#1994 assault weapons ban

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Dianne Feinstein, the woman who represented California in the US Senate and was the longest-serving female senator in history, “blazed trails for women in politics and found a life’s calling in public service”, Hillary Clinton said.

The former New York Senator and Secretary of State, who in 2016 was the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major US party, paid tribute to her fellow Democrat shortly after the announcement of her death. At the time of her death, Feinstein was 90 and still in office.

Clinton added: “I’ll miss her greatly as a friend and colleague.”

From the White House, Joe Biden saluted “a pioneering American.”

The President added: “Serving in the Senate together for more than 15 years, I had a front-row seat to what Dianne was able to accomplish. It’s why I recruited her to serve on the Judiciary Committee when I was chairman – I knew what she was made of.”

“… Often the only woman in the room, Dianne was a role model for so many Americans … she had an immense impact on younger female leaders for whom she generously opened doors. Dianne was tough, sharp, always prepared, and never pulled a punch, but she was also a kind and loyal friend.”

Gavin Newsom, the Democratic Governor of California, will select Feinstein’s replacement. Calling Feinstein “a political giant”, he said she “was many things – a powerful, trailblazing US Senator; an early voice for gun control; a leader in times of tragedy and chaos.”

“But to me, she was a dear friend, a lifelong mentor, and a role model not only for me, but to my wife and daughters for what a powerful, effective leader looks like.”

Feinstein’s “tenacity”, Newsom said, “was matched by her grace. She broke down barriers and glass ceilings, but never lost her belief in the spirit of political cooperation. And she was a fighter - for the city [San Francisco, where she was the first woman to be mayor], the state and the country she loved.”

There was some discord among the praise. David Axelrod, formerly a senior adviser to Barack Obama, pointed to recent controversy over whether, given her evidently failing health and absences which affected Democratic Senate business, Feinstein should have retired.

“How sad that the final, painful years will eclipse in the memories of some a long and distinguished career,” Axelrod said⁩. “RIP, Senator Feinstein.”

Many users cited a recent piece in New York magazine by the writer Rebecca Traister, about Feinstein’s declining years, which asked: “She fought for gun control, civil rights and abortion access for half a century. Where did it all go wrong?”

John Flannery, a former federal prosecutor turned commentator, was among those who had a rejoinder: “I hope some of those who hounded her in her dying days will remember her contributions.”

Many tributes highlighted Feinstein’s contributions to attempts to combat the problem of gun violence.

Though Feinstein “made her mark on everything from national security to the environment to protecting civil liberties”, Biden said, “there’s no better example of her skillful legislating and sheer force of will than when she turned passion into purpose, and led the fight to ban assault weapons.”

Chris Murphy, a Democratic Senator from Connecticut and a leading voice for gun control reform, said Feinstein would “go down as a heroic, historic American leader … an early and fearless champion of the gun safety movement as author of the monumental Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.”

“For a long time, between 1994 and the tragedy in Newtown in 2012 [in which 20 young children and six adults were killed], Dianne was often a lonely but unwavering voice on the issue of gun violence.”

“The modern anti-gun violence movement – now more powerful than the gun lobby – simply would not exist without Dianne’s moral leadership.”

From the US House, Maxwell Frost of Florida, one of the youngest congressional progressives, called Feinstein “a champion for gun violence prevention that broke barriers at all levels of government.”

“We wouldn’t have had an assault weapons ban if it wasn’t for Senator Feinstein and due to her tireless work, we will win it back. May her memory be a blessing.”

From outside Congress, Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a pro-gun control group, pointed out that Feinstein was “one of the first among her colleagues to support gun safety – including Democrats”.

Inside Congress, as a government shutdown loomed, Feinstein’s desk in the Senate was draped in black cloth, a vase of white roses placed to mark her death.

From the other side of the political aisle, the Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins called Feinstein “a strong and effective leader, and a good friend.”

Newsom has pledged to pick a Black woman to replace Feinstein until the midterm elections next year.

On Friday, Barbara Lee, a Black Democratic congresswoman running for the seat, said: “This is a sad day for California and the nation. Senator Feinstein was a champion for our state, and served as the voice of a political revolution for women.”

Among commentators, the MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan highlighted what will to many prove a complicated political legacy.

“The high point and low point of … Feinstein’s long and storied career as a US senator both relate to the ‘War On Terror’,” Hasan said. “Low point: voting for the Iraq invasion. High point: going against the CIA to expose their torture programme.”

