NEWARK — During an appearance this morning on ABC's news program "This Week," Cory Booker lambasted what he called "a false debate" over gun control that has intensified in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting.

The Newark mayor — fresh off the announcement that he plans to seek a U.S. Senate seat — argued that Americans are not as divided on the issue as they seem.

"I don't know if anybody here has seen somebody shot. I have," Booker said during a round-table discussion on the show, hosted by George Stephanopoulos. "I don't know if anybody here has had to put their hand in somebody's chest and try to stop the bleeding so somebody doesn't die. I have. And what frustrates me about this debate is it's a false debate. It's a false debate.

"This is a convenient trick to try to divide our country more. Most of us in America, including gun owners, agree on things that would stop the kind of carnage that's going on in cities all over America."

"I'm tired of the political debates," he added. "They're not necessary. I'm tired of the ideological positions. We don't even need to visit them. Let's stick to the pragmatic center where all Americans believe the same thing and let's pass legislation that would make America safer."

Booker pushed for stronger background checks on people looking to purchase guns and said a key way to curb gun violence is to shut down secondary markets.

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"I'm not afraid of law-abiding citizens who buy a gun," he said. "Buy the guns you want. What the problem is in America right now is that a terrorist person who is on the no-fly list could go into the secondary market today and buy a weapon."

"Criminals are killing people," the mayor added. "Not law-abiding gun owners."

The gun control debate heightened last Friday when a gunman killed 20 children and six staff members at a Connecticut elementary school.

The shooter, Adam Lanza, allegedly killed his victims with guns purchased legally by his mother, officials said. Neighbors said Lanza had a personality disorder — which has also sparked a debate over mental health care in America.

"Listen to me, the people dying in Chicago, the people dying in Newark are not being done with law-abiding gun owners," Booker continued. "We do not need to go after the guns. A law-abiding mentally stable American, that's not America's problem."

"We trace the weapons that come into my city," the mayor added. "And when residents look to me and they say, 'Stop the carnage, Cory,' what I say is with the guns we're tracing, I have no power to stop them coming into my city as (Chicago Mayor) Rahm (Emanuel) does them coming into Chicago. They're coming from places that have free secondary markets where criminals and gun runners so easily buy weapons and pump them into communities like mine where it is easy for a person who is a criminal to get their hands on a gun."

The appearance comes a few days after Booker argued for more gun control in a column on The Huffington Post.

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Booker — who announced last week that he will vie for the Senate spot long held by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) — also spoke about the budget debate gripping Washington. President Barack Obama is trying to reach a budget agreement to prevent the government from falling off the so-called "fiscal cliff" in January. In less than eight days, mandatory tax hikes and spending cuts kick in.

On Friday, Obama called on Congress to extend tax cuts for most taxpayers and forestall a painful set of agency budget cuts. He also asked Congress to extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed that would otherwise be cut off for 2 million people at the end of the year.

Booker said "there is a way forward through this."

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"What we're driving ourselves to is a real fiscal cliff," he added. "There will be thousands of dollars cut for families who are barely making their mortgage payments or are barely holding on. And so to have a ridiculous debate right now, when really real American families are in the lurch now, are going to be suffering in ways that most in Washington don't seem to understand."

"This is what I learned in Newark: If you start cutting programs for the poor, you start to inflict a damage not on the poor, but on yourself, because in this country — it's the truth — it's easier to raise strong children than to heal broken men," Booker said. "We wonder why we have such expensive prison systems, why we have such high medical costs, it's because we're not making the front-end investments. And if this country is going to cut investments in colleges and universities, cut programs that are going to give people access to college, we may get a short-term benefit from that, but we're going to lose the long-term gain."

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