Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) urged his colleagues in the upper chamber to consider changing their position on gun control measures, saying he “didn’t burst into flames or get run out of town” after changing his own stance on the issue years ago.
In an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Wednesday, Casey said that when he began serving in the Senate in 2007, he was against gun control measures, noting he had “the firm belief that to support and honor Pennsylvania’s deep-rooted hunting culture meant that I should not support restrictions on gun sales or increased regulations.”
But he said the tragedy of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting changed his stance and that he and his colleagues did not have to accept the idea that there was little they could do to stop shootings.
Casey said expanding background checks and banning certain firearms, including semi-automatic AR-15-style rifles, were steps the country could take “to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and criminals.”
“A decade ago, I changed my position because I didn’t want to see Americans dying every day without doing something about it. I shouldn’t be alone. Our children are depending on us,” he wrote.
Casey’s op-ed, though not a new stance, comes against the backdrop of several high-profile shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., Uvalde, Texas, and Tulsa, Okla. A group of bipartisan senators is working on gun reform negotiations, while the House is expected to vote on gun control legislation this week.
Actor Matthew McConaughey, who was born in Uvalde, made an emotional appeal to members of both parties to act during a White House press briefing on Tuesday.
“Can both sides see beyond the political problem at hand and admit that we have a life preservation problem on our hands?” he asked.