'When is enough enough?' asks Uvalde woman urging Congress to pass gun reform
WASHINGTON (CBSDFW.COM) — Faith Mata shared with members of Congress her family's sense of loss.
"She will never graduate high school, never fall in love herself, never be present at my wedding. We will never know how scared she was in her last moments in that classroom."
Mata, 21, and seven other people testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday morning.
She urged lawmakers to pass gun reform. "Are we not tired yet of hearing another tragedy because of gun violence? When is enough, enough? I truly hope this never happens to another family."
The hearing was called "Examining Uvalde: The Search for Bipartisan Solutions To Gun Violence."
But Democrats and Republicans remain far apart when it comes to any new reform.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed into law a gun reform bill championed by Texas Senator John Cornyn.
Among the provisions, authorities can look into the backgrounds of first-time gun buyers between 18 and 20 years old.
State Senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, is among the Democrats calling for a ban on assault style rifles like the one the Uvalde shooter used. "My question to the leaders of this country is how many children have to be murdered before they are willing to ban the chosen weapon of school shooters?"
U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and Chair of the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security subcommittee, told the hearing, "Without an assault weapons ban, more people will die."
Republicans say such a ban would hurt law-abiding citizens' ability to protect themselves.
U.S. Representative Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, and Ranking Member of the subcommittee, disagreed. "There hasn't been an honest engagement in March for bipartisan solutions to gun violence mostly because there's only one solution for my friends across the aisle and that's to emasculate the 2nd Amendment."
Dr. John Lott, Jr., gun rights advocate and President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, testified that a ban on those weapons presents a false choice. "An AR-15 functions exactly the same as any small caliber hunting rifle, firing the same bullets with the same rapidity and doing the exact same damages. Banning guns based on their looking like military weapons, military style weapons makes no sense."
The hearing took place weeks before the end of this Congressional term and before the new term in which House Republicans will assume the majority from the Democrats.
In Dallas Thursday, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, said she doesn't anticipate any new legislation coming out of the hearing. "You never give up. It is probably not anything we can expect to be too positive, but the positive thing is we're still talking."
Johnson is retiring at the end of the month after serving in Congress for 30 years.