the good guys- why then do you and Hillary want to control and restrict and limit gun
manufacturers, gun owners and a responsible use of guns and ammunition to the rest of
us- the good guys, instead of holding the bad guys accountable for their actions. And
Mr. President if I may, I'd like to use Chicago- your hometown, a city that has some of the
strictest gun laws in the nation, a city that for decades and still is under Democratic
control, a city that has an outrageous and even embarrassing murder rate- as my first
example. Why can't we round up these thugs, these drug dealers and gang members and hold
them accountable for their actions or allow the good people in Chicago the access to firearms
to protect themselves.
Obama: Alright well let me- it's a multi-part question. So let me just say
a couple of things. First of all the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever
you want to choose are hell bent on taking away folks' guns is just not true. And I don't
care how many times the NRA says it. I am about to leave office. There have been more
guns sold, since I have been president, than just about any time in U.S. history. There
are, there are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country, and at no
point have I ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it's just
not true. What I have said is precisely what you suggested, which is why don't we
treat this like every other thing that we use. We used to have really bad auto fatality
rates. The auto fatality rate has actually dropped precipitously, drastically since,
since I was a kid. Why is that? We decided we had seat belt laws. We decided to have
manufacturers put air bags on, in place. We decided to crack down on drunk driving and
texting. We decided to re-design roads so that they were less likely to have a car bank.
We studied what is causing these fatalities using science and data and evidence and then
we slowly treated it like the public health problem it was and it got reduced. We are
not allowed to do any of that when it comes to guns, because people- if you propose anything,
it is suggested that we are trying to wipe away gun rights and impose tyranny and martial
law. Do you know Congress won't allow the Center for Disease Control to study gun violence?
They're not allowed to study it, because the notion is that by studying it the same way
we do with traffic accidents somehow that's going to, to lead to everybody's guns being
confiscated. When we talked about background checks- if you buy a car, if you want to get
a license- first of all you have to get a license. You have to take a test; people have
to know that you know how to drive. You don't have to do any of that with respect to buying
a gun and when we talked about doing effective background checks it was resisted,
because the notion was that we were going to take your guns away. I, I just came from
a meeting today in the situation room in which I've got people who we know have been on ISIL
websites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens and we're allowed to put them
on the no fly list, when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association
I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun. This is somebody who is a known ISIL
sympathizer and if he wants to walk into a gun store or a gun show right now and buy
as much, as many weapons and ammo as he can nothing is prohibiting him from doing that,
even though the FBI knows who that person is. So sir, I just have to say respectfully
that there is a way for us to have common sense gun laws, there is a way for us to make
sure that lawful, responsible gun owners, like yourself, are able to use it for sporting,
hunting, protecting yourself. But the only way we're going to do that is if we don't
have a situation in which anything that is proposed is viewed as some tyrannical destruction
of the second amendment. And that's how the issue too often gets framed.