U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today celebrated a vote in the House to ban military style weapons from America’s streets. If enacted, H.R. 1808, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021 would revive and build on the watershed 1994 ban that lowered the frequency of mass shooting deaths by 70 percent. Republicans let the ban lapse in 2004 and for 18 years have blocked every attempt to reinstate it. Rep. Pascrell is an original cosponsor of the legislation today.

“Uvalde. Poway. Buffalo. Boulder. Orlando. Parkland. Aurora. Las Vegas. Sandy Hook. Highland Park. Sand Bernardino. Odessa. Sutherland Springs. Tree of Life. All of them the sites of tragic mass shootings. All of them committed with assault weapons,” said Rep. Pascrell, the longtime co-chair of the Congressional Law Enforcement Caucus. “Our streets are drenched with blood spilled by these weapons. Bullets fired from these weapons travel at three time the speed of sound. They liquefy tissue and vaporize bone. These weapons extinguish life with lethal precision. They have no place in our streets.

“For decades, Republican extremists and partisan rightwing judges have badly warped the Second Amendment. The late Chief Justice of the United States Warren Burger called perversion of the Second Amendment ‘one of the greatest pieces of fraud…on the American people’ he ever saw. The third word of the Second Amendment is ‘regulated.’ Yet Republicans have for decades have blocked all regulation of assault weapons. Republicans bear the blame for our streets being flooded with these weapons. But today we have acted to ban war weapons. Few measures we enact would save more lives. In the New Jersey state legislature I led our efforts to enact an assault weapon ban. In Congress we are finally catching up. I pray the Senate will do the right thing and put this into law for good.”