Oct. 16 - Candidates on Assault Weapons

Question #9 in the October 16, 2012 debate had to do with taking assault weapons out of the hands of criminals. Obama started with he’s a believer of the second amendment for sportsman and self protection activities; spoke about visiting the Colorado theater tragedy families; said we have to enforce the laws we have; we’re doing better background checks but there’s more to do to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill; he’s trying to get an assault weapons ban reintroduced and wants to look at the source of the community violence to spot and catch it before it gets out of control. (Per Daniel Vice, senior attorney for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Obama has said that he supports the renewal of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (signed by President Clinton in 1994 and expired in 2004. However, in 2010 the Campaign gave Obama an "F" because he failed to make an effort regarding gun control.)

Romney said – he’s not in favor of new legislation that takes away guns or makes certain guns illegal and it’s already against the law to have automatic weapons. He said he agreed with the President in enforcing the laws we have and in changing the culture of our society; he brought up Massachusetts (MA) schools being #1 in the nation (I’ve already said that they were #1 and dropped to #3 before being brought up to #2 went he left); he believes with better schools people will have better hope and opportunity and it will result in less violence; said we need parents helping to raise kids – where possible there should be 2 - stressed that kids get married before having kids; living in poverty increases with a single parent and opportunities increase with 2 parents; he then went to - the greatest failure we’ve had was with the Fast and Furious mission which was investigated to a degree but the administration used executive privilege to hide all the facts. Obama started to comment on his direction and Candy Crowley, the moderator, reminded Romney of the original question and she stated that Romney signed an assault ban as Governor of MA and apparently no longer supports that - so why. Romney said in MA both the pro and anti gun people put the legislation together so it had what they both wanted and that’s what we need more of in Washington, it’s gridlocked. Candy asked if he’d sign legislation if both parties (pro and anti guns) agreed and he didn’t answer but instead went on about having a lack of leadership in Washington to get bipartisan cooperation which he was able to do in his state. (Per Daniel Vice "It is false that they [automatic weapons] are illegal". Vice explains that in 1986, President Reagan signed a bill that banned the manufacture of automatic weapons for sale to civilians. However, the law did not apply to automatic weapons already on the market. Buying and selling those guns "grandfathered" in by the law, is still legal and "there are thousands and thousands of them." Per the NRA - Automatic weapons, whether semi-automatic or fully automatic, are legal in most states but require an extensive federal background check and a permit from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms; semi-automatic weapons account for about 15% of the more than 250 million privately owned firearms in the US.