But the carnage also shows the scale of their challenge in a country where Mateen, a 29-year-old once flagged on an Federal Bureau of Investigation watch list, was able to commit mass murder with a legally-bought assault rifle.
Advertisement
“Mass shootings are the status quo because Congress has voted against sensible gun safety measures – it’s that simple”, said Sen.
“I will acknowledge that the technology behind some of these firearms and the way that they comport with certain aspects of certain pieces of legislation is complicated”, Earnest said of the AR-15.
Obama said, “We have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be”.
It was a powerful appeal.
Since Obama took power in 2008, he had been stymied in his bid to curb gun violence by a Republican-led congress and a powerful gun lobby that reject any moves to rein in gun ownership in the name of the Constitution’s Second Amendment. New Jersey passed one of the first Assault Weapons Bans in the nation, and has the strongest ban still today – it’s the only ban with no grandfather clause.
Omar Manteen purchased his firearms legally.
By the time his shooting rampage ended, 49 people were dead and 53 others injured. The only question is the number of people killed and the setting – a nightclub, school, church, shopping mall, etc. Enacted in 1994, the so-called “assault weapons ban” targeted the same type of rifle Mateen purchased, and gun-control advocates are using Sunday’s massacre as a rallying call to revive the law.
No sooner had news of the carnage hit headlines than politicians jumped into the fray, with Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic White House nominee, training her fire on the ready availability of assault weapons. “They didn’t have enough to charge him with anything”, said Kucyk, who added he doesn’t think the fact that Mateen was interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation was enough to note on the national check registry.
“Because somebody is misusing Muslims or that faith, we ought not be criticizing the entire religion”, he said on MSNBC.
Liberals have a host solutions for gun violence, but none of them work. They often fail to mention that once you remove gang violence, suicide, and accidental death that that number drops almost 75% to around 7,500 deaths per year.
The fact-checking site Politifact said more Americans have been killed by guns in the United States since 1968 than in all wars in the country’s history. One of those points included reinstating the assault weapon ban and preventing those on terror watch lists from buying any guns.
U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, said Tuesday that Congress must take action to keep guns from getting into the hands of unsafe people.
Democrats in Congress have renewed their call for gun control following the Orlando massacre.
There is no permitting requirement for concealed firearm.
Paredes has testified, along with NRA lobbyists, against new laws, insisting guns aren’t the issue, behavior is.
The remarks came in response to Obama’s executive actions on rifle control, which require gun dealers to conduct background checks. But Florida does not conduct its own background checks.
This is the same NRA that has long fought to put semi-automatic assault rifles in the hands of criminals and murderers.
Advertisement
“It’s easy to buy a gun there – people go to Florida to buy guns because it’s firearm-friendly”, Horace said.
