Posted on 06/16/2016 5:54:13 PM PDT by TroutStalker
In a private meeting of Democrats on Wednesday, Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) begged his colleagues to push a measure that might have actually prevented Sunday morning’s carnage in Orlando: an assault weapons ban.
Cicilline was answering the call of President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, to keep “weapons of war” off the streets.
But Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nixed it. Better, she said, to focus on barring terror suspects from buying guns. That measure’s a no-brainer for Democrats, she reasoned, and easier to explain to the public.
"It’s not that we’re not strong enough to make the fight. It’s just that we want to win the fight," Pelosi said to her Democratic colleagues, according to sources in the room. "What we are trying to do — and forget the politics — what we are trying to do is save lives. What we are trying to do is to say that the Republicans will not even go to this place which overwhelmingly the American people support."
The top gun control advocates in the country share Pelosi’s strategy. They emphasize measures that have broad support — like expanding background checks — rather than trying to take America’s most popular rifle and its copy-cat semi-automatics (like the Sig Sauer MCX used in Orlando) off the shelves.
“We work hard to try to stay out of the polarizing divisiveness that comes with this debate,” said Mark Barden, who founded Sandy Hook Promise after his 7-year-old son Daniel was killed three years ago by a mentally ill young man with a Bushmaster AR-15. “We’ve identified the lack of engagement as really the No. 1 issue that is keeping this movement from moving forward. By steering around that, we feel like we can bring more people and more voices.”
Barden, reached on Thursday just after returning to Connecticut following a fundraiser in Washington, added, “I want to get something done.”
Banning the AR-15 just plays into the National Rifle Association’s warnings about the feds coming to take your guns, gun control advocates reason — and besides, most of the gun deaths that have become miserably routine are committed with handguns.
The ban isn’t part of the Everytown for Gun Safety’s platform, said spokeswoman Lizzie Ulmer, though the Michael Bloomberg-backed group is sympathetic to the urge to bar weapons that put the “mass in mass shootings.”
Ulmer said that background checks are the key to keeping dangerous people from using guns to hurt themselves and others.
“When you take a step back and look at preventing gun violence, it’s really about stopping guns from getting into the hands of these people,” Ulmer said. That approach is shared by Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, both of whom stress their personal gun ownership and support for Second Amendment rights.
There’s already evidence, meanwhile, that the “no fly, no buy” campaign is driving a wedge between the NRA and Republicans: Donald Trump, despite receiving a relatively early endorsement from the top gun rights group, drew the line with them on Twitter on Wednesday when he declared that he would meet with its leaders “about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no-fly list, to buy guns.”
That prompted a rebuke from Heritage Action on Thursday, which viewed Trump as getting on board with Clinton and congressional Democrats.
It took nearly 15 hours of filibustering on the Senate floor on Wednesday and Thursday for Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to win the promise of votes on background check and terror watch list measures — important statement votes that are widely expected to fail.
Nonetheless, many Democrats say they should be pushing for more amid unprecedented unity over gun control. Gay rights groups, teachers unions, immigration advocates and even abortion rights groups have signed on to the cause of gun violence prevention after mass shootings at a gay night club’s Latin night in Orlando, a black church in Charleston, an abortion clinic in Colorado Springs and schools around the country.
Cicilline is pushing for a discharge petition in the House, which would require every member to go on the record on an assault weapons ban. He’s getting back-up from the progressive movement: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has collected over 26,000 signatures in support of the discharge petition over the last 24 hours. MoveOn.org has collected more than half a million signatures calling for a ban generally.
“At major national moments, the lowest common denominator solutions aren’t enough,” said PCCC’s Sarah Badawi in an interview Thursday.
Obama on Thursday found himself once again expressing grief over another mass shooting, and made sure to talk up the dire risk of assault weapons.
"Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families," Obama said in Orlando after meeting with survivors and victims’ families. The shooter used a Sig Sauer MCX to kill 49 people and injure 53 others — a high-powered gun that would likely be taken off shelves under an assault weapons ban.
Clinton, who highlighted guns as a key area where she was to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders during the primary, has consistently advocated for an assault weapons ban on the trail. Perhaps more remarkable is her husband’s fresh call for “tighter security” on the AR-15 after Orlando.
