O’Malley calls for ‘comprehensive gun safety laws’

by Ben Kamisar - 07/24/15 7:16 PM ET

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is calling for “comprehensive gun safety laws to save lives” in the wake of a series of public shooting over the past month.

“During the first 204 days of 2015, there have been 204 mass shootings: a mass shooting for every day of the year. These tragedies aren’t isolated incidents or even ‘accidents’ as some have called them — they’re part of a full-blown epidemic,” the Democratic presidential hopeful writes in an op-ed in the Boston Globe published Friday, one day after a gunman killed two people in a Louisiana movie theater.

“We cannot let this become the new normal. As we mourn for the lives cut short — for the victims and the loved ones they leave behind — we can’t just sit by and wait for another tragedy to happen again.”

{mosads}The former Maryland governor also notes last week’s shooting at military installations in Chattanooga, Tenn., as well as last month’s shooting in a historically black church in Charleston, S.C.

His plan calls for limiting all gun sales to “tightly regulated, licensed dealers,” which includes closing a loophole that allows gun sales at gun shows without a background check.

He also wants an assault weapon ban, a national gun registry to “help law enforcement track down dangerous criminals” and a requirement that guns are secured in private homes.

O’Malley also touts his efforts in Maryland, where he helped shepherd through gun control reforms that include a slew of the ideas he wants to extend nationally.

“Our goal in Maryland, as it should be for the nation, was to reduce mass shootings and keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” he writes.

Gun rights supporters in Congress and the National Rifle Association have lobbied against similar efforts, saying the policies restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

Bills to expand background checks and ban the sale of certain assault weapons couldn’t overcome a Senate filibuster in 2013, months after a gunman killed 20 elementary school students and six adults in Connecticut.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican presidential candidate, pushed back at calls to immediately address gun control in the wake of the shooting in his state.

“We are less than 24 hours out, we’ve got two families that need to bury their loved ones. We’ve got families waiting for their loved ones to leave the hospital and are praying for their recovery,” he said Friday at a press conference in Lafayette, La.

“There will be an absolute appropriate time for us to talk about policies and politics and I’m sure that folks will want to score political points of this tragedy, as they’ve tried to do on previous tragedies.”

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