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A 20-year-old gunman fired on Donald Trump with a rifle that has been at the center of the national debate over gun control, and that the former president and Congress have resisted calls to ban.
Since taking office, President Joe Biden has made dozens of unanswered calls to Congress to renew a ban on so-called assault weapons like the AR-15-style rifle that was used to shoot into a crowd at a Trump rally on July 13.
The assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on Saturday night is likely to renew debate about the state of the nation’s gun laws and the proliferation of high-powered firearms like AR-style rifles, which have become the most popular firearms in America while being used in some of the deadliest mass shooting events over the last two decades.
“Time and time again our communities are shaken by acts of gun violence that have invaded what should be our safe places, and that includes the violence that we saw,” according to Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of gun reform group Moms Demand Action.
“But they are a consequence of our country’s weak gun laws and guns everywhere culture — laws that allow hate to be armed with a gun to easily take someone else’s life,” she added.
The 20-year-old suspected gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, could legally purchase rifles like the AR-15 in Pennsylvania, as shotguns and rifles can be purchased in the state at age 18. The minimum age to purchase handguns in Pennsylvania is 21.
But according to law enforcement officials speaking to ABC News, the firearm recovered at the scene of the was legally purchased by the suspect’s father.
About one in 20 US adults — roughly 16 million Americans — own at least one AR-15-style rifle, according to polling from Ipsos and The Washington Post.
AR-style rifles — which were initially developed as a military weapon before becoming the most popular gun in America — were used in at least 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings since 2012.
Biden has called on Congress to renew an assault weapons ban or pledged that his Democratic allies will do so more than 70 times since entering the White House, according to The Independent’s review of his public statements.
AR-15-style rifles accounted for 1.2 percent of all manufactured American firearms in 1990.
Thirty years later, the weapon made up 23.4 per cent, according to The Washington Post, which estimates there are at least 20 million AR-15s “stored and stashed” across the US.
Nearly every major gun manufacturer makes its own version of the weapon.
A House Oversight Committee probe found that five major gun manufacturers — Daniel Defense, Bushmaster, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson Brands Inc., and Sturm, Ruger & Co. — collectively earned $1 billion in revenue over a decade from sales of AR-style rifles alone.
Last year, Republican congressman Barry Moore of Alabama sought to make the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”
The weapon was first produced by Armalite in the 1950s, intended as a weapon on par with the Soviet Union’s AK-47. The patent was later acquired by Colt for production of its M16 under contract with the Department of Defense. That patent expired in 1977.
The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, which imposed the so-called assault weapons ban, was enacted in 1994.
But the law expired in 2004, and Congress has repeatedly decided not to renew it.
“Donald Trump blocked the legislation that would have kept the gun used to shoot him out of the shooter’s hands,” said Samuel Schwartz, whose cousin was killed in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
Gun reform group Brady: United Against Gun Violence — which was named after former White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled and later died in 2014 after he was shot during an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan in 1981 — has called on Congress to renew the assault weapons ban in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life.
“If you keep talking about the assassination attempt, don’t you dare tell the kids who survive school shootings and their families to ‘just get over it,’” said activist David Hogg, who survived the Parkland shooting.
The Trump rally shooting was “unacceptable and what happens every day to kids who aren’t the president and don’t survive isn’t either,” he said.
A study from Northwestern University found that the ban prevented 11 public mass shootings within the decade it was in effect. The study also estimates that keeping the ban in place until 2019 would have prevented 30 public shootings that killed 339 and injured 1,139 people.
House Republicans this year have also proposed a national funding bill that would eliminate public money for research on gun violence prevention and limit research on gunshot injuries.
During an address to the National Rifle Association in May, Trump claimed that the Second Amendment “is very much on the ballot” and baselessly alleged that Biden is “trying to rip firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.”
Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law in 2022 to clarify licensing requirements for firearms dealers and strengthen background check requirements for gun purchases, including a review of juvenile records for anyone 16 years of age or older who attempts to purchase a firearm.
But the administration’s efforts followed a landmark decision from the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority that has complicated how states and the federal government can restrict gun access.
That decision states that such restrictions must be rooted in the nation’s “historical tradition” of gun ownership, what critics have blasted as an impossibly high bar to combat a modern crisis.
