(LONDON) — Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said the guns used to kill 12 people in a Colorado movie theater were bought "illegally." However, that's not the case.
The firearms that authorities say James Holmes used on July 20 were purchased legally.
"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," Romney told NBC News in an interview. "And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't."
Holmes broke no laws when he purchased an assault-style rifle, a shotgun and Glock handgun. He also passed required background checks.
"I don't happen to believe that America needs new gun laws. A lot of what this ... young man did was clearly against the law. But the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening," Romney said in the interview.
