House Democrats accused their GOP counterparts of acting like “cowards” after Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee canceled a scheduled hearing on gun regulations just hours after a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, left six people dead.
Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Ted Lieu (D-CA) criticized Republicans for seeking to make it easier for people to obtain guns while failing to support Democratic legislation cracking down on violent shootings. The comments come just one day after a shooter opened fire at the Covenant School on Monday, killing three children and three staff members.
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“They canceled the hearing. Now why would they do that?” he said at a Tuesday press conference. “If they honestly believe, as they say, that arming more Americans with more guns, more AR-15s, more pistol braces, will make us safer, they would have held a hearing and had that as a solution. But they didn't do that. They ran away.”
Republicans were scheduled to meet on Tuesday for a markup meeting on a resolution seeking to override a recent rule from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that would clarify the classifications of rifles that are equipped with stabilizing braces. However, that meeting was canceled on Monday afternoon after reports emerged of the school shooting.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) defended the meeting’s postponement, arguing Democrats would have used the hearing to politicize the attack and press for stricter gun regulations.
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“Democrats were going to turn this tragic event into a political thing,” the Republican chairman told the Hill. “You had an agency tell Americans the rule was one thing. Ten years later, they just changed the rule without going through Congress. So, this is a constitutional concern, but Democrats had already been talking about making everything political, so we just decided to postpone.”
It’s not clear when Republicans will reschedule the hearing, but Jordan said it would happen in “a couple of weeks.”