‘You do not have the right to bear bullets’
Wasserman Schultz wants background checks for ammunition buyers
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz wants a federal law that would require background checks for people who buy ammunition.
“I really think it’s important to underscore that without bullets a gun is just a hunk of useless metal, and a would-be killer lacks the means to actually kill or maim,” she said Monday.
It’s already illegal for convicted felons, domestic abusers and dangerously mentally ill people to buy firearms and ammunition. Background checks also are required for some firearms purchasers, but nothing prevents anyone from buying ammunition.
The current system allows someone to “buy as much ammunition as they want, without so much as being asked their first name, and walk out,” said Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston.
By itself, the proposal wouldn’t have prevented high-profile shootings: the
Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, in which 17 people were killed and 17 wounded; the Oct. 1 shooting that killed 58 in Las Vegas; or the Jan. 6, 2017, shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in which five people were killed and six wounded.
And the legislation is sure to provoke opposition from many gun owners. The NRA didn’t respond Monday to requests for comment by email or through the organization’s website.
A good sign, Wasserman Schultz said, is that the legislation already has 36 cosponsors. A not-so-good sign: None are Republicans.
Democrats are the minority party in the House and Senate and rarely have a chance to advance controversial legislation. The fate of the legislation depends on whether leaders in the Republican majority who control the flow of legislation allow its consideration. Republican leaders in the House and Senate have blocked legislation that would restrict firearms.
Wasserman Schultz dismissed the argument that what she called “common sense gun safety laws” would infringe upon Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.
“You do not have the right to bear bullets,” Wasserman Schultz said at a news conference at the Pembroke Pines Police Department, where she was joined by political leaders, a police representative and teachers and students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Mei-Ling Ho-Shing, a Stoneman Douglas junior, praised the proposal. “If we can attack the bullets, we can stop how many people who can get shot with highcapacity magazines,” she said.
In connection with other proposals to combat gun violence — such as banning assault weapons and making it harder for mentally ill people to get firearms — Wasserman Schultz said an ammunition-related background check would have a positive effect.
“Put together, woven together, it will provide the safety net that is essential to reduce gun violence. That’s our goal,” she said.
California will require background checks for ammunition buyers beginning July 1, 2019 — something that’s being challenged by the NRA, which has filed multiple lawsuits against the state’s laws regulating ammunition and firearms that it labels “gunmaggedon.”
New York also will soon require background checks for ammunition sales, Wasserman Schultz’s staff said. Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey require background checks to obtain licenses to buy or possess ammunition.
Wasserman Schultz’s legislation wouldn’t require background checks for people who buy ammunition at shooting ranges or hunting camps and intend to use it at those locations.
Wasserman Schultz, who was joined by her 18-year-old daughter at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, has seen the effect of gun violence. One of her closest friends, then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, DAriz., was left with a severe brain injury after a Jan. 8, 2011, assassination attempt in which six people were killed and 13 wounded. Wasserman Schultz was in the hospital room a few days later when Giffords opened her eyes.
Giffords later resigned from Congress and cofounded a gun violence prevention organization with her husband Mark Kelly, a Navy veteran and retired NASA astronaut.