gun control question (transcript)

[aikoaiko]

http://fednews.com/ has published the transcript of the 2nd debate for access. I hope its ok to quote liberally from that source.

MS. CROWLEY: Because what I want to do, Mr. President — stand there for a second, because I want to introduce you to Nina Gonzales, who brought up a question that we hear a lot, both over the Internet and from this crowd.

Q: President Obama, during the Democratic National Convention in 2008, you stated you wanted to keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. What has your administration done or plan to do to limit the availability of assault weapons?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, we’re a nation that believes in the Second Amendment. And I believe in the Second Amendment. You know, we’ve got a long tradition of hunting and sportsmen and people who want to make sure they can protect themselves.

But there have been too many instances during the course of my presidency where I’ve had to comfort families who’ve lost somebody, most recently out in Aurora. You know, just a couple of weeks ago, actually probably about a month, I saw a mother who I had met at the beside of her son who had been shot in that theater.

And her son had been shot through the head. And we spent some time, and we said a prayer. And remarkably, about two months later, this young man and his mom showed up, and he looked unbelievable, good as new. But there were a lot of families who didn’t have that good fortune and whose sons or daughters or husbands didn’t survive.

So my belief is that A, we have to enforce the laws we’ve already got, make sure that we’re keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. We’ve done a much better job in terms of background checks, but we’ve got more to do when it comes to enforcement.

But I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence, because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.

And so what can we do to intervene to make sure that young people have opportunity, that our schools are working, that if there’s violence on the streets, that working with faith groups and law enforcement, we can catch it before it gets out of control?

And so what I want is a — is a comprehensive strategy. Part of it is seeing if we can get automatic weapons that kill folks in amazing numbers out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. But part of it is also going deeper and seeing if we can get into these communities and making sure we catch violent impulses before they occur.

MS. CROWLEY: Governor Romney, the question is about assault weapons, AK-47s.

MR. 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.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Candy.

MS. 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?

MR. 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.

MS. CROWLEY: So if I could, if you could get people to agree to it, you’d be for it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Candy —

MR. ROMNEY: I was able to do that in my state and bring these two together.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Candy.

MS. CROWLEY: Quickly, Mr. President.

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, then they’re less likely to engage in these kinds of violent acts. We’re not going to eliminate everybody who is mentally disturbed, and we’ve got to make sure that they don’t get weapons. But we can make a difference in terms of ensuring that every young person in America, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, have a chance to succeed.

And Candy, we haven’t had a chance to talk about education much. But I think it is very important to understand that the reforms we put in place, working with 46 governors around the country, are seeing schools that are some of the ones that are the toughest for kids starting to succeed. We’re starting to see gains in math and science. When it comes to community colleges, we are setting up programs, including with Nassau Community College, to retrain workers, including young people who may have dropped out of school but now are getting another chance — training them for the jobs that exist right now. And in fact, employers are looking for skilled workers, and so we’re matching them up. Giving them access to higher education — as I said, we have made sure that millions of young people are able to get an education that they weren’t able to get before.

Now — but —

MS. CROWLEY: Mr. President, I have to — I have to move you along here. You said you wanted to hear these questions, and we need to do it here.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: — but — but it’ll — it’ll — it’ll — it’ll be just — just one second, because —

MS. CROWLEY: One —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: — because this is important. This is part of the choice in this election. And when Governor Romney was asked whether teachers — hiring more teachers was important to growing our economy, Governor Romney said that doesn’t grow our economy. When — when he was asked — (inaudible) — class size —

MS. CROWLEY: The question, of course, Mr. President, was guns here. So I need to move us along.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I understand.

MS. CROWLEY: You know, the questions was guns. So let me — let me bring in another —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: But this will make a difference in terms of whether or not we can move this economy forward for these young people —

MS. CROWLEY: I understand.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: — and reduce our violence.

[aikoaiko]

1. Ok, here are my comments FWIW

MS. CROWLEY: Because what I want to do, Mr. President — stand there for a second, because I want to introduce you to Nina Gonzales, who brought up a question that we hear a lot, both over the Internet and from this crowd.

Q: President Obama, during the Democratic National Convention in 2008, you stated you wanted to keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. What has your administration done or plan to do to limit the availability of assault weapons?

Even though this topic is near and dear to me, I cringed, because I knew Obama had a lot more to lose than Romney.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, we’re a nation that believes in the Second Amendment. And I believe in the Second Amendment. You know, we’ve got a long tradition of hunting and sportsmen and people who want to make sure they can protect themselves.

So far so good. Especially the last part about self-defense. He got away from the Fudd framing of RKBA.

But there have been too many instances during the course of my presidency where I’ve had to comfort families who’ve lost somebody, most recently out in Aurora. You know, just a couple of weeks ago, actually probably about a month, I saw a mother who I had met at the beside of her son who had been shot in that theater.

And her son had been shot through the head. And we spent some time, and we said a prayer. And remarkably, about two months later, this young man and his mom showed up, and he looked unbelievable, good as new. But there were a lot of families who didn’t have that good fortune and whose sons or daughters or husbands didn’t survive.

