Vice President Joe Biden in a speech Thursday pointed to more stringent background checks and outlawing large capacity magazines, and not the assault weapons ban, as the most important parts of President Barack Obama’s new gun control proposals.
Obama and Biden will take their case on the road campaign-style in the coming weeks in an effort to marshal public opinion behind the efforts to curb gun violence that were announced Wednesday, Biden said in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Thursday.
The assault weapons ban has been criticized by conservatives and gun advocates as likely not stopping many of the shootings that Obama’s gun control efforts are aimed at, a point Biden seemed to emphasize in the speech.
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“The weapon of choice in vast majority of people who are killed is a handgun,” Biden said. “But you can put an awful lot of rounds in a Glock and a lot of other handguns.”
According to the Glock website, their firearms can hold up to 33 rounds, depending on the caliber of the weapon — part of the reason that emphasis has been put on the size of available magazines. Obama’s proposal is to end the manufacture and sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
Biden said that stronger background checks, both in stores and at gun shows, are the most important part of the proposals in the hope that they will discourage criminals from buying guns. At least 40 percent of gun purchases, he said, are made without a background check.
“Why would a criminal buy a gun at a store where he’s required to buy a gun to do a background check or at a gun show from a licensed dealer where he’s required to go through a background check,” he said, “when he can buy a gun from the guy at the next exit over who sometimes has a sign above saying ‘No background check required’?”
Both Biden and Obama plan to take their case to the American people, as they did during the debate with House Republicans over how to avoid the fiscal cliff.
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“We’re going to take this fight to the halls of Congress,” Biden said. “We’re going to take it beyond that. We’re going to take it to the American people. We’re going to go around the country making our case and we’re going to let the voices, the voices of the American people be heard.”
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