Alabama-Native New Yorker Wins Miss America: 'I Was Always A Little More Liberal-Thinking Than My Home Town'

Alabama-native Mallory Hagan, or 'Miss New York' as she may now be better known, was crowned queen of the Miss America pageant Saturday night and told reporters she left her hometown because she was 'always a little more liberal-thinking' than her peers.

'It wasn't that I wanted to leave Alabama,' she said. 'I saw the energy of New York City was something I couldn't get enough of.'

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Hagan only moved to New York city a mere four years ago to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. She's currently a Brooklynite and her win may have had a lot to do with the Q&A segment, where she said that she opposed armed guards in schools.

'I don't think the proper way to fight violence is with violence,' she explained. 'I think the proper way is to educate people on guns and the ways we can use them properly. We can lock them up, we can have gun safety classes, we can have a longer waiting period.'

The Washington Post reports that she's the first Miss New York to win the competition since Vanessa Williams 30 years ago.

Watch the clip below, via NBC: