We have a huge problem with guns. Assault weapons —
military-style firearms designed to fire rapidly — are a threat to our national
security, and we should treat them as such. Anyone who pretends there’s nothing
we can do is lying — and holding that view should be disqualifying for anyone
seeking to lead our country.
I know, because with Senator Dianne Feinstein I led the
effort to enact the 1994
law that banned assault weapons and high-capacity magazines for 10
years. Those gun safety reforms made our nation demonstrably more secure.
They were also, sadly, the last meaningful gun legislation
we were able get signed into law before the N.R.A. and the gun manufacturers
put the Republican Party in a headlock.
I fought hard to extend the assault weapons and
high-capacity magazines bans in 2004. The Republicans who allowed these laws to
expire asserted that they were ineffective. But, almost 15 years after the bans
expired, with the unfortunate benefit of hindsight, we now know that they did
make a difference.
Many police departments have reported an increase in criminals using
assault weapons since 2004. And multiple
analyses of the data around mass shootings provide evidence that, from
1994 to 2004, the years when assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were
banned, there were fewer mass shootings — fewer deaths, fewer
families needlessly destroyed.
There’s overwhelming data that shootings committed with
assault weapons kill more people than shootings with other
types of guns. And that’s the point.
Shooters looking to inflict mass carnage choose assault
weapons with high-capacity magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds.
They choose them because they want to kill as many people as possible without
having to stop and reload.
In Dayton, where the police responded immediately and
neutralized the shooter within about 30 seconds, he was still able to massacre
nine people and injure more than two dozen others because he carried an AR-style weapon with a magazine capable of holding 100
rounds.
We have to get these weapons of war off our streets.
Nearly 70 percent of the American public support a
ban on assault weapons — including 54 percent of Republicans.
When you have that kind of broad public support for
legislation that will make everyone safer, and it still can’t get through the
Senate — the problem is with weak-willed leaders who care more about their
campaign coffers than children in coffins.
The 1994 assault weapons and high-capacity magazines bans
worked.
And if I am elected president, we’re going to pass them
again — and this time, we’ll make them even stronger. We’re going to stop
gun manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor modifications to
their products — modifications that leave them just as deadly. And
this time, we’re going to pair it with a buyback program to get as many assault
weapons off our streets as possible as quickly as possible.
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