Via the New York Times, here is the part of the transcript from last night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas concerning gun control:

RUSSERT: We arrived in Nevada, the headline in Nevada Appeal newspaper: Nevada leads in gun deaths.

RUSSERT: The leading cause for death among young black men is guns — death, homicide. Mayor Bloomberg of New York, you all know him, he and 250 mayors have started the campaign, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Senator Clinton, when you ran for the Senate in 2000, you said that everyone who wishes to purchase a gun should have a license, and that every handgun sale or transfer should be registered in a national registry. Will you try to implement such a plan?

CLINTON: Well, I am against illegal guns, and illegal guns are the cause of so much death and injury in our country. I also am a political realist and I understand that the political winds are very powerful against doing enough to try to get guns off the street, get them out of the hands of young people.

The law in New York was as you state, and the law in New York has worked to a great extent.

CLINTON: I don’t want the federal government preempting states and cities like New York that have very specific problems.

So here’s what I would do. We need to have a registry that really works with good information about people who are felons, people who have been committed to mental institutions like the man in Virginia Tech who caused so much death and havoc. We need to make sure that that information is in a timely manner, both collected and presented.

We do need to crack down on illegal gun dealers. This is something that I would like to see more of.

And we need to enforce the laws that we have on the books. I would also work to reinstate the assault weapons ban. We now have, once again, police deaths going up around the country, and in large measure because bad guys now have assault weapons again. We stopped it for awhile. Now they’re back on the streets.

So there are steps we need to take that we should do together. You know, I believe in the Second Amendment. People have a right to bear arms. But I also believe that we can common-sensically approach this.

RUSSERT: But you’ve backed off a national licensing registration plan?

CLINTON: Yes.

RUSSERT: Senator Obama, when you were in the state senate, you talked about licensing and registering gun owners. Would you do that as president?

OBAMA: I don’t think that we can get that done. But what I do think we can do is to provide just some common-sense enforcement. One good example — this is consistently blocked — the efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers.

That’s not something that the NRA has allowed to get through Congress. And, as president, I intend to make it happen.

But here’s the broader context that I think is important for us to remember. We essentially have two realities, when it comes to guns, in this country. You’ve got the tradition of lawful gun ownership, that all of us saw, as we travel around rural parts of the country.

And it is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot.

And then you’ve got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago.

We can reconcile those two realities by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns, but that we also start cracking down on the kinds of abuses of firearms that we see on the streets.

RUSSERT: Senator Edwards, Democrats used to be out front for registration and licensing of guns. It now appears that there’s a recognition that it’s hard to win a national election with that position. Is that fair?

EDWARDS: I think that’s fair, but I haven’t changed my position on this. I’m against it. Having grown up where I did in the rural South, everyone around me had guns, everyone hunted. And I think it is enormously important to protect people’s Second Amendment rights.

I don’t believe that means you need an AK-47 to hunt. And I think the assault weapons ban, which Hillary spoke about just a minute ago, as president of the United States I’ll do everything in my power to reinstate it. But I do think we need a president who understands the sportsmen, hunters who use their guns for lawful purposes have a right to have their Second Amendment rights looked after.

So what Hillary and Barack are saying is that while they support licensing and registering all guns, they don’t think they can get it done but if they could, they would.

Hillary is flat out wrong when she states that police deaths are going up around the country “in large measure because the bad guys have assault weapons.” As the Miami Times (which I quoted on Monday) stated a few days ago, of the 69 police officers murdered with firearms last year, only one was killed by an “assault weapon.”

All three of them want the “assault weapons ban” act back in place with Edwards saying he doesn’t think we need an AK-47 to hunt. Well thank you very much but I think I have the right to decide for myself what I’ll hunt or sport shoot with. He goes on to state that he’ll do everything in his power to get the AWB reinstated. So does Clinton.

Compared to them, Obama almost sounded moderate, yet, he is on record as supporting a complete ban on semi-automatics by civilians.

Alphecca is, obviously, a “one issue” blog but that issue is gun rights and I think we can safely rule out any of these three (I know, you’re shocked — shocked!) as becoming our candidate of choice.

That leaves the Republicans, but only two of them: Fred Thompson and Ron Paul. Thompson needs a big win in South Carolina because while the race is wide open, Giuliani and Romney could pick up a lot of states on Super Tuesday. Paul? I just don’t see it happening, much as I like many of his ideas and a call to live strictly by the Constitution.