Biden calls for immediate ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines after CO shooting Nine Line News Team March 23, 2021 Nine Line News 321 Molon labe. In remarks to the nation after a 21-year-old man killed 10 people, including a police officer, in a Colorado supermarket, President Joe Biden called on Congress to “act immediately” on gun control. Biden said, “I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save lives in the future, and to urge my colleagues in the House and the Senate to act.” “We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a senator. It passed, it was the law for the longest time and it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again,” he added. Boulder, CO, where the shooting took place had banned “assault weapons” in 2018, but just 10 days ago, the court blocked the ban. According to court documents, the shooter apparently bought a Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle on March 16. When arrested, he also had a handgun and body armor, in addition to the long gun. It’s unknown whether the ban would have made any difference in this tragedy. Maybe not, when you learn more of the shooter’s history. His name is Ahmad Alissa. He was born in Syria and had lived in the United States since the age of three. He was a devout Muslim, who posted often on his Facebook page about his faith. Alissa’s brother, Ali Alissa, told The Daily Beast his brother was deeply disturbed, “very anti-social” and paranoid. In high school, he would say he was “being chased, someone is behind him, someone is looking for him.” A former wrestling teammate, Dayton Marvel, told the Denver Post Alissa was “short-tempered” and “scary.” He once threatened to kill people during a match, he said. “He was kind of scary to be around,” Marvel said. “His senior year, during the wrestle-offs to see who makes varsity, he actually lost his match and quit the team and yelled out in the wrestling room that he was like going to kill everybody,” he added. “Nobody believed him. We were just all kind of freaked out by it, but nobody did anything about it.” His Facebook page has now been deleted, but in a series of posts, Alissa made it clear he was anti-Trump and anti-gay. His brother Ali Alissa told the Daily Beast his brother was once outgoing, but turned anti-social after he was bullied in high school. “[It was] not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness,” he said. “The guy used to get bullied a lot in high school, he was like an outgoing kid but after he went to high school and got bullied a lot, he started becoming anti-social.” So did bullying and mental health issues cause this horrible tragedy to occur, or high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic rifles?
