Chris Kyle’s Widow Battles Obama on Futility of His Gun Control Ideas

KYLE: "I appreciate the time taking to come here and I think your message of hope is something I agree with, and I think it's great and I think that by creating new laws you do give people hope. The thing is that the laws that we create don't stop these horrific things from happening, right and that's a very tough pill to swallow. We want to think we can make a law and people will follow it by the very nature of their crime they are not following it. By the very nature of looking at the people who hurt our loved ones here, I don't know any of them would have been stopped by the background check and yet, I crave that desire for hope, too. Part of it we have to recognize that we cannot out law murder because the people who are murdering, right, are -- they are breaking the law but they also don't have a moral code that we have so they could do the same amount of damage with a pipe bomb, the problem is they want to murder. And I'm wondering why it wouldn't be a better use of our time to give people hope in a different way, to say you know what? We -- well, first of all, let me back up to that because with the laws, I know at least at last I heard the federal prosecution of gun crimes is like 40% and what I mean by that, there are people lying on those forms already and we're not prosecuting so there is an issue there but instead, if we can give people hope saying also during this time while you've been president, we're at the lowest murder rate in our country, all time low." 
OBAMA: "Right." 
KYLE: "Of murders. We're at an all-time high of gun ownership, right? I'm not necessarily saying the two are correlated but if we're at an all time low for murder rate. That's a big deal and I think most of us in this country feel like it could happen at any moment. It could happen to any of us at any time and I'm almost finished. When you talk about the NRA and after a mass shooting that gun sales go up, I would argue it's not necessarily I think somebody is going to come take my gun from me but I want the hope and the hope that I have the right to protect myself, that I don't end up to be one of these families, that I have the freedom to carry whatever weapon I feel like I need like your wife said on the farm road. The sheriffs aren't going to get to my house, either. I know they wouldn't have stopped any of the people here in this room from killing so it seems like almost a false sense of hope so why not celebrate where we are? I guess that's my real question." 
OBAMA: "Well, first --" 
KYLE: "Celebrate that we're good people and 99.9% of us will never kill anyone." 
OBAMA: "Let me make a couple points. First of all, thanks to your husband for his service and thank you for your service because extraordinary heroism that he and your family have shown in protecting all of us and I'm very grateful for that. Number two, what you said about murder rates and violent crime generally is something that we don't celebrate enough. The fact of the matter is is that violent crime has been steadily declining across America for a pretty long time and you wouldn't always know it by watching television, but overall most cities are much safer than they were ten years ago or 20 years ago. Now, I'd challenge the notion that the reason for that is because there's more gun ownership, because if you look at where are the areas with the highest gun ownership, those are the places in some cases where the crime rate hasn't dropped down that much and the places where there's pretty stiff restrictions on gun ownership. In some of those places, the crimes dropped really quickly so I'm not sure that there is a one to one correlation there, but I think the most important point I want to make is that you will be able to purchase a firearm. Some criminals will get their hands on firearms even if there is a background check. Somebody may lie on a form. Somebody will intend to commit a crime but they don't have a record that shows up on the background system. But in the same way that we don't eliminate all traffic accidents but over the course of 20 years, traffic accidents get lower. They are still tragedies. There are still drunk drivers. There is still people that don't wear seat belts but over time that violence is reduced so families are spared. That's the same thing that we can do with gun ownership. There is a way for us to set up a system where you, a responsible gun owner who I'm assuming given your husband and your family is a much better marksman than I am can have a firearm to protect yourself, but where it is much harder for somebody to fill up a car with guns and sell them to 13-year-old kids on the streets. And that is, I think, what we're trying to do. What we're also trying to do is make the database more effective, which by the way, will convenience you when you go to the store because if we can set up a 24/7 background check system, it's less likely that things slip through the cracks or it's more difficult for you to get your background check completed and we're also trying to close a loophole that has been developing over the last decade where now people are using cutout trusts and shell corporations to purchase the most dangerous weapons. Sawed off shot guns, automatic weapons, silencers and don't have to go through background checks at all and we don't know whether are these sales going to, you know, drug traffickers? Are they -- we don't know who is purchasing them right now. So what we're saying is you know what? That is something that we got to do something about. The same thing is true with Internet sales where one study has shown that one out of 30 persons who are purchasing weapons over the Internet turn out to have a felony record, and that's not something you want to see."