In the months before Saturday’s assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, the state’s legislature blocked a bill banning the sale of the type of assault rifle allegedly used in the attack.
Prior to that, at the federal level, nearly all of Pennsylvania’s Republican congressional delegation voted against a bill to reinstate a nationwide assault weapons ban, and the US Senate GOP blocked the legislation.
In January, a Democratic-controlled Pennsylvania House committee passed a bill banning the sale of assault weapons — against the unanimous opposition of Republicans on the panel. That legislation, however, was then tabled in the Pennsylvania assembly, facing stiff opposition from the state’s Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association (NRA).
On Saturday, Trump was wounded in the ear in a shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The suspected shooter, killed by Secret Service snipers, was identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, twenty, from nearby Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and an AR-15-type semiautomatic assault rifle was recovered at the scene. The gun was reportedly purchased by and registered to the shooter’s father.
When Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania opposed the assault weapons ban legislation earlier this year, they cited constitutional concerns as one of their reasons.
Yet even as the GOP made that legal argument, the Trump-packed US Supreme Court — the final arbiter on constitutional interpretation — was simultaneously allowing a similar ban to continue in a neighboring state.
“If we had banned assault weapons, this might have ended differently,” said a Pennsylvania lawmaker who asked for anonymity, citing safety concerns. “Whether or…
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Auteur: Helen Santoro
