WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats say they are pushing for a vote on expanded arms control measures, as the country reels after its second shootout in a week. But the prospects for any major reform are bleak for the time being in the intimately 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 Senate will debate and address the epidemic of armed violence in this country.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee was holding a hearing on gun control proposals on Tuesday, the day after a shooting in a crowded supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, killed 10 people, including a police officer.
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 that case. 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.
Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has been aggressively pushing for arms control expansion since the 2012 Sandy Hook Primary School shooting that killed 20 children and six educators, expressed optimism about the chances of new laws with President Joe Biden in the House Branca and the control of the Democrats the House and the Senate. He called it “the dawn of a new era”.
The reality can be more complicated. It is not yet clear whether Senate Democrats can find deep 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.
Still, Democrats say they feel the environment around gun legislation is different now, especially since the last big boost in 2013, when they tried to pass new laws after Sandy Hook’s horrific shooting. They point to problems at the National Rifle Association, the long-standing advocacy group that spent tens of millions of dollars on Donald Trump’s 2016 election. The organization has been weakened by infighting as well as legal entanglements over its finances.
“This is the time to take a stand. NOW, ”Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted 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 private arms sales and sales at arms fairs subject to background checks, which is what the House approved bill would make. Ninety-three percent of Democrats and 82% of Republicans were in favor of politics.
But the change is not easy in the Senate. Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia have worked together for years to reach an agreement on background checks, but have yet to come up with something that passes. Many at the base of the GOP are still strongly opposed to gun control of any kind.
And at Tuesday’s hearing, which was scheduled before the Colorado shooting, 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.
Legislation passed by the House two weeks ago would close loopholes to ensure that background checks are extended to private and online sales that often go unnoticed, including at gun shows. The legislation includes limited exceptions that allow the transfer of firearms that are gifts from the family, that are to prevent imminent damage or that are for use within a certain range, among others.
A second bill would extend a review period for background checks from three to 10 days. Congressman Jim Clyburn, DS.C., introduced legislation after a sniper killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. The FBI later said that a background check examiner never saw the arrest report. The sniper’s previous record because of the wrong detention, the agency was listed on the state’s criminal history records and the arms dealer was legally allowed to complete the transaction after three days.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Said after the Boulder shooting that “action is needed now to prevent this scourge from continuing to devastate our communities.”
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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.