Father of Newtown school shooting victim pleads for assault-weapon ban
WASHINGTON Battling tears, the father whose six-year-old son was killed in a Connecticut school shooting that revived the national conversation on guns pleaded with U.S. senators on Wednesday to ban assault weapons like the gun used in the massacre.
“I’m not here for sympathy,” Neil Heslin, a 50-year-old construction worker who said he grew up with guns and had been teaching his son, Jesse, about them.
“I’m here because of my son.”
Heslin spoke for 11 minutes, his voice barely audible and breaking at times, to the Senate Judiciary Committee that is deeply divided over the issue of curbing guns.
The panel was holding a hearing on a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, to ban assault weapons and ammunition magazines that can carry more than 10 rounds.
Feinstein and her allies said her measure would reduce the deaths such highpowered firearms can cause, but Republicans on the panel said the move would violate the constitutional right to bear arms and take guns away from law-abiding citizens who use them for selfdefence.
The U.S. has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world. Heslin said he supports sportsmen and the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right for citizens to have firearms. But he said that amendment was written centuries before weapons as deadly as assault weapons were invented.
“No person should have to go through what myself” and other victims’ families have had to endure, Heslin told the lawmakers.
He recalled the morning of Dec. 14, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster assault weapon to kill 20 children and six staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
The Judiciary panel could begin writing legislation as early as Thursday, but that session is likely to be delayed until next week.