“It's pretty clear that if you're firing … a lot of ammunition in a short amount of time with a weapon that's designed only to kill, more people will die than if you're stuck with a pistol,” Bill Clinton said Tuesday. “If the guy had just had a pistol in that nightclub, I don't think anybody believes he could possibly have killed 49 people.”
That’s in contrast to the weeks after Sandy Hook, when he said the 1994 assault weapons ban had “devastated” Democrats in that year’s midterms and warned his party not to overplay its hand.
While Obama has talked about an assault weapons ban multiple times since the Orlando massacre last weekend, he has yet to mount a big political push for it.
Polling also makes clear the higher pay-off for less aggressive measures. While support for a ban has spiked in the wake of Orlando (57 percent of respondents in a CBS poll released on Wednesday back a ban, up from 44 percent in December), almost 9-in-10 Americans support universal background checks, according to that poll, including 82 percent of gun owners. Those figures have held relatively steady since Newtown.
That “overwhelming support” for background checks — along with studies on their effectiveness in reducing gun crime — were why researchers at the liberal Center for American Progress deemed that professional gun control advocates’ “shift in focus to prevent dangerous people from accessing guns is appropriate” in 2014.
However, some Democrats point to strategic benefits of having a vote on assault weapons, even if it’s a lost cause — it’s easier to vote for “reasonable” gun restrictions if you’re drawing a line on the extreme gun grab.
Sixteen Democratic senators voted against the assault weapons ban on April 17, 2013, including the current head of their campaign arm, Montana’s Jon Tester.
Yet all but four of them voted in favor of proceeding with expanded background check legislation that same day. Sen. Joe Donnelly used the specter of the ban to explain his vote in favor of the background checks.
“History shows that Congress begins re-examining proposals that would infringe on citizens' 2nd Amendment rights, like the assault weapons ban, which I oppose, only when someone who shouldn't have had guns in the first place uses them to commit mass murder,” he said at the time.
“When Democrats go on offense and shift the conversation about these bigger ideas, that puts more oxygen in the room to have the conversation about these more important elements,” PCCC’s Badawi said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a longtime advocate for an assault weapons ban who introduced the 2013 version, said she still feels as strongly.
“In light of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, I believe we have an obligation to revisit this issue,” Feinstein said in a statement Tuesday, adding that she was “considering” re-introducing the bill and conferring with colleagues.
A spokeswoman said Thursday that Feinstein had yet to make a decision.
Simply because it won’t work. They are already in American’s hands. Do they think words on a piece of paper will make them suddenly disappear?
just make it a voice vote and declare the amendment failed...
sheesh...
Nancy, Nancy, Nancy...nobody is falling for your malarky anymore.
They get traction out of blaming intransigent Republicans.
Yeah, good luck enforcing it.
Because they know that if they can get the Republicans to vote to suppress those on the terror watch list and no fly list then they can win. How? By simply increasing whom they want on the lists. Tea Party types, conservatives, just about everybody. Then try getting yourself off that list.
No what you are now all doing is running a massive effort to distract from the fact that Trump has been on target all along and Hillary has and will continue to enable the terrorists.
Stay focused everyone
“Do they think words on a piece of paper will make them suddenly disappear?”
To libtards, yes.
Why yes, yes they do.
And then unicorns and fairy dust will flow from the heavens.
Tell that to the murdered unborn children she's in favor of killing.
Have you seen the percentages for estimated compliance with the NY state assault weapons ban? It’s something like 15%.
Like in Paris? Like in Brussels?
I pity the guys who get sent to take them away from us.
MEDIC! Something is wrong! @#$%&!
And Boston?
Ulmer said that background checks are the key to....
******************
Universal background checks are code for making every transfer of a firearm illegal unless reported to the government.
Backdoor registration.
They can’t confiscate until they know where they are.
They do not expect to collect them all at once. The intention is to gradually make them illegitimate, so that they can be incrementally confiscated over generations. That is what was done in the UK.
Generations. That’s the key word. By then there may not be an America anymore.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.