PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
Rep. Cicilline proposes reauthorizing 1994 federal assault-weapons ban :: 12/03/2015
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline announced Wednesday that he plans to introduce legislation reauthorizing the assault weapons ban.
As he spoke on the House floor, Cicilline referenced Friday's shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, the latest mass shooting in the United States this year.
Soon after he finished, there was the latest mass shooting -- this time, at a facility that offers services to people with developmental disabilities in San Bernandino, Calif. At least 20 people were reported shot, according to early reports from the scene.
As mayor of Providence and now as a Congressman, Cicilline has long supported a ban on assault rifles, which he said Wednesday are "weapons of war, not tools of self-defense. They serve no purpose other than to kill."
The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the manufacture, transfer and possession of 19 specific semi-automatic assault weapons, including AK-47s, AR15s, Uzis, and MAC-10s, ammunition devices that could fire 10 or more rounds. Cicilline was mayor when he and other Rhode Island mayors and chiefs joined then-Congressman Patrick Kennedy in 2004 urging Congress and then-President George W. Bush to extend the ban, arguing that it had reduced firearm deaths by 25 percent.
But the ban expired in September 2004, after Congress decided not to extend it.
A year later, then-Mayor Cicilline supported state legislation that mirrored the expired federal ban. Gun advocates turned out in force against the bill, which never made it out of committee.
As congressman, Cicilline continued to support reauthorizing the federal ban. He argued for it after the mass shootings in Tucson, Ariz., in 2011, when he talked about the mass shootings at Fort Hood in 2009 and Virginia Tech in 2007. Cicilline spoke again after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Each time, he said that the ammunition devices used in those shootings would have been illegal if the assault-weapons ban was in place.
On Wednesday, Cicilline spoke about the three people who were murdered at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. The Iraq war veteran, mother and police officer "are now among the more than 12,000 Americans who have died in gun-related incidents since the start of the year," Cicilline said.
He said he will introduce the legislation in the next several weeks to reauthorize the ban. "The only thing that stands in the way is Congress’s failure to act. The time for action is now," Cicilline said.
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20151202/NEWS/151209831
