During a recent interview on CNN, Rev. Jesse Jackson was repeatedly asked to defend Chicago's strict gun laws now that the city's reached its 500th homicide this year, its highest in four years. About 87.5 percent of those crimes were gun-related.

"If this level of gun laws doesn't work in Chicago, and you still have the guns coming from outside the city in, and now you've got 500 homicides this year, what is the argument to extending this nationally and to other cities?" CNN's Don Lemon asked.

Jackson explained that the gun culture is different in Chicago than in Newtown, Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting took place. He also said poverty, unemployment and other issues rooted in certain urban areas also affect the amount of gun violence.

"Forty percent unemployment does matter," Jackson said. "Lack of education does matter."

"It's not gun violence. It's also poverty and lack of education and lack of dreams, where people think killing is the only way out," he added. "This is the need for an urban policy of reconstruction."

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