Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., criticized Democrats for seeking to politicize a recent high school shooting in Florida that left 17 people dead.

“We ought not find ways to win elections off terrible tragedies in this country,” Scott said on Fox News on Saturday. “We should find ways to solve the problem and prevent these tragedies.”

.@SenatorTimScott: "We ought not find ways to win elections off terrible tragedies in this country. We should find ways to solve the problem and prevent these tragedies." #Cavuto pic.twitter.com/PxTmflMRQq— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 17, 2018



Scott also discounted the need for greater gun control after 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who confessed to be the shooter, opened fire at his former school Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday.

“If we were able to see all the crumbs left by Nikolas Cruz, I believe the highest probability of us preventing this crime is not another gun law that would have been broken but putting the pieces together like puzzle and solve that problem before the crime was committed,” Scott said.

Scott referred to other mass shooters who broke state gun laws, including Dylann Roof, who shot nine people at a predominantly African-American church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.

“The mental instability of the culprit should be the primary target that we look at, because it is the most pervasive fact in the pattern that we are looking at,” he said.