Libertarian vice presidential nominee Bill Weld said last week that he supports legislation that would prohibit someone on the terrorist watch list from purchasing a firearm, contradicting his running mate’s position.
Weld made the remarks during an interview with Revolt TV when asked by the host about his thoughts on “assault rifles.”
Weld is the running mate to Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson, who is currently aiming to get at least 15 percent in the national polls. His thoughts appear to put him at odds with Johnson.
“The five-shot rifle, that’s a standard military rifle; the problem is if you attach a clip to it so it can fire more shells and if you remove the pin so that it becomes an automatic weapon, and those are independent criminal offenses. That is when they become, essentially a weapon of mass destruction. The problem with handguns probably is even worse than the problem of the AR-15,” Weld said.
When asked what he would do “to help control the flow of guns,” he replied, “You shouldn’t have anybody who is on the terrorist watch list buy any gun at all.”
The Johnson camp gave a very different response The Daily Caller back in June.
“Gov. Johnson believes Second Amendment rights are too fundamental to be denied without due process, and being put on a list arbitrarily by the government is certainly not due process,” a Johnson campaign spokesman said.
Dean Weingarten, editor at the Truth About Guns blog, commented that Weld, a former Massachusetts governor, “should know that Massachusetts’ magazine capacity law contains no provision regarding a magazine’s insertion into a rifle. Simple possession is illegal.”
Weingarten also noted that Massachusetts’s “magazine capacity law prohibits possession [of post-1994 magazines] with a capacity of over10 rounds, not five. (The law restricts shotguns with tube mags to five rounds of internal ammunition).”
The Bay State’s attorney general recently banned more firearms in the state last month by expanding the definition of an “assault rifle.”