Law-abiding citizens should never be prevented from keeping and bearing arms for the very legitimate purposes of self-defense and sport.

I support criminal background checks on all gun sales by all firearms sellers at gun shows. I will support legislation to close the gun show loophole.

The Brady law has been a huge success. Brady background checks have contributed to an historic decline in lethal assaults by blocking 1.8 million attempts by high-risk people to buy a gun from a licensed gun dealer through the end of 2008. 

Remarkably, felony convictions account for over half of the total number of blocked attempts to purchase by high-risk people, or an estimated 842,000 blocked gun purchase applications submitted by convicted felons. That works out to be, on average, 169 thwarted attempts to purchase a gun by a felon every day through the end of 2007.

Murders declined 30 percent from 1993 to 2006 (from 24,526 to 17,034).  Most of the drop in murders - 73 percent - is accounted for by the sharp decline in gun murders.

The Republicans let the ban on the sale of semi-automatic weapons sunset in 2004.  I want to reinstitute banning military-style semi-automatic assault weapons.  These dangerous weapons have no sporting or civilian use and their only purpose it to kill many people in a short amount of time.  I will support legislation to ban all assault weapons along with high capacity ammunition magazines.