This is the reality of the criminal gun violence and I thought he was setting up a Clintonesque empathetic moment.

So my belief is that A, we have to enforce the laws we’ve already got, make sure that we’re keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. We’ve done a much better job in terms of background checks, but we’ve got more to do when it comes to enforcement.

This was great.

But I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence, because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.

At first I thought he was going to maintain his discipline of not mentioning or endorsing the AWB, but he went there for a half a sentence. It was a bad slip.

However, the part about handguns being more likely to involved with gun violence is one of the smartest things I've heard Obama say about gun violence.

And so what can we do to intervene to make sure that young people have opportunity, that our schools are working, that if there’s violence on the streets, that working with faith groups and law enforcement, we can catch it before it gets out of control?

This part was a but rambling -- schools and law enforcement.

And so what I want is a — is a comprehensive strategy. Part of it is seeing if we can get automatic weapons that kill folks in amazing numbers out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. But part of it is also going deeper and seeing if we can get into these communities and making sure we catch violent impulses before they occur.

I don't know if he was being clever by changing the discussion to automatic weapons or if he conflates semi-auto with automatic weapons.

MS. CROWLEY: Governor Romney, the question is about assault weapons, AK-47s.

MR. 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.

The first part of Romney's response is pretty much what I've been hoping Obama would adopt, but alas...

The second part about automatic weapons being illegal is obviously wrong, but then again it is illegal for regular folk to acquire newly manufactured select-fire firearms. I wish the president had embarrassed Romney for his slip.

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.

Schools and marriage. blah blah blah.

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.

Fast and Furious is an embarrassment as a botched and benighted law enforcement effort, but not the scandal some would like to make of it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Candy.

MS. 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?

Nice job, Candy, of bringing it back to the issue.

MR. 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.

FU Romney. You signed it. Now own it.

MS. CROWLEY: So if I could, if you could get people to agree to it, you’d be for it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Candy —

MR. ROMNEY: I was able to do that in my state and bring these two together.

You won't get the chance to sell out the RKBA as President, but FU anyway.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Candy.

MS. CROWLEY: Quickly, Mr. President.

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.

Nicely done pointing out his etch-o-sketch politics.

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, then they’re less likely to engage in these kinds of violent acts. We’re not going to eliminate everybody who is mentally disturbed, and we’ve got to make sure that they don’t get weapons. But we can make a difference in terms of ensuring that every young person in America, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, have a chance to succeed.

And Candy, we haven’t had a chance to talk about education much. But I think it is very important to understand that the reforms we put in place, working with 46 governors around the country, are seeing schools that are some of the ones that are the toughest for kids starting to succeed. We’re starting to see gains in math and science. When it comes to community colleges, we are setting up programs, including with Nassau Community College, to retrain workers, including young people who may have dropped out of school but now are getting another chance — training them for the jobs that exist right now. And in fact, employers are looking for skilled workers, and so we’re matching them up. Giving them access to higher education — as I said, we have made sure that millions of young people are able to get an education that they weren’t able to get before.

Now — but —

OK, I can understand why the President wants to get the hell out of the issue.

MS. CROWLEY: Mr. President, I have to — I have to move you along here. You said you wanted to hear these questions, and we need to do it here.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: — but — but it’ll — it’ll — it’ll — it’ll be just — just one second, because —

MS. CROWLEY: One —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: — because this is important. This is part of the choice in this election. And when Governor Romney was asked whether teachers — hiring more teachers was important to growing our economy, Governor Romney said that doesn’t grow our economy. When — when he was asked — (inaudible) — class size —

MS. CROWLEY: The question, of course, Mr. President, was guns here. So I need to move us along.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I understand.

MS. CROWLEY: You know, the questions was guns. So let me — let me bring in another —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: But this will make a difference in terms of whether or not we can move this economy forward for these young people —

MS. CROWLEY: I understand.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: — and reduce our violence.

And mercifully, it was over.

[Atypical Liberal]

7. Good analysis. n/t

[Eleanors38]

10. Good job on this. I wish Obama knew more about

Guns and their place in our history and society; he has a little knowledge, and that is dangerous.

[ellisonz]

2. President Obama doesn't support this gun insanity.

He desperately wants to reform our gun control laws to make them more effective!

In our country, this shit has gotten out of hand, and the President knows this first hand.

[gejohnston]

4. I agree that he wants to make the current ones more effective

but that has nothing to with reforming the laws, unless you need to pass one to get local cops and ATF to work on trafficking together. Personally, there are provisions in the current five federal gun laws I would like to change for various reasons. Some you would like, some you wouldn't.
If you want to see "shit getting out of hand" check out Mexico and Jamaica. UK has a bigger problem with illegal automatic weapons than we do. Why does that matter? Although I don't think he realized it, he was talking about machine guns.

[ellisonz]

5. "check out Mexico and Jamaica."

Buy my plane ticket...

[gejohnston]

6. Brazil for another.

or Canada until 1977 when their laws were, on balance, about as strict or laxer than ours. From 1968-1977 one could argue Canadian gun laws were laxer than ours.

[Dr_Scholl]

3. I'm surprised gun control even came up.

That being said, his comment about wanting to reinstate the AWB is going to hurt him in the battleground states, which are all very pro-gun.

[Atypical Liberal]

8. Here's my analysis on the remarks:

Q: President Obama, during the Democratic National Convention in 2008, you stated you wanted to keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. What has your administration done or plan to do to limit the availability of assault weapons?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, we’re a nation that believes in the Second Amendment. And I believe in the Second Amendment. You know, we’ve got a long tradition of hunting and sportsmen and people who want to make sure they can protect themselves.

It was glad here to see the President add, even though it was almost an afterthought in the presentation, that he acknowledges our "tradition" of people wanting to make sure they can protect themselves.

I am disappointed that the President does not call this what it really is: a right, not a "tradition".

We have "long traditions" of free speech, freedom of religion, and a host of other "traditions" that would be much more properly regarded as "rights", and it is telling when they are described otherwise.

So my belief is that A, we have to enforce the laws we’ve already got, make sure that we’re keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. We’ve done a much better job in terms of background checks, but we’ve got more to do when it comes to enforcement.

The President should have left it at this. But instead...

But I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence, because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.

On live television, the President of the United States just called for a new firearms ban.

The good news is if he wanted to stimulate the economy, he just dumped the firearms industry into overdrive. Heck, I had a headhunter call me yesterday for a job at Smith&Wesson in Massachusetts. At least we get job growth for a high-tech American manufacturer!

I was glad to see that the President is aware that most of the gun violence is committed using handguns and not "AK-47s", but given that that is the case, why advocate for an assault weapons ban that does not address the weapons being used in crime?!?!

Blah! I was disappointed in this.

And so what can we do to intervene to make sure that young people have opportunity, that our schools are working, that if there’s violence on the streets, that working with faith groups and law enforcement, we can catch it before it gets out of control?

This would have been a great segue into the social underpinnings of our crime problems. A great opportunity to take the argument away from guns and into what draws people into crime in the first place. Sadly, there was not enough time.

And so what I want is a — is a comprehensive strategy. Part of it is seeing if we can get automatic weapons that kill folks in amazing numbers out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. But part of it is also going deeper and seeing if we can get into these communities and making sure we catch violent impulses before they occur.

There are no "automatic weapons" being used to kill people in amazing numbers in the United States. Either this shows woeful ignorance (unlikely, given the AK-47s vs. handguns statement above) or an intentional attempt to mislead.

MS. CROWLEY: Governor Romney, the question is about assault weapons, AK-47s.

MR. 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.

Another fantastic flip-flop by Romney. It is truly astonishing how this guy can go into debates and with a straight face refute his past history so flagrantly.

I'm also annoyed about the misrepresentation of the legality of automatic weapons but, to be fair, such weapons have been regulated to the point that they might as well be illegal because of the hassle to obtain them and the astronomical cost of them even if you get permission to do so.

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.

Yeah, right. Romney the school supporter. Maybe you'll get a voucher to go to McSchool or something.

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.

Hey, I know - maybe if we didn't incarcerate so many men of child-bearing age for using drugs we might have more eligible bachelors in circulation to, you know, marry.

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.

Blah blah blah. I think Fast and Furious was a disaster, too, but that was not what the subject under discussion was. He's avoiding the subject. But not for long...

MS. 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?

MR. 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.

BWHAHAHAHAA! "Oh it wasn't me that passed that bill, the pro-gun people wanted it! Yeah right. You signed it, you own it, buddy. What a squirm.

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.

MS. CROWLEY: So if I could, if you could get people to agree to it, you’d be for it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Candy —

MR. ROMNEY: I was able to do that in my state and bring these two together.

So Romney just admitted that he, too, would favor an assault weapons ban.

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.

Nailed. To. The. Wall.

---------------------

I think the President did enormous damage to his chances among pro-firearms folks with this debate.

The only good news here is that Romney did worse to himself. At least the President was honest on his opinion on the matter. Not only did Romney attempt to crawfish away from his true position on an assault weapons ban, but then in the end he had to admit he would be for it, too.

On the whole I was very pleased with this debate and I was proud and happy to see the President on the offensive, looking aggressive and actively refuting things that Romney said.

I have always said, and still maintain, that in debates, facts don't matter. Everyone assumes that "the other guy" is lying or, at best, cherry picking their data. These debates are not places to assess information, they are places to assess character. People want to see if someone, under pressure, can defend their position. They want to know whether they believe what they themselves are saying. They want to know whether they proudly endorse what they are saying or if they are trying to weasel out of positions by being mealy-mouthed.

I think the President did a great job overall.

[Eleanors38]

9. Yeah, the "cheap handgun" statement has the potential

Of being read as another ban in the wings. Gun control is like Sodom: You can't help but glance back.

Good analysis!