Barack Obama tore into the nation’s largest gun lobby on Thursday as he sought support for his actions on gun control, accusing the National Rifle Association of peddling an “imaginary fiction” that has distorted the national debate about gun violence.

In a televised townhall meeting on CNN, Obama faced a range of audience questions from people across the spectrum, from a rape survivor who wanted to be reassured that she would still be able to protect herself, to a sheriff who wanted to know if he would be able to enforce the law, to Mark Kelly, the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the representative who was shot in Arizona in an attack that killed six people.

The president’s cool demeanor frayed only once – when challenged over his use of the term “conspiracy” when discussing whether his government wanted to take people’s guns from them. “Yes! I think it’s fair to call it a conspiracy!” he said.

He blamed that notion on the NRA and like-minded groups that convince its members that “somebody’s going to come grab your guns”.

“I’m only going to be here for another year,” Obama said. “When would I have started on this enterprise?”

Obama’s acknowledgement of his limited remaining time in office as an obstacle to effecting permanent change in US gun laws was echoed in an op-ed published in the New York Times on Thursday evening.

“It’s clear that commonsense gun reform won’t happen during this Congress,” he wrote. “It won’t happen during my presidency. Still, there are steps we can take now to save lives. And all of us – at every level of government, in the private sector and as citizens – have to do our part.”

Shown a video clip of himself wiping away tears as he announced his latest strategy earlier this week to try to boost background checks for gun buyers, Obama told CNN host Anderson Cooper that he had been surprised by his own emotion.

“It continues to haunt me, it was one of the worst days of my presidency,” Obama said of the attack on Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, in which 20 children and six adults died.

“I visited Newtown two days after what happened so it was still very raw. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen secret service cry on duty.”

Obama told the town hall meeting at George Mason University, Virginia – again reiterating a point from his column in the New York Times – that he would “not campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support commonsense gun reform.”

“All of us need to demand leaders brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby’s lies,” he wrote.

Among the questioners on Thursday evening were Taya Kyle, whose late husband, US navy seal Chris Kyle, was depicted in the film American Sniper, and Cleo Pendleton, whose daughter was shot and killed near Obama’s Chicago home.

Kyle said laws would not stop people with criminal intent: “The problem is that they want to murder.”



Barack Obama greets Taya Kyle during the televised town hall meeting. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Kimberly Corban, a survivor of a sexual assault who said she carried a gun to protect herself and her two young children, told Obama that she felt his changes infringed on her rights. “I have been unspeakably victimised once already, and I refuse to let that happen again to myself or my kids,” Corban said.



Obama told her his proposals would not make it harder for law-abiding people to buy a gun, but could stop some criminals: “You certainly would like to make it a little harder for that assailant to have also had a gun.”

Cooper said that “one voice you won’t hear from tonight is the National Rifle Association”, adding that the organisation was asked to attend but declined.

Obama said the White House had invited the group to meetings many times, to no avail.

“There’s a reason why the NRA’s not here. They’re just down the street,” Obama said, referring to the group’s nearby headquarters. “Since this is a main reason they exist, you’d think that they’d be prepared to have a debate with the president.

“I’m happy to talk to them, but the conversation has to be based on facts and truth, and what we’re actually proposing, not some … imaginary fiction in which ‘Obama’s trying to take away your guns’.”

Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, said he was “not really interested” in talking to Obama.

“He doesn’t support the individual right to own a firearm. That’s been the position of his supreme court nominees, that’s been the position of his administration,” Cox said on Fox News after the debate.

“So what are we going to talk about – basketball?”

The NRA pushed back on Obama in real time on Twitter, noting in one tweet that “none of the president’s orders would have stopped any of the recent mass shootings”.

.@POTUS doesn’t want an intellectually honest policy discussion. He wanted #NRA to be an audience member at his PR stunt. No thanks — NRA (@NRA) January 8, 2016

Obama told CNN he supported the constitutional right to gun ownership, but said he had never personally owned a gun. Noting that gun sales have gone up during his seven years of presidency, he remarked, a little bitterly: “I’ve been good for gun manufacturers.”

But he argued that the NRA was refusing to acknowledge the government’s responsibility to make legal products safer, citing seatbelts and child-proof medicine bottles as examples of measures already taken.

“As I enter into my last year as president, I could not be prouder of the work that we’ve done, but it also makes me really humble. A lot of the work you do is just to incrementally make things better,” he says, speaking with unusual candor.

The Republican presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, addressing a rally in Vermont just as Obama was holding the town hall, said he would eliminate gun-free zones in schools on his first day if elected to the White House.



“You know what a gun-free zone is for a sicko? That’s bait,” Trump told the crowd.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report