LIZ AIMS TO CUT GUN DEATHS 80%
Plan creates federal licensing, raises firearm buying age
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled a sweeping gun control policy Saturday as she joined several of her Democratic presidential rivals at an Everytown for Gun Safety forum in Iowa a week after a pair of mass shootings left 31 dead.
Warren’s plan centers on reducing the number of gun deaths — nearly 40,000 nationwide in 2017 — by 80%.
It’s an ambitious goal, one the Massachusetts senator aims to accomplish by instituting background checks for gun purchases, including online and at gun shows; creating a federal licensing system; raising the minimum purchasing age to 21; prosecuting traffickers who move guns across state and international lines; and banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.
She would also cap firearm purchases to one per month; close the “boyfriend loophole” to protect survivors of domestic abuse; and raise taxes on gun manufacturers to 30% on firearms and 50% on ammunition, according to an online post introducing the plan.
“I will introduce it in the first 100 days and I will help repeal the filibuster so that we can actually get it passed in Congress,” Warren said in Iowa.
As with many of her policies, Warren linked tackling gun control with eradicating corruption in Washington, saying, “we’re going to keep losing this fight” until the “stranglehold of the gun industry and the NRA” is broken.
Warren was the latest Oval Office hopeful to release gun control policies following the massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. She was among at least 16 candidates to participate in Everytown’s Presidential Gun Sense Forum Saturday.
U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to recall lawmakers to Washington and take up gun control legislation.
“If the American people want us to move aggressively in terms of gun safety legislation, why aren’t we doing it? Why isn’t Mitch McConnell doing what I and others have asked him?” Sanders said, adding, “Do it now.”
Several candidates spoke of the psychological trauma mass shootings have on the nation’s youth, with active shooter drills now common in schools. Some also decried how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have long been unable to study gun violence.
U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris reiterated her campaign pledge to take executive action on gun control should Congress fail to produce comprehensive gun safety legislation within her first 100 days as president.
She also took aim at President Trump, saying, “People say to me that Donald Trump caused those folks to be killed. Well, of course he didn’t pull the trigger, but he certainly has been tweeting out the ammunition.”
Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who returned to El Paso, the community he represented in Congress, following last Saturday’s shooting, urged via video to make “red flag” laws — which allow authorities to temporarily remove firearms from those a judge deems a danger to themselves or others — a “national priority.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg discussed reassessing the Second Amendment. “No amendment is in fact absolute,” Biden said.