CNN senior political analyst Kirsten Powers grilled firearms reporter Stephen Gutowski during a fiery discussion about mass shootings on Wednesday. (Watch the video below).
The exchange between the two came after two high-profile mass shootings in the past week including the Club Q shooting that left five people dead in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Saturday and another shooting that left seven people dead, including the shooter, at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, on Tuesday.
Kasie Hunt, who hosted the CNN panel on gun violence in America, asked Gutowski whether access to assault weapons or “a cultural thing” has led to the amount of mass shootings in America.
He later got into a testy back-and-forth exchange with Powers, who pointed to the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, after he said the two recent shootings “show that it’s not just about AR-15s.”
“I mean this is like a game that you guys play,” Powers swiftly said.
The amount is on track to make 2022 the year with the second-highest number of mass shootings, CNN noted.