Frustrated by inaction over gun safety legislation in the wake of previous tragedies, she wanted to make it clear that this time it had to be different. Moments later he approached Kentucky minority leader Mitch McConnell and South Dakota Republican Whip John Thune in the Senate and asked them with whom he could negotiate at the Republican conference.
“They said (Republican senators) John Cornyn and Thom Tillis. I texted the two men right away,” he said, referring to senators from Texas and North Carolina. “We agreed to meet the next day.”
His relationship with the press, however, had not gone unnoticed by his fellow Democrats.
Thirty minutes later he received a text message from Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who had been working for a decade to reform the country’s gun laws since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in his own state.
“Are you serious? Would you like to work on that?” she remembers asking him.
“Thirty minutes later,” Sinema said, “he and I were in my hiding place.”
What unfolded over the next month was an unexpected and even strange pair of lawmakers: Sinema, a Democrat who had rejected his party to remove the obstruction and fiscal policy, Murphy, a Democrat who had dedicated the his career in calling for radical changes in arms policy. as a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks, and Cornyn and Tillis, two Conservative senators who rarely voted on proposals that did not have the support of the majority of their party.
But the group was able to do something that had haunted Washington negotiators so many times after shootings such as Sandy Hook, Pulse, Las Vegas and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, consolidating its reputation as effective negotiators that its fellow senators called the “four basics.” . “
The following is based on CNN interviews with more than a dozen members of Congress and staff, many with backgrounds to speak more freely to get the internal account and never-before-seen details about how the deal was met. weapons in the Senate after more than a year. 30 years of lockdown.
The central negotiating group was of disparate political origins, but somehow – through a continuous chain of text, hours of secret meetings and negotiations with staff – they were able to forge a close agreement on security legislation. of arms which had been elusive in the Senate for three years. decades. Assistants and members credited the result with their temperament, the agreement to leave certain burning issues off the negotiating table, the blessings of their respective leaders, and the willingness of President Joe Biden to let the Senate work its will. .
“This time, Democrats seemed willing to get a result on what we considered on our side the issue that was school safety and mental health, and they were willing to give up their wish list of things we feel … infringed. Rights of the Second Amendment of American Citizens, “McConnell said in a call with reporters.
While the legislation is far from the panacea that Democrats had campaigned for or expected, the bill represents significant changes to the country’s gun laws and challenged the thesis that the National Rifle Association had become somehow too powerful for any Republican to reverse.
“At the end of the day, it’s the members of the Senate who have to make a decision, and I have to answer to 10 million people, and they all live in North Carolina,” Tillis told CNN in an interview Thursday. “Groups are important; it’s not that I don’t respect them. I respect the (National Rifle Association), I respect (the National Shooting Sports Foundation). I respect the National Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony and a number of other conservative organizations, and I will continue to defend them, but on this particular issue we only have to agree on disagreeing. “
Leadership gives its blessing
Hours after the shooting in Uvalde, majority leader Chuck Schumer was under tremendous pressure to act quickly on gun legislation. He took a procedural step that would allow him to move on to an arms bill passed by the House that had no chance of approval in the Senate, but would at least send a signal that Democrats were taking action. This, he said publicly, would become an issue that voters would have to decide at the polls if Washington did not resolve it.
The next day, the majority leader made a morning call with his staff to review the options. Devastated by the massacre, the New York Democrat and his staff concluded that holding such a quick vote on a failed House bill would only further divide Republicans and Democrats over gun policy, he said. tell CNN a knowledgeable source of the conversation.
Instead, Schumer wanted to entertain another option. After delivering his initial speech in the Senate, Schumer called Murphy. Minutes later the two men were sitting face to face in his office. Murphy had told Schumer that the chances of a deal were slim. But Murphy wanted to try it. With a few caveats, Schumer wanted to leave him.
The plan, according to a known source, was to see where the conversations could go, but insist that they would not last forever. If meetings ceased to be regular or progress stalled, Schumer was willing to disconnect, pass the background check bill passed by the House, and force the problem with voters in the middle of the legislature.
A day later, McConnell came out with his own endorsement of the talks. In an exclusive interview with CNN, McConnell said he had spoken to Cornyn that morning after the Texas senator had returned from Uvalde and had “encouraged him to speak with Senator Murphy and Senator Sinema and others who are interested.” to try to achieve a result that is directly related to the problem “.
It was a strange move for McConnell to announce support for bipartisan talks that would likely split his Republican conference a few months before the talks, but McConnell acknowledged Thursday in a call with reporters that he also saw a political advantage in participating in the conversations.
“It’s no secret that we’ve lost ground in suburban areas,” McConnell said. “We practically own rural and small towns in America, and I think that’s a sensible solution to the problem we’re facing, which is school safety and mental health, and yes, I hope it’s seen favorably by suburban voters who we need to recover in order to be a majority next year “.
In the weeks that followed, Cornyn and Tillis kept the minority leader constantly informed of his progress, and Tillis told CNN that McConnell’s approach was largely to trust the two senators, both on the Senate Judiciary Committee. , in order to cut a deal that would be palpable. to a large number of conference members.
“He never had a discussion about specific provisions,” Tillis said of McConnell’s role in the process. “Seva [message] It was that if we come to a framework that we believe we can get the support of members, I want to look at it and then make a decision about it. … There were no specific instructions from him on priorities. “
For her part, Cornyn also sometimes communicated directly with Schumer, at a time when the two men were seen during the first workouts at the Senate gym, according to a known source.
Senators also received calls from colleagues offering a number of ideas and proposals they wanted to include in gun safety legislation. One such idea came from Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, who had wanted to include a provision she had with Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico that created a new federal statute against the purchase of straw. Another idea for mental health benefits came from Sen. Roy Blunt, a retired Missouri Republican senator, and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who had been working for years to provide more federal funding for mental health clinics. across the country.
Talks on the bill were also happening with people outside Capitol Hill. A well-known source told CNN that from the beginning, Republican negotiators regularly interacted with gun groups such as the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, raising questions and concerns about what could end up in the bill. McConnell also said he was involved in those conversations.
“Senator Cornyn and I and others discussed the bill’s issues with the NRA. It was fruitful discussions, but in the end we decided not to support it,” McConnell said.
Win the GOP votes
From the beginning, there were more Republicans involved in discussions about an arms security bill that hadn’t been around for decades, a sign that Murphy found promising.
“The large number of people we spoke to was different than at any other time,” Murphy said. “We had 12 members sitting around talking about guns. Back then, the composition of the small group was really unique. The four of us have never worked on another topic before, maybe we won’t work together again after spending four long weeks together. . “
Some GOP senators are crying out for their provisions in the bill. Some Republicans were deeply skeptical of touching on anything related to the Second Amendment, but many felt that something was fundamentally changing in the way voters viewed gun rights in the United States.
“This is a topic that people from all over the country are talking about,” Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in early June as talks heated up. “They certainly talk about it in my state and rightly so. We own guns, we’re proud of Second Amendment supporters, but we’re also mothers, grandmothers and have children in school, so we care what is happening “.
The thinking within the group of four negotiators was that to keep members bought, communication was key.
“They were constantly communicating with members about what they were doing and why they were doing it,” a GOP senator, who wanted to talk in depth to talk freely about the talks, told CNN. “I was convinced from the start that we had to do something.”
The group wanted to show that the votes would be there before the bill was even …