Obama spends Saturday in Wisconsin

  MILWAUKEE -- President Barack Obama has been working to spoil Republican hopes for a resurgence in pivotal Wisconsin.

On Saturday, he pushed back against rival Mitt Romney's complaints about an overly intrusive government telling a Milwaukee audience that government can't solve every problem but is also not the source of every problem. He says Americans should not only accept responsibility for themselves but also for their communities and the nation.

The president faulted Romney for advancing a top-down economic approach that he said "never works."

Also, Obama made a point of renewing his pledge to create a million manufacturing jobs.

Meanwhile, Romney took time away from campaigning in the battleground states Saturday to troll for cash in California. But he did keep up his criticism of the president for fostering a culture of dependency. According to Romney, Obama is "taking Americans on a course that is extremely foreign to us." As he put it at a fundraiser near San Diego, "One would suggest that government knows better than free people." He said "It's a pathway to become like Europe, and Europe doesn't work there. It's never going to work here."

A Romney adviser says the GOP candidate would begin "a really intense battleground state schedule" with visits to Colorado, Ohio and Virginia in the coming week.

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barack obama, joe biden, 2012 presidential election, mitt romney, paul ryan, politics & elections

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Gun buyback program in the Bronx Saturday

  Eyewitness NewsBRONX (WABC) -- Law enforcement and three Bronx churches joined forces to sponsor a gun buyback program for one day only on Saturday.

Participants in the gun buyback received a $200 pre-paid cash card for each eligible weapon that was surrendered, no questions asked, in the Bronx.

Three-hundred and fifty-four guns were surrendered in the cash-for-guns exchange, officials said. The weapons included one Uzi submachine gun, one Tec-9 and one Tec-22 semi-automatic, four AK-47 style assault weapons and six sawed-off shotguns among 161 revolvers, 112 semi-automatics, nine shotguns, 16 rifles, and 46 BB and zip guns.

"Programs like the gun buyback have real, quantifiable results," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. "Since this program started in 2008, it has been responsible for taking over 6,000 guns off the street of the five boroughs. Our hope is that [the] gun buyback in the Bronx builds on this success and results in even more guns off the street, and more innocent lives saved."

Plainclothes NYPD officers, Bronx DA Detective Investigators and members of the NYPD Bronx DA Squad were on hand at the churches to accept the firearms that were surrendered. Participants were encouraged to bring the weapons in paper bags, plastic bags or shoe boxes.

Citizens who want to turn in weapons can do so anonymously at police stations citywide every day of the week and receive $100. In addition, the Department's Operation Gun Stop program (1-866-GUN-STOP) rewards individuals up to $1,000 for information that leads to the arrest of an individual who is carrying, selling or using guns illegally.

(Copyright ©2011 WABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.) Get more New York News »

new york city, bronx, gun, gun violence, gun buy back, new york news

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