In his statement, Newsom said: “Every race [Feinstein] won, she made history, but her story wasn’t just about being the first woman in a particular political office, it was what she did for California, and for America, with that power once she earned it. That’s what she should be remembered for.”

“There is simply nobody who possessed the poise, gravitas, and fierceness of Dianne Feinstein.”

Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University, put the case for Feinstein perhaps most simply of all.

“Dianne Feinstein was on the right side of history,” she said.

[tomorrowusa]

Reminding people about Trump's Project 2025 and his promise to be a "dictator on Day One" do not promote violence. Republican pandering to the NRA has actually killed people.

Trump's wannabe assassins, both the registered Republican and the 2016 Trump voter, used assault rifles.

There was an assault weapons ban in the US from 1994 to 2004. During that period the number of people murdered in mass shootings declined.

When that ban expired, the Republican trifecta in Washington at the time refused to extend it. Mass shootings then soared.

As for "inflammatory rhetoric"...

J.D. Vance, Whining About Democrats, Seems to Forget Trump’s Own Words

[mariacallous]

Dianne Feinstein, California’s longest-serving U.S. senator who led San Francisco through its darkest and most violent days as mayor in the 1970s and later authored a federal ban on assault weapons that lasted a decade, died Thursday night, according to multiple reports.

At 90, she was the oldest member of Congress and the longest-serving female in the chamber’s history.

...

At the start of her career, Feinstein was a trailblazer for women and gay rights, and after the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, she emerged as a reassuring leader and formidable force who pulled together the city that was still reeling from the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana 10 days earlier, where 900 people connected to the San Francisco-based People’s Temple died.

In what would become known as “The Year of the Woman” in 1992, she shared a historic moment with Barbara Boxer when they were both elected to the U.S. Senate and California became the first state with two women senators. Feinstein won in a special election and was sworn in first.

“She had tenacity. She never gave up,” especially in passing the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, Boxer said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “I will always remember how proud I was when she stood her ground on the floor of the Senate, when some of the men said, ‘Well, you don’t even understand what an AR-15 is,’ and she said, ‘I understand what gun violence is. I had to put my finger through a hole in the wrist (of Harvey Milk).’ It was very emotional.”

Feinstein also pioneered a number of other firsts: first woman mayor of San Francisco, first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the first woman to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, a watershed moment after public outrage over the handling of Anita Hill’s testimony during the male-dominated Supreme Court nomination hearings of Clarence Thomas in 1991.

In 1994, the same year she passed the weapons ban, Feinstein wrote the California Desert Protection Act that established Death Valley and Joshua Tree as national parks. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, she publicly released the “Torture Report” that exposed the CIA’s interrogation program that failed to work on terrorist suspects and, along with the late Sen. John McCain, authored legislation outlawing the CIA’s use of torture.

For those old enough to remember the shocking assassinations at San Francisco City Hall in 1978, however, it was her brief videotaped news conference and its aftermath that launched her national political career. Standing outside the supervisors offices, news cameras illuminating her face, she delivered the shocking news: “As president of the board of supervisors, it’s my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed,” she said as the media erupted in gasps and shouts. “The suspect is Supervisor Dan White.”

She would later detail her actions that morning, that when she heard the shots, she raced into Milk’s office. “I tried to get a pulse,” she said, “and put my finger through a bullet hole.”

Duffy Jennings, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was in the crowd when Feinstein made the announcement, said her leadership through a tumultuous era would come to define Feinstein.

“She was incredibly resilient, strong and decisive,” Jennings said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group. “It wasn’t just Jonestown and Dan White. The ‘70s had the Zodiac killer, Patty Hearst, the SLA, the New World Liberation Front, counterculture extremism. It was a horrific decade in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And politically, she was as strong as anybody in holding the town together.”

At one point, New World Liberation Front – an anti-capitalist terrorist group – planted a bomb on the windowsill of her daughter’s bedroom. It failed to explode.

Born in San Francisco in 1933, Feinstein was the daughter of a prominent surgeon. Feinstein was Jewish but attended the prestigious Convent of the Sacred Heart Catholic girls school, where she acted in plays and – because of her 5-foot-10-inch height – often played male roles. She attended Stanford University in the early 1950s, where she was elected vice president of the student body.

When Feinstein entered San Francisco politics in the late 1960s, “nobody took her seriously,” said Jerry Roberts, the Chronicle’s former executive editor who wrote an early biography called “Never Let Them See You Cry,” named for one of Feinstein’s tips for businesswomen.

