New York Times reporter Peter Baker appeared disappointed Wednesday that a shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school wouldn’t cause “a lot to change” on gun control.
An active shooter opened fire during an all-school mass held by the Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday morning, killing two children and wounding at least 17 other people. MSNBC host Chris Jansing questioned if a ban on so-called “assault weapons” would pass after the incident.
“For decades, we’ve heard Democrats talk about better, stronger national gun laws. Even if there was any movement in that direction, obviously it’s not going to happen overnight,” Jansing said. “Trump is now saying, I can fix this. There was a new poll out from the Associated Press. 81% see crime as a major problem in large cities. 53% approve of his handling of crime. So as Democrats, is there any sense that they can take a moment, a horrific moment like this, kids sitting in pews, literally getting shot to death and try to do something to help it from stopping again, particularly as it comes to assault weapons?”
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“Well, it feels like we’re in a loop, right? That we have seen this happen so many times before, and the reactions of the political class are fairly predictable. You know, Democrats instantly call for more restrictions on guns. Republicans, most of them pretty quickly say, this is not about guns. Don’t try to take our guns away,” Baker responded.
Baker said that at one point, President Donald Trump backed some gun control measures and had talked about taking on the National Rifle Association, but had instead loosened regulations imposed by the Biden administration.
“Assault weapons” is a euphemism that gun-control advocates use to gain support for banning certain semi-automatic firearms with features that provide a cosmetic similarity to firearms capable of fully-automatic operation. The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated that over 24 million “modern sporting rifles,” which include the AR-15, are “in circulation” in a July 2022 release.
“What has incorrectly been termed an ‘assault weapon’ is a semi-automatic firearm that fires just one bullet with each pull of the trigger (versus a fully automatic firearm — machine gun — which continues to shoot until the trigger is released),” the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) said in a fact sheet.
“I wouldn’t expect a lot to change here. I think we would see this pattern,” Baker said. “And if things like Newtown, the shooting at the school there years ago wouldn’t change things, if shootings at Charleston, the Mother Emanuel Church wouldn’t change things, it’s hard to see what at this point would be enough to move the political conversation.”
CNN Senior Justice Correspondent Evan Perez inaccurately claimed Wednesday that semiautomatic firearms could fire “dozens of bullets” with a single pull of the trigger while covering a Minneapolis shooting. Information on how semi-automatic firearms operate is available on numerous websites easily accessible through a simple search on the internet conducted by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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