House Democrats pushed ahead Wednesday with legislation that would ban certain semi-automatic weapons as they considered their most far-reaching response yet to this summer's spate of mass shootings .
“There are more guns than people in this country, more mass shootings than days in the year. This is a uniquely American problem, and assault weapons only magnify the epidemic,” Cicilline said during the committee hearing.
The renewed push comes nearly two decades after Congress allowed similar restrictions to lapse. The original ban passed in 1994, led by then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., and outlawed certain semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines. It exempted an estimated 1.5 million of those weapons and 25 million that were already owned by people in the United States.
In the nearly three decades since, mass shootings have become alarmingly frequent, with semi-automatic weapons often used in attacks on schools, workplaces, public spaces, stores, churches and other places where people gather. “An assault weapon’s only purpose is to kill people efficiently,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY., the committee chairman. “It is time to protect our communities and to ban them once more.”“Democrats know this legislation will not reduce violent crime or reduce the likelihood of mass shootings, but they are obsessed with attacking law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment liberties,” said Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the committee.
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