Taya Kyle, the widow of Chris Kyle, whose story made it to Hollywood with Bradley Cooper’s starring role in American Sniper, confronted President Obama Thursday over gun control. She told the president that gun control won’t prevent mass shootings like the recent one in San Bernardino, California.
It was during an event in Fairfax, Virginia at George Mason University that Taya Kyle spoke up when the president walked over to greet her.
Taya Kyle confronts Obama on gun actions, says new rules give 'false hope' https://t.co/5utZedVXIA
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 8, 2016
“[What] we have to recognize is we cannot outlaw murder, because the people who are murdering are breaking the law, but they also don’t have the moral code that we have,” she said, according to CNN. “They can do the same amount of damage with a pipe bomb. The problem is that they want to murder. We want to think we can make a law and people will follow it, but by the very nature of their crime, they are not following it.”
"American Sniper" Chris Kyle's wife, @TayaKyle, poses a question for @POTUS https://t.co/HqK2hdXIfb #GunsInAmerica https://t.co/wdzfzU0c2X
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 8, 2016
Taya Kyle went on to say she hopes the country will “value freedom” to bear arms.
President Obama, who also took questions and comments from others during this town hall-type event, blamed the NRA for convincing citizens that the government wants to take away all guns. He added that if his plan was to ban all guns, he would have done so much earlier in his presidency.
“If you look at where the areas are with the highest gun ownership, those are the places that the crime hasn’t dropped down that much,” he told Taya Kyle. “The way it is described is that we are trying to take away everybody’s guns. Our position is consistently mischaracterized…If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over-the-top, it is so overheated.”
Taya Kyle tells President Obama that gun control won't stop mass shootings: https://t.co/s8XPqUH4Qa pic.twitter.com/SrMby30lmg
— Us Weekly (@usweekly) January 9, 2016
The president added that he wants Congress to conduct better background checks to keep the country safe, adding that he has never owned a gun.
“All of us can agree that it makes sense to do everything we can to keep guns out of the hands of people who would do others harm, or themselves harm,” he said at the time. “The fact that the system doesn’t catch every single person has to be weighed against the fact that we might be able to save a whole bunch of families from the grief that some of the people in this audience have had to go through.”
Taya Kyle is the widow of Chris Kyle, who was shot and killed by a war vet with PTSD in February 2013.
