There was little demand on Capitol Hill or on the presidential campaign trail to ban assault-style weapons like the AR-15 used by the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooter and by the killer of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue; the AK-17 used in the deaths of 22 people in El Paso, Texas; or the Bushmaster semiautomatic used to gun down 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.
One of the few calls to action in Congress after the July 13 shooting came from U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who used his opening and closing statements during the panel's July 22 hearing on the Trump shooting to call for stronger gun regulations.
"Part of the problem is people have resigned themselves to a brick wall of Republican obstruction on the issue," Raskin, D-Md., said in an interview. "The vast majority of Americans would like to see universal violent criminal background checks, a ban on assault weapons and red flag laws. That agenda has to be as important to the majority as blocking that agenda is to a much smaller minority."
In the days following the shooting, Trump doubled down on his opposition to gun regulations, touting his endorsement by the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun rights lobby.
"I will fully uphold our very important but under siege Second Amendment as I did for four years, and I got the full endorsement from the NRA," Trump said in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20, his first rally after the Butler County shooting. "You saw that. They gave us their full strongest endorsement. For four years, I protected (gun rights) and it was not that easy to do."
Months earlier, Trump's first 2024 campaign appearance in Pennsylvania, the nation's most populous battleground state, took place Feb. 9 in Harrisburg at an NRA-sponsored gun show. It was his eighth appearance before NRA members.
"When I'm back in the Oval Office, no one will lay a finger on your firearms," he told the crowd.
The NRA spent more than $16 million in the 2020 elections to reelect Trump, according to the research group OpenSecrets. Gun rights groups in total spent $33.2 million in 2020, the ninth largest among outside organizations and more than 99 percent of that sum on behalf of Republicans.
Gun control groups ranked 12th in 2020 with $23.5 million in expenditures, all of it to help Democrats.
In 2022, following mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, President Joe Biden signed the first gun bill since the 1994 assault weapons ban.
It provided expanded background checks for gun buyers aged 18 to 21, including mental health records, and encouraged states to pass so-called "red flag" laws that would let authorities temporarily take away guns from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others.
The new law also included funding for mental health programs and increased school security; made it more difficult for people who could not pass a background check to get someone else to buy a gun for them; and required more gun sellers to register as dealers, therefore mandating background checks of their customers.
A 2023 Gallup poll said 56 percent of Americans favored stricter gun laws, while 12 percent said they should be less strict. Another 31 percent said the laws should remain unchanged.
On the campaign trail, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are calling for stronger gun regulations, though neither has mentioned the Trump shooting as a reason to do so.
"Tim is a hunter and a gun owner who believes, as the majority of gun owners do, that we need reasonable gun safety laws in America," Harris said to applause when introducing Walz at a rally in Philadelphia.
"So, as governor, he expanded background checks and increased penalties for illegal firearm sales. And together, when we win in November, we are finally going to pass universal background checks, red flag laws, and an assault weapons ban."
Walz, during his speech, said, "As you heard, I was one of the best shots in Congress. But in Minnesota, we believe in the Second Amendment, but we also believe in common sense gun violence laws."
The Democratic ticket has been endorsed by March for Our Lives, the group borne out of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The organization's spokesman, Ryan Barto, criticized Trump's continued opposition to stronger gun laws.
"During Trump's presidency, he not only stood by while gun violence soared to become the No. 1 cause of death for children, but he repeatedly bowed down to the NRA and embraced their agenda, and he's vowed to do the same if reelected," said Barto, a veteran of Josh Shapiro's 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign. "While we hoped that former President Trump would have a change of heart and demand laws that could have prevented the very shooting that targeted him, it's clear that this isn't the case."
The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.
At a news conference last week, Trump hit back against Harris on guns.
"She wants to take away everyone's gun," he said. "They need guns for protection in this country. People live out in the woods and they're not going to have a gun."
One reason there was little discussion of new gun legislation on Capitol Hill after the July 13 shooting is that political assassinations are viewed differently than other shootings, said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who led a 2016 Senate Democratic filibuster to force action on gun legislation after 49 people were gunned down at an Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub.
"It is a narrative about politics, about the motivation of the shooter, about security," he said in an interview. "I think it's unfortunate but understandable that we don't process assassinations in the same way we process a mass shooting. But there's no doubt that the gun facilitates political assassinations just like it facilitates mass murder."
The 2016 filibuster ended when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., agreed to bring up bills to ban those on the terrorist watch list from buying weapons, and to require background checks for purchases at gun shows and online transactions. Then Republicans blocked any debate on them.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who joined the filibuster, said in an interview that the assassination attempt should have sparked new pressure to ban assault weapons. Then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., was the lead Senate sponsor of the 1994 law that banned those weapons. President George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress let the ban expire 10 years later.
"It's stunning to me that these weapons of war are so readily available and put the lives of people in danger, including presidents," Booker said. "So it is something I definitely think should be part of this conversation and I'm surprised it's not."
In his closing statement at the hearing, Raskin called out Congress for failing to act, noting on the same day Trump was shot, a gunman killed four people and wounded 10 others in a Birmingham, Alabama, nightclub.
"The mass shooting that took place in Butler, Pennsylvania, is replicated all over the country every day," Raskin said. "I just wish to the heavens that our colleagues who could get together on the question of presidential security against an AR-15 attack could get together on the question of public security against an AR-15 attack."
(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
