After Nashville, Congress confronts limits of new gun law
Legal Outlook
Nine months ago, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun law, the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades.
“Lives will be saved,” he said at the White House.
The law has already prevented some potentially dangerous people from owning guns. Yet since that signing last summer, the tally of mass shootings in the United States has only grown. Five dead at a nightclub in Colorado. Eleven killed at a dance hall in California. And just this past week, three 9-year-olds and three adults were shot and killed at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.
A day after that school shooting, Biden’s tone was markedly less optimistic than it was the signing ceremony.
“What in God’s name are we doing?” he asked in a speech Tuesday, calling for a ban on so-called assault weapons like those that were used to kill at The Covenant School in Nashville. “There’s a moral price to pay for inaction.”
Biden and others had hailed last year’s bipartisan gun bill — approved in the weeks after the shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas — as a new way forward.
Several months in, the law has had some success: Stepped-up FBI background checks have blocked gun sales for 119 buyers under the age of 21, prosecutions have increased for unlicensed gun sellers and new gun trafficking penalties have been charged in at least 30 cases around the country. Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health services for children and schools.
Related listings
-
Supreme Court skeptical of man who offered adult adoptions
Legal Outlook 03/27/2023The Supreme Court seemed inclined Monday to rule against a man convicted of violating immigration law for offering adult adoptions he falsely claimed would lead to citizenship.Attorneys for Helaman Hansen told the justices during approximately 90 min...
-
Supreme Court won’t upset Arkansas anti-Israel boycott law
Legal Outlook 02/21/2023The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to step into a legal fight over state laws that require contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel.The justices rejected an appeal on behalf of an alternative weekly newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, that objec...
-
Top Brazil court greenlights probe of Bolsonaro for riot
Legal Outlook 01/14/2023A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday authorized adding former President Jair Bolsonaro in its investigation into who incited the Jan. 8 riot in the nation’s capital, as part of a broader crackdown to hold responsible parties to account.A...
New Rochelle, New York Personal Injury Lawyers
If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Kommer, Bave & Ollman, LLP, in New Rochelle, New York, immediately. We can answer all your questions and work with you to determine if you have the grounds for a personal injury lawsuit. The attorneys at our firm are determined to resolve even the most difficult of cases. We will work closely with you to determine the best course of action to get your claim or case resolved in the most efficient way possible. We will fight for your right to compensation! No one should have to suffer a financial burden from the result of another person’s carelessness. The attorneys at Kommer, Bave & Ollman, LLP will aggressively fight to ensure that justice is served on your behalf.