Early media reports of her campaigns, he said, were “unbelievably sexist,” and often characterized her as a “raven-haired beauty” with a “slender figure.” Her husband at the time, Dr. Bertram Feinstein, was widely mocked as a “first husband.”

“Just in terms of the cultural obstacles that she had to overcome to be taken seriously and to win is something people don’t think a lot about now,” Roberts said. “She was never a movement feminist, but she was a feminist.”

She kept a firefighter’s turnout jacket and helmet in her trunk to race to fires, and once gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a man she saw collapse in the Tenderloin. She listened to a police scanner in her office.

Although she opposed domestic partnership legislation for the city in 1982, when the AIDS epidemic broke out, Feinstein “got right on it. I mean, instantly,” said Louise Renne, whom Feinstein appointed as San Francisco’s first woman City Attorney. “The folks at San Francisco General were pulled in to deal with the AIDS epidemic, and San Francisco took a leadership role in solving that problem.”

Feinstein was considered moderate politically, supporting environmental causes but also encouraging commercial high rise development in downtown San Francisco. She is credited with completing the Moscone Convention Center project, renovating the city’s cable car system and retrofitting Candlestick Park before the Loma Prieta earthquake struck during the third game of the 1989 World Series.

Feinstein ran for governor of California in 1990 and lost to Republican Pete Wilson, whom she would replace in the Senate. In 1996, she was one of only 14 senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act that prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Feinstein’s leadership opened doors for two San Francisco women who would become the most powerful female politicians in the country – Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Kamala Harris as vice president.

...

Looking back, Boxer recalls when she and Feinstein were first elected to the Senate, her colleague sat her down and told her, “You’ve got to stick with this. The longer you stay, the better you’ll feel, the more you’ll get done.”

Feinstein stuck with it on Capitol Hill for three decades, perhaps summing up why in her final acceptance speech before her re-election in 2018, years before the political implications of her frail health in her final years threatened her legacy.

In the speech, she called serving in the Senate “the greatest honor in my life.”

[gunzlotzofgunz]

SITES SPECTRE HC PISTOL

9x19mm; 5.25'' barrel Semi-automatic only pistol version of the Italian M4 Submachine gun. Few imported before the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994

[chuplayswithfire]

Diane Feinstein died in office today, the longest serving of the 59 women to ever serve in the US Senate. She was California's first woman elected to the US Senate, and the 18th woman to ever be elected to the Senate at all. She was the first woman to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the first woman to become the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was behind the first congressional action on Global Warning, helped to outlaw the use of torture by the CIA, and secure the Violence Against Women Act until 2027. She was passionately against gun violence, and authored the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which was in effect until 2007.

She was an accomplished Senator, an incredible woman, and did a great deal to push for protections for women and all vulnerable people. Her wisdom and courage in the Senator were deeply admired by many.

May her memory be a blessing.

[hillaryisaboss]

On #PresidentsDay, remember & share what we could have had again — the Clinton Era:

—Surplus

—22 million new jobs

—4-balanced budgets due to the superb compromising ability of Bill Clinton

—7 million fewer Americans living in poverty

—Minimum wage up 20%

—Assault Weapons Ban

—Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act

—Campaign Against Teen Pregnancy: all-time low abortion rates

—Office on Violence Against Women

—Violence Against Women Act

—Children’s Health Insurance Program: 8.9 million children insured

—Family and Medical Leave Act

—Incomes rising at all income levels

WATERGATE:

Youngest lawyer ever appointed to an impeachment trial. 26-year-old Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham.

CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND:

Investigated African American juveniles being placed in South Carolina adult prisons, and posed as a racist housewife to expose segregation throughout schools in the South.

FIRST LADY OF ARKANSAS:

Hillary successfully reformed the entire K-12 Arkansas educational system, expanded healthcare for those in rural Arkansas, worked at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Legal Services, and co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. First female partner of the Rose Law Firm.

The joke in Arkansas was that they “hired the wrong Clinton.”

FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES:

Hillary spearheaded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, the Foster Care Independence Act, Office on Violence Against Women, the Campaign Against Teenage Pregnancy (lowering abortion and teenage pregnancy rates), and the Children’s Health Insurance Program — providing 8.9 million low-income children with healthcare access.

In 1994, Hillary proclaimed on the world stage in Beijing, China:

“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.”

