White House press secretary Jay Carney on Sunday said President Obama was committed to preventing gun crimes by relying on “existing law,” two days after a mass shooting in Colorado left 12 dead and dozens injured, sparking renewed debate about gun control…

In a gaggle aboard Air Force One, en route to Colorado Carney struck a cautious tone, saying the president “believes we need to take steps that protect Second Amendment rights of the American people but that ensure that we are not allowing weapons into the hands of individuals who should not, by existing law, obtain those weapons,” according to a White House transcript.

“There are a number of steps that have been taken and a number of others that can be taken to accomplish that goal,” said Carney, touting the administration’s efforts to increasing the number and effectiveness of “background checks.”

“The [gun-control] law that we signed in Massachusetts was a combination of efforts both on the part of those that were for additional gun rights and those that opposed gun rights, and they came together and made some changes that provided, I think, a better environment for both, and that’s why both sides came to celebrate the signing of the bill,” Romney told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, according to a transcript released before the evening airing of the interview. “Where there are opportunities for people of reasonable minds to come together and find common ground, that’s the kind of legislation I like. The idea of one party jamming through something over the objection of the other tends to divide the nation, not make us a more safe and prosperous place. So if there’s common ground, why I’m always willing to have that kind of a conversation.”…

“I still believe that the Second Amendment is the right course to preserve and defend and don’t believe that new laws are going to make a difference in this type of tragedy,” Romney said. “There are–were, of course, very stringent laws which existed in Aurora, Colorado. Our challenge is not the laws, our challenge is people who, obviously, are distracted from reality and do unthinkable, unimaginable, inexplicable things.”

The simple issue is access to weapons and explosives. Among the three guns that Holmes allegedly brought into the movie theater was a Smith & Wesson assault rifle with an oversize, 100-round magazine. This weapon jammed, according to police, leaving Holmes with a shotgun and a pistol. Had the assault rifle worked properly, the toll surely would have been much higher.

An unstable person can walk into a gun shop and buy a weapon designed for deadly combat. No meaningful questions asked. Have a nice day, Mr. Joker.

This is crazy. Minimal gun control — such as prohibiting assault weapons — wouldn’t eliminate these massacres, but it would prevent some and mitigate others. Lives would be saved. Congress should pass an assault weapons ban this morning and the president should sign it tonight.

Now, there’s a very good reason why coastal elites’ arguments for gun control fall on deaf ears in most of Middle America. Those who value the Second Amendment suspect that people like Dionne and Bloomberg advocate “reasonable” gun restrictions as a camel’s nose to a total or near-total ban on private ownership of firearms and their use for self-defense.

This suspicion is entirely justified. At his press conference, for instance, Bloomberg professed to believe that “there’s nothing wrong with you having a gun. . . . If you comply with the law you will have responsible people who know the danger that a weapon or the responsibility that somebody who has a weapon in their hands has.”

Well, this columnist lives in Bloomberg’s New York, and we would like to own a pistol. But our understanding is that the procedures for acquiring a permit are so onerous that it isn’t worth our while to apply. In more than a decade as mayor, Bloomberg has never sought to relax the city’s gun restrictions, which are among the nation’s most oppressive. He has always pushed in the other direction, demanding loudly if ineffectually that the rest of the country make its laws more like New York’s. His actions give every reason to think his claims to respect gun rights are in bad faith.

Proponents of gun control are baffled that horrific massacres such as the one in Aurora, Colorado, do not lead to stricter gun control. They have their causation backward.

The more terrifyingly criminal the world looks, the more ineffective law enforcement seems, the more Americans demand the right to deadly weapons with which to defend themselves. It is local TV programming directors, not the National Rifle Association, who are tirelessly persuading Americans that they need to strap a gun to their legs before heading to the mall…

The police can protect you, and will, and do. And a gun in the house is not a guarantee of personal security — it is instead a standing invitation to family tragedy. The cold dead hands from which they pry the gun are very unlikely to be the hands of a heroic minuteman defending home and hearth against intruders. They are much more likely to be the hands of a troubled adolescent or a clumsy child.

In the land of the Second Amendment, nobody will take your guns away. But if you love your children, you should get rid of them voluntarily.

KRAUTHAMMER: The problem for [Joe] Lieberman is the gun lobby is the majority of the American people. It’s not a lobby that is stopping all of this. The reason that the lobby is strong is because it represents overwhelming opinion in the United States. How do we know that? The president of the United States, who had this tremendous opening if he wanted to push the use of guns after a tragedy of this magnitude could easily have done it and he has assiduously stayed away because he knows it’s a losing political proposition.

Liberals in the country want gun control, Democrats don’t. They normally overlap, but not on this. Democrats will not go near it because of the experience as we heard earlier about 1994, and they don’t want to repeat that again. We’re at the height of an election and they won’t go near it. You’re going to have discussion on talk shows and none in Congress and nothing will happen in terms of legislation.

What purpose does an AR-15 serve to a sportsman that a more standard hunting rifle does not serve? Let’s see – does it fire more rounds without reload? Yes. Does it fire farther and more accurately? Yes. Does it accommodate a more lethal payload? Yes. So basically, the purpose of an assault style weapon is to kill more stuff, more fully, faster and from further away. To achieve maximum lethality…

These weapons are military weapons. They belong in accountable hands, controlled hands and trained hands. They should not be in the hands of private citizens to be used against police, neighborhood intruders or people who don’t agree with you. These are the weapons that maniacs acquire to wreak murder and mayhem on innocents. They are not the same as handguns to help homeowners protect themselves from intruders. They are not the same as hunting rifles or sporting rifles. These weapons are designed for harm and death on big scales.

SO WHY DO YOU CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THEM? WHY DO YOU NOT, AT LEAST, AGREE TO SIT WITH REASONABLE PEOPLE FROM BOTH SIDES AND ASK HARD QUESTIONS AND LOOK AT HARD STATISTICS AND POSSIBLY MAKE SOME COMPROMISES FOR THE GREATER GOOD? SO THAT MOTHERS AND FATHERS AND CHILDREN ARE NOT SLAUGHTERED QUITE SO EASILY BY THESE MONSTERS? HOW CAN IT HURT TO STOP DEFENDING THESE THINGS AND AT LEAST CONSIDER HOW WE CAN ALL WORK TO TRY TO PREVENT ANOTHER DAY LIKE YESTERDAY?

Via Gateway Pundit.

Via Mediaite.