Issue Position: Gun Control

Issue Position

Protecting the safety and security of Massachusetts' schools, streets and communities is of the utmost importance to Senator Markey, who supports common-sense gun control reforms, including universal background checks for all firearms sales, reinstituting the ban on assault weapons, making gun trafficking a federal crime, a prohibition against high capacity ammunition magazines, and closure of the loopholes surrounding the creation of undetectable, plastic guns.

In 1994 in the House of Representatives, Markey was successful in his bipartisan effort to get President Bill Clinton to place an emergency moratorium on the importation of military style assault weapons from China, including the AK-47 and Uzi. At the time, it was estimated that between 425,000 and two million modified rifles had been imported into the United States since 1991, selling for less than $130 per gun.

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