From NOTICE News Daily for March 30, 2023
There has been renewed calls to ban assault weapons after a mass shooting at school in Nashville, Tennessee. We break down both sides of the issue.
TRANSCRIPT
The mass shooting in late March at a school in Nashville has brought back an issue to the national spotlight:
Whether or not to ban assault weapons.
Biden: You know, the shooter in this situation reportedly had two assault weapons and a pistol, two AK47. So I call on congress again to pass my assault weapons ban. It’s about time that we make some more progress.
Assault weapons are guns that don’t have to be re-loaded often that were initially designed for battlefields.
They’re commonly used in mass shootings, and the shooter in Nashville left two at the scene of the attack.
Sound: “We’ve determined that Audrey bought seven firearms from five different local guns stores here, legally. They were legally purchased. Three of those weapons were used weapons yesterday during this horrific tragedy that happened.”
Those are weapons that were once banned in our country.
President Clinton signed the assault weapons ban in 1994, but Republicans, who strongly opposed the ban, allowed it to expire 10 years later in 2004.
They say a ban violates the 2nd amendment.
In full, it reads “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The Supreme Court has ruled that that language protects the right of private citizens to own guns.
Many Democrats, however, disagree. They say restricting gun ownership is key to reducing gun violence in our country.
Since 2020, guns have become the leading cause of death of children in the U.S, outpacing car accidents and cancer.
Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on how to fix that, but polls show the vast majority of Americans agree something needs to be done.
