Earlier this month, Connecticut marked eight years since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 children and six educators. Since the massacre in Sandy Hook, there have been over 2,600 mass shootings in the United States with at least 2,900 people killed and 11,000 wounded. Even though studies show firearm legislation reduces firearm-related Injuries, little has been done on the federal level to regulate guns.
The lack of new federal gun control legislation since Sandy Hook is not due to a lack of trying by Democrats. After Democrats regained control of the House in 2018, they introduced and passed legislation to expand background checks for all gun purchases and placed greater regulations on gun sales.
Shortly after the House passed new gun control legislation in February 2019, Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) went to work making it virtually impossible for the bill to get a vote in the Senate.
At the core of McConnell’s opposition to gun control is his stated belief that gun control legislation infringes on one’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.
After Sandy Hook, McConnell taped a robocall saying, “President Obama and his team are doing everything in their power to restrict your rights, invading your personal privacy and overstepping their authority...I want you to know that I will be doing everything in my power as Senate Republican leaders, fighting tooth and nail, to protect your second amendment rights.”
Almost three years later, McConnell is once again working to stop much-needed legislation over the issue of individual liberties and freedoms. However, this time, McConnell is trying to curtail American's rights.
For months, Democrats and Republicans have been negotiating over another coronavirus stimulus bill. One of the key sticking points was McConnell’s insistence that businesses be protected from legal liability related to COVID-19.
"My red line going forward on this bill is we need to provide protection, litigation protection, for those who have been on the front lines. ... We can't pass another bill unless we have liability protection," McConnell said during an interview, calling new legal protections a "condition" for the bill.
McConnell’s requested change to legal liability would raise the threshold employees must meet to sue their employer. Rather than requiring employees to prove their employer did not take “reasonable care” to prevent injury, sickness, or death, McConnell would require employees to prove their employer acted “grossly unreasonably.”
In the simplest of terms, McConnell wants to limit your ability to enforce your right to a safe workplace.
McConnell has made it eminently clear that he is all for individual rights until those rights interfere with business. In 2005, McConnell voted to protect firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable for crimes committed with their products.
And while it is certainly true that there are an endless number of frivolous lawsuits in America and it can be almost impossible to determine where someone contracted COVID-19, Americans should be weary of McConnell and his Republican stooges who claim to be defenders of individual freedom.
Republicans are more than happy to restrict and regulate your freedom in the name of protecting inanimate businesses. Unless, of course, you are Mitt Romney (R-UT) and believe, “corporations are people, my friends.”
Comments