The close ones of last month’s shooting in Charleston, South Carolina church went all the way to Washington on Wednesday for insisting that U.S. lawmakers vote on legislation for expanding background check before gun sales.
The odds of success are narrow since similar legislation has been unsuccessful two years ago when the Connecticut school massacre took place costing the lives of 20 precious little kids.
Andre Duncan, whose aunt Myra Thompson was slain in the Charleston church on June 17, said, “I’m here today to speak up on behalf of the Charleston community and all who are sick and tired of Congress ignoring the problem of gun violence.”
The Congress has been urged to shut the loopholes in this alleged Brady law by Duncan and that requires licensed firearms seller for checking criminal history of buyer before selling it to owners who are prohibited from owning a gun.
Passed in 1993, the Brady law has been named after President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was shot and wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on the president.
Standing strong alongside friends and family of the Charleston victims and of other casualties of gun violence, Duncan declared in the visitors’ center of the U.S. Capitol, “I will not rest until our legislators do what’s right by expanding Brady background checks at gun shows and online sales. This will save lives.”
Dylann Roof, a white man has been charged with the shooting after the photos that emerged had been his. The photos had been of him posing with the Confederate battle flag on a website that displayed a racist manifesto.
There weren’t too many outcries for Congress to pass legislations of such, “It hasn’t been the loudest cry,” said Representative Mike Thompson, a Democratic co-sponsor of legislation to expand Brady background checks at Wednesday’s event. The bill had been introduced in March while the measure had also been introduced in the last congress but it failed to get a hearing and a similar measure failed a Senate vote in 2013.
Opponents of better background checks still believe that criminals will always find a way to get guns, no matter how. But Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he was exhausted of hearing cynics stating that if Congress could not act after the Connecticut school shooting, lawmakers will not be able to act now. Gross said that since the Connecticut school massacre, six states had passed laws expanding Brady background checks to all gun sales, “and it’s time for Congress to catch up.”
