WASHINGTON (AP) – The House passed the legislation on Friday to reactivate the ban on semi-automatic weaponsthe first vote of its kind in years and a direct response to the firearms often used in crushing mass shootings tearing apart communities across the country.
Once banned in the US, high-powered firearms are now banned widely accused as the weapon of choice among young people responsible for many of the most devastating mass shootings. But Congress allowed restrictions first established in 1994 on the manufacture and sale of guns to lapse a decade later, unable to muster the political support to counter the powerful gun lobby and reinstate the gun ban.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed the vote toward passage in the Democratic House, saying the earlier ban “saved lives.”
The House legislation is rejected by Republicans, who dismissed it as an election-year strategy by Democrats. Almost all Republicans voted against the bill, which passed 217-213. It will likely stall in the Senate 50-50.
The invoice arrives in a moment of increasing concern about gun violence and shootings: the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York; massacre of school children in Uvalde, Texas; and the Fourth of July shootings of revelers in Highland Park, Illinois.
Voters seem to be taking their election-year votes seriously as Congress splits along party lines and lawmakers are forced to go on the record with their opinions. A recent upvote protect same-sex marriages from potential Supreme Court legal challenges won a surprising amount of bipartisan support.
President Joe Biden, who was instrumental in helping secure the first semi-automatic weapons ban as a senator in 1994, encouraged passage, promising to sign the bill if it reached his desk. In a statement before the vote, his administration said “we know that banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines will save lives.”
The Biden administration said that for 10 years while the ban was in place, mass shootings declined. “When the ban expired in 2004, mass shootings tripled,” the statement said.
Republicans strongly opposed limits on the ownership of high-powered firearms during a sometimes emotional debate before the vote.
“It’s a gun grab, pure and simple,” said Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., said, “An armed America is a safe and free America.”
Democrats argued that the gun ban makes sense, portraying Republicans as extreme and out of step with Americans.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, said the gun ban is not about taking away Americans’ Second Amendment rights, but about ensuring that children also have the right “not to be shot at the school”.
Pelosi showed a gun company’s poster advertising children’s guns, smaller versions that resemble the popular AR-15 rifles and are marketed with cartoon-like characters. “Disgusting,” he said.
In one exchange, two Ohio lawmakers squared off. “Your freedom stops where mine begins and my constituents’ freedom begins,” Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur told Republican Rep. Jim Jordan. “Schools, malls, grocery stores, Independence Day parades should not be scenes of mass carnage and bloodshed.”
Jordan responded by inviting her to his congressional district to debate the Second Amendment, saying he believed most of her constituents “probably agree with me and agree with the United States Constitution.”
The bill would make it illegal to import, sell or manufacture a long list of semi-automatic weapons. Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said it exempts those who already have them.
Representatives Chris Jacobs of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the measure. Democratic lawmakers who voted no were Reps. Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas.
For nearly two decades, since the previous ban expired, Democrats had been reluctant to revisit the issue and confront the gun lobby. But voter views appear to be shifting, and Democrats are emboldened to act ahead of the fall election. The result will provide voters with information about where the candidates stand on the issue.
Democrats had sought to tie the gun ban to a broader package of public safety measures that would have increased federal funding for law enforcement. It’s something that centrist Democrats in tough re-election campaigns wanted to protect them from political attacks from their Republican opponents, they’re soft on crime.
Pelosi said the House will take up the public safety bills in August, when lawmakers are expected to return to Washington briefly to handle other remaining legislation, including Biden’s inflation-fighting priority package of strategies of health care and climate change that opens in the Senate.
Congress approved a modest gun violence prevention package just last month following the tragic shooting of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde. This bipartisan bill was the first of its kind after years of failed efforts to confront the gun lobby, including after a similar mass tragedy in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School of Newtown, Conn.
This law provides for expanded background checks on young adults who purchase firearms, allowing authorities to access certain juvenile records. It also closes the so-called “groom loophole” by denying gun purchases to those convicted of domestic abuse outside of marriage.
The new law also frees up federal funding to states, including for “red flag” laws that allow authorities to take guns away from those who harm themselves or others.
But even this modest effort to stem gun violence came at a time of great uncertainty in the United States over gun restrictions as the more conservative Supreme Court tackles gun rights and other issues.
Biden signed the measure two days later Judgment of the Supreme Court overturn a New York law that restricted people’s ability to carry concealed weapons.
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