Stopped outside of The Palm in Beverly Hills by TMZ, T.I. was asked to chime in on gun control following the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. While he doesn't want to see guns outright banned and taken away, he does believe that change clearly needs to happen to stop tragedies like the incident in Parkland and the Las Vegas shooting last year.
"It's a tough one," he tells TMZ. "I think you should probably make it more difficult for people who aren't mentally stable to have guns, and maybe there should be some... I just honestly feel like if you lose the right to bear arms as a citizen, then you know what I'm saying, it's easy to enslave. It's easy for the government to enslave people when they don't have the right to bear arms."
He follows-up by adding that it's never people who bought guns illegally that go on mass shootings, explaining that it's often those with licenses that commit such disgusting acts of violence. "I think mental stabilization needs to be a big part... Just not being a felon isn't enough. We see that, that isn't working. People think that the felons that's causing all the problems, but you know, it seems as though people who have been given gun license, who bought guns legally... Those are the ones causing all the mass hysteria, so I think that our system's broken."
The majority of mass shootings take place in the United States, and the most common weapons used are semi-automatic in nature. The shooting in Parkland, Florida saw perpetrator Nikolas Cruz leave 17 dead and 14 injured when he indiscriminately opened fire with his semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. When T.I. was asked by TMZ if he thinks stopping sales of semi-automatic weapons is a step in the right direction, he simply responded, "Could be."
