US House narrowly passes assault rifle ban
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The US House of Representatives passes a bill that would ban assault rifles in a first since 1994.
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Anti-gun protestors and activists rally outside the National Rifle Association annual meeting in Houston, Texas, United States, on May 28, 2022 (UPI)
The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday that, if passed, would ban assault weapons, marking a first in decades in light of a mass shooting epidemic in the country.
The anti-gun legislation was approved by 217 House members and opposed by 213 in the body controlled by a Democratic party majority. The bill, as customary, will now head to the Senate floor. But expectations for it to survive the split Senate are meager.
The United States is deeply divided about reforming gun laws despite an erratic episode of gun violence that has seen an escalation in recent months. The bill passed the House floor with the support of two Republicans who joined efforts with their democratic counterparts and backed the measure.
This marks the first ban on assault rifles since 1994 when Congress passed a 10-year ban on the weapons and certain high-capacity magazines. Lawmakers, however, let the ban expire in 2004, sending the sales of arms nationwide skyrocketing.
Such a ban is unlikely to pass again 18 years later, as the 100-member Senate only has 50 Democrats, and a bill requires 60 votes to pass; therefore, 10 Republican Senators must back the bill proposed by the anti-gun Democratic lawmakers.
The bill is "a crucial step in our ongoing fight against the deadly epidemic of gun violence in our nation," US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.
If passed, the bill would ban the sale, import, manufacture, or transfer of certain semi-automatic rifles, which have long been used in the United States in mass shootings, especially over the latest period, such as in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Illinois.
The recent spike in tragic shootings has pushed guns to the forefront of a national debate as US leaders grapple with how to reduce the alarming rate of violence.
The recent spike in tragic shootings has pushed guns to the forefront of a national debate as US leaders grapple with how to reduce the alarming rate of violence.
Two shootings in May that left 21 people dead, mostly young children, at an elementary school in Texas and 10 Black grocery patrons dead in upstate New York revived the US' bitter debate over gun regulation.
US President Joe Biden pleaded for lawmakers to pass stricter gun control laws, including a ban on assault weapons, in a bid to clamp down on unprecedented levels of mass shootings across the United States that have been turning American communities into "killing fields".
Biden's calls came just a day after a mass shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over a week after a school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, and almost three weeks after a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York City.
He called on lawmakers to raise - at a minimum - the age at which assault weapons can be purchased from 18 to 21. The President highlighted the "unconscionable" fact that the majority of Senate Republicans do not want any of these proposals to be debated or come up for a vote.
Other measures include bolstered background checks, a ban on high-capacity magazines, maintaining safe storage of firearms, and allowing for the liability of gun manufacturers for crimes committed using their products.
Republican lawmakers, however, saw such restrictions as going against the constitutional right to bear arms, staunchly opposing the affair as a whole. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution grants Americans the right to keep and bear arms.
"We know an assault weapons and large-capacity magazine ban will save lives," Biden said.
The Republican party backs and is backed by gun lobbyists in the United States, and that industry is booming in light of the crisis hitting the country.
Gunmakers in the United States have seen a tremendous hike in earnings from their sales of AR-15-style rifles, a US House Oversight Committee probe revealed on Wednesday as the country undergoes a mass shooting crisis and while lawmakers call for holding the industry accountable for crimes committed using their products.
"Gun manufacturers collected more than $1 billion from the sale of AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons in the last decade - and sales are increasing as gun deaths and mass shootings rise," a memorandum on the Oversight Committee investigation said.
Firearm manufacturer Daniel Defense earned more than $120 million in revenue from selling AR-15-Style rifles in 2021, a three-fold increase from the amount it made two years earlier in 2019.
Gunmaker Ruger's earnings, on the other hand, witnessed a near-three-fold increase over the same time period, going from $39 million in 2019 to more than $103 million in 2021, the memorandum revealed.
The Oversight Committee's probe into the gun industry practices found that companies, including Daniel Defense and Sig Sauer, employ a variety of marketing and financing tactics to increase sales of AR-15-style rifles to civilians. pic.twitter.com/4fdU8iSmV1
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) July 28, 2022
