On February 1 NRA-ILA executive director Chris Cox told Breitbart News that President Obama lacked the “political backbone” to act and keep Chicago from becoming a “national disgrace.”

Cox was being interviewed for the upcoming episode of Breitbart News podcast, Bullets with AWR Hawkins.

He said, “This is very simple, you prosecute the criminals who are breaking the law, you let law-abiding people have the ability to defend themselves, because in Chicago there’s a lot more bars on windows than gates around communities.” He added, “This is no longer funny, it’s a national disgrace and a tragedy.”

He then turned to Obama’s inaction:

We had eight years where President Obama could have done something about his supposed hometown. He could have worked with Rahm Emanuel, the Mayor. But he certainly could have picked up the phone to the Justice Department and said, ‘Look, every one of these gang members; every one of these murderers and rapists and thugs in Chicago, when they get arrested on a gun charge or a drug charge, turn it over to the U.S. Attorney [and] prosecute [them] in federal court and put them in jail.’ But he didn’t do that. He didn’t do that because he didn’t [have] the political backbone and the will to do it.

We asked Cox about Representative Luis Gutierrez’s (D-IL-4) attempts to blame Chicago gun violence on the NRA. Cox said, “Gutierrez and the rest of them are playing the people for fools. People are smarter than that. People understand that you can respect the rights of law-abiding people–and our inherent, preexisting right to defend ourselves–while at the same time, going after and prosecuting criminals who misuse firearms. Those are not mutually exclusive ideas despite the left’s having such a hard time wrapping their head around it.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.