Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., led a roundtable discussion at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., Wednesday about the epidemic of mass shootings. New Mexico’s senior U.S. senator is leading an effort to promote legislation that would curtail high-capacity semi-automatic weapons.
Heinrich joined seven participants, including public figures such as actress Melissa Joan Hart, actor Wilson Cruz and Sheriff Kim Stewart of Dona Ana County, N.M. The group discussed a plethora of issues surrounding guns and shootings that result in mass causalities, including stories of personal tragedy and potential public policy solutions.
Sen. Heinrich’s proposed bill, the GOSAFE Act, would limit semi-automatic weapons to an ammunition capacity of 10 rounds or less. Semi-automatic weapons are defined in the bill as guns that utilize both a “gas-operated” action component and a “large capacity ammunition feeding device”, the latter commonly being a detachable magazine.
March Fourth, an anti-mass shooting advocacy group, co-sponsored the discussion. The group formed in response to the July Fourth parade massacre in Highland Point, Ill., on July 5, 2022. Seven people died as a result of the shooting. The organization’s publicly stated mission is to restore the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.
In his opening statement, Sen. Heinrich alluded to the guns his bill targets as “weapons of war” and “assault weapons.” Retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. John Hambley followed up, commenting on how seriously the military and its personnel treat gun safety.
“My service, my branch, every single year this most elite fighting force in the entire world, every year you have to go and re-qualify on a rifle that you’ve used for years,” Hambley said. “You’ve obviously had experience but yet it requires you to go back and learn the basics of safety”.
March Fourth founder, Kitty Brandtner, believes Heinrich’s legislation will be effective. “According to the Violence Project, approximately one third (30%) of mass shootings weapons are purchased within one month of the tragedy. By stopping the sale, manufacture and transfer of these weapons of war, we would see immediate benefit,” she said in an email statement.
One of the event’s speakers, sports journalist Sarah Spain, cited findings 339 deaths, over 1,100 injuries and 30 mass shootings would have been prevented from 2005 to 2019 if the federal assault weapons ban was still active.
Another roundtable participant, Whitney Port, talked about the effect mass shooting drills have had on her six-year-old child and other elementary school students. Port posited requiring young children to participate in active shooting drills has caused unnecessary anxiety and depression.
According to Brandtner, these drills are largely ineffective, and more attention should be paid to stopping mass shootings before they start. “While processes and procedures are important, a desk or children’s backpack will not stand up to an AR-15 that was designed to rip through Kevlar helmets and pulverize human organs,” Brandtner stated when asked to comment about Port’s remarks.
“AR” stands for Armalite Rifle, which is the company that manufactured the firearm starting in the 1950s. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic weapon and has been used in 12 of the deadliest mass shootings since 2006. Ten states currently have laws restricting assault-style weapons like the AR-15, including total possession bans in California, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Hawaii.
Despite seemingly strong support for the tenets of Heinrich’s bill across a broad swath of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the diversity of participants at Wednesday’s meeting, gun rights advocates remain in opposition. In response to a request for comment, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Randy Kozuch issued the following statement:
“This legislation blatantly violates the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court rulings by banning the very types of firearms and magazines most often utilized by Americans for defending themselves and their families. This bill unjustly and improperly places the full burden of the law on law-abiding residents, while doing nothing to take guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.”
Sen. Heinrich may well have responded to Kozuch with a pertinent comment he made towards the end of the meeting about the degeneration of gun safety in the U.S.
“I grew up in a very conservative, very small rural community,” Heinrich said. “Gun culture when I was a kid was such a culture of safety. And somewhere along the way we got to a culture of complete permissiveness and my hope is we’re re-correcting again to say guns are fine but there’s a responsibility here and we self-impose limits to make sure that our communities, our children are safe.”
Featured image: Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash
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