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‘We had to go big’: US Rep. Richard Neal, Massachusetts House Speaker Ron Mariano lay out path to recovery at Springfield Chamber event
Updated Apr 29, 2021;
SPRINGFIELD Thirteen months ago, the ill-understood threat known as COVID-19 loomed over the Springfield Regional Chamber’ annual Outlook luncheon.
The event at the MassMutual Center ballroom included hastily set-up hand sanitizing stations the first time those had been seen locally. Visitors were not yet instructed to put on face masks.
Like so many events since then, the chamber’s 2021 Outlook event was held online to avoid spreading the virus. But with vaccines available and COVID-19 cases in decline, speakers Wednesday highlighted the steps businesses and governments are taking to recover.
When James Eagan Holmes shot and killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012, one of the weapons he used was an AR-15-style rifle manufactured in Massachusetts.
The Bay State has banned civilians from purchasing or owning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines for decades, but companies like Smith & Wesson, headquartered in Springfield, can still build them here and sell them elsewhere.
Backed by parents who lost children to mass shootings and the Stop Handgun Violence organization, a group of Democratic lawmakers launched an effort Tuesday to change that dynamic, filing legislation that would extend the existing assault weapon ban to cover their manufacture for civilian use as well.