Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice defended the Second Amendment during a visit to The View on Thursday.

Amidst the national debate raging over gun control, host Sunny Hostin mentioned that Rice has said that she doesn’t think that civilians should have assault weapons, but that she is for the Second Amendment.

Rice explained why by sharing a story about her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama during the height of the civil rights era.

“Let me tell you why I’m a defender of the Second Amendment," Rice said. "I was a little girl growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s. There was no way that Bull Connor and the Birmingham police were going to protect you."

Because black residents could not rely on the police, they had to arm themselves, Rice said. She went on to say that her father and his friends would shoot their rifles in the air to spook the Ku Klux Klan and protect their neighborhood.

“I’m sure if Bull Connor had known where those guns were, he would have rounded them up. So I don’t favor some things like gun registration.”

Still, Rice said there is a difference between the type of guns her family used to stay alive and the type of guns used in mass shootings.

“It’s time to have a national conversation about how we can deal with the problems that we have. It’s not gonna be any single fix to the terrible events of Parkland,” she continued. “You’re going to have to decide if civilians really should have access to what are really military weapons.”

She also implied that authorities dropped the ball since there had been previous complaints about Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz prior to the massacre.

“If you get that many tips about somebody that they’re going to cause harm, go and figure out what was going on,” she said.