Semiautomatic rifle used in shooting at Trump rally is same type used in school shootings

A mass shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, left at least one attendee dead and former President Donald Trump and others injured on July 13. Law enforcement officials recovered an AR-15-style semiautomatic weapon similar to those used in many recent mass shootings in the United States.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed a law banning the sale of assault weapons and many semiautomatic guns with high-capacity magazines for 10 years. Since the law expired in 2004, the nation has seen a major spike in the number of mass shootings, including shootings at K-12 schools. 

Deadly shootings at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school in 2012; an Orlando, Florida, nightclub in 2016; a Las Vegas music festival in 2017; a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church in 2017; a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019; and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 each involved assault weapons with large-capacity magazines. 

“It literally can pulverize bones, it can shatter your liver and it can provide this blast effect,” Johns Hopkins Hospital trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran told the Washington Post in 2023 for a story documenting the force of AR-15 weapons. “We often sanitize what is happening.”

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress have repeatedly attempted to enact a new ban on semiautomatic guns and high-capacity magazines. The National Rifle Association and the Republican lawmakers it bankrolls have blocked those efforts.

In 2022, the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives voted 217-213 to pass an assault weapons ban, mostly along party lines; it did not make it through the Senate. 

Nebraska Republican Reps. Don Bacon, Mike Flood, and Adrian Smith all voted no. 

Bacon and Smith also voted against a 2022 bill that would have raised to 21 the age minimum for purchases of semiautomatic weapons. “I oppose raising the age of purchase because this country trusts young adults at the age of 18 to vote and to serve in the military protecting our country,” Bacon said in a press release. “So why aren’t they considered mature enough to purchase a gun? If a person has a record of violence, then I would support, but I cannot when this impacts adults who have done nothing wrong.”

Polls have shown broad support for an assault weapons ban. A May 2023 survey by the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety and Blue Rose Research found 65% of likely American voters backed a ban, while 32% opposed one.

Trump himself backed an assault weapons ban in his 2000 book “The America We Deserve,” media reported in 2019, and, according to New York Times reporting, he asked what could be done about assault rifles after the 2019 El Paso shooting. Nothing, the Times said he was told by his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, or he “would lose.” After receiving millions of dollars in support for his campaigns from the NRA, Trump backed off all of his previous support for gun restrictions.