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Representative Jared Golden<\/strong> had a B rating from the National Rifle Association<\/a> last year\u2014the highest mark<\/a> of any member of his party running for the House or Senate that cycle. In Congress, he had cast votes opposing expanded background checks and against restrictions on assault weapons. But in the wake of Wednesday\u2019s mass shooting in his hometown of Lewiston, the Maine Democrat had a new outlook: \u201cI have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war like the assault rifle [suspected shooter Robert Card<\/strong>] used to carry out this crime,\u201d a visibly emotional Golden said in a press conference Thursday. \u201cThe time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI ask for forgiveness and support,\u201d he continued, \u201cas I seek to put an end to these terrible shootings.\u201d<\/p>\n This content can also be viewed on the site it originates<\/a> from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was a powerful moment\u2014but one that only came after at least 18 people had been killed, and more than a dozen wounded, at a bar and a bowling alley in Maine\u2019s second-largest city.<\/p>\n Unknowns abound in the wake of that massacre. But at least one thing seems clear: Too many Americans continue to die needless deaths because too few of their leaders are willing to do the right thing on guns\u2014despite widespread support for commonsense reforms. \u201cI feel shattered,\u201d Lynn Ellis,<\/strong> legislative director at the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, told me the day after the shooting. \u201cThe damage is devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also familiar: Lewiston was the nation\u2019s 565th mass shooting this year alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive<\/a>. Add in the daily deluge of suicides, accidental shootings, and routine gun violence, and you have a firearm-related death rate in America that far outstrips that of the<\/a> country\u2019s peers<\/a>. Guns, beating out car accidents and cancer, are the leading cause of death<\/a> for kids and teens in this country. And though studies have shown that more access to guns correlates with higher rates of gun-caused deaths, America remains armed to the teeth\u2014the only nation on the planet where civilian guns outnumber people.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not really \u2018freedom\u2019s safest place,\u2019\u201d Kris Brown,<\/strong> president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence, told me, referring to the National Rifle Association\u2019s slogan. \u201cNot when weapons of war that were designed literally for the battlefield are more easily sold than Ozempic or Tylenol.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf guns were the solution,\u201d she said, \u201cwe\u2019d be the safest country in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Golden\u2019s reversal is just one sign that the ground may be shifting: The NRA is a \u201cshadow of its former self,\u201d as John Feinblatt,<\/strong> president of Everytown for Gun Safety, put it to me Thursday, while the gun control movement has gained momentum\u2014leading to last year\u2019s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety legislation in three decades. \u201cIf you look at the last 10 years, significant progress has been made,\u201d Feinblatt said. \u201cA huge contrast to the days after Sandy Hook.\u201d<\/p>\n But for all the ground the gun control movement has gained since Newtown, the Lewiston shooting makes clear that there is still a long way to go\u2014both at the federal level and in states like Maine with lax gun laws.<\/p>\n Many Maine residents remained under a lockdown advisory Friday as authorities continued their search for Robert Card, the alleged Lewiston shooter. The 40-year-old suspect\u2014whom law enforcement described<\/a> as a member of the US Army Reserve and a trained firearms instructor, and who was reportedly<\/a> committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this past summer\u2014is believed to have carried out the attacks with an assault-style weapon that may have been legally obtained<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nX content<\/h4>\n