Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., one of a small handful of Democratic candidates to agree to a town-hall event on Fox News, visited the friendlier terrain of MSNBC on Monday.

Quick on his feet and skilled at finding applause lines, Mr. Buttigieg, 37, has thrived in the town-hall format before. It was his performance at a CNN event in March that launched him to the top quarter of the 23-person Democratic field, and he received an enthusiastic reception in his Fox News appearance last month.

The MSNBC town hall, which will be moderated by Chris Matthews in Fresno, Calif., runs until 8 p.m. Eastern, and we will update this article during and after the event.

The first question for Mr. Buttigieg was about gun control, which has become a litmus-test issue for Democratic candidates in a way that has not happened in previous presidential election cycles. Mr. Matthews pressed him on his proposal to require gun licensing along the same lines as driver’s licenses: How would that work, Mr. Matthews asked, when Americans already own 400 million guns?

Mr. Buttigieg said his primary focus was on requiring licenses for all guns purchased going forward. “Retroactively is going to be tougher,” he acknowledged, while arguing that crafting a system for future purchases could eventually create a template to apply to past purchases.

Also raised early in the event was Mr. Buttigieg’s experience coming out as gay while serving as a mayor in a conservative state — governed, at the time, by now-Vice President Mike Pence. He came out during an election year, he said, but was overwhelmingly re-elected “because people just cared about what kind of job I was doing for them as mayor.”

The question that prompted the discussion — from an audience member who said he and his husband had adopted sons through the foster care system and suggested, with a smile, that perhaps Mr. Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, might do the same — concerned how to improve the foster care system. Mr. Buttigieg discussed, in broad terms, federal policies that would hold states to “a higher standard” on things like wait-lists and moving children from home to home. He also called for policies to prevent foster care and adoption agencies from discriminating against same-sex couples.

As the night continued, Mr. Buttigieg was asked about impeaching President Trump, about tariffs and about abortion rights. This article will be updated with more from the event.

Follow Maggie Astor on Twitter: @MaggieAstor.

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