Thus is the case with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a proposal he introduced in the Senate this week.
The bill was a reintroduction of another radical gun control measure proposed by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
The National Rifle Association (NRA) immediately jumped to the fore and denounced his latest move against constitutional freedoms. Schumer reintroduced a ban on so-called “assault weapons” that the organization rightly proclaimed is yet another effort to “destroy our self-defense and Second Amendment rights.”
This echoed a previous ban in 1994 that came with a sweeping anti-crime bill. In order to ensure its passage, lawmakers included a sunset provision. This led to its quiet demise ten years later.
In an interview with Fox News Digital Wednesday, NRA-ILA President Randy Kozuch blasted the senator’s move as unnecessary and wrong.
“Sen. Chuck Schumer launched a failed attack on the Constitution itself, targeting firearms legally owned and used by millions of Americans.” Kozuch categorized the scheme as just another affront to the fundamental American right to self-defense.
Schumer this week posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he would reintroduce a bill to ban semi-automatic weapons that expired nearly 20 years ago. He posted that the “assault weapons ban” will get a floor vote before boasting of leading the Brady Bill and previous ban three decades ago.
Then Schumer reasserted the debunked claim that the previous prohibition summoned an era of lower violent crime across the U.S.
But that ban was found by the Justice Department in 1999 to have “failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims.”
The DOJ studied the issue again five years later and concluded the ban had little if any effect on gun violence, “perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
The New York senator still declared “we must stand with the American people and against the gun lobby.”
On Wednesday morning, he announced to his colleagues that he was presenting an “assault weapons ban, among other gun safety legislation.” Schumer admonished lawmakers to join ranks to halt the “scourge of gun violence in America.”
As if ripping away firearms from law-abiding citizens will end violence and make anyone safer.
Schumer asked the body for unanimous consent, which under Senate rules would permit its passage without a formal vote. That, of course, did not happen as there are many members who stand for the Second Amendment.
Immediate opposition to the measure came from Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY). He took the floor and told the body that Shumer’s bill was a brazen attempt “to infringe on your Second Amendment rights.”
“Almost every single page of the bill that’s in front of us today adds new restrictions and new burdens on people who follow the law. It tells you what you can buy, what you can’t buy.” Barrasso noted that Schumer’s proposal specifically prohibits by name more than 200 rifles, shotguns and pistols.
He then called on defenders of constitutional freedoms to reject the “bumper sticker solution to ban guns.”
The NRA noted with appreciation the Wyoming senator’s stand for the rights of the people. Kozuch declared its millions of members “are grateful to Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming for courageously standing on principle and championing the rights of law-abiding Americans and stopping Schumer’s egregious onslaught on the rights of responsible gun owners.”
The push to strip away the right to own popular sporting rifles starts at the top. In September, President Joe Biden told a White House gathering that “it’s time again to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
Ending ownership of these popular weapons would be quite a task. There are nearly an estimated 25 million semi-automatic rifles in circulation in the U.S., and they are regularly used for everything from sport shooting to self-defense.
