Rep. Phillips Votes To Pass Gun Control Bill After Recent Massacres

HENNEPIN COUNTY, MN — U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips voted Wednesday to help pass the Protecting Our Kids Act, a bill that would make several major changes to gun laws in America.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) introduced the bill May 31, one week after an 18-year-old man shot and killed 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 others at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

That massacre occurred 10 days after 10 people were killed and three others were injured during a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

The 18-year-old man arrested after that shooting faces 10 counts of first-degree murder, 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime, and three counts of attempted murder as a hate crime, CNN reported. Police allege the white man targeted the supermarket because it’s in a predominantly Black community, according to the report.

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Provisions of the Protecting Our Kids Act include raising the age to buy a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21; banning the import, sale, manufacture, transfer and possession of large-capacity magazines; regulating bump stocks; and establishing new crimes for gun trafficking and related conduct.

The bill would also allow local governments to use grant funding to kickstart buyback programs for large-capacity magazines.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting Our Kids Act by a mostly party-line vote of 223-204. Only two Democrats in the House voted against the bill, while just five Republicans supported it. Minnesota’s U.S. House delegation voted strictly along party lines.

The vote came after federal lawmakers heard testimony Wednesday from victims of recent shootings and their families.

Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo told a U.S. House committee she covered herself in a dead classmate’s blood so she wouldn't be shot during the attack at her elementary school in Uvalde last month, PBS NewsHour reported.

Uvalde parents Kimberly and Felix Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was killed May 24, told lawmakers they support a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, as well as red-flag laws, which allow courts to order the temporary removal of firearms from someone who could be a danger to themselves or others, the report states.

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Zeneta Everhart testified Wednesday about the injuries her son, Zaire Goodman, suffered when he was shot several times during the attack in Buffalo, PBS NewsHour reported. Zaire survived the mass shooting, but “shrapnel will be left inside his body for the rest of his life,” she said, according to the report.

Phillips, who represents Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, said Wednesday that the provisions of the Protecting Our Kids Act “will save countless lives and reduce gun massacres in our streets, schools, theaters, and houses of worship.”

“Despite inexplicable opposition, we will not stop trying to pass common sense solutions into law,” Phillips tweeted.

Firearm-related injuries caused more deaths among U.S. children and adolescents in 2020 than any other cause, including motor vehicle crashes, drug overdoses and poisoning, and drowning, according to The New England Journal of Medicine.

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Speaking Wednesday on the House floor, Phillips shared a message from Kathryn Ramstad, the widow of the late Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad, who served Minnesota’s Third Congressional District from 1991 to 2009.

“Jim voted for the 1994 Crime Bill and its gun control measures. He was one of only six Republicans to cast what was clearly a difficult vote, but he felt so strongly about the compelling need to act and believed it was consistent with his bipartisan, pragmatic and commonsense approach to fighting crime,” Phillips said, reading Kathryn Ramstad’s message.

The Federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 included a provision known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that made it illegal to manufacture, transfer and possess certain semiautomatic firearms and large-capacity magazines.

The ban was in effect for a decade until 2004, when it lapsed because lawmakers did not renew it.

“‘After so many mass shootings, I cannot understand why Congress does not at the very least,’ (Kathryn Ramstad) wrote, ‘ban semiautomatic weapons like the AR-15 that has been used in so many recent mass shootings,’” Phillips said Wednesday, urging his colleagues to pass the Protecting Our Kids Act.

The Star Tribune reported the bill "has almost no chance of becoming law," with the Senate focusing its response to the massacres on mental health, school security and background checks.

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