Seth Moulton on NY Daily News Front Page: ‘No Civilian Should Own This Gun’

Photo via AP

It isn’t too often you see a Red Sox cap on the front page of the New York Daily News.

A photo of Rep. Seth Moulton, a former Marine, holding the same kind of weapon used in the Orlando gay nightclub shooting, graced the tabloid’s Tuesday cover, accompanied by an op-ed from the freshman congressman demanding action from his congressional colleagues on a military-style assault weapons ban.

“Hey, NRA: This Marine served in Iraq & he says assault rifles should be banned,” the headline reads. “Does that make him a gun-grabbing commie, too?”

A look at tomorrow's front page…
Hey @NRA, Marine says "NO CIVILIAN SHOULD OWN THIS GUN" https://t.co/dDrxtVLUgs pic.twitter.com/1cngdNzvNu

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) June 15, 2016

In his column, Moulton said Congress, flooded with campaign donations from the National Rifle Association, lacks the courage needed to pass a ban on military-style assault rifles. The Harvard alum, who served four tours of duty in the Iraq War, even compared their civilian ownership to that of rockets and landmines.

“I’m a Marine. I carried guns every day in Iraq, guns very similar to the ones used to perpetrate the Orlando murders and many other mass shootings in America. I’ve used guns in combat. On more than one occasion, guns have saved my life. But there’s a big difference between a U.S. Marine with a rifle and a civilian with a gun,” Moulton, a Democrat, wrote.

“I trained for years in order to use my weapon properly. And long before I ever aimed it at an individual, I had to look at pictures of dead and mangled bodies in order to understand the magnitude of what it meant to pull that trigger.”

Moulton, along with his colleague Rep. Katherine Clark, protested a Congressional moment of silence led by House Republicans for the 49 victims of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. House Dems shouted “Where’s the bill?’’ and ‘‘No leadership!’’ after Speaker Paul Ryan silenced Democratic South Carolina Rep. Jim Cleburne, who asked if the body would consider gun legislation.

‘‘If the LGBT community has taught us anything, it’s that silence is the enemy of progress,” Clark wrote on Facebook. “I refuse to take part in a moment of silence by a Congress that takes part in empty gestures rather than do something—anything—that could actually prevent these horrific acts from happening. We can’t reduce gun violence with silence.’’

“Congress can prevent future tragedies by requiring a background check for every gun purchase in America. Congress can prevent people on terrorism watch lists from buying guns,” Moulton wrote in Tuesday’s paper. “And Congress can lift the restrictions on the study of the causes of gun violence, so that we can at the very least better understand why this keeps happening.”