Gun-control group plans rally at Toomey office next week
Delaware County United for Sensible Gun Policy is planning a Demand the Ban rally in Old City Philadelphia next week to continue the push to ban assault weapons and assault-style rifles that were used to kill 31 and injure dozens more in the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend.
Delco United is partnering with Heeding God’s Call to End Gun Violence, The CHARLES foundation, CeasefirePA and Orange Wave for Gun Safety to coordinate the rally scheduled for Aug. 12 at 11 a.m. outside the federal building at Second and Chestnut streets.
The planned rallying spot, home to a constituency office for U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, the state’s Republican senator and gun owner, is not coincidental.
“Sen. Toomey, who touts himself as a gun violence prevention advocate, has refused to openly support a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons. These weapons of war have allowed for devastating mass shootings to repeatedly unfold, such as the violence witnessed in El Paso, Texas, this past weekend, and including the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting which took place in our own state last year,” read a rally announcement. “Sen. (Robert) Casey (the Democratic U.S. senator for Pennsylvania) has already joined dozens of other legislators in support of this life-saving legislation. It’s time that Sen. Toomey stand up to protect Pennsylvanians from the horrific tragedies that these weapons leave in their wake.”
A Demand the Ban rally was held at the same spot in March 2018 and included the melting down of an assault rifle.
“From that time, we knew that sadly we would need to hold an event like this again, as the mass violence committed with assault weapons was far from over, and Sen. Toomey still had not changed his stance regarding the assault weapons ban,” said Delco United Co-Chair Jessica Frankl Wednesday. A rally was planned for spring 2020, but the weekend’s events were, “a chance to harness our grief and anger into action.”
Frankl said the need for a rally became more imperative after Toomey on Tuesday took to a Fox News appearance to uphold his view on the use of assault weapons.
“Guns that are described as assault weapons are almost invariably no more powerful than ordinary hunting rifles,” he said. He added that they are comparable in features as an ordinary hunting rifle and they are extremely popular. To ban them he said, “would be an infringement on the rights of law-abiding citizens.”
“What we ought to focus on is keeping them out of the hands of violent criminals and those who are dangerously mentally ill. Those are the people that are committing these massacres,” Toomey said on the cable news channel broadcast.
Toomey was in Philadelphia Tuesday to hold a press conference to support the bipartisan NICS Denial Notification Act, a federal bill that would expand the scope of background checks for gun purchases. Dubbed the “lie and try” bill, the act looks to catch persons who lie on a federal background check in the FBI’s NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) System and whose denial will be reported to local law enforcement authorities.
At the same press conference, he encouraged broad background checks at commercial venues like gun shows an online gun sales sites.
“I am a gun owner, I am a believer in the Second Amendment and I’m equally convinced that a background check to determine if someone is disqualified in buying a firearm is not an infringement on the Second Amendment,” said Toomey.
He also supports red flag bills that alert authorities to potentially dangerous persons who are in possession of a gun that may need to be removed from their control.
“The truth is, there is no law that we can pass that guarantees there will never be another such mass shooting, however, there are things we can do to make our communities safer than they are today, and it’s past time for Congress to act,” Toomey said at the press conference.
Part of Delco United’s rally will be to support S. 66, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019 that has the support of 30 senators, all Democrats, including Casey, plus Sen. Bernie Sander, I-VT. Frankl said Wednesday that Toomey’s reasoning to defend the sale of assault weapons as “illogical, incorrect and immoral.”
“We hope that we will not have to hold a third Demand the Ban rally in the future, but until our Senator starts defending the Pennsylvanians he is employed to serve, we won’t be backing down,” she said.
Monday’s rally is open to all and no registration is required.