Rep. Ralph Norman said he displayed his gun at a town hall meeting Friday to make a point about gun safety.
"I didn't do anything wrong," the South Carolina Republican told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" Monday. "The only reason I pulled the gun out, or placed the gun on the table was to prove a point that the gun doesn't shoot by itself."
On Friday, Norman placed his gun, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, on a table for several minutes during a meeting with his constituents.
"I said, 'I'm tired of the police being demonized. I'm tired of the NRA [National Rifle Association] being demonized. And I'm tired of guns in and of themselves being demonized as the problem,'" Norman told Fox News, describing the incident.
"And the fellow sitting in front of me, said, 'Ralph, don't you carry a gun?' I said, 'Absolutely I do.' Then I reached in my pocket, safely, pulled out the gun and laid it in front of me.
"And I said, 'This gun doesn't shoot by itself. It takes a person behind it.' And then I put the gun back in my pocket," Norman said. "And then the next thing I know, front page news, 'Congressman Ralph Norman pulls a gun at an event.'"
"Fox & Friends" host Steve Doocy said one woman at the event said she felt unsafe.
Norman replied: "She could have left. At no time did she say she was scared… What she did was saw this as an opportunity to make something over not anything."
During the town hall, Norman said he wasn't going to be a "Gabby Giffords," referring to a former congresswoman who was shot during a 2011 constituent gathering.
"She is a hero. She is a survivor," Norman told "Fox & Friends" program.
"My point there was, if somebody had had a loaded handgun, that could have shot — that could have stopped her shooting, that would have been a good thing. I believe that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And evidently the left does not believe that."
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