You can't educate a child who isn't healthy, and you can't keep a child healthy who isn't educated.

I've pretty much always used my positions as a bully pulpit. What that means is strongly advocating for the things I feel are really important. Gun violence, to me, is the highest-priority public-health issue, and I have to make sure Congress is aware of it, the American people are aware of it, the president is aware of it, and that we all begin together to develop policies to exterminate the disease - the epidemic, really - of gun violence.

You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.

Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

What I can do is to go out and talk about the problems and solutions, make people aware of the scope of the problems, get them to become advocates for a turnaround, and convince them to develop an action plan, targeted to their community, to deal with young people. [They need to] find out what the kids want to do - dances, midnight-basketball leagues.

Certainly we have to find some kind of warning to put on guns for sale. And that's not too far-fetched. But what I really want to do is take the guns out of the hands of irresponsible people.

Nobody with a criminal record would ever be allowed to buy a gun. All assault weapons would be banned, completely. And everybody who still possesses a gun license would receive mandatory education and training by professionals on how to handle a gun. After all, I can't drive my car until I pass a test proving I know how to handle a car.