Jacobs, whose district includes suburban Buffalo, dropped out of his re-election campaign after his support for a federal ban on assault weapons sparked a backlash from the group he represents in Congress.
Following the deadly mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Rep. Jacobs of New York, a congressman serving his first full term in the House, shocked his fellow Republicans by embracing a federal ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity chargers, The New York Times reported.
I can’t in good conscience sit down and say I didn’t try to do something, the politician said from his suburban Buffalo district a week ago before dropping out of the campaign for re-election.
“We have a problem in our country in terms of our two main parties. If you move away from a party position, you get wiped out”, he said.
“In the case of Republicans, it’s been pretty clear to me over the last week the issue is gun control. Any gun control,” he added.
The politician warned his colleagues that his “absolute position” on guns would hurt the party in the long run and urged senior lawmakers to step up.
“Look, if you’re not going to take a stand on something like this, I don’t know what you’re going to take a stand on,” he added, citing the grief of families in Buffalo, Uvalde and elsewhere.
Jacobs’s near-forced resignation from re-election, according to the Times, serves as a neat encapsulation of how little deviation in gun policy GOP officials and activists are willing to tolerate from their lawmakers, despite broad support from politicians. Americans to gun safety measures.
Jacobs’s decision to go against his party on gun control provoked an immediate and vitriolic response: Local gun rights groups posted his mobile phone number online, and local and state leaders members of the party began withdrawing their support, one by one, the Times noted.
Reactions against it were viral among Republicans, but not among independents, Democrats and gun control advocates who denounced the attacks on the congressman for his position, saying that it showed the intolerance of the Republicans’ hard-line approach to the rights of weapons.
“It is very disappointing that extremists in his party have expelled Congressman Jacobs for simply saying enough is enough,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action.
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