TWO-TIME NEW YORK SENATOR:

Hillary secured 20 billion in federal funds to rebuild downtown New York City after 9/11. She also secured healthcare for 9/11 First Responders and expanded access to care for the National Guard, Reservists, and their families.

U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE:

Passed the first-ever U.N Resolution on gay rights (proclaiming: “human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights” on the world stage), and made it so trans Americans can legally change their gender on their passport. Hillary also rebuilt relations with every nation after the disastrous Bush Administration, traveling to 112 countries — more than any other Secretary of State. Our worldwide favorability rose 20% during Hillary’s tenure. Her primary focus was on women’s rights and health, bringing up issues such as forced abortion and maternal mortality rates. Hillary re-opened relations with Burma, enacted a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and killed Osama Bin Laden. She also was instrumental in putting together the Paris Climate Agreement, something Trump has since removed us from.

*Three-time popular vote winners

*Two-time White House occupants

Presided over our last great era — the pragmatic 1990s.

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

The Clintons: two players that got actual results for the American people.

Vilified for playing the game and winning.

Haters have been hating since Arkansas.

Happy Presidents Day Bill & Hillary.

Made for the White House.

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Should be in the Oval Office right now.

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

#3MillionMoreVotes

#TrumpIsIllegitimate

#StolenBy #Russia & #Comey

We were robbed.

2016 was stolen from the American people.

We should be outraged forever.

#PutinDestroyingUsFromTheInside

Don’t believe the Russian-bots when they lie and spread propaganda about the Clintons.

The Clintons are a good family that genuinely cares about the American people.

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” ~President Bill Clinton

❤️❤️❤️❤️💙💙💙💙

[darkfictionjude]

I thought you & some of the readers might find this interesting, things that happened in 1994 (according to Wikipedia):

February 12: Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is stolen in Oslo

March 12: A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell, previously touted as "proof" of the Loch Ness Monster, is confirmed to be a hoax

April 5: Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, commits suicide at age 27 at his home in Seattle. His body was found three days later.

April 27: South Africa holds its first fully multiracial elections, marking the final end of the last vestiges of apartheid. Nelson Mandela wins the elections and is sworn in as the first democratically elected president the following month.

May 10: Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

May 10: A solar eclipse occurs in The United States.

May 18: The Flavr Savr, a genetically modified tomato, is deemed safe for consumption by the FDA, becoming the first commercially grown genetically engineered food to be granted a license for human consumption.

June 12: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman are murdered outside the Simpson home in Los Angeles. O. J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in a civil suit.

June 15: The Lion King, the highest-grossing hand-drawn animated film of all time, is released by Walt Disney Feature Animation.

June 17: NFL star O. J. Simpson and his friend Al Cowlings flee from police in a white Ford Bronco. The low-speed chase ends at Simpson's Brentwood, Los Angeles mansion, where he surrenders.

June 17: The 1994 FIFA World Cup starts in the United States.

July 12: The Allied occupation of Berlin ends with a casing of the colors ceremony attended by U.S. President Bill Clinton.

August 12: Woodstock '94 begins in Saugerties, New York. It is the 25-year anniversary of Woodstock in 1969.

August 12: All Major League Baseball players go on strike, beginning the longest work stoppage in the sport's history.

September 13: President Bill Clinton signs the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which bans the manufacture of new firearms with certain features for a period of 10 years.

September 14: The 1994 World Series is officially cancelled due to the ongoing work stoppage. It is the first time a World Series will not be played since 1904.

September 17: Heather Whitestone is crowned the first deaf Miss America; she is crowned Miss America 1995.

September 19: Andrew Wiles proves Fermat's Last Theorem, solving the 357-year-old mathematical theorem first proposed by Pierre de Fermat in 1637. He would publish it in 1995.

October 1: The World Wide Web Consortium is founded by Tim Berners-Lee, becoming the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.

November 5: George Foreman wins the WBA and IBF World Heavyweight Championships by KO'ing Michael Moorer becoming the oldest heavyweight champion in history.

December 3: Sony releases the PlayStation video game system in Japan.

And that is why it’s such an interesting year to set the story in. So much happens in all areas of the world. I knew some of these but it’s nice to know how much the world began to change here. And yes I will pat myself on the back for picking 1994 as the set year for the story 🥳

Thank you nonnie this was very cool 💜 (rip to Kurt — I should add more nirvana to the game playlist).

[vote-democrat-president-congress]

It should say: opposed by republicans whom were (and still are today) bought-and-paid-for by the NRA.

