Blitzer began by asserting that Mark Kelly was “causing a stir after purchasing two guns, including an AR-15 assault-style rifle,” and asked Kelly “How come you went out and bought an AR-15?”

Kelly responded that “it’s important for me to have firsthand knowledge about how easy it is, or difficult it is, to buy a weapon like that,” and that he plans to complete similar purchases at gun shows in the future. He also noted that purchasing that AR-15 was “actually pretty easy, you know, for a weapon that’s so deadly, and really designed for the military, especially with the high capacity magazines, it is a pretty easy thing to do, even with a background check.”

“The conservative news site Breitbart suggested you went public with this decision to buy the AR-15 because they were about to report it,” Blitzer said, reading from the Breitbart story, and asking “What do you say about that?”

“Well, I don’t know anything about who Breitbart is, or anything about his website,” Kelly responded. “We had a plan to go in there to buy a .45, and if we had the opportunity, to buy an AR-15 as well. I don’t know the timing, but we had a plan when we were going to announce that on Facebook. In the future, I’ll be talking about buying a gun from a gun show, also selling a gun. So that’s all to come later, because I really need to understand this, the issues, you know, surrounding gun violence and these weapons.”

“What are you going to do with the AR-15?” Blitzer asked.

“Well, the plan is to turn it into the Tucson police department,” Kelly replied, just as he had on Facebook.