Vice President Kamala Harris called for an assault weapons ban Saturday, saying that in the wake of two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society.”
“On the issue of gun violence, I will say, as I’ve said countless times, we are not sitting around waiting to figure out what the solution looks like. You know, we’re not looking for a vaccine,” Harris told reporters in Buffalo, New York, after attending the funeral for a victim of a mass shooting there earlier this month. “We know what works on this. It includes, let’s have an assault weapons ban.”
“You know what an assault weapon is? You know how an assault weapon was designed?” she continued. “It was designed for a specific purpose — to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in a civil society.” The comments from the vice president come as the nation is reeling from both Buffalo, where 10 people were killed in a racist mass shooting at a supermarket, and from a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, earlier this week in which 19 children and two teachers were killed by a gunman.
