Some Democrats turn focus to gun restrictions after Trump assassination attempt

Some U.S. House Democrats are calling for federal gun restrictions after the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

Throughout a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing on Monday, Republicans and Democrats called for Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle to resign, which she did Tuesday.

She did so after the committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, and Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, formerly called for her resignation saying it was needed to allow “new leadership to swiftly address this crisis and rebuild the trust of a truly concerned Congress and the American people.”

After she resigned, Raskin said Tuesday the hearing “identified two urgent priorities in the wake of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and the accompanying mass shooting.” The first was her resignation. The second “was to ban assault weapons to protect the rest of us from mass shootings like the one that took place in Butler. As I made clear during yesterday’s hearing, a weapon that can be used to commit a mass shooting at an event under the full protection of the Secret Service and state and local police is a danger to schoolchildren, Walmart shoppers and congregants in church, synagogue and mosque services.”

Raskin also called on Congress to ban the AR-15 from public use, referring to it as “a weapon of war,” saying it “has no legitimate place in our society.”

Unlike Raskin, other Democrats referred to Trump’s assassination attempt as “political violence,” including Texas Democrats who also suggested “assault weapons” should be banned.

Among them was U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, who at the hearing referred to the assassination attempt as an “incident.”

Crockett was one of nine House Democrats who sought to strip Trump of Secret Service protection if he is sentenced to prison, The Center Square reported.

Crockett, a Black woman from Dallas, asked Cheatle questions about Secret Service training as it relates to race and gender. “Was the July 13 incident due to DEI,” she asked, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion policies Cheatle championed to hire more female agents. Cheatle replied the “July 13 incident had nothing to do with DEI.”

Crockett next asked, “if you have any bias training that your officers undergo” because “I've learned so many times in having to deal with law enforcement that there usually is not a perception of a threat when it is a young white male even if they are carrying a long gun. Yet a lot of times, at least in this country, when it comes to law enforcement, there is a perceived threat just by somebody having a little bit more melanin in their skin.”

“A lot of times, one of the things that we have consistently pushed for on my side of things … is once we are looking at a tragedy in which law enforcement made an error is the bias training and whether or not our officers are getting it,” she said, referring to her being a civil rights and criminal defense attorney before running for the Texas House and Congress.

Bias training is part of Secret Service training, Cheatle said.

Crockett then proceeded to talk about the need to ban open carry and her opposition to Texas gun laws, saying Congress needed to come up with a solution to gun violence.

“In this space in which this event took place, it was an open carry space, is that correct?” Crockett asked.

“That is correct,” Cheatle replied.

Crockett was a state representative when a mentally ill man opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019. The Texas legislature “had an opportunity to do right by our citizens in Texas but we did not,” she said.

“Instead, they passed permitless carry,” she said, referring to the Texas legislature advancing Second Amendment protections that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in June 2021, including legalizing permitless carry, The Center Square reported.

Right after the law was passed, “we ended up with Uvalde,” she said, referring to a teenager who entered an elementary school and killed 21 people, mostly children, due to extensive police security failures. Since then, two former Uvalde school police officers were indicted on charges of child endangerment; lawsuits are ongoing. Crockett said the “officers were scared to go in” the school “because of the firearm.”

A Department of Justice report found widespread problems with law enforcement officers’ response and a state investigation identified systemic failures at the school, The Center Square reported.