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Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) told host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that supporters of new gun control legislation do not yet have the votes to pass it, despite defeating a Republican-led filibuster attempt last week. Durbin is the Senate Majority Whip, responsible for counting his party's votes on key legislative proposals. The specific bill facing the Senate is the Manchin-Toomey compromise on background checks, which would expand such requirements to gun shows, among other provisions. Currently, private sales between individuals at gun shows do not require background checks--just as private sales anywhere do not require them. The following is...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., is "confident," he said Sunday on "Face the Nation," that he and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., will be able to muster enough Republican support in the Senate to pass an amendment that would expand background checks for gun purchases. "We're close," said Toomey said, appearing with Manchin. "We're discussing with colleagues on both sides. We've got bipartisan support, but there is bipartisan opposition." Toomey and Manchin, along with Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced last week they had struck the deal, which would expand background checks for gun purchases to all commercial...

The Tea Party Patriots organization is planning protests on Tuesday at the home state offices of several Senators that the group argues are in need of an “intervention” for being sucked up into inside-the-Beltway politics, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). The group is targeting Rubio on immigration reform and Toomey on gun control. “Two Senators in particular are facing Tea Party pressure, as they should--Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Pat Toomey (R-PA),” Tea Party Patriots said in a release. “Both of these men were elected thanks to Tea Party support, yet Senator Rubio is the...

Senator Joe Manchin was on FOX News today to discuss his proposed gun control legislation. He admitted his bill will not prevent another Newtown massacre, “This is not a universal background check. This is a criminal and mental background check at gun shows and internet sales. It does not infringe on your right as a family… It protects the rights of our veterans… They (families of Newtown shooting victims) even recognized that this legislation we’re working on, which is the background checks on criminal and mental illness would not have saved their little babies."

Appearing on CBS News' Face the Nation on April 14, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Newtown families have told him they know the bill he and Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) have crafted would not have prevented the heinous crime at Sandy Hook Elementary. In other words, Manchin's expanded background check "compromise" bill, being pushed in response to Newtown, does not do anything that would have stopped the Newtown tragedy from happening. Manchin said the families to whom he's spoken just keep urging him to do something in hopes that somewhere down the road new gun control legislation will "prevent one...

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms had opposed previous iterations of a Democratic proposal for univesal background checks. "It's huge," Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told Fox News on Sunday afternoon as he announced the CCRKBA endorsement.

It has been almost 20 years since Congress has taken up the topic of gun control legislation. As the new debate over gun control heats up, senior Senate aides on both sides of the issue laid out advocates’ plan to get their bill through the Senate. The strategy advocated by gun control supporters in the Senate was described to BuzzFeed by two senior Republican Senate aides working to oppose the effort, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate leadership aide working to get it passed. Prospects for the gun control legislation weren't looking good until the recent Toomey/Manchin proposal. The legislation...

Most people assumed that anything truly problematic in new gun-control legislation that comes out of the Senate would have little chance of getting through the House. Looks like we’ll get a chance to test that hypothesis sooner rather than later. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told Politico today that he and Mike Thompson (D-CA) will introduce the House version of Manchin-Toomey by Tuesday at the latest: "Reps. Peter King and Mike Thompson are planning to introduce a House version of the compromise on background checks for gun buyers on Monday or Tuesday, King told POLITICO exclusively on Friday. “I will be...

Here is the whole, long AWB including Manchin-Toomey amendments, the "compromise", which is on pages 2613-2618, toward the end. thomas.loc.gov has a "search link" which will expire so I posted the whole thing.   TEXT OF AMENDMENTS -- (Senate - April 11, 2013) [Page: S2598] ---        SA 711. Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself, Mr. SCHUMER, Mr. DURBIN, Mr. WHITEHOUSE, Ms. KLOBUCHAR, Mr. FRANKEN, Mr. BLUMENTHAL, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. HARKIN, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, Ms. MIKULSKI, Mrs. BOXER, Mr. REED, Mr. CARPER, Mr. LAUTENBERG, Mr. MENENDEZ, Mr. CARDIN, Mrs. GILLIBRAND, Mr. SCHATZ, Mr. MURPHY, Ms. HIRONO, Ms. WARREN, and Mr. COWAN) submitted an...

