State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, is becoming something of a staple on Piers Morgan’s CNN program this year, with previous appearances in February and March to discuss gun control and NASCAR. And on Tuesday night, following the mass stabbing at the CyFair campus of Lone Star College, Patrick was again invited on the show to talk gun violence.

“The way you’ve been thinking about the whole gun issue I have found just totally out of touch with reality,” Patrick said. Morgan responded by calling America’s 100,000 annual gun deaths “shameful” and named countries with strict gun laws—Japan, Britain, and Australia—where gun violence is rare. “This is a proven, demonstrable fact,” Morgan said. Patrick disagreed: “This is America and our constitution gives us the right to bear arms. This is not Tokyo, this is not Finland, this is not any other country you want to talk about, Piers,” Patrick said. “This is the United States of America, and in America where law abiding citizens have guns, crime is down.”

Patrick added that he believed that if another student at Lone Star College on Tuesday had a CHL and a handgun, the day’s violence could have been avoided. When Morgan noted that not everyone in the studio audience seemed to concur with this sentiment, Patrick retorted, “Well, they’re probably northeast liberals who don’t understand.”