This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 7, 2013 - WASHINGTON – After nearly three months of debate following the mass shooting of 20 first graders at a Connecticut school, Congress on Thursday began the legislative process of determining which initiatives are politically feasible in the effort to deter gun violence.
At a markup session of the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and other senators discussed separate bills that would: ban assault weapons; require criminal and mental-health background checks of all gun buyers; crack down on illegal gun trafficking; and provide help to bolster school security.
Republicans oppose reinstating the assault weapons ban – similar to a ban in place between 1994 and 2004 – but there appears to be movement toward a compromise on the gun-trafficking legislation. Durbin and U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., have agreed with other sponsors – led by Judiciary Chairman Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt. – to substitute a compromise in place of two rival bills they had previously backed.
UPDATE The compromise, called the Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act, was approved by the committee in an 11-7 vote, with the panel's top Republican, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Ia., joining Democrats in supporting it. Senators debated the assault weapons ban but recessed before taking a vote on whether to send it to the full Senate. END UPDATE;
The committee-approved bill would give law enforcement better tools to investigate and prosecute the common practices of gun trafficking and straw purchasing – cases in which someone buys firearms for someone else (often a felon) who is barred by law from buying his own weapons. Currently, no federal law defines either gun trafficking or straw purchasing as crimes.
The new bill combined parts of separate Leahy-Durbin legislation that aims at “straw purchases” with a separate anti-trafficking bill introduced by Kirk and Sen. Kirsten Gillebrand, D-N.Y. Another key sponsor of the compromise will be U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me.
“One of my top priorities this year is to pass legislation that will dry up the supply of illegal weapons to dangerous drug gangs,” said Kirk, adding that he hopes “we can break through the gridlock here in Washington to actually get something done to save lives.”
Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democratic leader, said the bipartisan compromise “will crack down on the illegal trafficking of guns and impose strict punishments for straw purchasers. It is a commonsense approach that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals and protect the rights of law-abiding citizens.”
The Chicago Crime Commission reported that Chicago police confiscate an average of 13,000 illegal weapons each year, Durbin said. He added: “Every year, 11,000 Americans are murdered with guns – more deaths each year than all of the American lives lost in the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.”
Kirk also has been working with other gun-control moderates – including U.S. Sens Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. and Tom Coburn, R-Ok. – to try to reach a compromise on legislation that would bolster current requirements for background checks for gun buyers. The main sticking point: to what extent records of gun sales would be available for scrutiny.
While many Democrats say it is important for law enforcement to keep records of private sales to be able to enforce the background-check law, Republicans worry that mandating such records would make it easier in the future to require everyone to register their guns – something that the NRA and other gun lobbies strongly oppose.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a background- check bill that would require such records. In a joint statement, Kirk and Manchin said they disagreed with Schumer's bill but were “committed to continuing to work in a bipartisan effort ... to find a common sense solution for enhanced background checks.”
Said Kirk and Manchin: “Our goal is to pass a bill that will close loopholes in the current background check process in a way that does not burden law-abiding citizens.”
Grassley, the panel's ranking Republican, has expressed such concerns but recently told a Capitol Hill newspaper that “there might be something done on background checks” when the committee marks up gun legislation.
Grassley and other Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., oppose a bill by U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., to reinstate the lapsed bans on assault weapons and high-volume ammunition magazines. While that bill might survive a committee vote, it would likely face a filibuster in the full Senate, staff insiders say.
U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has said she would support some sort of gun violence legislation in the Senate, but wanted to see what the Judiciary Committee approved before she took positions on specific bills.
“I hope we can get as much of it done as possible,” McCaskill said last month. “But I am not as optimistic about picking individual weapons to ban as I am about universal background checks – in terms of what we actually have a chance of passing and sending to the president’s desk.”
Another bill that might survive a Judiciary vote is one sponsored by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that would provide federal funds to help bolster school security. Boxer is said to have agreed, in response to GOP complaints, to reduce the annual cost of the bill to about $40 million – less than half of what she had proposed earlier.
>Interest groups air ads on gun violence
As the Judiciary Committee neared a vote, interest groups on all sides of the gun issue stepped up their campaigns this week to try to influence lawmakers.
A new Super PAC headed by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords – an Arizona Democrat who was badly wounded in a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson – and her husband Mark Kelly began airing new ads in the home districts of key Republican senators, including Grassley.
“Let’s get this done,” Giffords says in one of the TV ads sponsored by the PAC, called Americans for Responsible Solutions. While backing Second Amendment gun rights, Giffords and Kelly advocate more restrictions on military-style guns and ammo.
But the National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund and other gun advocacy groups are also stepping up their ad and lobbying campaigns against what they perceive as new proposals that would violate Second Amendment rights.
In a recent report, the Sunlight Foundation found that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC spent over $2 million in a successful campaign to defeat a pro-gun former House member who tried to win the Chicago congressional seat vacated by former U.S Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, co-chaired by Bloomberg, is buying ad time on a national Sunday talk show to promote gun control legislation. And President Barack Obama’s new advocacy group, Organizing for Action, plans to spend as much as $100,000 targeting a dozen members of Congress who oppose gun control
Another group that backs gun control, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is running ads in Kentucky against Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell for opposing gun control. And the liberal MoveOn.org has run ads criticizing U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, for accepting NRA campaign contributions.
Not to be outdone, the powerhouse NRA has prepared several “TV-ready” ads taking aim at gun registration plans, universal background checks and the White House. The NRA also is spending about $350,000 on newspaper ads in Arkansas, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina and West Virginia that oppose White House gun control proposals.
In an email Wednesday to supporters, Giffords wrote that “we hope to get a vote before the full Senate shortly after members return from recess in early April.” But then the Republican-led House – which appears more hostile to most gun-control efforts – will have its say.
House less likely to approve gun control bills<
Even if the Senate eventually agrees on a package of legislation designed to deter gun violence, the House does not appear to be friendly territory to move such an initiative forward.
“I’ve made clear if the Senate acts on gun-control legislation, the House will consider it,” House speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. But he said that, in his opinion, the more important issue was keeping weapons out of the hands of the severely mentally ill.
“We need to look at more than just guns,” Boehner said. “We need to look at violence in our society . . . How do we ensure that we keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them?”
House Judiciary Chairman U.S. Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., told Roll Call last week that “Congress is going to act on this issue” of gun violence. “The Senate is at work on it, and we are as well. Our goal is to do anything we can do to keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them.”
However, despite the advocacy of stricter gun control laws by many liberal Democrats, including U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, the main focus of House efforts appear to be on stepping up enforcement of existing gun laws as well as coming up with better ways to keep guns away from the mentally ill.
Last week, Goodlatte and other GOP members of his committee sent letters to Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., asking for detailed data about federal enforcement of existing gun laws over the past decade.
“Part of the decision-making process as to whether additional laws are necessary to combat future violence is whether the existing federal firearms laws are being enforced,” the letters stated.
“It is imprudent to simply call for more laws without examining the efficacy of the current laws.”