While elected officials and community leaders condemned the attempted assassination of former President Trump on Saturday, as well as political violence in general, some also lamented the shooter’s basic access to the powerful firearm used in the attack.
They noted that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who shot at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, used an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, similar to a weapon that has been used in numerous mass shootings across the country.
They include a shooting in Philadelphia last year in which a man who was apparently mentally unstable was named as the murder suspect. five people and several others injuredand 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh in which 11 believers were murdered.
Pennsylvania law allows anyone 18 or older to buy an AR-style rifle or other long gun from a store after passing a quick background check or from someone who failed a background check. In the case of Saturday’s shooting, the gun was reportedly purchased by Crooks’ father.
To prevent or limit harm from such incidents, the state should ban or restrict access to so-called assault weapons, said officials who spoke at a news conference on election security on Monday.
For a political candidate to “get shot and almost killed, that’s an absolute disgrace,” said Philadelphia Democratic Party chairman and former congressman Bob Brady. “And … with a long-range automatic rifle that only law enforcement and the military should have — maybe we should figure that out, do something about it.”
Speakers at a press conference outside Philadelphia City Hall mourned Corey Comperatore, a rally participant who died when he used his body to shield his wife and daughter. Two other people in the audience were seriously injured, and Trump was shot in the ear.
“It’s clear to many of us that a weapon of war should never end up in the hands of a 20-year-old like it did Saturday. This is something we will work together on as a region to prevent further gun violence,” said Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner recalled that a similar firearm was found in the vehicle two men from Virginia who went to Philadelphia in November 2020, allegedly to interfere in the recent election campaigns of Biden and Trump.
“A couple of guys thought it would make sense to take an AR-15—sound familiar?—an AR-15 to where the votes were counted in the last presidential election,” Krasner said. “Now they’re felons. Now they’re convicted felons. Now they’re under the supervision of a court.”
Divided along party lines
One sec Crooks’ Motives and Actions Before Saturday’s Shooting are still unclear, state lawmakers and gun safety advocates say a series of laws have been proposed that could make it harder for him to get a gun, as well as the shooters in multiple other incidents in Pennsylvania, to commit violent crimes.
“For a variety of reasons, making assault rifles unavailable may have helped prevent this bill or limit the harm it did,” said Adam Garber, executive director of Ceasefire PA, a Philadelphia-based gun violence advocacy group.
Assault weapons are banned in nine states: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington and California.
In January, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Judiciary Committee made a decision five pieces of legislation relating to firearmsincluding a ban on assault weapons such as AR-15s and AK-47s. It would cover rifles, shotguns and pistols that can apply high-capacity ammunition magazines or are capable of fully automatic, semi-automatic or burst fire.
The bill was unanimously supported by Democrats and unanimously opposed by Republicans. Opponents argued that some firearms are used in shooting competitions and that citizens need to be armed to protect themselves from people illegally crossing the U.S. border, and provided other arguments.
Garber said the Legislature has options other than banning guns, such as requiring gun owners to have licenses, tightening background check requirements or imposing a waiting period before a potential buyer can acquire a firearm, which would discourage impulsive suicides or shootings.
The city of Philadelphia tried to pass its own firearms laws, but they were blocked by a court because state law on firearms priority.
Call for Safe Storage and Red Flag Regulations
The Democratic-led House of Representatives has also introduced several other gun restrictions and safety measures in the past few years. Most of them have stalled or been ignored in the Republican-led Senate, according to state Sen. Art Haywood, who represents parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County and has co-sponsored gun safety legislation since taking office a decade ago.
“We have a Republican majority in the state Senate that does not support real gun control,” he said Monday. “I call their strategy the ‘guns everywhere’ strategy — good guy with a gun killing bad guy with a gun. It doesn’t work.”
Republican lawmakers have called some of the proposed restrictions unconstitutional or unnecessarily punitive against law-abiding gun owners, and said gun violence should be addressed by arresting more criminals and enforcing existing laws more rigorously.
After the House of Representatives passed legislation last year to keep guns safe and sound around children and hold parents accountable for their children’s apply of guns, state Senate Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Lisa Baker, a Republican from Luzerne County, said no intention to promote draft laws.
“I said we would invite proposals from anyone who represented some kind of consensus on approaches that were considered constitutional, feasible and practical,” Baker said, according to Patriotic News“We have not received such a proposal so far.”
Reports that Crooks used his father’s legally purchased gun to shoot Trump and other victims point to possible connection proposed regulations for safe and sound storage It would require firearm owners to lock their guns, especially in the presence of minors, Garber and others say.
Crooks was 20, so he wasn’t a minor. But “generally, locking up firearms is responsible, and part of that is because it also requires someone to take a break when they’re cocking their firearm, and it prevents them from making impulsive actions,” Garber said. “That can be really helpful in preventing all forms of violence, including suicides and shootings.”
He and lawmakers also touted the possible benefits of so-called “red flag” lawsSuch measures allow for extreme risk protection orders, under which a judge can order the fleeting seizure of a person’s weapons if he or she is deemed to pose a risk to himself or others.
“I certainly don’t know anything about the mental state of the person,” state Sen. Sharif Street said, referring to Crooks. “But if the person is in a mental health crisis and they can be identified, and there’s a process for family members and others to take away people’s guns, that could prevent a lot of mass shootings, and a lot of shootings in general.”
Haywood said the women’s rights marches that followed Trump’s election in 2016 led to increased interest among lawmakers in passing bills to take guns away from perpetrators of domestic violence and people deemed to pose a threat.
In a scarce case of bipartisan agreement, the measure perpetrators of domestic violence giving up their weapons became law (although enforcement was irregular). However, the accompanying red flag proposal “did not reach the finish line,” he said.
“There were due process issues, how do you take guns away from people who are in danger to themselves or others,” he said. “They haven’t been resolved.”
Long list of proposals on hold
Gun measures proposed in Pennsylvania include one that would require reporting of lost and stolen guns. That would assist combat “sham purchases,” in which a person sells a gun to someone who is prohibited from owning a firearm and then claims it is lost or stolen, Street said.
Other proposed legislation would close a loophole that allows private gun sales without background checks; ban the sale of so-called “cop-killer” armor-piercing rounds; raise the minimum age for owning long guns; ban bump stocks and other devices that convert semiautomatic weapons into automatic weapons; and ban ghost guns, which are home-assembled and have no serial numbers, making them virtually impossible to trace.
Hayward and Street said they intend to continue sponsoring bills on gun restrictions and gun safety, but they have doubts any of them will pass if Democrats do not take control of the state Senate in future elections.
Though the target of the shooting in Butler on Saturday was a prominent Republican and a group of his supporters, Street said the event is unlikely to motivate GOP state lawmakers to support stricter gun laws.
“It happened when we weren’t in session, so we weren’t together, and we’ll see what happens when we come back,” he said. “But considering that the Tree of Life didn’t — there was a huge loss of life there — and considering that mass shootings of policemen in my district, at the intersection of 15th and Erie, no, I’m not sure if that’s gonna work.
“It’s going to happen at some point. I’m not sure we’re there yet,” Street said.
Hayward said the shooting at the Trump rally clearly showed the state’s failure to address the enormous harm caused by gun violence.
“It’s terrible for the nation and terrible for Pennsylvania. The fact that the shooter was from Pennsylvania was just devastating,” he said. “To some extent, we are responsible for what happened here. It’s very sad.”
