Houston Police Chief: 'We Need to Start Using the Ballot Box'

With another 10 lives stolen this week at a Texas school, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo argued in favor of "gun sense" on Face the Nation. "Let me tell you, people at the state level and the federal level in too many places in our country are not doing anything other than offering prayers," he said, per CBS News. "We need to start using the ballot box and ballot initiatives to take the matters out of the hands of people that are doing nothing ... to see that the will of the people in this country is actually carried out." He added that the "vast majority" of Americans "are pragmatic and actually support gun sense and gun reform in terms of keeping guns in the right hands." But not everyone agreed:

• Oliver North staked out a strong gun-rights position on Fox News Sunday, Fox News reports. "I believe that we can make sure kids are protected without taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens," said North, the incoming NRA president. He advocated metal detectors in schools and likened gun violence to a disease. "We are trying like the dickens to treat the symptoms, not the disease," he said. "The disease isn't the Second Amendment."
• Mark Kelly, who co-founded the gun-control group Giffords, didn't entirely agree. "We should make it more difficult—I mean figure out a way to prevent people coming in the door with a firearm," he said on Fox News Sunday, per the Hill. "At the same time, make sure that that irresponsible person can’t get the gun in the first place."
• Neither did Bernie Sanders: "It’s a three-letter word. It’s the NRA," said Sanders on Meet the Press, per the Hill. "And it’s Trump and the Republicans who don’t have the guts to stand up to these people and that’s pretty pathetic." He said the Senate hasn't done enough on gun control, "but it's like every other issue. The American people are united overwhelmingly."

• The FBI informant in the Trump campaign: "I find it outrageous that the president's allies are in effect playing fast and loose with confidential information," said Sen. Mark Warner on Face the Nation, per CBS News. "And don't take my word, take the president's own FBI director, [Christopher] Wray, who said, if you go out and start exposing classified information about informants that you will make America less safe."
• The Russia probe: "It is not inconceivable now that Mr. Mueller and his team may seek to conjure up some extraneous crime, pertaining to my business, or maybe not even pertaining to the 2016 election," said ex-Trump advisor Roger Stone on Meet the Press, per the Hill. "I would chock this up to an effort to silence me."
• Chinese phone-maker ZTE: "Do not, please, do not expect ZTE to get off scot-free. It ain't gonna happen," said Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow about the US-sanctioned company that Trump then promised to help, reports Politico. So why even help ZTE? "I think President Trump is doing this because there's some very good feeling between him and China."

(More Sunday morning talk shows stories.)