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.
