Q: Are there any changes you could support on gun control?
A: We’ll look at it. When I was a United States Attorney, I had a gun program. We worked with local law enforcement and we had more prosecutions — for an assistant U.S. Attorney — for gun violations, than anybody in the country. Under this administration, gun prosecutions are down compared to the Bush years.
Q: So you favor Obama’s proposed executive orders on increasing prosecutions?
A: If they focus on people likely to shoot somebody, yes. Criminals and thugs and the mentally ill and that sort of thing. What they want to focus on is restricting the ability of law-abiding citizens to get guns, and I’m not for that.
Q: Could you support restrictions on the size of the magazines?
A: I’ll have to see what they say about that. That’s obviously more political and psychological than it is substantive, in terms of impacting crime. Is it going to impact crime if the clip has nine instead of 16 rounds in it? Not much, I don’t think. The numbers don’t show the assault weapons ban had much impact.
Q: Do you support a ban on semi-automatic weapons?
A: I definitely would oppose a ban on semi-automatic weapons. The old Colt revolver is a semi-automatic weapon. If you start banning semi-automatic weapons, you’ve really banned the essence of gun ownership today. Normal people are coming up to me expressing concerns about banning guns. They don’t like it. “Don’t let them take our guns,” that’s what they say. And they mean it.
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