Kamala Harris Calls For Gun Reform To Honor Sandy Hook Victims

NEWTOWN, CT — On Monday, the eighth anniversary of the date a gunman fired multiple rounds of ammunition into 20 first graders and six Sandy Hook Elementary School employees, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said “it’s past time we implement commonsense gun safety reforms to keep our children safe.”

Harris’ tweet on the anniversary of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, was both celebrated and condemned. After four years of President Donald Trump in the White House, those favoring more restrictions on assault-style weapons see a glimmer of hope. For others, the suggestion runs afoul of the Constitution.

“This,” one Twitter user responded to the vice president-elect’s tweet. “It will be wonderful to have people leading our country again who actually know and care about such events. Biden/Harris will have a nightmare to clean up courtesy of 45 but at least we'll finally be able to focus on moving forward after this long dark night.”

Related: Remembering Sandy Hook Victims 8 Years Later

Others argued that tightening gun laws won’t increase safety.

“The issue in this is not the weapon, but the fact that the problems the shooter had long before he went ape were completely ignored by everybody,” one person noted.

Since Sandy Hook, there have been more than 2,400 mass shootings in the United States in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, were shot. Among the deadliest:

• Oct. 1, 2017, from the Mandalay By Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada: 58 people killed.
• June 12, 2016, at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida: 50 people killed.
• Nov. 5, 2017, at a small church in Sutherland Springs, Texas: 25 people and unborn child killed.
• Aug. 3, 2019, outside a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas: 23 people killed.
• Feb. 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida: 17 people killed.
• Dec. 2, 2015, at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California: 14 people killed.

Democrats have a long wish list for gun reform after four years of Republican control in the White House and Senate, including renewing a ban on AR-style rifles, universal background checks, restrictions on high-capacity magazines and a federal red-flag law designed to prevent people at risk of harming themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.

After regaining control of the House in the 2018 midterm election, Democrats passed sweeping gun control measures that would have broadened federal background checks and extended the waiting period before purchasing firearms.

The legislation died in the Senate, where any gun-control packages approved would likely face the same difficulties, even if Democrats pick up two more seats in Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia. That would result in a 50-50 split in the Senate, and Harris would have the tie-breaking vote.

Years ago, gun politics crossed party lines and Democrats and Republicans were able to find common ground. But the atmosphere in Washington is so polarized now that getting a majority of lawmakers on board will be a tall order.

"It used to be a cross-cutting issue; there used to be Democrats that were very pro-gun and Democratic legislators who won districts in part on their pro-gun views," Matt Grossmann, an associate professor at Michigan State University and director of its Institute for Public Policy and Social Research who follows gun politics, told The Associated Press. "And you just don’t have that anymore.”

The number of firearms in circulation has mushroomed in the past 12 years, starting in President Barack Obama’s administration when gun owners feared he would push through significant restrictions.

It continued unabated during Trump’s lone term. In the first years of his tenure, Americans amassed firearms amid fears about new gun measures following mass killings. The gun buying picked up even more steam in the past year as civil unrest, economic turmoil and the pandemic propelled unparalleled buying sprees.

And with the pandemic dominating the conversation, guns took a back seat in the 2020 election.

Gun control groups still want to be heard, however. For one, they want universal background checks that would require the review for virtually every sale of a firearm, and a ban on online sales of firearms, ammunition and parts.

Among the legislative proposals, the one viewed as having some bipartisan support is a federal “red flag” law that would make it easier to temporarily confiscate firearms from someone deemed a risk to themselves or others. Currently, fewer than two dozen states have such laws on the books.

Gun control groups also are more aggressively underscoring the fears they have about the abundance of guns in homes of Americans. They worry about the toll it will have on households where firearms are present, both through murder-suicides and suicides.

Citing statistics that show an increase in calls to domestic violence and suicide hotlines, and rising gun violence in cities, the Everytown for Gun Safety group has called on Biden to take executive action on guns.

The group’s priorities include restricting access to untraceable “ghost guns” and cracking down on people who are able to purchase a firearm if the FBI background check isn’t conducted within the required three business days.

“The need for action is urgent,” Michael-Sean Spence, Everytown’s director of community safety initiatives, said at a news conference last week. “This was already a public health crisis before COVID arrived — and the pandemic has made things far worse.”

Biden can take other steps by executive action, including restoring a rule passed in the final days of the Obama administration but scrapped by Trump soon after taking office: requiring the Social Security Administration to provide information to the gun-buying background check system on recipients with a mental disorder so severe they cannot work or handle their own benefit checks.

About 75,000 Social Security beneficiaries would be affected.

Democrats’ most coveted piece of legislation is renewal of the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. Biden was a key player in passing through the decade-long ban, and he has pledged to pursue another ban on the semiautomatic long guns that have surged in popularity since their return to the marketplace.

There were an estimated 8.5 million of the so-called “modern sporting rifles” in circulation in the United States in the years leading up to and after the ban. Since its expiration, more than 17 million such guns are in circulation. The number only increased this year after months of record-setting requests for background checks.

The National Rifle Association, which poured tens of millions of dollars toward electing Trump in 2016, has been weakened by infighting as well as legal tangles over its finances. While it remains a force in the gun arena, it’s unclear what influence it will be able to muster during the Biden administration.

Alan Gottlieb, the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, told The AP he's watching for the outcome of two runoff elections in Georgia that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. But regardless what happens, he's hopeful that efforts to severely restrict firearms will face resistance in the courts after four years of Trump appointing conservative justices throughout the federal court system as well as on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We know where they’re coming from, we know what they want to do. They have a very long laundry list of things they’d like to accomplish," Gottlieb said. "And we’ll see where we go with that.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.