Taya Kyle, the widow of slain Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, challenged President Obama Thursday evening on his proposed executive actions on gun violence, suggesting that his approach to the issue is counterproductive.
“I think that by creating new laws, you do give people hope,” she said at a town hall meeting in Fairfax, Virginia. “The thing is: The laws that we create don’t stop these horrific things from happening, and that’s a very tough pill to swallow.”
“We want to think that we can make a law and people will follow it, but by the very nature of their crime they are not following it,” she added.
Kyle’s husband, who was the topic of the major motion picture “American Sniper,” was shot and killed on Feb. 2, 2013, at a firing range by Eddie Ray Routh, a mentally disturbed U.S. Marine Corps veteran.
“When you talk about the [National Rifle Association] and after a mass shooting that gun sales go up, I would argue that it’s not necessarily I think somebody is going to come take my gun from me,” she continued, explaining that people like herself are concerned primarily after mass shooting events with arming herself against future massacres, “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.”
Obama thanked Kyle for her family’s service to the country, and stressed that his goal is not to ensure an end to violent crime, but to try to reduce the lethality of these incidents when they occur.
“The fact of the matter is: 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,” Obama said.
He continued, “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 … so I’m not sure that there’s a one-to-one correlation there.”
He concluded, explaining that his “most important point” is that she – a responsible gun owner – will indeed still 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 check system,” he said.
“But in the same way that we don’t eliminate all traffic accidents, but over the course of 20 years, traffic accidents get lower. There are still tragedies. There are still drunk drivers. There are still people who don’t wear their seatbelts. But over time, that violence is reduced and so families are spared. That’s the same thing that we can do with gun ownership,” he added.
Later, a woman who was raped by a man who broke into her apartment also pressed the president on his support for greater gun control.
“I have been unspeakably victimized…why can’t your administration realize that what you’re trying to do is actually making my kids and I less safe?” the mother of two asked.
Obama tried to clarify that there is nothing that he is proposing that prevents or makes it harder for law-abiding people to purchase firearms.
But, he said, “you want to make it harder for the assailant to have a gun” and “if he gets released he now can’t do what he did to you to somebody.”
“We can do that better if there’s a strong background system in place,” he added.
Susan Crabtree contributed to this report.
