WASHINGTON | Democratic worries about this November’s elections, a lack of Senate votes and House opposition are forcing congressional gun-control supporters to significantly winnow their 2014 agenda, a year after lawmakers scuttled President Barack Obama’s effort to pass new curbs on firearms.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently said he needs additional votes before revisiting a proposed expansion of gun sale background checks that the Senate derailed last April. That has left advocates of tighter gun curbs hoping Reid will allow votes on more modest proposals, such as one by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., to add convicted stalkers to the list of criminals barred from acquiring guns.
But with Reid wary of exposing Democratic senators facing tight re-election contests in some conservative and Western states to politically risky votes — and the Republican-run House showing no appetite to restrict guns anyway — people aren’t holding their breath waiting for proposed gun restrictions to reach the Senate floor before Election Day.
“This kind of change doesn’t happen overnight,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “There are obviously a lot of other considerations and variables in play here, like elections.”
Klobuchar’s bill on stalkers would play into Democrats’ campaign-season theme of pushing legislation that appeals to women, a key Democratic voting bloc. She said Tuesday she has discussed her legislation with Reid but didn’t ask about holding a vote because she’s first trying to round up Republican support to make the measure bipartisan.
Democratic caution on the gun issue has been displayed several times recently, even as the December 2012 killings of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that fanned interest in firearms restrictions fade further into the past.
The September 2013 shooting deaths of 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard and this month’s slaying of three people outside Jewish community centers in Overland Park, Kan., were greeted with no fresh Democratic legislative pushes. And in the face of National Rifle Association opposition last month, the White House paused its effort to push its surgeon general nominee through the Senate — Dr. Vivek Murthy, a Harvard Medical School physician, Obama political organizer and gun-control supporter.
“They’re waiting for another tragedy to exploit,” Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, said of the Senate hiatus on gun activity. “The question is, do they want gun owners across this country to be more enraged this election cycle than they’re already going to be?”
White House officials say they’ve not abandoned the issue. They cite 23 executive orders Obama issued last year, including restarting federal research on gun violence, plus additional steps like starting to close a loophole that let some felons get machine guns by registering them to trusts or corporations.
“We’re just going to keep pushing until Congress does the right thing,” presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett told gun-control activists last week.
As the issue has ebbed in Congress, it has accelerated in the states, where legislatures are debating hundreds of gun-related bills, some weakening and others strengthening restrictions.
Meanwhile, powerful groups are revving up for the fall elections.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire and advocate of firearms curbs, plans to spend $50 million this year setting up a new group that will mix campaign contributions with field operations aimed at pulling gun-control voters to the polls.
The new organization, Everytown for Gun Safety, will focus on women, especially mothers, and work on state and federal elections, the group said Wednesday.
Bloomberg said Wednesday on NBC’s “Today” that his group will reward candidates “who are protecting lives, and make sure that those who are trying to keep people from being protected lose elections.”
Also planning campaign activity this year is Americans for Responsible Solutions, a gun-control group headed by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband, ex-astronaut Mark Kelly. The group reported late Tuesday that its political committee has raised nearly $14.5 million since it was founded in January 2013, and it plans to spend its money on federal and state races, said spokesman Mark Prentice.
Giffords was severely wounded in a Jan. 8, 2011, shooting rampage that killed six people.
The National Rifle Association spent nearly $20 million on federal campaign activity in 2012 races. Its true strength is viewed as its claimed 5 million members, many of whom consider gun issues strongly when voting.
One area where fights over gun policy seem likely is in the annual bills Congress must pass to finance federal agencies.
Those bills traditionally contain more than a dozen longstanding, gun-related provisions. These include language making it easier to import antique guns and harder for the government to get gun-tracing information from licensed firearms dealers.
When lawmakers consider those spending measures, Republicans could try blocking requirements that gun dealers in states bordering Mexico report multiple purchases of shotguns or rifles to one buyer, an effort the Democratic-led Senate thwarted last year. Democrats could try requiring dealers to conduct annual inventories and report the results to the government.
A year ago, Reid fell five votes short of the 60 needed to bust a GOP procedural blockade against the background check measure. He and others have said they’ve not yet lined up any additional votes.
Also defeated were Democratic efforts to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, tools used by some assailants in recent mass shootings.
The background check provision, written by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., would have required such checks for all commercial firearms purchases at gun shows and online. Currently, background checks — aimed at preventing criminals and the mentally ill from acquiring weapons — are required only for sales handled by licensed federal gun dealers.
In a sign of how times change, Toomey and Manchin are working again this year on background check legislation — aimed this time at making sure teachers and others who work with children are not sexual predators.
Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
So in other words your conviction are only skin deep and as usual you sell your souls for the vote. I’ will give up my guns when all the washington hacks and police do.
I hope they democrats push gun control all the way to election day….it will ensure they lose an extra 20 or 30 house and senate seats…..
They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Apparently the Democrats are insane.
First they register, then they regulate, then they restrict, then they confiscate!
Fact: In 1994, before the Federal “assault weapons ban,” you were eleven (11) times more likely to be beaten to death than to be killed by an “assault weapon.”
Fact: Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year or 6,849 every day. Often the gun is never fired and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.
Fact: Every year, people in the United States use guns to defend themselves against criminals an estimated 2,500,000 times – more than 6,500 people a day, or once every 13 seconds. Of these instances, 15.6% of the people using firearms defensively stated that they “almost certainly” saved their lives by doing so.
Fact: 54% of these deaths are suicides (80% in Canada). Numerous studies have shown that the presence or absence of a firearm does not change the overall (i.e., gun plus non-gun) suicide rate.
Fact: Guns are used for self-defense 2,500,000 times a year in the United States.
• 71% of gunshot victims had previous arrest records.
• 64% had been convicted of a crime.
• Each had an average of 11 prior arrests.62,63
• 63% of victims have criminal histories and 73% of the time they know their assailant (twice as often as victims without criminal histories).
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. Subsequently, from 1915 to 1917, 1.5-million Armenians, deprived of the means to defend themselves, were rounded up and killed.
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. Then, from 1929 to 1953, approximately 20-millon dissidents were rounded up and killed.
In 1938 Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945 over 13-million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, union leaders, Catholics and others, unable to fire a shot in protest, were rounded up and killed.
In 1935, China established gun control. Subsequently, between 1948 and 1952, over 20-million dissidents were rounded up and killed.
In 1956, Cambodia enshrined gun control. In just two years (1975-1977) over one million “educated” people were rounded up and killed.
In 1964, Guatemala locked in gun control. From 1964 to 1981, over 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and killed as a result of their inability to defend themselves.
In 1970, Uganda embraced gun control. Over the next nine years over 300,000 Christians were rounded up and killed.
Over 56-million people have died because of gun control in the last century.
“Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic, purely symbolic move… Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.” – Charles Krauthammer Syndicated Columnist The Washington Post, April 5, 1996
All Quotes are from Gun Facts by Guy Smith 2011
Yes more laws is always the answer, the people who beak the law are criminals so you can make all the laws you want it will not matter. Our constitution has survived for over 200 years and the liberal elitist left think they can re-write it. If they were around 200 years ago tea and crumpets would be an American staple today!