Posted on 01/05/2013 10:00:43 AM PST by pabianice
President Obama announces he is appointing Vice President Joe Biden to craft new policies within the next month to curb gun violence.President Obama announces he is appointing Vice President Joe Biden to craft new policies within the next month to curb gun violence. 0
The White House and gun control supporters are gearing up for a whirlwind month, with plans to pass reform legislation before outrage over the Sandy Hook massacre has a chance to fade.
While the fiscal cliff has dominated Washington’s attention in recent weeks, lawmakers and activists are laying the groundwork for their big push. Vice President Joe Biden, tasked with heading a commission to investigate gun violence, has been quietly meeting with experts, interest groups, and public officials and is expected to release a set of recommendations within weeks. Boston mayor Thomas Menino, co-chair of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told the Boston Herald this week that an optimistic Biden had assured him that Obama would sign legislation “by the end of January.”
“We had been led to believe their report would come by end of January, but we’re hearing they may want to have something out by January 15, even quicker than expected,” Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told TPM.
House Democrats are moving ahead with their own plans as well. On Friday, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), chair of the newly created Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, announced the appointment of 12 vice chairs, including Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), the body’s leading voice on gun control. According to a Democratic aide, the group plans to release its recommendations in early February and is already organizing public hearings on the issue.
Obama has personally identified an assault weapons ban and limits on ammunition magazine size as top priorities. Other possible reforms could include background check requirements for purchases at gun shows, a loophole that’s helped create a huge market of off-record arms purchases.
Pro-gun groups have dominated Congress in recent years and, while lawmakers approved by the National Rifle Association have mostly kept their heads down in recent weeks, any legislation could face an difficult path to passage, or even a vote, especially in the Republican-led House.
Glaze said his group would work hard to build public support, hosting local events with various mayors, dozens of whom will descend on Washington later this month for The United States Conference of Mayors winter gathering.
Gun violence survivors are also planning trips to lobby lawmakers to support legislation. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived a mass shooting in 2011, could play a prominent role in that regard: on Wednesday she met with Bloomberg in New York and on Friday traveled to Newtown to comfort families who lost loved ones in the attack there.
But Glaze acknowledged the NRA has long held an advantage not only in its cash resources, but in its large and active grassroots membership, which has rallied in the past to whip members of Congress against gun control bills. For gun control advocates, they’ll have to offer a compelling case that lawmakers who squelch reforms will pay a price in the midterm elections and that means building their own active network of supporters. Glaze is confident they can do so, citing recent polls showing restrictions on extended ammunition clips and an expansion of background checks to be popular nationally.
“The broad solutions are there and if Congress doesn’t act I think theyre going to be digging themselves further into a big hole,” he said.
The Brady Campaign, the gun control group founded by former Ronald Reagan press secretary Jim Brady, is also expected to play a role in promoting legislation, but it’s an open question whether they can compete with the NRA’s experienced leadership. TPM reached out to the group’s staff in recent days for information on its plans, but received no response.
Because it is a House Dems group with all Dem members. It has nothing to do with the official committee organization.
It's not a House committee. It's an 'organization'.
The media is being vague, so that people think it's official.
Liars gotta lie.
/johnny
He’s going to do this by executive order.....No way Dems in the House will give it to him.
There is no wasted action when defending our Constitution. Any pebble tossed onto their road to enslavement could cause their plans to topple like a fat SoS.
Works for me. If Obama wants a war it might as well be now before he has 4 more years to screw America.
“Not letting a good crisis go to waste”.
Fading...not going to happen you leftists at TPM.
An EO to turn in guns would be ignored in mass.
The campaign against the Republican House for 2014 has begun and they don’t have a wartime Speaker.
I don’t think O thinks much is going to pass and it sure is not going to pass quickly.
Bottom line: He wants to outlaw the most popular guns being sold in America today. It ain’t going to happen.
1. The NRA and every other group are going to be going strong on this.
2. We are going nicely register our discontent with our representatives and senators during this period. Be polite but firm when you talk with them.
3. There doesn’t seem to be any support for these initiatives in the general populace. None.
Epic fail is on the way.
Going to be anything but a rapid victory. Over 3 weeks now since Newtown and I believe resistance to any new legislation is galvanizing.
The media is doing all they can to create an air of inevitability. Feinstein’s bill is DOA but we can’t even entertain the idea of compromise.
I think some sort of compromise which includes universal registration is the course they most want to pursue. They want good records which will ultimately lead to firearms confiscation. The ultimate goal of every control freak.
I am becoming a gun owner for the first time ever. A pox on all their houses.
If those DemoQuacks are so interested in protecting U.S. citizens then how about a quick victory over the Mexican drug cartels against whom the federal government to date has failed to protect us.
The federal government with all its weapons, laws and resources can’t stop the deadly Mexican drug cartels at the border, and cannot stop them from operating in hundreds of communities throughout the United States. And now the government want to disarm citizens to stop us from protecting ourselves against the narco terrorists and other criminal pyschopaths that run the streets? Citizens have the right to protect ourselves particularly when the government is unable or unwilling to protect us.
Obama is going to lay the blame for CW2 off on Joe Biden and that stupid SOB can’t even see it coming.
This is really about the evil mentally ill (and I do not believe insanity is ever a defense) and evil men in general.
Poor editing. They misspelled putsch.
This "rapid" talk is more like "rabid" or "blitzkrieg-like".
I think they will have a tough time getting anything out of the Senate. Lots of red state senators up for re-election in 14. Reid knows that the Dems could very well lose the Senate because of this so look for him to give it lip service and then determine that there are just too many other pressing issues facing them to deal with it right away.
If, by chance, it does get out of the Senate it will get shuffled off to some committee in the House where it will rot for a while.
By that time we’ll be dealing with the debt limit and sequestration.
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