Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a package of gun control bills in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
The “Protecting Our Kids Act” passed 223-204, mostly along party lines. Only five Republicans joined the Democrats in passing the legislation, which was a package of eight bills that included raising the legal age to buy certain semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21.
Most Republicans voted against the legislative package, arguing that it infringed on American’s rights to bear arms.
Thursday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” U.S. Rep. Barry Moore (R-Enterprise) explained why he joined his Republican colleagues in voting against the gun control bills.
“I was a hard no on all of the above,” Moore said, “and again I think what we’re seeing is they’re trying to take a crisis and limit Americans rights to own firearms and it’s just something that the Democrats are very good at doing. It’s like Rahm Emmanuel said — never waste a good crisis. They’re taking this recent school shooting and trying to limit American’s rights to bear arms and infringe on our constitutional rights.”
The congressman said the focus should be on making sure the schools are protected.
“I think we have to look at hardening schools,” he argued, “I’m ranking member of Economic Opportunity for the Veterans Affairs and we have a lot of veterans coming out of the military that would love to have a job working in schools protecting our kids and defending those teachers and those facilities, so there are some opportunities to do it the right way.”
Moore said we should take a lesson from history on how we should respond to these recent mass shootings.
“When the airplanes ran into the buildings on 9/11, we didn’t ban flying, and we didn’t ban airplanes,” he continued. “We secured our airports, and I think that’s kind of what we need to do, we need to secure our schools.”
He said the focus should be on protecting schools because gun control never works.
“We know gun laws don’t work,” he said. “If gun laws worked, we wouldn’t have problems in Chicago, New York, and D.C. Gun laws will never work. The deal is deterrent, and hardening and making sure that people can’t just walk into schools with guns.”
The congressman added the legislation didn’t have a chance of passing in the Senate.
“I think that the Senate will certainly not pass that,” he said. “I worry sometimes about some of the senators, what they may do up there, but right now I don’t see anything that we passed off the floor of the House last night getting through the Senate.”
None of the GOP members of the Alabama congressional delegation voted in favor of the gun control legislation in the House, with the sole Democratic member, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Birmingham), voting for it.
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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