Speaking on "Morning Joe" Tuesday morning, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said that as long as Republican politicians continue to block stricter gun-control bills, counter-terrorism officers face an uphill battle.
"They prostitute themselves in front of the NRA," a visibly upset Bratton said of pro-gun Republicans, who blocked a bill the day after the San Bernardino massacre last year that would have banned people on the terror watch list from purchasing guns. "They put the interests of their own political careers and that of the NRA ahead of the American people."
In the wake of Sunday's shooting in Orlando by a man armed with a Sig Sauer MCX rifle, an A-15 style weapon, many people, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, are calling for a ban on assault weapons.
The gun used in the Orlando massacre, as well as those used in the Sandy Hook and Colorado theater shootings in 2012, can fire about eight rounds in a second "in capable hands," the owner of a gun-engineering company told the New York Times.
"A Snapchat video taken at the scene in Orlando illustrates its devastating power: the shooter can be heard firing more than 20 shots in a single nine-second stretch," Rolling Stone reported.
"Most forms of the gun had been prohibited under the 1994 federal assault weapons ban that was allowed to expire in 2004, following ferocious lobbying by the National Rifle Association," the New York Daily News reported.
Today, the gun is very easy to buy. Just ask Helen Ubiñas, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, who says she was about to purchase a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle in seven minutes, from the moment she "handed the salesperson my driver's license to the moment I passed my background check," at a gun shop in Philadelphia Monday.
Often called the most political gun in America, AR-15s range in price between $500 and $3,000.
In central Oregon, Redmond Black Rifle/Colfax Tactical owner Larry Myers told KTVZ that he expects gun sales to increase following the Orlando massacre, which left 49 people and dozens more injured.
"It is a tactical weapon commonly used for home defense but most often utilized (for shooting) varmints," Myers said. "The civilian version of the AR-15 is not a full automatic, it's a semi-automatic — pull the trigger once and get one bullet.
"They do not empty magazines within one minute unless you pull the trigger that many times," Myers said.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was once in favor of a national assault weapons ban, but he has changed his tune recently.
"I changed positions because we need protection in this country," Trump said on "CBS This Morning" Monday. "We need protection. We have to have protection. And the bad guys have them, so if the bad guys have them, we need protection in this country.”
Patch wants to know what you think. Should Congress ban assault weapons? Take our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.
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Congress ban assault 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Photo by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: A gun similar to the one used by Omar Mateen in the Orlando shooting at a gay nightclub.
