When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, 'Well, what do you need?'
I've dealt with a lot of guns over my career, so I'm getting better and better with firearms.
After the Civil War, when blacks fought along whites to secure freedom for all, southern states enacted Black Codes, laws that restricted the civil rights and liberties of blacks. Central to the enforcement of these laws were the stiff penalties for blacks possessing firearms.
Gun owners and non-gun owners alike agree on expanding background checks, making gun trafficking a serious crime with stiff penalties, making it illegal for all stalkers and all domestic abusers to buy guns, and expanding mental health resources so the mentally ill find it easier to receive treatment than to buy firearms.
They have some pretty tough gun laws in Japan, as they do in any other civilized country in the world, and they're not killing each other off with firearms. You have very violent films in Europe, yet it's not causing the mayhem we see in our streets routinely here.
Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.
I think that we should take the tragedy that happened in Newtown and have a full comprehensive dialogue about all issues, whether it has to do with mental health, whether it has to do with the social decline of our young people and some of the things that they are exposed to, whether it has to do with the firearms and guns.
So many deaths could be prevented if measures were implemented to expand background checks and keep individuals like John Hinckley from ever buying firearms in the first place.
Americans have the right under the Second Amendment to own firearms, and that is not going to change.
After a week of back and forth, and forth and back over firearms, it's good to see a consensus developing on this common-sense amendment to keep handguns away from children.