Politics
Obama to reveal gun control details this week
The assault weapons ban, which Obama has long supported, is expected to face the toughest opposition in Congress, which passed a 10-year ban on the high-grade, military-style weapons in 1994. Supporters didn’t have the votes to renew it once it expired.
As the president spoke Monday, some parents who lost children in the Connecticut shooting spoke out for the first time, calling for a national dialog to help prevent similar tragedies. They spoke one month after the shooting.
“We want the … shootings to be recalled as the turning point where we brought our community and communities across the nation together and set a real course for change,” said Tom Bittman, a co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise group.
States and cities have been moving against gun violence as well. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo was poised to sign into the law the most restrictive gun law in the nation, after he delivered a fiery speech last week on the need to make changes.
“This is a scourge on society,” Cuomo said Monday night, exactly one month after the massacre. “At what point do you say, ‘No more innocent loss of life’?”
The bill had bipartisan support, with the leader of the Republican-held state Senate saying it does not infringe on the Constitution’s Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right of citizen to bear arms.
The New York measure calls for a tougher assault weapons ban and restrictions on ammunition and the sale of guns. It also would create a more powerful tool to require the reporting of mentally ill people who say they intend to use a gun illegally and would address the unsafe storage of guns.
