WASHINGTON (AP) – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer quickly launched a couple of background check bills for gun buyers Wednesday in response to the Texas school massacre. But the Democrat acknowledged Congress’ inflexible rejection of previous legislation to curb the national epidemic of armed violence.
Schumer implored his Republican colleagues to put aside the powerful gun lobby and get to the other side of the aisle even to get a modest compromise bill. But no votes are being scheduled.
“Please, please, damn it, put yourself in those parents’ shoes just for once,” Schumer said as he opened the Senate.
He raised his hands at the idea of what might seem like an inevitable outcome: “If the schoolgirl massacre can’t convince Republicans to reverse the NRA, what can we do?”
The murder of at least 19 children plus a teacher at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, has exposed the political reality that the U.S. Congress has shown that it is unwilling or unable to pass substantial federal legislation to curb armed violence in the United States.
In many ways, the end of any legislation on armed violence in Congress was signaled a decade ago when the Senate did not pass a gun background check bill after 20 children, most of them 6 and 7 years old, they died when a gunman opened fire. at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Despite the effervescence of pain on Wednesday after the very similar Texas massacre, it is not at all clear that there will be a different outcome.
“It’s our choice,” D-Conn. Sen. Chris Murphy lamented on CBS Mornings.
While President Joe Biden said “we have to act,” Republicans have routinely blocked important legislation on armed violence, often with a handful of Conservative Democrats.
Despite mass shootings in communities across the country, two in just the past two weeks, including Tuesday in Texas and the racist killing of black shoppers at a market in Buffalo, New York, 10 days earlier, lawmakers have not they have wanted to put aside their differences and give up. the arms lobby to resolve any compromise.
Even his own goals failed to get Congress to act. Former House of Representatives Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. receive a shot years later during morning practice.
“The conclusion is the same,” said Sen. Cory Booker, DN.J. “I don’t see any of my fellow Republicans showing up right now and saying, ‘Here’s a plan to stop the carnage.'”
“It’s crazy not to do anything about it,” Giffords’ husband, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Said Wednesday.
Republicans quickly pushed for a bill advocated by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson that would create a national database of school safety practices. But Schumer opposed his immediate consideration, promising a much broader debate and vote.
Asking his colleagues for a compromise, Murphy said he was in contact with two Texas Republican senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and had called on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who co-authored the bill. law that failed after Sandy Hook.
“When you have babies, little children, how can you be innocent, oh God,” Manchin told reporters, noting that he had three grandchildren of school age. “It makes no sense why we can’t make common sense (common sense things) and try to keep it from happening.”
After Sandy Hook, the compromise legislation, written by Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, was backed by a majority of senators. But he fell into a stalemate, blocked by a majority of Republicans and a handful of Democrats, unable to exceed the 60-vote threshold needed to move forward.
The same bill was fired again in 2016, following a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Toomey told reporters Wednesday, “My interest in doing something to improve and expand our background check system continues.” He said he had been in contact with Murphy.
But Toomey was atypical of the GOP. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has declined to comment publicly on potential legislation, and few others have added their voices to the mix.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Congress should focus on “what some states have done, red or yellow flag laws,” which are designed to keep guns away from people who could be harmed. to themselves or to others.
A well-known negotiator, Democratic Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona, told reporters Wednesday that she will begin talks with senators about red flag or other laws. In the House, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he would introduce a red-flag federal bill for a vote.
“People at home across America are just scared. They want us to do something,” Sinema said.
But other Republicans considered these efforts too far-reaching and instead suggested that an agreement could be reached to send federal funding to states to bolster security or other local deterrents.
“What we’re still facing is Senate rules, which are manipulated in a way that ignores what the American people want,” said Christian Heyne, Brady’s vice president of politics, an organization that is pushing for an end to armed violence. .
A modest effort to strengthen the federal background check system for gun purchases became law in 2018, following the mass shootings during the Trump administration.
But former Republican Sen. Bill Frist, a doctor who had been the leader of his party, urged action after Texas and the rise in gun deaths among children. “We can find ways to preserve the intent of the Second Amendment while safeguarding the lives of our children,” he tweeted.
Biden, whose party has little control in Congress, has failed to push the Armed Violence Bills beyond what is now primarily Republican opposition in the Senate.
Last year, the House passed two bills to extend background checks on gun purchases. A loophole would have closed for private and online sales. The other allegedly extended the review period of the background check, a response to the shooting at the church of black people by a white man in South Carolina.
Schumer immediately set them in motion for the vote. Both had languished in the 50-50 Senate, where Democrats only have a narrow majority because of Vice President Kamala Harris ’ability to cast a tiebreaker vote and need at least 10 Republicans to overcome an obstruction.
The stalemate has renewed calls to remove Senate obstruction rules for legislation, lowering the threshold to a 51-vote majority for approval.
“Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority if your answer is that as the slaughter increases, as our children run to save their lives, we don’t nothing?” Murphy said in a fiery speech Tuesday afternoon as news of the Texas massacre spread.
Cornyn and Cruz were both in Uvalde on Wednesday. Cruz previously issued a statement calling Tuesday “a dark day. We are all completely sick and heartbroken.”
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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Mary Clare Jalonick, Alan Fram and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.