Grassley doesn’t expect any new gun legislation in Congress

NEW HARTFORD — Despite another mass shooting over the holiday weekend, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he does not foresee any new gun control legislation moving forward in Congress that would prevent future killings.

Grassley says the bipartisan gun bill that was signed into law last month by President Biden was “very hard” for lawmakers to create.  Grassley says, “It’s sad that you can’t celebrate the Fourth of July and have a good celebration like that, one of the most famous holiday weekends of the year for people and families, you can’t do it without having this killing.”

A gunman opened fire at an Independence Day parade in a Chicago suburb, killing 7 people and wounding more than three dozen. A suspect is in custody.  Grassley says, “It does seem to me that there are some things in the bill that would work if people like him are identified ahead of time and you can intervene, and one of them is the additional spending on mental health issues.” Saying they only had an hour to read the 80-page bill, Grassley says he voted “no” on the initial procedural vote on the gun bill.

Several sections of the bill weren’t spelled out fully enough to win Grassley’s approval, and he again voted “no” during the measure’s final vote, though he says some very helpful elements were included.
“The parts of it that are dealing with mental health and the things that deal with securing our schools, so it can be a safe place for our kids under adult supervision, I thought those were very good things,” Grassley says, “and I wasn’t entirely against other things that were in the bill.”

Fellow Republican Senator Joni Ernst voted “yes” on the measure, as did Democratic Congresswoman Cindy Axne of West Des Moines, but the rest of Iowa’s congressional delegation opposed it.