Tag: gun control

House Democrat Floats 1,000% Tax on AR-15-Style Rifles

A key House Democrat is floating a 1,000% tax on AR-15s and similar rifles as part of his party’s latest bid to push gun control in the wake of recent mass shootings.

Rep. Donald Beyer of Virginia, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, told Business Insider that increasing the cost of the rifles ten-fold could be a deterrent to mass shootings. The tax could raise the price of the rifles to anywhere from $5,000 to as much as $20,000.

“What it’s intended to do is provide another creative pathway to actually make some sensible gun control happen,” Beyer said. “We think that a 1,000% fee on assault weapons is just the kind of restrictive measure that creates enough fiscal impact to qualify for reconciliation.”

A final draft of Beyer’s bill is not yet complete, and it is still unclear when the tax would take effect and what the added revenue would fund, although one possibility is a restitution program for family members of victims killed in shootings. Beyer said that law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military wouldn’t be subject to the tax. The lawmaker added that he believes his bill can clear the House, where Democrats hold a clear majority, and bypass the filibuster in the Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris could cast the deciding vote.

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Fordham professor makes up statistic about AR-15s to peddle gun control

A Fordham University history professor recently was caught fabricating a statistic about the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

In a May 19 Slate article, gun control advocate Saul Cornell claimed the AR-15 is “200 times more deadly” than the rifles used in the American Revolution.

“Recent events in New York have brought the grim realities of America’s gun violence problem into sharp relief,” Cornell wrote. “In both instances, the perpetrators took advantage of the nation’s lax gun laws and legally purchased firearms whose lethality would have been unimaginable to the authors of the Second Amendment.”

Cornell also chided conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices for clinging to “originalist fantasy” and being “happy to parrot the propaganda” put forth by the National Rifle Association.

But National Review’s Kevin Williamson asked Cornell about the “200 times” statistic and discovered the professor had used World War II-era machine guns as a “stand-in” for AR-15s.

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Democrats to Vote on 8 Gun Control Measures

Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee will hold a vote on a gun control package Thursday which includes six gun control measures that would not have prevented the Uvalde attack.

The package is titled the “Protecting Our Kids Act.”

Punchbowl News reports that the package contains eight gun controls. Six of those gun controls would not have prevented the Uvalde attack.

Nadler’s spokesman confirmed the list of bills the House Judiciary Committee will consider under the broader “Protecting Our Kids Act.” They include:

  • The Raise the Age Act
  • Prevent Gun Trafficking Act
  • The Untraceable Firearms Act
  • Ethan’s Law
  • The Safe Guns, Safe Kids Act
  • The Kimberly Vaughan Firearm Safety Storage Act
  • Closing the Bump Stock Loophole Act
  • The Keep Americans Safe Act

Those six include background checks for “ghost guns,” gun storage requirements for homes with minors present, additional penalties for gun trafficking and straw purchases, a bump stock ban, and a requirement that existing bump stocks be registered under the auspices of the National Firearms Act.

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Canada introduces law to freeze handgun sales, ban look-alike toys

Canada’s government introduced legislation Monday to implement a “national freeze” on the sale and purchase of handguns as part of a gun control package that would also limit magazine capacities and ban some toys that look like guns.

The new legislation, which resurrects some measures that were shelved last year amid a national election, comes just a week after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in their classroom in Uvalde, Texas.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters the new measures were needed as gun violence was increasing.

“We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly it gets worse and worse and gets more difficult to counter,” he said.

The handgun freeze would contain exceptions, including for elite sport shooters, Olympic athletes and security guards. Canadians who already own handguns would be allowed to keep them.

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NBC’s Chuck Todd: Second Amendment Right ‘Does Not Exist’

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

But NBC’s Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press,” says that doesn’t mean Americans have a right to bear arms.

“This current version of the Republican Party is being held hostage by a vocal minority obsessed with an absolute right that does not exist,” Todd said on his show on Sunday.

Todd went on an anti-gun, anti-GOP rant to open his show, following in the footsteps of liberals who blast anyone for offering “thoughts and prayers” after a shooting in Texas left 19 children and two adults dead.

“It’s become our uniquely American ritual of words after each episode of this uniquely American serial tragedy. Thoughts and prayers, nothing we can do,” Todd said. “No law would have stopped this. The real problem is mental illness. If only the victims had been armed. More thoughts and prayers.”

Todd argued that the law’s to blame.

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Biden calls 9mm ‘high-caliber weapons,’ suggests banning them

President Biden on Monday took aim at 9mm handguns, appearing to suggest that the “high-caliber weapons” ought to be banned. 

The president made the remarks outside the White House after returning from a visit to the site of a mass shooting in Texas where 21 people, including 19 elementary school children, were killed last week. 

Recounting a visit to a New York trauma hospital, Biden said doctors showed him X-rays of gunshot wounds. 

“They said a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out — may be able to get it and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” Biden said. 

“So, the idea of these high-caliber weapons is, uh, there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting,” Biden added. “Remember, the constitution was never absolute.” 

“You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” Biden said. “You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weaponry.” 

The president, however, ruled out the possibility of issuing an executive order on guns, saying: “I can’t dictate this stuff.” 

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