A Fox News commentator and the leader of Rainbow/PUSH both came out backing increased gun control to include a ban on some rifles over cosmetic properties.
Bill O’Reilly, visiting on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week, said a version of a ban such as in Australia or a revisit to the 1994 federal assault weapons ban coupled with other changes could help stop gun violence.
“Congress debates which guns are allowed,” said O’Reilly. “So it’s perfectly legitimate for Congress then to say which kind of rifles which people should be able to buy.”
Colbert asked O’Reilly if he meant a return to banning AR-15s and similar weapons, to which the Fox News host agreed.
“1996 I believe, they did stop many of the high-tech rifles. They banned them. And that lapsed. We should look at that,” said O’Reilly, going on to advocate for federal criminalization of all gun crimes.
A second Fox commentator, Gretchen Carlson, voiced a similar call this week.
On the other side of the political spectrum recently, the Rev. Jesse Jackson also made much the same argument.
In a statement issued through Rainbow/PUSH and published in the Chicago Sun-Times, he said:
Gun control cannot end terror, neither the mass shootings like Orlando nor the daily horror as in Chicago. Omar Mateen, the killer in Orlando, was a security guard, apparently with a record clean enough that he was able to buy guns legally. But surely it is inconceivable that military assault weapons like the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle that he used (and that was also used in Aurora and Newtown and San Bernardino) should be so easily purchased. Reviving the ban on assault weapons that lapsed under President Bush is not a full remedy, but it is simple common sense.
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