We need a bipartisan solution to gun violence

The recent mass shooting at a community college in Oregon has sparked a renewed debate about whether Congress can and should act to help prevent gun violence. It’s a debate we’re all familiar with, one that has raged for years, gaining heightened attention in the aftermath of particularly horrific shootings like those at Umpqua Community College, Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and so many other places that have been seared into our collective memory because of bullets and bloodshed.

Politicians on one side, including me, call for measures that we consider common sense, like expanding background checks, banning the sale of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, and designating gun trafficking a federal crime. Critics on the other side say such proposals will have no effect on gun violence and only amount to an attack on the Second Amendment.

And nothing ever comes of this debate.

We can’t go on like this. We can’t keep engaging in an argument that goes nowhere while we watch scenes of mass gun violence unfold in schools, theaters, places of worship and public spaces across the country. We can’t keep ignoring the fact that, on average, more than 30,000 people are killed by guns each year in the U.S. And we can’t keep acting as if there’s nothing we can do about it.

We need a new approach to preventing gun violence in America, one that shuts out the extremists and special interests and focuses on the facts. That’s why, last week, I joined my fellow House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force vice chairs in cosponsoring a resolution introduced by Chairman Mike Thompson, a Democrat from California, that would create a bipartisan select committee to investigate the causes and effects of gun violence.