Clinton expands on call to reinstate assault weapons ban: ‘It’s a different world now’

Former President Bill Clinton, who signed a since-expired ban on assault weapons in 1994, called for the prohibition to be reinstated in an editorial for Time magazine on Wednesday.

Noting that Congress’s failure to reinstate the ban since it expired in 2004 has largely been attributed to fear of electoral losses like those of the 1994 midterms, Clinton wrote that the political landscape would be friendlier to such a move today.

{mosads}“The 2018 elections, thanks to the passionate activism of citizen groups across the country, proved that it’s a different world now,” he wrote.

“Today members of Congress will be supported if they reinstate the assault-weapons and large-ammunition magazine bans, and if the Senate passes the universal-background-check law already passed by the House of Representatives,” he added.

Clinton previously called for the restoration of the ban on Monday in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that collectively killed more than 30 people, tweeting, “How many more people have to die before we reinstate the assault weapons ban & the limit on high-capacity magazines & pass universal background checks?”

“Of course, no single action can completely end mass shootings and the wave of gun violence that plagues communities across America,” Clinton wrote in the Time op-ed. “We all have to stand against, not inflame, the racial, religious and gender-based bigotries that often drive the delusions of mass killers.”

Clinton also called proposed “red flag” laws endorsed by congressional Republicans a “good idea,” but noted that other nations have comparable rates of mental illness to the U.S. but vastly smaller rates of gun violence.

“We know reinstating the assault-weapons ban and the ammunition limit, and making improved background checks universal, will help. A 2018 RAND study found that policies that could bring about a drop in gun deaths as small as just 1% would mean 1,500 fewer deaths in a decade. And we can do better than that,” he wrote.

An assault weapons ban has been introduced in the Republican Senate but not yet received a vote. The Trump administration in March banned so-called bump stocks, which were used in a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed nearly 60 people.