Friday, 12 April 2013 00:25 Written by Gun Owners of America But there’s still a very good chance we can win! “Gun Owners of America [has] been pressing lawmakers who may have wavered on this emotional issue of background checks.” - CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, April 10, 2013 We've been fighting these gun control battles for almost 40 years now. And we almost always win. But it's almost always a nail-biter. And so it is on Obama's gun control agenda. We'd hoped that we could stop the gun control bribe-o-thon early (and risk-free) by blocking the motion to proceed to the...

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) joined President Obama for his second closed-door dinner with Senate Republicans on Wednesday. Rubio had been invited but had not committed for most of the day of the dinner. The Florida Republican's office said immigration meetings might get in the way of him going to the dinner, but later said he would attend. Besides Rubio, Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), John Boozman (Ark.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Deb Fisher (Neb.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Johnny Isackson (Ga.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) Roger Wicker (Miss.) dined with Obama. Obama's first meeting with...

-- IMAGE HERE -- “So what does a traitor look like?” That is a very good question. After all, a traitor is different than an enemy. An enemy declares himself and opposes you openly. But in order to become a traitor, someone first needs to enjoy your trust. Those of us in the gun rights community have plenty of enemies … people who have openly declared war on the Second Amendment and the Constitution. Heck … practically every Democrat in the country seems to have signed up for a frontal assault on gun owners. But to be betrayed by one...

Sen. Mark Kirk says the real driving force behind the gun deal that was hatched by bipartisan work was booze and boat retreats. The Illinois Republican said to reporters that visits to the Black Tie, a yacht owned by Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, played a large role in the Democratic-Republican come-together over background checks and other legislation related to gun control, Roll Call reported. “You guys really ought to go out to National Harbor and see the Black Tie, which has been much of the reason for much of the bipartisan cooperation around here,” he said, as quoted in Roll...

Well, assembled sophisticates, you’d better pull that extended arm back toward you and rescind the offer of the Martini, for I’m about to drop off society’s tightrope and out myself as one of those people naïve enough to advance a “slippery slope” argument in public. And about guns, no less. Arguendo, let’s presume that the much-vaunted Toomey-Manchin “compromise” makes it out of the Senate unalloyed, and then that it then passes the House with nary a squeak from the right. Let’s then postulate that a majority agrees with the president that expanding background checks is a “reasonable” thing to do...

n. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) panned an agreement to expand background checks on gun sales that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) unveiled on Wednesday. "The Manchin-Toomey proposal is a good faith but unworkable plan," Coburn said in a statement. "The proposal will impose new taxes and unreasonable burdens on law-abiding citizens."

I just talked to someone familiar with the Toomey-Manchin proposal who raises a serious concern based on his understanding of the legislation. Everyone on all sides agrees that we need better help for those with mental health problems who need treatment. Unfortunately, the person I talked with is concerned that the Toomey-Manchin proposal could discourage people from getting help. The proposal will allow a doctor to add a patient to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) without ever telling the patient he or she has been added. There would be no due process requirement. Not all doctors will...

The National Rifle Association will oppose the background check bill introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) Wednesday, the pro-Second Amendment group told the Free Beacon. Manchin and Toomey held a press conference Wednesday morning announcing a bipartisan bill that would expand background checks for all commercial firearm sales, including gun shows and Internet sales. The bill is the latest effort by the Senate to introduce background check legislation, after negotiations between Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) and Democrats broke down earlier this year. Manchin’s office told BuzzFeed Wednesday that the senators had been...

Two key senators have reached a deal to expand background checks to firearms sales at gun shows and on the Internet, sources close to the negotiations said early Wednesday. Sen. Pat Toomey, a conservative Pennsylvania Republican, plan to announce the deal Wednesday with West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who holds an A rating from the National Rifle Association. The two have been working on a compromise proposal that could draw Republican support for expanding background checks. On Tuesday evening, the two had an agreement in principle, and spent the night hammering out the final details.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is close to a deal with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on background checks for gun show and Internet gun sales, his office said Tuesday night. The two are planning a joint press conference for Wednesday morning. A Toomey spokesperson on Tuesday told NBC News that the two senators have agreed on all but the final details of a compromise. Manchin told reporters Tuesday that the compromise would close the gun show loophole by mandating background checks for those transactions and also require background checks for all Internet gun sales.