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John Walsh addresses the audience at the 14th annual Canon USA fundraising event at the Bellagio Grand Ballroom on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013. The event benefited the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Saturday, Jan. 12, 2013 | 11:40 a.m.
John Walsh talks with guests at the 14th annual Canon USA and NCMEC fundraiser at the Bellagio Grand Ballroom on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013.
John Walsh talks about “the window.” It’s an opening that allows a sliver of light, he says, to stricter gun-control laws in the United States.
“I really believe there is a window, in the psyche of America, we have this little chance to respond to these horrible, horrible events over the past year,” said Walsh, who since 1988 has served as host of the crime-fighting series “America’s Most Wanted” and was in town Wednesday for the annual Canon USA gala dinner and auction benefiting the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “I think Americans have said, ‘Enough.’ ”
Walsh has been one of the country’s leading anti-crime activists since the 1981 kidnapping of his 6-year-old son Adam in Hollywood, Fla. He helped enact the Adam Walsh Act, which created the national sex offender registry used across the country. Under the authority of that act, registered sex offenders are categorized in three tiers and required to update their whereabouts to federal officials every three months.
Walsh’s show, which now airs on Lifetime after 24 seasons on Fox, has helped track down and prosecute nearly 1,200 fugitives in the United States. He has long been an advocate for more stringent regulations on gun ownership.
“This actually has been a big problem for me and a big issue for years, and we have hunted down the worst of the worst and many of them the most violent people in America who have committed murders on every level,” he said after walking the red carpet at the Bellagio Grand Ballroom. “I am a gun owner, and I am for responsible gun ownership. I hunt. I own shotguns. I own pistols. But no one needs assault weapons. They are weapons of killing. I hunt quail, but I don’t need an automatic weapon to shoot a quail.”
Walsh has been in contact with Vice President Joe Biden, and the two have agreed to meet, possibly as soon as next week, to discuss the proposals to help curb gun violence. Biden was co-author of the Adam Walsh Act and has known Walsh for decades.
The issue became a heated topic, again, after the murders of 20 children ages 6 to 7 and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December. Walsh says the process of background checks for gun ownership in the U.S. is “woefully inadequate.”
“We are a first-world country. We are a country that just put a $44 billion module on Mars, but we have the highest numbers of mass murders of any first-world country,” he said. “If you’re a responsible gun owner in Canada, England, Germany, Japan, you have to prove you are psychologically sound to own a gun. They are allowed to talk to people at your workplace, they are allowed to talk to your family. ... You have to prove you can be a responsible gun owner. I have no problem with that. ... I’ve profiled zillions of guys on ‘Americas Most Wanted’ who were mentally ill, sociopaths, and they can still buy a gun at a gun show.”
Walsh says he is attempting to cut into the influence the nation’s largest gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, holds over elected officials.
“The NRA has completely held the U.S. Congress hostage for years by saying, ‘If you are for any type of reasonable, responsible gun control and getting these weapons off the street, I will come into your district, little congressman or congresswoman, and will defeat you,’ ” he said. “People on Capitol Hill are held hostage by the gun lobby.”
Walsh says he supports gun-buyback programs such as the event in Los Angeles in late December during which gun owners turned over 75 assault weapons, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns, 901 handguns and (astonishingly) a pair of rocket launchers. Walsh is forceful and pointed in his arguments, but he stresses that he supports a sensible and responsible approach to curbing the availability of firearms, focusing on assault weapons.
“Nobody wants to overturn the Second Amendment. Nobody wants to take over guns from responsible gun owners,” he said. “But I’ve been all over this world and seen a lot of terrible things. If this were Somalia or Mogadishu, I might understand it. But here we are, in Las Vegas, in the biggest, richest and most powerful country in the world, and we can’t continue to put up with this overwhelming level of violence. It has got to stop.”
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.
"I am a gun owner, and I am for responsible gun ownership. I hunt. I own shotguns. I own pistols. But no one needs assault weapons. They are weapons of killing."
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What a bleeding heart anti-American liberal fascist.
Right wingnuts?
Common sense. Thanks John.
Better background checks are mandatory. The rest shouldn't be restricted.
First off, pistols are also weapons of killing just as much as assault weapons (whatever the heck those are). Secondly, Walsh needs to read the Second Amendment; it has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with defense, or "killing," if you prefer.
MotorSports, I highly doubt Chicago'a gun violence problem is a Right on Right problem.
Nice try.
Obama has a knack for getting what he wants. I suspect some type of automatic weapons and large clip ban will be proposed.
As full automatics are fairly heavily regulated I'd assume some type of "assault" weapons ban will be re-instated.
MotorSports, you just played your phony hand. Sorry to read that you have no clue that 500 people were killed in Chicago from gun violence.
Try your next post in crayon.
The gun owners I'm worried about are the paranoid crazies who think their barbed wired pit bulled "protected" trailers have anything worth having. Or the ones who think the Feds are going to come after us. If that were true, do you really think whatever weapon you have is a match for the military? Really? And the ones who want to hide out in the woods. Good riddance. We'll feel safer knowing that whatever self-imposed significance you think your life is worth going after by the government is miles away from us. Astounding amount of ignorance can be correlated here to people with little education. In the end the far right gun folks are chicken. They are cowards. Because if they, like that lunatic Alex North guy thinks the government is going to march into our living rooms, then they should fight for the right to own grenades, missile launchers, bazookas, tanks, etc. But they don't. In 1776 everyone had the same weapons. So why aren't gun crazies insisting on that now? There's a reason why assault weapons in a house has no real place in the discussion about self-defense the same way drag race cars are not typical forms of transportation - too much overkill.
I like his message, but I am not crazy about the guy. I was part of a media effort on behalf a missing child foundation in the midwest and the foundation asked Walsh to call in. He said ONLY if he was the FIRST guest of the event.The Foundation already had a format established so they did not feature Walsh.
What an ego this guy has. I was shocked he put his own promotion ahead of the efforts of a missing children's foundation.
Chediski, you are incorrect that in 1776 everybody had equal weapons. The British and its allies predominately used smooth bore muskets and many of the Americans used rifled long guns or "rifles". The accuracy difference was astounding.
http://www.revolutionarywararchives.org/...