New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday expressed his sorrow for victims of the Wednesday shooting at a Charleston church, but said that gun control laws could not have prevented the attack.
“This type of conduct is something that only our display of our own love and good faith that’s in our heart can change. Laws can’t change this,” he said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington D.C. “Only the goodwill and the love of the American people can let those folks know that that act was unacceptable, disgraceful, that we need to do more to show that we love each other.”
Authorities on Thursday arrested 21-year-old Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Wednesday shooting at a historic black church in Charleston that left nine people dead.
During his Friday speech, Christie asked the audience to pray for the families of the victims in the attack.
“The idea that anyone, that any human being would walk into a church and sit there for an hour and pray with people that he intended to murder, is depraved, it’s unthinkable,” he said. “We can’t put our minds around conduct like that, can we?”
Watch Christie’s remarks below via C-SPAN:
