I know people get upset and go, 'They're going to take away the assault weapon'. But who needs an assault weapon? Like, really, unless you're carrying out an assault.
This is a matter of vital importance to the public safety ... While we recognize that assault-weapon legislation will not stop all assault-weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals.
As soon as you define what an assault weapon is, you know, you can't sell a weapon, and here's how we describe it, gun manufacturers just make one adjustment or two, and they say, 'See, this isn't subject to the limitation.'
The protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. But increasingly, and especially in the US, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote". Rather than correcting the market failures, the political system was reinforcing them.
I believe that if you make it harder to vote, then we should make it harder for you to get reelected.
If you're too dangerous to buy an airplane ticket, you're too dangerous to buy an assault weapon. And, when we talk about the Second Amendment - I support the Second Amendment - but the Second Amendment was created and designed to prevent tyranny and not to encourage terror.
The people that are proposing banning assault weapons, well, first of all they're already banned. Assault weapon is a fully automatic, those are already banned.
We would get rid of assault weapons. There would not be an assault weapon in the United States, whether it's for a show or someone having it in a collection.
I think it is a simple statement of principle that in a democracy you should make your MPs work harder for your vote and try and get at least majority support in their local area, and that in a nutshell is what AV does.
It is true that the vast majority of gun deaths in America are not the consequence of the use of an 'assault weapon.' But that begs the question of whether assault weapons have any real utility either in terms of any sporting or self protection needs.
There's an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.
If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote; Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry, or control health care choices that women should make for themselves.
We think about democracy, and that's the word that Americans love to use, 'democracy,' and that's how we characterize our system. But if democracy just means going to vote, it's pretty meaningless. Russia has democracy in that sense. Most authoritarian regimes have democracy in that sense.
If you vote early, great. If you vote on Election Day, great. If you vote absentee, great. But get out and vote.
Now the dictatorship or call it the 'Indonesian regime', fully consolidated its power... You see, the West told Indonesians, indirectly of course, that 'democracy' is when you have several or many political parties, and people vote at least once in a while. But it is total nonsense. Democracy is when you vote and your vote can actually totally change the course of your nation.
Health and Human Services has an enormous amount of discretion that they have so far used to make it harder to get affordable health care. To make you buy what the government insists you must buy. That doesn`t work.