The House of Representatives has passed a bill to revive a ban on certain semi-automatic firearms in response to hundreds of mass shootings in the United States this year.
It was the first such vote in a few years, and Republicans dismissed it as “grabbing a gun” that curtailed American freedom.
Once banned in the United States, the powerful semi-automatic assault rifle is now the weapon of choice for young people behind the most devastating mass shootings.
Congress has allowed the 1994 ban on the manufacture and sale of weapons to expire after 10 years.
He defied a powerful gun lobby and was unable to gain political support to restore the gun ban.
Nancy Pelosi said the early ban “saved lives” and called for a vote in a House led by Democrats.
Welcome to yesterday’s House vote, President Joe Biden said, “Most Americans agree with this common sense action.”
POTUS urged the Senate to “move this bill to my desk soon,” but it is expected to stall 50-50 in the Senate.
Republicans rejected the bill, dismissing it as a Democratic election year strategy. Almost all members of the House of Representatives voted in favor of the House bill, which passed 217-213.
The bill comes as there is growing concern about gun violence and shootings, such as a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, a campus massacre in Yuvarde and a 4th of July shooting in Highland Park.
Voters appear to take election year voting seriously, as parliament is divided into political parties, forcing lawmakers to seek their own views.
Recent votes to shield same-sex marriage from potential Supreme Court legal trouble have garnered bipartisan support.
Biden helped secure the first semi-automatic firearms ban as a senator in 1994.
His administration said shootings had decreased in the decade before the ban went into effect.
“When the ban expired in 2004, mass shootings tripled,” his office said in a statement.
Republicans strongly opposed restrictions on powerful firearms ownership in emotional debates leading up to the vote.
“This is gun robbery pure and simple,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Guy Reschentaler.
“America armed is a safe and free America,” added Andrew Clyde, a gun store owner and representative from Georgia.
Democrats argue that gun control makes sense and portray Republicans as extremists and not Americans.
Representative Jim McGovern, D-Mass. He said the gun ban did not deprive Americans of the rights under Article 2 of the Constitutional Amendment.
Rather, he said, it was to ensure that children also had the right “not to be shot at school.”
Pelosi displayed a sign from a gun company promoting guns for children.
He said the idea of a smaller version of the popular AR-15 rifle being sold with cartoon characters was “disgusting”.
“Your freedom stops at my beginning and my members’ freedom begins,” Democratic Rep. Mercy Captor told Republican Jim Jordan in a tense exchange.
“Schools, shopping streets, grocery stores and Independence Day parades should not be the scene of genocide or bloodshed,” he said.
Jordan responded by inviting him to the parliamentary district for a debate on Article 2 of the Constitutional Amendment.
It said most of its members believed that it “probably agrees with me and agrees with the Constitution of the United States.”
This bill would make it illegal to import, sell or manufacture a long list of semi-automatic firearms.
New York Democratic Party top chairman Jerry Nadler said there were exceptions that allowed him to possess existing semi-automatic firearms.
New York Rep. Chris Jacobs and Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick were the only Republicans to vote on the bill.
Democrats voted against: Kurt Schrader, Oregon, Henry Cuellar, Texas, Jared Golden, Maine, Ron Kind, Wisconsin, and Vicente Gonzalez, Texas.
For some 20 years after the end of the last ban, Democrats have revisited the issue and been hesitant to take on the gun lobby.
But the mindset of voters appears to be changing, and Democrats are brave enough to act ahead of the fall election.
Jason Coume, secretary general of the NRA’s Law Enforcement Institute, said gun control advocates “are leading the attack on the liberty and civil liberties of law-abiding Americans.”
He said the bill could establish gun ownership as an individual right and ban millions of firearms “clearly ignoring the Supreme Court ruling” that extended it…
Among the prohibited semi-automatic firearms are more than 200 types of semi-automatic rifles, including the AR-15 and pistols. The restrictions do not apply to many other models.
Democrats sought to tie the gun bans to a broader package of public safety measures that would increase federal funding for law enforcement.
That’s why centrist Democrats who participated in the tough re-election campaign wanted to insulate them from political attacks from criminally vulnerable Republicans.
Pelosi said the House of Representatives would take up the public safety bill in August, when lawmakers are expected to temporarily return to Washington to discuss the rest of the law.
Parliament approved a modest anti-gun violence package last month after 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were tragically shot in Yuvarde.
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The bipartisan bill was the first of its kind after years of failed attempts to confront the gun lobby, including after a similar mass tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
This expands background checks on young gun buyers and gives authorities access to records on specific children.
The law also closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” by refusing to buy guns for those convicted of domestic violence other than marriage.
It also exempts the state from federal funding, including a “danger signal” law that allows authorities to seize guns from those who harm themselves or others.
However, there are still many uncertainties about the future of American gun rights.
Biden signed the bill two days after the Supreme Court ruling violated New York law that limits people’s ability to carry concealed weapons.
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Source: Metro
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