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- [Excerpt from http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/16/transcript-second-presidential-debate/?hpt=hp_t2]
- CROWLEY: Governor Romney, the question is about assault weapons,
- AK-47s.
- ROMNEY: Yeah, I'm not in favor of new pieces of legislation on
- – on guns and taking guns away 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 that we have.
- And you ask how - 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 to 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 - to
- gun violence in some respects is what - 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, where thousands of
- automatic, 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 - but the administration has carried
- out executive privilege to prevent all of 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.
- OBAMA: Candy?
- CROWLEY: Governor, Governor, if I could, the question was about
- these assault weapons that once were once 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 have changed your mind?
- 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 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 haven'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 gridlocked.
- CROWLEY: So I could - if you could get people to agree to it,
- you would be for it?
- ROMNEY: We have –
- OBAMA: Candy?
- ROMNEY: - we haven't had the leadership in Washington to work
- on a bipartisan basis. I was able to do that in my state and bring
- these two together.
- CROWLEY: Quickly, Mr. 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 important of parents
- and the importance of schools, because I do believe that if our young
- people have opportunity, then they are less likely to engage in these
- kinds of violent acts. We're not going to eliminate everybody who is
- mentally disturbed and we have got to make sure they don't get
- weapons.
- (AUDIO GAP)
- OBAMA: because I do believe that if our young people have
- opportunity, then they're less likely to engage in these kind of
- violent acts.
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