Focus on banning assault weapons

Assault rifles have no legitimate civilian use. Their sale was banned in the 1990s, but the ban was allowed to expire when Dennis Hastert refused to allow a bill extending it to come to a vote.

They have been used over and over again to quickly kill large numbers of innocent people- from the 6-year-old kids whose little bodies were torn to pieces by a Bushmaster assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine at Newtown, to the AK-47 used to massacre Walmart shoppers in El Paso and the AR15 that killed nine people and wounded 27 in less than a minute in Dayton.

The only Republican response has been to blame violent video games and call for doing more about "mental illness." Their dishonesty and hypocrisy are palpable.

Numerous studies have shown that there is no link between playing violent video games and the commission of acts of violence. As to their supposed concern for preventing mass murder by the mentally ill, they assume that you will forget that they passed a bill, subsequently signed into law by Trump, to rescind an Obama-era regulation designed to prevent persons with mental illness so severe that a conservator had been appointed to manage their affairs, from purchasing firearms.

They have also voted to reduce or cut funding for mental health programs over and over again. The Republicans in Congress have been purchased by the NRA.

We need a law which makes it a serious federal felony, with mandatory prison time, to sell an assault weapon.

Persons who already own an assault weapon should be required to turn them over to law enforcement within 90 days of the effective date of the law and the federal government should compensate them with a payment equal to what they paid for the weapon. The failure to turn in an assault weapon should also be a felony with mandatory prison time.

Wiley Edmondson

Geneva