WASHINGTON — One of the first votes cast by new Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich was against Senator Dianne Feinstein's legislation to reinstate the assault weapons ban in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
In the decade since, as mass shootings have struck nearly every corner of the United States, the New Mexico senator, an avid hunter once backed by the NRA, has pondered what it would take to craft legislation that avoids banning guns that Americans use for legitimate purposes and still save lives.
He has also watched his two sons grow up and learn how to hunt and how to duck and take cover in mass shooting exercises that brought him to tears.
“I think there is a generational change happening,” Heinrich said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“It has really made those of us who grew up in gun culture reevaluate our views and really think about this: This is not a black and white issue,” he said. “You can accept the fact that guns are a legitimate tool without accepting that you should be able to own firearms that are truly designed to cause mass lethality.”
The result is a new version of Heinrich and Maine Sen. Angus King's gun violence legislation that targets what are often referred to as assault weapons, which are among the most popular in America, and focuses on the role of the weapon they carry. particularly dangerous in the event of mass shootings.
Rather than trying to ban assault weapons entirely, their legislation would essentially require such weapons to have permanently fixed magazines, limited to 10 rounds for rifles and 15 rounds for some heavy pistols. The idea is to reduce a shooter's ability to fire dozens of rounds in seconds and prevent him from being able to attach a new magazine to keep shooting.
The senators come from rural states where guns are popular, and their legislation would allow gun owners to keep existing weapons but would also create a buyback program, among other things. It's called the Go Safe Act, named after the internal cycle of high-pressure gas in the firearms in question.
“We were both uncomfortable with an assault weapon being defined by its appearance, because that can be manipulated, and we were looking for more functionality,” said King, who recently suffered the worst mass shooting in its history. endured when a gunman shot a Lewiston. bowling alley and bar, killing 18 and injuring many others.
“Lewiston has made it clear, certainly to me, how important it is,” King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, told the AP. “It kind of strengthened my resolve.”
The National Rifle Association has labeled the legislation “the most sweeping gun ban of the 21st century.”
Randy Kozuch, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement that the bill would “ban the types of firearms and magazines most often used by Americans to defend themselves and their families.”
He said the bill “blatantly violates” the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court rulings.
Fourteen states and Washington DC have their own bans on high-capacity magazines, according to the Giffords Center to Prevent Gun Violence, although these laws are facing new lawsuits in the wake of a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that led to widespread unrest has led to the rule of law. the national firearms legislative landscape.
But Mark Collins, director of federal policy at the gun violence prevention organization Brady, said this new approach, focusing on the gas-operated mechanism and non-detachable magazine, is unique. The time it takes to stop and reload, he says, is often the “critical moment” when a mass shooter can be stopped.
“This will not prevent mass shootings because you cannot prevent mass shootings in a free society where everyone has access to a firearm,” Collins said.
“But what it can do is it can significantly limit the damage that someone could do in a targeted mass attack.”
It's not at all the kind of legislation that's expected to come to a vote in Congress anytime soon. The senators, along with Democratic co-sponsors Michael Bennet of Colorado and Mark Kelly of Arizona, do not yet have a Republican support base. But Senate talks are quietly underway as mass shootings hit schools, college campuses, concerts, bars, nightclubs, churches, a movie theater and bowling alleys across the US.
The effort comes as Feinstein, whose landmark 1994 assault weapons ban expired after a decade, was never able to revive her legislation as gun violence in the country only worsened. She died in October at the age of 90.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had worked with Feinstein years ago on the assault weapons ban and tried unsuccessfully to push it to a vote on Wednesday. “We need it now more than ever,” he said.
Heinrich worked with Feinstein in the Senate, particularly on the Intelligence Committee, where he said he had great respect for the California Democrat who led the panel through tumultuous times, especially the investigation into U.S. interrogation techniques that became known as the torture report.
But regarding firearms legislation, he said, “I've dealt with it in a slightly different way, partly because of my kind of technical background.”
His goal for the past few years, he said, has been to figure out “how to build something that I think creates a regulatory structure that is not focused on the individual firearm model, but on the mechanical properties that make these things dangerous.”
And he said, “to write it in a way that hopefully we can get through it eventually, and secondly, that it can stand up to the Supreme Court – in this Supreme Court, not in the Supreme Court of the 1990s.”
Heinrich choked up as he recalled how his only son took cover at the sight of a workman carrying what appeared to be a firearm into a community hall where they met in Albuquerque. It was a thermal imaging gun.
“They both grew up with firearms, and a lot of their memories, really positive ones, involve firearms,” he said, describing the family's hunting of elk, deer, javelina and quail for food.
“But they also grew up in the era where they learned mass shootings and lockdowns and all the terrible baggage that brings,” he said, adding that one of his sons marched through Washington in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting school in Florida.
“And I thought, you know, in conversations with them, they could draw a line, and you know, if kids can do that when they're teenagers, I thought policymakers should figure that out.”
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Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.