NYTimes: "As a senator in 1994, Mr. Biden negotiated a 10-year assault weapons ban as part of a broader crime bill. That led to a temporary drop in gun crime and shootings of police officers, according to a study by the Justice Department. The ban blocked the sale of 19 weapons similar to those used by the United States military, including semiautomatic rifles and certain types of shotguns and handguns, and it was opposed by Republicans and the National Rifle Association."

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Despite the lack of sufficient support in Congress to pass a new assault weapons ban, President Joe Biden on Friday said the US has “reached a tipping point” in the fight to strengthen America’s gun laws, due to the activism of the gun violence prevention movement that has gathered increasing strength in recent years.

Mr. Biden, who was delivering remarks at the National Safer Communities Summit in Hartford, Connecticut, at the invitation of Senator Chris Murphy and a coalition of gun safety groups including Everytown, Moms Demand Action and Giffords, recounted some of the more than 20 executive actions his administration has taken to stem the tide of mass shootings since he took office. He said those politicians who claim to be concerned about crime should realise that crime can’t be tackled without dealing with gun violence.

“It’s a simple proposition,” he said.

The President also lamented how since 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death for children in the United States — more than automobile accidents or cancer.

He recalled how the assault weapons ban he wrote into the 1994 crime bill enacted under then-President Bill Clinton cut mass shootings “significantly” only to see their number triple when Mr. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, allowed the ban to expire with the aid of a Republican Congress, allowing military-style rifles and high-capacity magazines to “come back into vogue.”

Mr. Biden also called for a repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which immunises gun manufacturers from lawsuits filed by gun violence victims, and for the enactment of universal background checks before anyone can purchase high-powered rifles, many of which are modelled off of those issued to American soldiers, as well as safe storage requirements for such weapons.

“The United States of America has the finest fighting force in the history of the world [and] provides … service members with the most lethal weapons on Earth. We also require them to receive significant training before they’re allowed to use them. We require extensive background checks and mental health assessment that before they can … use them [and] require them to lock them up or store the weapon responsibly,” he said.

“Every gun owner should be required to have the same requirements held to him or her,” he added.

The President also hailed Governors who have taken action to strengthen state gun laws, including Connecticut’s Ned Lamont, who recently signed more than 12 separate bills to strengthen his state’s firearm regulations, and praised state governments in Illinois and Washington for passing assault weapon and ghost gun bans, as well as the 21 states that have enacted so-called “red flag” laws to allow courts to temporarily disarm people who are determined to pose a risk to the community by a judge.

Though chances of a federal assault weapons ban making it to his desk are slim to none given the composition of Congress, Mr. Biden promised the gun safety advocates that he will “never stop fighting.”

“We will ban assault weapons in this country … we will hold gun makers liable, we will beat the gun industry,” he said.

[mariacallous]

Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News on Friday.

The Democrat’s passing marks the end of a boundary-pushing political career that spanned more than half a century, studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.

Feinstein had planned to retire at the end of her current term in 2024.

Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.

A San Francisco native, Feinstein cleared a path for women in politics as she rose the ranks of leadership. After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title.

Feinstein was made acting mayor of the city later that year, after then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, her colleague on the board of supervisors, were assassinated by Dan White, a former member of the same board.

In later interviews, Feinstein recalled finding Milk’s body and searching for a pulse by putting her finger in a bullet hole.

Feinstein was the first to announce the murders to the press. She was appointed mayor a week later, again becoming the first woman elevated to the office.

The tragedy had the side effect of jumpstarting Feinstein’s political career, but the trauma of the day stuck with her even decades later. 

“I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the murders in a CNN interview in 2017.

Her streak of firsts continued at the national level. Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid in 1990, but two years later won a special election to the U.S. Senate, becoming California’s first female senator.

Weeks later, the state’s second female senator, Barbara Boxer, was sworn into office, making California the first state in the U.S. to be represented in the Senate by two women. 

Their 1992 elections helped define the “Year of the Woman,” in which four Democratic women were newly elected to the Senate — more than doubling the chamber’s female representation.

In the Senate, Feinstein clinched some of her biggest legislative achievements. She wrote and championed the 1994 assault weapons ban, both a landmark bill and a continuation of a career-long effort to enact stricter gun controls. 

The legislation passed Congress and was signed by then-President Bill Clinton, albeit with major compromises including a 10-year sunset provision. The ban expired in 2004 during the administration of George W. Bush.

