Former Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum defended Georgia’s controversial new “guns everywhere” legislation on Sunday.
The bill, which would allow licensed gun owners to carry their firearms at airports, schools, churches and other buildings, will only make people more safe, the former Pennsylvania senator said.
“I don’t think this is going to do anything to encourage some bad guy to cause harm in airport, but it is going to create an opportunity where if something bad maybe does happen in an airport, that maybe someone will be there to be able to stop it,” he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
{mosads}“I think a well-armed family is a safe family,” he added. “A well-armed America is a safer America.”
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) signed the Safe Carry Protection Act last week.
Santorum, who spoke at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting last week, said he and his wife both have concealed carry permits “because we believe that we have an obligation to protect ourselves, just like everybody else does.”
He dismissed a question from “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer that the bill could turn the state into the “O.K. Corral.”
“Everybody romanticizes the O.K. Corral and everything that happened, but gun crimes were not very prevalent back then,” Santorum responded. “Why? Because people carried guns.”
Santorum has a new book out that urges the Republican Party to focus more on working Americans, but he said on Sunday that he’s undecided about whether he will seek the White House again in 2016.
“We’ll make a decision next year as to whether we run or not, but I’m going to stay very, very engaged and hopefully Republican candidates across the country will get this book, look at it and begin to talk to folks who should be voting for us, and should be helping us to change America but are not,” he said.