WASHINGTON – Democrats said on Tuesday they were pushing for a vote on expanded arms control measures, as the country staggered after its second shootout in a week. President Joe Biden said “we have to act”, but the prospects for any major changes were vague, for the time being, in the divided Congress.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer promised on Tuesday morning to bring to the Senate floor legislation passed by the House that would require background checks for most arms sales and transfers. He said the Senate “must face a devastating truth” after Congress has failed to act on the issue for nearly three decades.
“This Senate will be different,” said Schumer, DN.Y., the day after a shooting in a crowded supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, killed 10 people, including a police officer. “The Senate will debate and address the epidemic of armed violence in this country.”
Although the Senate vote on the new arms control is the first in several years, Democrats have no vote to pass any significant reform. They are not even united, as Senator Joe Manchin, DW.Va., told reporters on Tuesday that he is opposed to House legislation on background checks.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Tuesday on proposals for arms control. It is not clear whether any of the projects to be considered – most of them involving more restrictive background checks – would have made a difference in the case of Colorado. A 21-year-old man accused of killing eight people in the Atlanta area last week bought a 9mm gun hours before the killings, prompting defenders to push for longer waiting periods for purchases.
In brief comments in response to the shooting, Biden urged Congress to act quickly to close loopholes in the background check system and ban high-capacity assault weapons and magazines – an effort that would be even more difficult to achieve politically. According to a police statement, the Colorado sniper had purchased an assault rifle six days earlier.
“It shouldn’t be a party issue,” said Biden. “This is an American issue. It will save lives, American lives. “
Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Who has been aggressively pushing for expanded gun control since the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Primary School, which killed 20 children and six educators, expressed optimism about the chances of new laws with Biden in White House and Democrats control the House and the Senate. He called it “the dawn of a new era”.
The reality is probably more complicated. At the moment, Senate Democrats do not have enough support among Republicans to pass new arms control legislation in the Senate 50-50, as they would need 60 votes to do so. While the expansion of background checks is generally popular with the American public, even with some conservatives, Congress has failed to find a successful arms deal in decades, making it one of the most intractable issues in American politics.
The arms debate also highlights a greater difficulty for Senate Democrats as they try to move forward on arms legislation and other political priorities at the Biden White House. With the obstruction in place, forcing a limit of 60 votes for most legislations, bills passed by the House on issues such as gun control and voting rights are effectively impossible to accept unless Democrats guarantee significant support. of the Republican Party.
Some Republicans hinted that they would be open to negotiations, although it was unclear whether there was any real bipartisan discussion. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said he is opposed to House legislation, but “I am certainly open to discussion”.
Manchin and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who worked together for years to reach an agreement on background checks, said they opposed House legislation, which would close loopholes to ensure that background checks were extended to private sales. and online. go unnoticed, including at gun shows, with some limited family exemptions and other scenarios. A similar version that Manchin and Toomey proposed shortly after the Sandy Hook shootings included a broader set of exemptions than the House bill.
The Chamber also passed a second bill to extend a certain review period for background checks from three to 10 days. Representative Jim Clyburn, DS.C., introduced the legislation after a sniper killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Toomey said he would like to find legislation that could be passed, but “it would probably require something a little different. So, let’s see if we can find out how to thread the needle. “
Manchin did not say whether he would restart negotiations, only that “we will try to do the responsible and reasonable thing”.
Schumer and Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, a leading advocate for arms control, said they would meet this week to discuss a way forward. Schumer did not say when he would take House legislation up for a vote.
Democrats say they feel the environment around firearms legislation has evolved, especially since that last big boost in 2013. They point to problems with the National Rifle Association, the long and powerful defense group that has spent tens of millions of dollars in the election of Donald Trump in 2016 The organization has been weakened by infighting as well as legal entanglements over its finances.
“This is the time to take a stand. NOW, ”tweeted Murphy when details of the Colorado shooting emerged on Monday night. “Today, our movement is stronger than the arms lobby. They are weak. We are powerful. Finally, a president and a Congress that supports arms reform ”.
Democrats also expect gradual political change among voters. A survey by the Pew Research Center in September 2019 showed that a large majority of Americans, 88%, supported the subjection of private arms sales and arms fairs to background checks, which is what the House approved bill would do. Ninety-three percent of Democrats and 82% of Republicans were in favor of politics.
Many at the base of the GOP are still strongly opposed to gun control of any kind. At Tuesday’s hearing, scheduled before the shooting in Colorado, the Republicans showed no sign of hesitation. Texas Senator Ted Cruz said that every time there is a shooting, the Senate gets involved in a “ridiculous theater”, with Democrats proposing laws that he said could take the guns off law-abiding citizens. Republicans argued that background checks would not prevent most mass shootings and prevent some legal gun owners from buying firearms.
“We already know that this pattern is predictable, indefinitely,” said Cruz.
By Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Hannah Fingerhut and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.