As the first two of 26 victims fatally shot in the Newtown school shootings were laid to rest Monday, a long-dormant debate about gun control gained momentum and picked up a few unlikely backers in Washington.
“Seeing the massacre of so many innocent children has changed everything,” West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III, an avid hunter and NRA member, said on MSNBC Monday. “Everything has to be on the table.”
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley proposed a debate on guns, The Associated Press reported, while Rep. John Yarmouth, a Kentucky Democrat who long avoided the topic apologized for his silence.
“I am now as sorry for [my silence ] as I am for what happened to the families who lost so much in this most recent, but sadly not isolated, tragedy,” Yormouth wrote in a statement.
His calls to reexamine gun laws and revisit a federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 under President George W. Bush have been echoed at all levels of government in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary Friday that devastated the once-peaceful Connecticut town.
A day after President Barack Obama's Sunday trip to Newtown, where he vowed to use “whatever power this office holds” to protect the country’s children against gun violence, he met with Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and others to discuss a response to the fourth mass shooting in his four years as president, The Associated Press reported.
His meeting comes as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the author of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, prepares to introduce new legislation to stop the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of assault weapons, and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
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Police have said that 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza ambushed the elementary school with a Bushmaster AR 15 rifle—a high-powered weapon similar to the military’s M-16. Each of the 26 victims slaughtered in the attack suffered at least two bullet wounds, the state’s medical examiner said.
Since the shooting, questions about the need for high-capacity weapons have abounded, from governors' offices to the streets of Newtown.
“If people want to go hunting, a single-shot rifle does the job, and that does the job to protect your home too,” Ray DiStephan told The Associated Press outside the funeral of 6-year-old Noah Pozner Monday. “If you need more than that, I don’t know what to say.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy—who cried during a press conference Monday when recounting the pain of having to break the news to parents that their children were among the dead—said that the weapons Lanza used in the attack “are not used to hunt deer.”
He urged debate on the issue and said he’d “love to hear the people argue that we need 30-round magazines and that that’s somehow tied to the right to bear arms.”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a longtime advocate of stricter gun laws, unveiled Monday a new campaign urging Congress to immediately pass legislation requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, a ban on assault weapons and a new laws that would make gun trafficking a felony.
Flanked by suvivors of gun violence and family members of those who weren't as lucky, Bloomberg called Congress’ inaction on the issue a “stain on our nation’s commitment to protect our children.”
While the National Rifle Association has been silent since the shooting Friday, dismantling its Facebook page and refusing interviews, some gun supporters have argued, in the wake of the massacre, in favor of the controversial weapons.
“Every mass killing of more than three people in recent history has been in a place where guns were prohibited,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said on Fox News Sunday. “… They choose this place. They know no one will be armed.”
On the topic of assault weapons he added that they “ensure against the tyranny of the government.”
As the debate continues on the national stage, the town of Newtown is taking its first steps to return to its routines. Tuesday, Newtown schools—with the exception of Sandy Hook Elementary School—will reopen. Gov. Malloy signed an executive order to expedite the relocation of the district’s elementary school to an unused building in the neighboring town of Monroe.
Meanwhile, investigators are still searching for a motive and working to uncover information from a badly damaged hard drive that Lanza removed from his computer before launching his attack.
Photo Credit: AP