Lighter (26 Jul 12 - 02:26 PM), no need to apologize for misunderstandings (unless resulting from sloppy reading), otherwise Mudcat would be full of apologies.

By "ban" I would understand: restrict legal usage to certain professionals, such as soldiers and security guards (many nuts among these, to be sure).

"Criminals" in the sense of this debate, vaguely seems to mean: persons who have been convicted for violent crimes, or who have been diagnosed "nuts".

The phrase I was referring to can be changed in two ways to become logically sound:
1. Automatic weapons must not be sold to "criminals" in the above sense, all other adult citizens should be allowed to buy them (even if they later turn out to be criminals or "nuts").
2. Automatic weapons belong in the hands of the above professionals, and nobody else.

If I am correctly informed, Obama's actual policy is 1., his slip suggests that he would prefer 2. It may even be a more or less conscious slip, to please both sides best he can.

Not only truth suffers in election campaigns, but also logic.