BOSTON - U.S. Sen. John Kerry and his Republican challenger Jeff Beatty met for round two Monday in another feisty debate that ranged from social issues to the current financial crisis facing the country.

For the first time in the race, both candidates discussed social issues at length. With Monday's news of an 8-year-old's ccidental death while shooting an Uzi at a gun show in Westfield, both candidates were asked what they would do to make sure such an event never happened again.

Beatty said he has worked in the past to help keep schools safe but said the country needs "to enforce the laws we have."

"I think that if we enforce the laws we have, we'll be OK," he said.

Kerry, in contrast, said the current loophole that allows citizens to purchase weapons at gun shows needs to be closed.

"It just  defies common sense that we have people that can go out, through the gun show loophole, and buy semi-automatics anywhere in the country without adequate background checks," the senator said. "We have to close that loophole."

Kerry also called for greater education to "reduce America's addiction to violence that we see in any number of television shows and movies."

The candidates were also asked about abortion and whether they support Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court Decision that legalized abortion.

Both candidates said they do not support a litmus test on the issue in selecting judges, but Beatty said he is opposes abortion rights. An adopted child, Beatty said that he's, "awful glad that my birth mother chose not to abort me." But Beatty also said that overturning Roe v. Wade is not one of his legislative priorities.

"I'm not looking to go out and change the Constitution on this issue or, take any other significant action on this issue," he said.

Kerry also said he does not have a litmus test when deciding which judges to support and that he would be willing to support a qualified judge that opposes Roe v. Wade. However, Kerry also said he would not support a judge that opposes abortion rights if his vote would determine whether the nominee was confirmed for the Supreme Court.

"If it's the deciding vote, no way," Kerry said.

On immigration, Kerry said he did not support giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses. The senator said that the key to immigration reform is securing the border and enforcing employment laws. "The second piece of enforcement [after securing the border], is why do people come here, they come here to work and somebody's hiring them," he said. "We know that there are people being hired illegally. I think you have to enforce that. That's against the law."

Beatty stood by previous statements that he does not support amnesty for illegal immigrants and also supports stronger enforcement at the borders. He also said that he would support forcing immigrants to forfeit assets gained while working illegally in the United States.

"We cannot ask the taxpayers to finance the criminal activity - the arrest, the prosecution, the incarceration and the repatriation - of people that are here illegally," he said. "They have to pay, not the taxpayers."

Both Kerry and Beatty both said they oppose the Massachusetts ballot measure that would decriminalize possession of an ounce or less of marijuana. They both also agreed that they support the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.  

When the discussion turned for foreign policy, Beatty, as he has throughout his campaign, continued to blast Kerry for his 2002 vote for the war in Iraq.

And, perhaps more so than in the first debate, Kerry was willing to fire back at Beatty, frequently accusing him of focusing on personal attacks that looked into the past rather than focusing on the issues facing the country.

Kerry was immediately asked to respond to charge Beatty made in the previous debate that he voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq for political reasons leading up to his run for the presidency. Beatty had cited a passage from Bob Shrum's book, No Excuses, and Kerry said he has received a letter from Shrum that stated he made no such claim.

"The letter says very clearly that under no circumstance did he write or did he insinuate or did I vote anything other than my conscience," Kerry said.

Kerry did not have the letter with him, but immediately said he is willing to release the letter. He also said the Beatty's repeated criticism of the vote was an unfair political attack and said he did "extraordinary due diligence" leading up to that vote, including having an in depth conversation with then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"The bottom line is this, that is a Karl Rove tactic, frankly, to attack on that kind of basis," Kerry said. "I'm a war veteran; I'm a combat war veteran. I would never ever vote anything but my conscience." Beatty, however, wasn't convinced or deterred. "Sen. Kerry did not do due diligence," Beatty said. "He did not read the National Intelligence Estimate. He is trying to deceive us again right now."

Beatty also attacked Kerry again for allegedly having ties to Fannie Mae and Freddic Mac, the embattled mortgage lenders.  "Sen. Kerry has been there for 24 years, he's been part of the problem," Beatty said. "We just learned that Fannie Mae, when he started writing letters on behalf of Fannie Mae, he helped boost the stock to three times what it was. And then we find out that Sen. Kerry, the day before the New York Times is going to publish that there are problems with Fannie Mae's accounting, starts dumping his Fannie Mae stock."

Kerry also forcefully responded to that charge and Beatty's previous statements that the senator owned $2 million worth of stock in AIG, the recently bailed out insurance lender.  "I don't own any stock and I have never owned any stock in Fannie Mae," the Democrat said. "Secondly, I have no control over my wife's funding and you are so personally stuck there, Jeff, it's ridiculous."

Kerry has previously stated that it was a company that was managing his wife's portfolio that invested briefly in AIG and he had no control over that investment.

Turning to the economy, Kerry said government has to invest in the work force just as President Franklin Roosevelt did during the New Deal.

"We're going to have to do exactly what Franklin Roosevelt did," he said. "We're going to have to spend some money to put some people back to work."

Kerry also defended the recent Wall Street bailout plan. In particular, he highlighted three principles that he said the Democrats added to the proposal delivered by the Bush administration. First, he said they added taxpayer protections so ultimately taxpayers will end up making money off the investment. Second, there will be judicial oversight over the process and third they stopped foreclosures.

"The fact is," Kerry said, "that the rescue package that we put together we made better than what the administration wanted."

The senator did say that there will be increased unemployment but "nothing compared to what we would have seen if we had simply left things the way they were and all of these large entities failed."

Beatty continued to criticize the bailout and again called for taking back money from executives who profited from the bailout, reorganizing government oversight agencies and protecting taxpayers. He also said that he would support a joint congressional committee to investigate what went wrong.

The debate was hosted by WTKK-FM radio.