WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin and a coalition of medical experts pleaded Tuesday for Congress to pass stricter gun safety laws.
Congress should build on the 2022 gun control law after high-profile mass shootings, Durbin, Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy and about 80 members of OnCall4Kids, a group of doctors and health experts advocating for stricter gun laws, said at a news conference Tuesday.
“There is one constant in America, and I am very embarrassed to say that we have allowed it to exist for too long, and that is gun violence,” said Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois.
Speakers included Emily and Elliot Lieberman of Illinois and Ashlee Jaffe of Pennsylvania, survivors of the July 4, 2022, mass murder in Highland Park, Illinois, in which seven people were killed.
“It is unlikely that I will ever be able to do my job again due to my injuries,” Jaffesaid a pediatric physiatrist who was shot in the hand and suffered nerve damage.
Speakers urged that Congress pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, laws regulating the storage of firearms and restrictions on the sale, transfer and receipt of gas-operated semi-automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines.
But in a divided Congress, where Democrats control the Senate and Republicans have a majority in the House, gun safety legislation is unlikely to pass.
Durbin urged voters to elect candidates who would enact gun safety laws.
“As American voters, we must do this and say, ‘We’re going to the polls to elect women and men who have a sense of responsibility to change this once and for all and end this gun threat,'” Durbin said .
The press conference took place Friday ahead of the two-year anniversary of the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.
“We are losing an entire generation of children in this country to the trauma of gun violence,” Murphy said.
This mass shooting, coupled with another in Buffalo, New York, where a white supremacist targeted a predominantly black neighborhood and killed ten black people, led to the passage of a gun safety law in 2022.
Murphy led the coalition of 20 bipartisan senators to pass the bill.
This law led to this creation The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention allocated $750 million for states to adopt red flag laws, provided $11 billion for mental health services for schools and families, and targeted the illegal gun trade, known as “straw purchases.” A buyer can purchase a gun for someone else.
“Incremental progress”
Although the legislation was historic — it was the first time in 30 years that Congress passed comprehensive gun safety legislation — many Democrats noted that it did not ban assault weapons, a term that generally refers to semi-automatic rifles or high-capacity magazines Capacity relates.
The shooters used these weapons in seven of the deadliest mass shootings in the last decade. According to the Giffords Law Center, an organization that conducts research on gun violence and advocates for ending it.
“Let’s judge the legislation not by what it doesn’t do, but by what it does,” said then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, at the time of the bill’s passage in the House.
Several OnCall4Kids speakers mentioned that they were grateful for the gun safety laws that Congress passed nearly two years ago, but that more needs to be done.
“Incremental progress is still progress,” said Emily Lieberman. “However, firearm death rates continue to rise.”
Elliot Lieberman said the leading cause of death in children is firearms.
“If your child dies in this country, the most likely cause will not be a drowning accident. It won’t be a car accident or even cancer,” Elliot said. “It’s a bullet.”
Sofia Chaudhary, a pediatric emergency physician in Atlanta, advocated for laws requiring unthreatening storage of firearms. She said such laws could have saved the lives of several of her patients – including a 1-month-old baby – who were unintentionally shot by other children.
“These patients haunt me,” she said. “Your unnecessary, senseless loss haunts me. The piercing screams of her parents haunt me.”
