U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney spoke with students, teachers and families Saturday afternoon about an issue at the forefront of national policy — gun violence.

"What we are doing is not working something is terribly wrong in our society when 100 people a day die of guns," said Rep. Maloney. 

Congressman Maloney lead the community in a town hall on gun violence to discuss his plans for ending the epidemic and to listen to the community's concerns.  

"We also ought to do something about the deadliest weapons that are creating the most carnage in these mass shootings and if I were running the zoo I would move the prohibition on machine guns and other weapons of war a little lower so that it included semi automatic weapons like AR 15s."

Some people at the meeting disagreed with his calls to ban ARs and implement universal background checks. 

"Be realistic, you're not being realistic," shouted one man in the audience. "Until you can actually address the problems it's always gonna happen."

One focal point during the meeting was the idea of arming school teachers, which was also a divided issue.

Some community members thought this would be a good idea, while others called it an insane solution.

"As a student, I wouldn't feel safer with a teacher who had a gun, especially when teachers sometimes don’t know how to control their class let alone a gun,” said Ashley Chavez, a senior at Middletown High School.

Rep. Maloney says he his hopeful Congress will act soon to enact gun control legislation. 

"I think a lot of Americans are saying we need to do something differently. I think youre seeing that right now play out in the congress we've already seen some Republicans who in the past didn't support anything say they would support some common sense steps," said Rep. Maloney. "I think you're going to see an increasing set of voices on this demanding action." 

Rep. Maloney will hold another event later this month with gun owners and sportsmen to let them share their side of the debate.