing us right now," regarding passing gun control legislation in Congress.
"The problem we have and really the firewall that we have right now is due process. It's all due process," Manchin said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "So we can all say, yeah, we want the same thing but how do we get there?"
"If a person is on the terrorist watch list like the gentleman, the shooter in Orlando, he was twice by the FBI, we were briefed yesterday about what happened, but that man was brought in twice. They did everything they could. The FBI did everything they were supposed to do, but there was no way for them to keep him on the nix list or keep him off the gun buy list," Manchin said.
"There was no way to do that. So can't we say that if a person's under suspicion, there should be a five year period of time of time that we have to see if good behavior, if this person continues the same traits, maybe we can come to that type of an agreement. But due process is what's killing us now."
Several individuals have been placed on the no-fly list despite having done nothing remotely wrong or no ties with malicious individuals. A notable case is that of Weekly Standard columnist Stephen Hayes.
Manchin later contradicted himself with talking about law-abiding gun owners.
"This is a troubled world we live in, a divided country, and we're making it more divided because we're accusing people that have no intent to do anything wrong," Manchin said.
Manchin and Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) co-authored a gun control bill in 2013 that failed to pass out of the Senate.