rifle legally in colorado, although it is worth mentioning, and this is something gun control groups are emphasizing today, that the arl-15 was illegal a few years ago. it was banned from 1994 to 2004. that was lifted under president bush. president obama pledged during his campaign to restore it. he has dropped the issue. so the assault, that a.r.-15 is a legal weapon now. but it was not ten years ago. one other point, in addition to purchasing the guns, he also got 7,000 rounds of ammunition and multiple magazines online. another indication of the ease with which one can acquire fire power. so we know how he acquired the weapons. what we don t know is why. obviously, michael, it s a relief to hear at this point there s no reason to believe
the nra convention. we see them often every couple years when there is a big fight in congress, over, say, the assault weapons ban or cop killing bullets. they ve lost a lot of those in the 90s under the bill clinton years. they ve been at the state level on all these things, on conceal carry laws. bringing guns to national parks. bringing guns into bars. bringing guns into churches. whatever. and it is hard to fight them in 50 states. the gun control groups just don t have the same clout or the same amount of political dollars that they have. okay. tomorrow we re going to see mitt romney, rick santorum, newt gingrich and a who s who of other republican leaders telling at the convention and they ll decry the president as their bogeyman. yet the reality is, you and i know this president has done absolutely nothing in relation
endeavor. they ll do it for 200 bucks. and so cases like this are very important, but there s got to be a lot more of this government has to be a lot more aggressive. give us the big picture. michael isikoff, you ve been looking into this. what s the big picture on this? the big picture is this is a major way that the mexican drug cartels have been arming themselves for their bloody drug war in mexico, and that is using straw buyers in the united states to take advantage of weak u.s. gun laws to buy up large quantities of high-powered weapons and then smuggle them across the border. in this case yesterday, in the indictment, it spells out how some of these gun traffickers and straw buyers were going into one single gun store in glendale, arizona, the lone wolf trading store, and buying up 10, 20, 30 ak-47 assault rifles at a time. and one thing that gun control groups and atf officials have
door to tighter gun restrictions, can barack obama avoid it. you mentioned before, i think you are going to do something on campaign pledges the president made. this was one of them. he supported during the campaign a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban which included a prohibition on the manufacturer of high capacity magazines such as the one used by jerrold loughner in the tucson shooting. once taking office, the president and the white house pretty much dropped this issue as politically unfeasible. in fact, they even took that pledge down from the white house website. and there was there has been barely a mension of anything resembling gun control in the past two years. now the question is, can they avoid it in the wake of tucson. and gun control groups, members of congress, are really and some democratic party donors are calling up the white house and really pressing them hard to stand by their original pledge and what they really want is an
his gun. but he got off at least 31 rounds before emptying the magazine. and several members of congress are now drafting legislation to put federal restrictions on those so-called high capacity clips like the one in loughner s semi-automatic pistol. michael, first of all, tell us about this movement in congress. and as i understand it, these extended clips used to be banned in conjunction with the assault weapons ban. exactly. in fact this was an issue that was first flagged to me on sunday by senior law enforce the officials on the scene? arizona, not gun control groups. they pointed out loughner when he had that clock 19 miss popis had along with him four magazines with 90 round s of ammunition. that is a lot of fire power. two were high capacity