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Monika L. McDermott

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Congress

Why gun control laws don’t pass Congress, despite public support and repeated outrage over mass shootings

Monika L. McDermott
David R. Jones
May 27, 2022
Uvalde newspaper

The front page of the local newspaper in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26.

Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images

McDermott is a professor of political science at Fordham University. Jones is a professor of political science at Baruch College, CUNY.

With the carnage in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y.,in May 2022, calls have begun again for Congress to enact gun control. Since the 2012 massacre of 20 children and four staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., legislation introduced in response to mass killings has consistently failed to pass the Senate. The Conversation asked political scientists Monika McDermott and David Jones to help readers understand why further restrictions never pass, despite a majority of Americans supporting tighter gun control laws.

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