She also sponsored bills that protect millions of acres of California’s desert, worked to create a nationwide AMBER alert network, helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and fought for the release of a lengthy report detailing the CIA’s torture practices, among other accomplishments.

[funshoot-com]

When the data differs from the narrative

Despite having a “gun epidemic” (according to the CDC) the homicide rate has dropped since the early 1990s to near historic lows in the mid-2010s, a decade after the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban sunset in 2004. Both CDC and FBI data verify this. There was an uptick in violence from these historic lows during the pandemic, which has largely subsided since as the article below indicates. What…

[adelaidesadviceattic]

Let's Protect Our Children

On Dec 14, 2012, Adam Lanza walked into an elementary school and killed 26 people, 20 of them kids. On Valentine's day, 2018, Nicholas Cruz walked into a high, which he was a former student at, and killed 17 people. April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris entered their high school with assault weapons, killing 12 students and one teacher. Later they would go on to kill themselves in the school library, where much of the massacre happened. I was one month away from graduating high school. At that time, no one worried about things like this. It was all so New to everyone. During the years between 1994 to 2004, there was an assault weapons ban, and during that time, you were 70% less likely to die in a mass shooting than today. So, why not bring it back? It wasn't so bad to ban assault weapons, so why is it now? Back when I was going to school, the only thing I worried about was my grades and if I was good enough for college. 

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would live to see the day where school shootings or any type of mass shooting would be a part of daily life. Right now, as I type type this, the US government is deciding whether or not to ban tiktok. TIKTOK!! Can you believe that?! My government believes banning books, drag shows, women's rights and tiktok are far more important than banning guns. We need to Project our children, they say. But they are not protecting our kids. I don't have kids, I have nieces and nephews that go to school. I much rather they read a book about the LGBTQ+ community and go to drag show, support my nieces and female cousins have an abortion and be on tiktok, than worry when they are off at school that some A**hole is going to come and murder them. When Columbine happened, assault weapons should have been banned right then and stayed that way. In 1997, Australia had a mass shooting and shortly thereafter the PM of that country told everyone to give up their AK type of guns and everyone did. There were no protests, no debates, NOTHING! And since there have been 0 mass shootings. Other countries have done the same when a mass shooting occurred in their country. Right now, if people aren't worried about getting vivid or whatever the latest disease is spreading, we are worried about getting killed. While shopping for Christmas in December, I had a mini panic attack at the store because I worried about things like this. Last week alone, my local news reported on all seven days, someone dying due to gun violence. Three were school shootings. It really is exhausting. I don't believe in arming the teachers with guns. for starters, what if a teacher lays the gun down and a student picks it up and plays with it and accidentally shoots another student? What if a teacher comes to school in a bad mood ( which can happen! ) and decides to shoot a student. We've all heard stories about students doing the same towards teachers, so why can't a teacher do the same? School shootings should not be a thing. Or any mass shooting. Thanks to our US government, the United States is the #1 country with the most mass shootings. And it sickens me that they care more about banning books, drag shows, and tiktok than our kids. This is not protecting our kids. No one is protecting our kids. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among kids. Think about that, folks! I'm tried of living in fear. I'm tired of turning on the news or looking at the internet and seeing this kind of sh**. Let's do something! Let's fight for our kids! 

[mybeingthere]

This is a shot of two skyscrapers. 50 California, (completed in 1972), is reflected in the facade of 101 California, (completed in 1982).In 1993, a mass murder occurred at 101 California Street. 

A disgruntled client of the law firm Pettit & Martin entered their offices on the 34th floor and killed eight people and wounded six before killing himself. 

The event was a catalyst in the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a drive initiated by California Senator Dianne Feinstein to ban assault weapons.

Source - San Francisco Obscura — Photography by Jon Rendell.

[this-shit-is-zucchini-baby]

what? no it didn't, this is just blatantly fake. I don't even need to do an indepth analysis, the 1994 AWB expired after 10 years specifically because it failed to prove that it did anything. that was a clause specifically set up at the beginning to force it to pass with both party support. It says that straight up on the first page of the Wikipedia article.

want further evidence? COLUMBINE happened during it, in 1999.

Assault weapon bans frequently, FREQUENTLY, have clauses that allow police and federal agents the ability to buy otherwise restricted guns. any magazine above 10 rounds was banned during those 10 years, but if you were a cop? hah, look at this mag stamping.

If you blindly support an assault weapons ban without reading it through 100%, you are supporting police being able to have superior ability to subjugate people.

ACAB.