Obama calls out US gun laws in speech: They ‘don’t make much sense’

Former President Obama criticized the United States’s gun laws during a speech in Brazil on Thursday, saying they “don’t make much sense.”

“The most difficult day that I’ve had was the day that there was a shooting in a school where 20 small children were shot,” Obama told the crowd during his appearance at the VTEX Day conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 

“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 without much, if any, regulation,” he said. “They buy it over the internet. They can buy machine guns.”

{mosads}Obama made the comments referring to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 26 children and educators dead during his first term.

The Sandy Hook tragedy has been followed by a number of other deadly mass shooting incidents, such as the attack at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival, which have sparked calls for gun reform among lawmakers and activists.

President Trump signed a law in December banning bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire much more rapidly.

During his speech in Sao Paulo, Obama also praised his own administration for achieving “great power without corruption.”

“Nobody was jailed. We made mistakes. We were not perfect. But we maintained integrity and we were able to show that it is possible to achieve great power without corruption,” Obama said. 

The comment comes after the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which ended with more than two dozen Russians and six Trump associates charged. Mueller separately indicted a dozen Russian intelligence officers for allegedly hacking the Democratic National Committee and U.S. election infrastructure.