This has to be seen to be believed.
CANDY CROWLEY
Governor Romney, the question is about assault weapons, AK-47s.
1:18:36
MITT ROMNEY: Yeah, I -- I'm not in favor of new pieces of legislation on -- on guns and -- and taking guns away or -- or making certain guns illegal. We of course don't want to have automatic weapons, and that's already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.
What I believe is we have to do as the president mentioned towards the end of his remarks there, which is to make enormous efforts to enforce the gun laws that we have and to change the culture of violence we have. And you ask, how are we going to do that? And there are a number of things.
He mentioned good schools. I totally agree. We were able to drive our schools to be number one in the nation in my state, and I believe if we do a better job in education, we'll -- we'll give people the -- the hope and opportunity they deserve, and perhaps less violence from that.
But let me mention another thing, and that is parents. We need moms and dads helping raise kids. Wherever possible, the -- the benefit of having two parents in the home -- and that's not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone -- that's a great idea because if there's a two-parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically. The opportunities that the child will -- will be able to achieve increase dramatically.
So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity and bring them in the American system.
The -- the greatest failure we've had with regards to gun violence, in some respects, is what is known as Fast and Furious, which was a program under this administration -- and how it worked exactly, I think we don't know precisely -- but where thousands of automatic and -- and AK-47-type weapons were -- were given to people that ultimately gave them to -- to drug lords. They used those weapons against -- against their own citizens and killed Americans with them.
And this was a -- this was a program of the government. For what purpose it was put in place, I can't imagine. But it's one of the great tragedies related to violence in our society which has occurred during this administration which I think the American people would like to understand fully. It's been investigated to a degree, but the administration has -- has carried out executive privilege to prevent all the information from coming out. I'd like to understand who it was that did this, what the idea was behind it, why it led to the violence -- thousands of guns going to Mexican drug lords.
1:20:56
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Candy.
1:20:57
CANDY CROWLEY
Governor, Governor, if I could, the question was about these assault weapons that once were banned and are no longer banned. I know that you signed an assault weapons ban when you were in Massachusetts. Obviously with this question, you no longer do support that. Why is that? Given the kind of violence that we see sometimes with these mass killings, why is it that you've changed your mind?
1:21:21
MITT ROMNEY
Well, Candy, actually, in my state, the pro-gun folks and the anti-gun folks came together and put together a piece of legislation, and it's referred to as a -- as an assault weapon ban, but it had at the signing of the bill both the pro-gun and the anti- gun people came together, because it provided opportunities for both that both wanted. There were hunting opportunities, for instance, that hadn't previously been available and so forth. So it was a mutually agreed upon piece of legislation.
That's what we need more of, Candy. What we have right now in Washington is a place that's -- that's gridlocked. We haven't had -- we haven't -- we haven't -- we haven't had the leadership in Washington to work on a bipartisan basis.
1:21:55
CANDY CROWLEY
So if I could, if you could get people to agree to it, you'd be for it.
1:21:57
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Candy --
1:22:01
MITT ROMNEY
I was able to do that in my state and bring these two together.
1:22:03
PRESIDENT OBAMA
Candy.
1:22:04
CANDY CROWLEY
Quickly, Mr. President.
1:22:05
PRESIDENT OBAMA
The -- first of all, I think Governor Romney was for an assault weapons ban before he was against it. And he said that the reason he changed his mind was in part because he was seeking the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.
So that's on the record. But I think that one area we agree on is the importance of parents and the importance of schools, because I do believe that if our young people have opportunity...
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 754023 times)