LONDON—Mitt Romney suggested new gun control legislation likely wouldn't stop a massacre like last week's movie theater shooting in Colorado, but "changing the heart of the American people" possibly would.
Romney made the comment during an interview with NBC's Brian Williams in London, the first stop of the presumptive Republican nominee's seven-day overseas tour.
NBC released an early excerpt of the interview, scheduled to air on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News:
WILLIAMS: "On things however like Aurora, Colo., do you see why Americans get frustrated at politics. They can see and hear your words from earlier in their career, people are hurting out there. Perhaps they want to start a national conversation about whether an AR-15 belongs in the hands of a citizen, whether a citizen should be able to buy 6-thousand rounds off the internet. You see the argument?"
ROMNEY: "Well this person shouldn't have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people."