Former President Barack Obama told a crowd of Brazilians that America’s gun laws “don’t make a lot of sense” during an appearance Thursday, falsely stating that anyone can buy weapons like machine guns over the Internet.
The comments came while the former president discussed the Sandy Hook tragedy, which he said was the “the most difficult day” for him as president.
“The most difficult day that I’ve had, was the day where there was a shooting at a school. Uh, where, 20 small children were shot, as well as some teachers,” Obama said. “I had to go and comfort the parents.”
"Some of you may be aware our gun laws in the United States don’t make much sense,” Obama said, “Anybody can buy any weapon any time — without much if any regulation, they can buy it over the Internet, they can buy machine guns."
“For me, having to speak to parents who have lost a child, just two days, or a day, after it happened, uh, and not being able to assure them that, um, that would change, that we would fix this,” he continued. “I couldn’t bring the children back, but I couldn’t even, uh, promise them that we would change the laws so that this wouldn’t happen to somebody else’s children.”
Obama was in Brazil for the digital convention, VTEX Day, which took place Thursday in Sao Paulo.