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Mitch McConnell had just finished his first term as Kentucky’s junior senator when a mass shooting shook his hometown of Louisville.
On September 14, 1989, a disgruntled employee entered the Standard Gravure printing plant in downtown Louisville and, armed with an AK-47 and other pistols, killed eight and wounded 12 more before removing the life, in what remains the deadliest mass shooting. in the history of the state.
At the time, mass shootings had not yet become the basic element of American life that they are now, and McConnell said he was “deeply disturbed,” and said, “We need to take action to stop this. these cruel crimes. “
But he added: “We need to be careful to legislate in the midst of a crisis.” And in the days and weeks that followed, he did not join the others in calling for a ban on assault weapons such as the AK-47 used by the shooter.
The massacre of the Standard Gravure gave an early view of how McConnell, now leader of the Republican Senate minority, would manage the mass shootings and their aftermath for the next three decades, constantly working to delay, obstruct or prevent the majority. of the major arms control laws passed by Congress.
McConnell would continue to follow a similar game book over and over again during his seven terms in Congress, offering vague promises of action, often without any specificity, only to be followed by any action or incremental measures that would prevent new regulations on weapons. As a Republican leader, he also helped dissuade his conference — as after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut — from supporting gun legislation and, as a majority leader, he refused to propose major arms control measures for a vote.
Now, the latest devastating and notorious shootings, a massacre on Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 students and two teachers dead just 10 days after a racist massacre at Buffalo Supermarket kill 10 people. Congress returns to heated debate over what lawmakers can do to curb armed violence.
On Thursday, McConnell told CNN that he had encouraged Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) To contact Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) And Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Who made control of the weapons were personal. project after Sandy Hook: to start discussing what bipartisan measures might be possible.
But many Democrats and gun advocates remain skeptical, predicting that McConnell and his fellow Republicans are willing to re-block any gun violence prevention bill.
“If there’s anyone in the United States to blame for our inability to put things in place to prevent armed violence, it’s Mitch McConnell,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, a group dedicated to fighting armed violence. “McConnell understands that he is the hostage of this extreme base that simply does not tolerate any deviation from any of his views.”
Many Republicans say McConnell is less of a singular obstacle than a smart leader who is able to read his lecture and make decisions that will help his senators and protect them politically. “McConnell knows where his members are and makes strong calls to protect their interests,” a senior Republican aide said, explaining McConnell’s general motivations for addressing armed violence and gun legislation.
McConnell declined to comment.
In 1990, the year after the Standard Gravure shootout, McConnell ran for re-election and ran in a close race with Democrat Harvey Sloane, then Jefferson County Executive Judge and a former mayor of Louisville. , who had called for a ban on assault weapons.
In 2013, after Sandy Hook, Sloane told the Louisville Courier-Journal that as his career with McConnell hardened on the finish line, McConnell and the National Rifle Association “falsely blamed the state. on how this ban would end “your hunt.” pistol and handgun you need for your personal protection. ”
McConnell defeated Sloane by five percentage points and, in his second term in the Senate, voted against both the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993 and the federal assault weapons ban. in 1994.
“Mitch is really Machiavellian,” Sloane said in an interview with The Washington Post last week. “It has advocated for any kind of weapons legislation that makes sense on its own.”
“Nothing changed”
In September 2019, a group of gun control advocates, including Kris Brown, the president of Brady, an armed violence prevention organization; MP John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights icon; and MP Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), who lost her 17-year-old son in a 2012 shooting, gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol for a rally in support of tighter control of the background.
After the rally, some in the group, which also included some McConnell voters, decided to head to the then-majority leader’s office for what Lewis might have called “good trouble.”
“As we approached, John Lewis led us in, talking about the importance of peaceful resistance,” Brown recalled, adding that Lewis asked if anyone should get Depends, a brand of diapers for adults. because the group could be there for a while. .
“His employees had no idea what to do with us,” Brown said. “McConnell didn’t have the human decency to sit down with John Lewis.”
Instead, a McConnell staff member introduced the group to a conference room and met with them for more than an hour. Brown said the staff seemed clearly moved by Lewis, telling him he loved him, and by the victims of the armed violence, who told their stories one after the other.
“She was moved to tears, but nothing changed,” Brown said, saying staff essentially told the group “it was the wrong time to introduce this bill.”
Doug Andres, a spokesman for McConnell, said McConnell had not been able to meet with the group at the time because it was a surprise visit and he had already planned constituency meetings. He said staff simply told the group that then-President Donald Trump was unlikely to sign the bill and that McConnell would not advocate legislation he knew would fail.
For McConnell, however, the timing has seldom seemed right.
Almost immediately after Sandy Hook, then-President Barack Obama commissioned then-Vice President Joe Biden to come up with a solid political response. McConnell, then leader of the Senate minority, downplayed the effort.
Asked about gun control issues on ABC’s “This Week” in January 2013, less than a month after Sandy Hook, McConnell said he was looking forward to seeing Biden’s proposal, but did not plan to prioritize it. on other issues such as “spending and debt” in the coming months.
Then, later that month, after Obama signed 23 executive orders on weapons in response to the tragedy that left 20 kindergarten children dead, McConnell recorded an automatic call and sent it to gun owners in his home. state.
The Republican Senate leader has spent his career working to delay, obstruct, or prevent most major gun restrictions from being passed by Congress. (Video: Joy Yi / The Washington Post, Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / AP / The Washington Post)
“President Obama and his team are doing everything they can to restrict your constitutional right to bear and bear arms,” McConnell said in the recording. “Your efforts to restrict your rights, invade your personal privacy and exceed your limits with executive orders are simply wrong.”
McConnell also declined a meeting with Sandy Hook’s families, according to someone familiar with the request, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal details. But in the end, Sen. Joe Manchin III (DW.Va.) and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) Negotiated a modest bipartisan background check bill, known as the Manchin-Toomey.
At the time, McConnell was still adapting to the boom of the far-right tea party movement at the Republican base; in the 2010 Republican Senate primaries in Kentucky, Rand Paul defeated Trey Grayson, the hand-picked candidate by McConnell, to mount the wave of the tea party in what some also saw as a poignant disapproval of McConnell. And in 2013, McConnell was already preparing for his 2014 re-election candidacy.
When Manchin-Toomey finally reached the Senate for a vote in April 2013, McConnell pushed his conference to oppose the bill, which ultimately failed 54-46, falling below the 60 votes needed to vote. to approval.
“McConnell hit hard. McConnell is obsessed with protecting his right flank,” said Adam Jetleson, who at the time was working for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev. ), explaining why McConnell helped close the background check bill. “That’s why he’s been able to survive as a leader for so long.”
Jesse Benton, a Conservative activist who ran Paul’s campaign in the Senate in 2010 and whom McConnell hired to run his 2014 campaign, said McConnell at the time “told me something like,” I hope you know that i’m thinking about supporting none of this. shit. ”
“He is not a pickpocket like some of the [pro-gun] activists want to, but make it clear to your team that you are a believer in the Second Amendment, “Benton said. as only he can “.
McConnell, on other occasions, was willing to entertain the idea of some firearms legislation, in part as a way to release pressure from members of his caucus who wanted to show some legislative action after the mass shootings.
But that approach has also angered some Second Amendment advocates, some of whom posted ads against him during his 2014 primary.
“When things get tough, Mitch McConnell has always been absent from the fight,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Arms Association.