‘I don’t understand why civilians need military weapons’ – Condi Rice

Condoleezza Rice doesn’t “understand why civilians need to have access to military weapons.” The former Secretary of State’s comments are seemingly at odds with her support for the 2nd Amendment.

Rice, George W Bush’s secretary of state, was speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday when she questioned the need for military weapons. “I think it is time to have a conversation about what the right to bear arms means in the modern world,” she said.

“I don’t understand why civilians need to have access to military weapons. We wouldn’t say you can go out and buy a tank,” she added.

Rice’s loyalty to the 2nd Amendment is in some part tied to her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, which saw her exposed to violence against the black community by the Ku Klux Klan. Recalling how her father and other men in the community protected them at that time, Rice said, “I think it’s a pure version of the second Amendment, as a matter of fact, the right to bear arms.”

“The rights that we have in the Constitution are indivisible,” Rice said. “We can’t throw away the Second Amendment and keep the First.”

While President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have called for teachers to be armed in the wake of the Florida school shooting that killed 17, Rice doesn’t think arming teachers with guns is “going to be the answer.”

“I don’t really like the idea, frankly, of a gun in my classroom,” she said. Rice teaches political science at Stanford University.

“Look, if people need to train people to protect our schools, and perhaps even communities want to consider whether or not they need guards to protect the schools, it’s a sad thing to think that we might, then that’s something that we should look at,” she said.

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