Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden says his party must steer clear of the most far-reaching gun control proposals. Biden, who’s been a U.S. Senator representing the state of Delaware for the past 34 years, says some types of gun control can be a “liability” for Democrats.
“I oppose registration…There is a Second Amendment, and it’s real,” Biden says. “…There are certain things that I have strongly supported: eliminating cop killer bullets, assault weapons, dealing with the ability to have multiple-rounds in a gun that’s semi-automatic — 20, 25, 17, 18 rounds.”
Biden says it’s folly to think congress could have done much beforehand to prevent this week’s shooting rampage on the Virginia Tech campus. “There’s those of us who would have liked to have not seen the assault weapons ban lapse. I supported the idea you have to have a limited number of bullets in the clip of a gun,” Biden says. “…But the truth of the matter is I can’t make the assertion, nor can we in congress, that had that law been in place this wouldn’t have happened.”
According to Biden, there’s a “real need for society as a whole” to take a closer look at students who exhibit the kind of behavior the shooter at Virginia Tech showed prior to the incident. Biden’s wife teaches at a community college and the senator says his wife has raised red flags about similar behavior. “She teaches a writing course and she has them keep journals and they write some very disturbing things and it creates a real dilemma,” Biden says.
Biden suggests laws might be rewritten to make it easier for college officials to contact a parent when their child, who is an adult but still a college student, engages in such troubling behavior. But Biden says rewriting such privacy laws “gets very, very touchy.”
Biden made his comments during taping of next week’s “Iowa Press” program which airs on Iowa Public Television Fridays at 7:30 p.m. and is replayed mid-day Sunday. Click on the link below to listen to Biden’s comments on gun control.