"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

“It starts with enforcing the law. We need to say loud and clear to somebody, if you’re going to carry a gun illegally, we’re going to arrest you, if you’re going to sell a gun illegally you need to be arrested, and if you commit a crime with a gun there needs to be absolutely certainty in the law. The local law enforcement officials need help at the federal level. Need programs like Project Exile, where the federal government intensifies arresting people who illegally use guns. And we haven’t done a very good job of that at the federal level recently. And I’m going to make it a priority.

”Secondly, I don’t think we ought to be selling guns to people who shouldn’t have them. That’s why I support instant background checks at gun shows. There’s a lot of talk about trigger locks being on guns sold in the future, I support that, and so we’re distributing them in our state of Texas for free. I think we ought to raise the age at which a juvenile can carry a handgun from 18 to 21.”

“The Brady Bill [is] a commonsense law that establishes a five-day waiting period and a background check that has already kept handguns out of the hands of some 60,000 felons, fugitives, and other criminals.

”We also have a law that bans the sale of 19 assault weapons-guns made expressly for killing people. What’s more, not a single hunter in America has lost a weapon or missed a season as a result of either the assault weapons ban or the Brady Bill.”