Rep. Yarmuth: Wouldn't regret losing my seat over gun control

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) said Tuesday that he wouldn't regretting losing his seat over tighter regulations on guns and invited the NRA to spend money to oppose his reelection.

Yarmuth told The Washington Post that the power of the NRA was greatly overstated. He asked the gun lobby to "please spend their money" to oppose him, because "it would be wasted."

In the wake of the tragic elementary school shooting in Connecticut, Yarmuth apologized on Monday for remaining silent on the issue of gun violence over his past six years in Congress. He said he learned "through painful history" that guns were more likely to be used to harm the innocent than to protect them.

Yarmuth told The Washington Post he was previously unwilling to talk about gun control because the issue was so quickly passed over by the national media. Though there was an initial furor after mass shooting incidents like the one in Colorado earlier this year, nobody continued to talk about the issue, he said.

"That gets to be pretty frustrating," the congressman explained. "I think for me and for many people, this last event was a tipping point, it was the last straw. After Aurora, after Columbine, after the Sikh temple, after all these incidents, you just say, OK, we've just got to keep the drumbeat up, because it is when the drumbeat stops that we lose our opportunity to make changes."

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube by The Washington Post, below: