Rick Perry: Allowing Guns In Movie Theaters Would Prevent Shootings

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) claimed that if people could bring their guns to the movies, they could have prevented the movie theater shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, Thursday evening.

"These concepts of gun-free zones are a bad idea. I think that you allow the citizens of this country -- who have been appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded, know how to handle and use firearms -- to carry them," he told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday. “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."

Such a provision “makes a lot of sense” under the Second Amendment, the 2016 presidential hopeful said.

When Tapper asked if that solution would be more effective than strengthening gun control laws, Perry pushed argued that the problem in Lafayette and the recent shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, is a lack of enforcement.

“We need to enforce the laws that are on the books,” he said. “Somebody didn't do their job in the standpoint of enforcing the laws that are on the books."

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) similarly called for better enforcement of gun laws, stressing that John Russell Houser, the shooter who had a history of mental illness, should not have been able to obtain a gun.

"Every time this happens, it seems like the person has a history of mental illness. We need to make sure the systems we have in place actually work," he said on CBS’ "Face the Nation." “We need to make sure that background system is working. Absolutely, in this instance, this man never should have been able to buy a gun."

Houser legally purchased the gun used Thursday at a pawn shop in Alabama last year, according to law enforcement officials. He had previously been denied a pistol due to a prior arrest and reports of domestic violence.

Source: The Huffington Post

Rick Perry's lesson from 2012 U.S. presidential bid: be prepared

Former Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry addresses the ''Road to Majority'' conference in Washington June 20, 2015.

REUTERS/CARLOS BARRIA

Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who is making a second run for the Republican presidential nomination next year, says he took away a major lesson from his failed 2012 bid: be prepared.

The Boy Scouts motto is something Perry knows well as an Eagle Scout, the highest attainable rank in the movement.

But the conservative Perry, who announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination on June 4, said he was caught by surprise at the depth and breadth of knowledge presidential candidates were expected to have at their fingertips.

"Until you've done it you don't even realize what a challenge it is - these broad array of issues that you just have to have more than just passing knowledge of," Perry said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

The longest-serving governor in Texas history, Perry's 2012 candidacy fell apart in an embarrassing Republican debate performance when he could not remember the third of three government agencies he wanted to scrap, blurting out "Oops."

This time, the 65-year-old has presented himself as a more thoughtful, policy-oriented candidate, punctuated by thick-framed, wonky-looking glasses.

A presidential candidacy involves years of sustained preparation and learning from "real experts," Perry said.

"I feel very comfortable now sitting on the stage that I can have those conversations and regurgitate that information that I know and that I've absorbed in a way that the American people are going to see a very different candidate that they did four years ago," he promised.

Perry was asked about a gaffe last week in which he referred to the Wednesday night shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, as an "accident."

Perry, whose poll ratings hover in the single digits, has said he misspoke.

"People are going to make mistakes and people know that," he said on the Fox program. - Reuters