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US Senator to Introduce Gun Control Bill
an article by Meet the Press Transcripts (excerpt)
MR. DAVID GREGORY: This morning [December 16], a special edition of MEET THE PRESS, the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. Even as we grieve, will we face the troubling questions about the place of guns and violence in our modern life? Sandy Hook is the latest and most deadly of a series of mass murders that mark our time. . .
click on photo to enlarge
GREGORY: Joining us for the rest of the hour, a special panel. A leading voice in the Senate for gun control for the past two decades, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California . . .
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA, Judiciary Committee): . . . I’m going to introduce in the senate and the same bill will be introduced in the house--a bill to ban assault weapons. It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation, and the possession, not retroactively but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums, or strips of more than ten bullets. So there will be a bill. We’ve been working on it now for a year. We’ve tried to take my bill from ‘94 to 2004 and perfect it. We believe we have. We exempt over 900 specific weapons that will not be-- fall under the bill. But the purpose of this bill is to get just what Mayor Bloomberg said--weapons of war off the streets of our cities.
GREGORY: What makes you think it can pass that? We’ve had tragedies before and nothing happens.
SEN. FEINSTEIN: Well, I’ll tell you what happened back in ‘93 when I told Joe Biden who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee that I was going to move this as an amendment on the Crime Bill. He laughed at me. He said, you’re new here. Wait till you learn. And we got it through the Senate, we got it through the House, the White House came alive and the House of Representatives and the Clinton administration helped. The bill was passed. And the president signed it. It can be done.
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DISCUSSION
Question(s) related to this article:
Do you think handguns should be banned?, Why or why not?
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Under pressure from the gun lobby, especially the National Rifle Association, on April 18, the Senate of the United States failed to pass a law designed to control the sale of guns such as those used in the Newtown massacre. Here are excerpts from the account on Democracy Now.
Senate Kills Gun Reform with Defeat of Every Key Measure
The Senate has sparked widespread outrage after defeating every major gun reform measure on the table. One by one, proposals unveiled since December’s Newtown shooting massacre failed to reach the 60-vote threshold in a Wednesday vote: a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, a bipartisan compromise on expanding background checks in gun purchases, and new penalties for illegal gun trafficking.
Obama Decries "Shameful Day" After Senate Defeat of Gun Control
At the White House, President Obama stood with a group of gun violence victims and their families to denounce the senators — including some Democrats — who defeated the proposals.
President Obama: "The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. A minority in the United States Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked commonsense gun reforms, even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is expected to pull the overall gun-control bill from the Senate floor later today.
Calling the vote a "shameful day" on Capitol Hill, President Obama vowed to redouble his efforts for gun reform.
President Obama: "This was a pretty shameful day for Washington. But this effort is not over. I want to make it clear to the American people we can still bring about meaningful changes that reduce gun violence, so long as the American people don’t give up on it. . ...more.
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