Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) advocated raising the age for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18-to-21 in comments to reporters on Monday and said he’d potentially be open to supporting a ban on AR-15-style-rifles, questioning why civilians need such weapons.
“I never thought I had a need for that type of a high-capacity automatic weapon,” Manchin told CNN on Monday. “I like to shoot, I like to go out and hunt. I like to go out sports shooting. I do all of that. But I’ve never felt I needed something of that magnitude.” The AR-15 used in a string of recent mass-shootings is a semi-automatic rifle; it does not have automatic capabilities as Manchin implied.
The West Virginia Democrat said that imposing an age minimum of 21 to buy certain firearms could curb mass shootings, two of which shocked the nation in May. Federal law already prohibits individuals under 21 from buying handguns.
Last month, an 18-year-old stormed an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and massacred with an AR-15 style rifle 19 children and two teachers in a fourth-grade classroom. That attack came after a white supremacist teenager killed ten people in a supermarket in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y.
“Every time we’ve tried to do something after horrific, horrific tragedy such as this, people said, ‘Well, that wouldn’t have prevented that, that wouldn’t have prevented that,’ ” Manchin told CNN. “Well, we know we can do something that would have prevented this: raising the age. Making sure that the age at least gives us a chance to work with that person, see, evaluate and, and have a little maturity to them. And the second thing is that we know that the red flag laws do work, as long as there’s due process.”
Manchin said he believes that raising the gun purchase age would be within constitutional bounds.
“Why do we have driver’s license? Why is there a certain age for everything that we do in this society?” he asked. “It’s always been accepted. So I don’t see how this one thing can be any different than other things we do.”
Manchin also recommended passing federal standards for red flag laws, already in place in some but not all states, which would allow for the confiscation of guns from individuals deemed dangerous.
These proposals are currently being debated by a bipartisan coalition of senators. While many Democrats have immediately pushed for more gun regulation, including expansive background checks and a national red flag law protocol, many Republicans have advocated for “hardening” schools, by arming teachers, training guards, or bolstering security on campuses generally. The GOP is unlikely to sign onto raising the age for buying semi-automatic rifles.
Manchin suggested he wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to a ban on so-called assault weapons, an ambiguous umbrella term that Democrats tend to use, adding that he “wouldn’t have a problem on looking at” the idea. The proposal has a low chance of advancing in an evenly-divided Senate with the 60 vote filibuster threshold, however.
“It depends on what they, how they would approach it,” Manchin said. “I’m open to anything that makes gun sense.”
After the Uvalde tragedy, progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Manchin and his moderate Democratic counterpart in the Senate Kyrsten Sinema of obstructing gun-control measures including stricter background checks and a ban on “semiautomatic assault weapons” and called for changes to the filibuster to enable gun legislation by the Democratic-led House to reach the floor.