O’Malley: We’d be safer if assault weapons banned

WINDSOR HEIGHTS - Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley told a seniors' group Monday that Americans would be safer from domestic terror attacks if combat assault weapons and unlimited ammunition sales were banned as part of comprehensive gun safety legislation.

O'Malley, who passed similar legislation as governor of Maryland after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut, said last week's attack in San Bernardino, Calif., pointed up the need for 'common-sense restrictions” and safety measures aimed at keeping weapons out of the hands of people with mental illnesses or intent on doing harm to others.

The former governor said licensing requirements that include mandatory, universal background checks and safety courses for the purchasers of new guns would be part of his goal, as the next president, to cut the number of deaths by gun violence in half over the next decade. He also called for reinstating the expired federal ban on assault weapons.

'We would be better served as a nation if we had these common-sense restrictions at the national level,” O'Malley told more than 100 people who attended an AARP forum at a local community center on Monday.

Last week's bloody attack revived fears about domestic threats from groups such as the Islamic State in America and prompted President Obama on Sunday to call for new restrictions that would prevent suspects who are on no-fly lists from getting access to guns as a way to enhance national security.

O'Malley told reporters he agreed with a number of points Obama made in his nationally televised speech, including not committing 'big combat divisions of American troops on the ground” in places like Syria, Iraq and other Middle East hot spot when the situation calls for establishing international coalitions led by Muslim nations with stakes in the region.

He said he also supports the move to place more U.S. special-operations forces in the region in concert with close coalition air support to 'increase and accelerate the battle tempo” to take away safe havens for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

'The challenge is that everybody wants things to be a kind of drive-through McDonald's window here,” he said. 'It's probably going to take a little more time to assemble the coalition necessary to reclaim some of the territory on the ground. It can't be done with airstrikes alone.”

O'Malley said the world faces a 'whole new era of conflict” in which terrorist threats morph and evolve, requiring the development of better international alliances that can adapt as quickly or quicker than the terrorists seeking to destabilize the status quo with new threats.

With domestic threats becoming increasingly common, O'Malley called for better preparation, coordination and information sharing by governments at the federal, state and local levels. That includes assessing every state having an intelligence fusion center that can piece together disparate bits of information and joint terrorism task forces functional in every state to follow up on suspicious activity reports. Personnel need analytical skills 'to connect information over a time-space continuum.”

He called sales of combat assault weapons and unlimited ammunition both online or at gun shows 'a glaring vulnerability,” but he also called for better scrutiny of the visa waiver program, ramping up state intelligence fusion centers, and better communication among state, federal and local law officers who face a challenge of needing to be '100 percent successful” in their terror detection efforts.