The president’s latest push goes beyond expanded background checks and sets the stage for votes to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines — a potential political liability in Senate battlegrounds such as Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
One North Carolina-based Democratic strategist said voting on an assault weapons ban would help fuel Republican arguments that the Biden administration is coming to take their guns.
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“Republicans are already claiming that Democrats are trying to take people’s guns and have no respect for the Second Amendment,” said the strategist.
“It is a problem in all those states, in my mind,” the strategist said of the debate on gun control measures. “The question which is going to determine 2022 is: Is it going to be enough to get those Trump voters out to vote?”