Following last week’s House Oversight hearing on the Secret Service and the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin said issues with both the Secret Service and firearms must be addressed.
“We have to deal both with the Secret Service issue on the defense side, but we’ve got to deal with the AR-15 assault weapon issue, and the weakness of our background checks on the offense side,” Raskin said Wednesday during County Executive Marc Elrich’s weekly briefing. “We cannot allow these situations to arise anywhere in the country at any point.”
Raskin, whose Congressional District 8 includes Montgomery County, said there needs to be a serious investigation into how the attempted assassination took place in order to protect presidential candidates during the ongoing election year. But he emphasized not only was it an attempted assassination, but it was also a mass shooting with one person killed and two others wounded. He said it was not even the worst mass shooting that day. There was a shooting in Birmingham, Alabama later on the night of July 13 in which four people were killed and 10 were wounded.
Raskin said it was a “very frustrating” hearing and the Secret Service Director “really answered none of our most basic questions,” like how it was possible that the shooter accessed a nearby building roof. Director Kimberly Cheatle has since stepped down after Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee, and Committee Chairman James Comer called for her resignation.
“Even if we clean up the Secret Service’s act and we get the kind of protection that we need, what about the rest of us?” Raskin said. “What about all the other hundreds and thousands of people who are affected by mass shootings every year, and what about the tens of thousands of people who are affected by gun violence every year?”
“20-year-olds should not be able to access AR-15s and show up anywhere, whether it is a president campaign rally, or a movie theater, or a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque, or a Walmart.”
Raskin mentioned universal violent criminal background checks and a ban on AR-15s and military style assault weapons for daily civilian life.
“We’re pushing for that, it’s obviously going to be tough in this Congress, but I’m very hopeful that in the next Congress we’re going to be able to make this happen,” Raskin said.
Elrich said he is hopeful as well.
