Obama says US gun laws 'don't make much sense,' claims 'anybody can buy any weapon any time'
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Former President Barack Obama slammed U.S. gun laws on Thursday while speaking an event in Brazil, telling the audience that the laws "don't make much sense" and claimed that "anybody can buy any weapon any time."
Obama began by recalling the "most difficult day" in office was the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre that left 26 dead, including 20 young children in Newtown, Conn.
"My daughters were only a little bit older than these young children that have been shot, and I had to go and comfort the parents," Obama said. "And some of you may be aware our gun laws in the United States don’t make much sense. Anybody can buy any weapon any time..."
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That sparked loud applause from the Brazilian audience.
"You know, without much, if any, regulation," he continued. "They can buy it over the Internet, they can buy machine guns. And for me, having to speak to parents who have lost a child, just two days or a day after it had happened, and not being able to assure them that that would change, that we would fix this — I couldn’t bring their children back, but I couldn’t even promise them that we would change the law so this didn’t happen to somebody else’s children."
Critics blasted the former president, accusing him of "lying" about U.S. gun laws.
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Conservative radio show host and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch insisted "literally everything" Obama said was "false."
As The Washington Examiner reports, there are rougly 300 federal and state gun laws that regulate sales, and the buying and selling of new machine guns has been banned since 1986 as part of the Firearms Owners' Protection Act.