Bloomberg.com: on Gun Control

Rick Perry: Taking away guns is knee-jerk reaction to gun tragedies

After his speech, though, he sent mixed signals about the wisdom of debating gun laws in the wake of the tragedy: "It is healthy for us as a nation to have conversations, but I do have an issue that the knee-jerk from the left is always, 'We're going to take people's guns away from them,' when in fact there may be a host of contributing factors here."

When asked if Obama was exploiting the tragedy by raising the issue of better background checks, Perry said yes; "that's the knee-jerk reaction--that if we can just take the guns out of the hands of everyone in this country, these types of things won't happen again."