Presidential candidate and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said on Sunday that people should be able to take guns into movie theaters to help prevent mass killings, such as the shooting in a Louisiana theater last week that left two dead and others injured.
During CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper said that Perry seemed “to be suggesting that a solution to the problem would be to allow patrons in the movie theater to bring guns with them into the movie theater.”
“I think that it makes a lot of sense to send a message across this country. If we believe in the Second Amendment, and we believe in people’s right to protect themselves and defend themselves, and their families,” he told Tapper.
“I will suggest to you that these concepts of gun-free zones are a bad idea,” he said. “I think that you allow the citizens of this county, who have been appropriately trained and appropriately backgrounded who know how to handle and use firearms, to carry them.”
The laws in place related to background checks should be better enforced, the 2016 presidential candidate told CNN.
“I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette,” Perry said.
Watch the full video from CNN:
