WASHINGTON — After 288 school mass shootings in the United States since 2009 -- and more than 45,000 firearms deaths in 2020 alone -- momentum finally seems to be building on Capitol Hill for lawmakers to take action on guns.
"These weapons have no place in our community," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) on Wednesday at a hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which she chairs.
She continued: "No civilians need an assault rifle and the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right to own a weapon of war."
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative-leaning Democrat, has now said he would support increasing the age from 18 to 21 for adults to be able to purchase semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15s that are repeatedly used in recent mass shootings.
Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine are expressing very cautious optimism that maybe this time, some kind of deal may come together, even if any reforms are modest.
"I am strongly in support of the bipartisan effort on the part of addressing gun violence," said Warner. "It probably won't go as far as I'd like to go. But making progress even for a small step at a national level, I think is extraordinarily important."
Kaine agreed.
"One of the things that gives me hope is paradoxical: it's the compounding weight of these tragedies," he said. "It is just harder and harder for this great deliberative body, the U.S. Senate, to ignore this. And the back-to-back horrific shootings in Buffalo and Texas make it very hard to ignore."
The non-profit organization Gun Violence Archive said the United States has had 246 mass shootings this year, putting the country on pace to match or surpass the worst year on record.