By: Sarah Johnson
This past weekend the United States experienced two horrific mass shootings within 14 hours of each other, taking 32 lives and injuring 38 others. Since the shootings we have seen federal gun legislation trending, primarily the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 and the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019.
The Shootings.
The first mass shooting occurred at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas on August 3, 2019, at 10:39 AM. The shooter drove approximately 600 miles from where he lived in Texas to El Paso in order to target a predominantly Hispanic community (~80% Hispanic). The shooter entered a Walmart to eat, left and reentered the establishment wearing protective ear muffs, safety glasses and wielding a high-powered assault-style rifle. He murdered 22 people and injured 24 others. The shooter was arrested in the parking lot after he returned to his vehicle following the attack and surrendered to the police, unarmed, and was arrested without incident.
The shooter had posted a hate-filled diatribe to 8chan shortly before carrying out the massacre. If you are not familiar with 8chan, 8chan is an online forum with few rules and little oversight. Many people who are banned from popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. for views that are violent, racist and hateful congregate and collaborate on 8chan. The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism, meaning the suspect was allegedly intent on “coercing and intimidating a civilian population”, and as a possible hate crime.
The second mass shooting occurred in Dayton, Ohio, on August 4, 2019, at 1:05 AM. The gunman wore a mask, bulletproof vest and hearing protection while he opened fire with a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle accompanied by a 100-round drum magazines. Nine people were murdered and the perpetrator was killed by police. Fourteen people were injured by the shooters gunfire, including his sister. The firearm was ordered online in Texas and transferred to the shooter at a local firearms dealer. He was killed by police within 30 seconds of the first shots being fired. The motive behind this massacre is not yet known.
Bipartisan Background Checks Act
The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 passed the House late February 240 – 190 and crossed over to the Senate where it was placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. This legislation made news when it was passed the House because it is the only gun reform legislation to pass either chamber in more than two decades. The legislation had five Republican co-sponsors and eight Republicans vote in support of the bill.
The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 mandates background checks be performed on all gun sales, including firearm purchases made privately, whether it be online or at gun shows. Under current law, only licensed gun dealers are required to conduct a background checks, but there is a loophole. If a background check isn’t finalized within three days, a gun sale is permitted to go through. This three day loophole, allowed the shooter who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, to obtain his weapon because he had a pending drug charge which would have made him ineligible. The bill also requires federal immigration officials be contacted in the event someone in the U.S. illegally tries to buy a gun.
The bill lays out a few different exceptions. If a firearm is being transferred between close relatives, a background check is not needed. If a firearm is loaned to someone for the purpose of using it at a shooting range or to go hunting, a background check is not needed. Finally, a temporary transfer of a gun is allowed without a background check in situations where it’s “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” Unless there is a reason to suspect the gun will be used in a crime or the person receiving the gun is prohibited from possessing the gun under state or federal law, these three situations require no background check.
Assault Weapons Ban of 2019
The Assault Weapons Ban of 2019 would ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. The bill aims to enact three primary bans ranging from weapons to magazines to ammunition feeding devices. First, the bill would ban the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 named military-style assault weapons. Second, it bans any assault weapon that accepts a detachable ammunition magazine and has one or more military characteristic including a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel or a folding or telescoping stock. Finally, it bans magazines and other ammunition feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which allow shooters to quickly fire many rounds without needing to reload. This means that bump-fire stocks and other devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire at fully automatic rates would be banned. The legislation allows owners to keep existing weapons or magazines they already have.
The bill provides a few different exceptions including exemptions for more than 2,200 guns for hunting, household defense or recreational purposes and it allows for a grandfather clause that exempts all weapons lawfully possessed at the date of enactment. It does, however, require grandfathered assault weapons to be stored using a secure gun storage or safety device like a trigger lock and prohibits the transfer of high-capacity ammunition magazines.
The ban also addresses background checks, requiring one for any future sale, trade or gifting of an assault weapon covered by the bill.
Conclusion.
Critics of these bills say the background check legislation would have done nothing to stop many of the recent mass shootings. They also say these background checks would prevent law-abiding citizens from having access to firearms. Some critics prefer to focus on mental health and violent video games. Obviously mental health plays a part in many mass shootings, but there is so much more to unpack here than simply saying let us focus on mental health. There are plenty of people all over the United States and world who have mental health issues that do not commit these acts of violence. People also play violent video games all over the world.
Regarding mental health, Obama enacted a gun control measure rule for the Social Security Association to report disability-benefit recipients with mental health conditions to the FBI’s background check system, but the Trump administration rescinded this rule in 2017.
There are so many items we could bring up that could curb gun violence in different ways, possibly more effective ways than the common talking points. But this constant cycle we are in: a mass shooting, people outraged, introducing policy, people pointing out how that policy is not the magical wand to fix every single issue that we need to address to curb this issue, leading it to fizzle out and and, in the end, nothing is done. We must break the cycle. We must do something.
According to data collected by Mother Jones, since the passage of the last gun control legislation, the assault weapons ban by Bill Clinton in September of 1994, there have been 95 mass shootings. These 95 shootings have resulted in 773 murdered and 1221 injured. Of the 95 shootings, 91 were committed by men, 3 were committed by women and one was committed by a man and a woman. Some type of semi-automatic weapon was used in 63 of the shootings. A recent Quinnipiac poll found 92 percent of respondents supported background checks for all buyers, breaking out among party lines as: 95 percent of Democrats, 94 percent of independents and 89 percent of Republicans in favor of background checks.
Call your senators. Call your congress people. Let them know it has been time to do something for a long time. People support some kind of reform. Demand better.
Cover Photo by Mitya Ivanov on Unsplash
About BillTrack50 – BillTrack50 offers free tools for citizens to easily research legislators and bills across all 50 states and Congress. BillTrack50 also offers professional tools to help organizations with ongoing legislative and regulatory tracking, as well as easy ways to share information both internally and with the public.