Rep. Mace visits Coast Guard base, comments on issues impacting SC

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Congresswoman Nancy Mace visited U.S. Coast Guard Base Charleston Tuesday and shared her thoughts on issues impacting our state and country.

Mace toured a U.S. Coast Guard national security ship “Hamilton” on Tuesday, which was her first time on one of their cutters. She also toured to the future site of what will be one of the largest Coast Guard installations in about ten years.

Following the visit, Mace took time to comment about the issue of gun violence, after President Joe Biden signed an executive order Tuesday that would increase the number of background checks to buy guns and promote better firearms storage. She says she’s for strengthening background checks as long as they’re not violating constitutional rights.

“Gun violence is a huge issue,” Mace said. “Not only unfortunately in our community but in our state, and I’ve worked on ways to strengthen background checks and a lot of what I’ve seen both in the state and federal level has to do with data on criminals and the inability for our databases on criminals to talk to each other when you’re doing a background check.”

Mace also weighed in on the approval of an amendment by the South Carolina House to reduce Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom’s salary to $1 last night.

Speaker of the House Murrell Smith called the amendment a quote “tripartisan agreement” between Democrats, Republicans, and members of the “Freedom Caucus”. It comes after Eckstrom revealed last month that an accounting error led to his office overstating the state’s cash balance by $3.5 billion over a decade.

Mace says there must be consequences in our country and in our state.

“We see with a lot of government employees and even elected officials is that when something happens, very few people are held accountable,” Mace said. “Very few people lose their jobs or are referred to the Department of Justice when they’ve broken the laws.”

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