“Caving To Fear”: The Senate Fails America
For 45 senators, the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy. The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action. The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.
Those senators, 41 Republicans and four Democrats, killed a bill on Wednesday to expand background checks for gun buyers. It was the last, best hope for meaningful legislation to reduce gun violence after a deranged man used semiautomatic weapons to kill 20 children and six adults at the school in Newtown, Conn., 18 weeks ago. A ban on assault weapons was voted down by 60 senators; 54 voted against a limit on bullet magazines.
Patricia Maisch, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, spoke for many in the country when she shouted from the Senate gallery: “Shame on you.”
Newtown, in the end, changed nothing; the overwhelming national consensus to tighten a ridiculously lax set of gun laws was stopped cold. That’s because the only thing that mattered to these lawmakers was a blind and unthinking fealty to the whims of the gun lobby.
The National Rifle Association once supported the expansion of background checks, but it decided this time that President Obama and gun-control advocates could not be allowed even a scintilla of a victory, no matter how sensible. That group, and others even more militant, wanted to make sure not one bill emerged from the Newtown shooting, and they got their way. A vast majority of Republicans meekly followed along, joined by a few nervous red-state Democrats, giving far more weight to a small, shrill and largely rural faction than to the country’s overwhelming need for safety and sanity.
Guns had not been on the president’s campaign agenda, but, to his credit, he and Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. came up with a solid package of proposals after Newtown that would have reduced the number of dangerous weapons on the street and in the hands of criminals. Mr. Obama traveled the country to promote it in 13 speeches, and he has spent the last weeks unsuccessfully trying to pry senators out of the pocket of the gun lobby.
The most important aspect of his proposal, in the eyes of many gun-control advocates, was the expansion of background checks, both because it closed an important loophole and because it seemed the easiest to pass. From 20 percent to 40 percent of all gun sales now take place without a background check, and the bill rejected on Wednesday would have required the check for buyers at gun shows, on the Internet and at other commercially advertised sales. It was sponsored by two pro-gun senators with the courage to buck the lobby, Joe Manchin III, a Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick Toomey, a Republican of Pennsylvania.
The critical need for this measure was illustrated by a report in The Times on Wednesday that showed how easy it is for criminals to buy weapons on the Internet without a look at their backgrounds. One widely popular Web site contains tens of thousands of private postings of gun sales, and The Times’s investigation found that many buyers and sellers were criminals. Some of the guns have been used to kill.
A vote to continue this practice would be hard to explain to constituents, so lawmakers simply invented reasons to oppose background checks. Some insisted it would lead to a national gun registry, though the plain language of the bill prohibited that. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said it would raise taxes. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said it would require checks even when a gun sale is posted on an office bulletin board. (There’s nothing wrong with that, but it wouldn’t.) Mr. Obama, after the vote, said those who made these arguments had “willfully lied.”
It’s now up to voters to exact a political price from those who defied the public’s demand, and Mr. Obama was forceful in promising to lead that effort. Wednesday was just Round 1, he said; the next step is to replace those whose loyalty is given to a lobby rather than the people.
“Sooner or later, we are going to get this right,” he said. “The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people.”
By: The Editorial Board, The New York Times, April 17, 2013
“A Bridge Too Far”: GOP Sees Background Checks As Too Much Paperwork
Before the Senate left for their spring recess, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made clear what he and his party expect of legislation to reduce gun violence. While he said several key provisions are negotiable, “[I]n order to be effective, any bill that passes the Senate must include background checks.”
At least on the surface, it would seem to be the most difficult provision to oppose. Expanded background checks enjoy extraordinary levels of public support, even among gun owners, and there are no constitutional concerns to speak of. Critics of the idea have generally been reduced to making up nonsense and conspiracy theories, unable to think of any substantive arguments.
It would seem, then, that expanded background checks would be the kind of measure that might actually pass. And yet, on the Sunday shows, Republican senators rejected the popular idea out of hand.
In this clip, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said closing the gun-show loophole is “a bridge too far” for most Senate Republicans. He added that the “paperwork requirements alone would be significant.”
The nation would like to reduce mass murders, but for some federal lawmakers, “paperwork requirements” have to take precedence?
Similarly, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was asked whether expanded background checks can survive in the Senate. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think it makes any sense. The current system is broken. Fix the current system.”
By “fix the current system,” Graham apparently envisions efforts to improve the existing background database while enforcing the law more diligently — that might be possible if Senate Republicans weren’t also blocking ATF from functioning effectively — all while leaving the massive gun-show loophole in place, on purpose.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 1, 2013
“Straw Purchasing”: Senate Gun Trafficking Bill Advances With Only One Republican Vote
Gabrielle Giffords on Wednesday urged senators to be “bold” and “courageous” in acting now on gun violence legislation, specifically universal background checks.
Seven Republicans sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Jeff Flake from Giffords’ home state of Arizona, couldn’t even bring themselves to vote for a federal gun trafficking bill, which would for the first time enhance criminal penalties for straw purchasers and gun traffickers.
On Thursday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the bipartisan Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act of 2013, with 10 Democrats and only one Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), voting to bring the bill to a full Senate vote, which will likely take place after Congress returns from April recess.
The seven Republicans who voted against the measure — whose chief sponsor is committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) (pictured) and is co-sponsored by Republicans Mark Kirk (IL) and Susan Collins (ME) — are: Orrin Hatch (UT), Jeff Sessions (AL), Lindsey Graham (SC), John Cornyn (TX), Mike Lee (UT), Ted Cruz (TX), and Flake.
ThinkProgress quotes Cornyn as saying “my concern is that this bill is a solution in search of a problem. Straw purchasing for purpose of directing guns to people who cannot legally attain them is already a crime,” in explaining his opposition to the federal gun trafficking law.
Giffords and husband Mark Kelly’s new gun safety advocacy group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, states on its website why the gun trafficking law is important. They say, contrary to Cornyn’s assertion, that “law enforcement can only go after gun traffickers for what are essentially paperwork violations,” and that these offenses generally lead to minor sentences (the law would stiffen penalties for straw purchases to up to 25 years). They also state that “one percent of licensed firearm dealers account for 57 percent of guns recovered in crimes.”
The committee is also set to consider three other gun bills, including universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines. Although a majority of Americans support all three proposals, many congressional Republicans and the National Rifle Association oppose any new gun laws.
“The number one thing we can do to stop gun trafficking is a universal background check system. But Congress should also institute stiff penalties for straw purchasers and pass a clear federal statute that makes gun trafficking a serious crime,” Americans for Responsible Solutions says.
By: Josh Marks, The National Memo, March 7, 2013
“A Model Of Deception”: For House Republicans, A Game Of Debt Charades
Lawmakers went home for the holidays and got an earful from constituents about their juvenile behavior in Washington.
So, in their first major act of 2012, House Republicans picked up exactly where they left off: They staged a duplicitous debate in which they pretended that they were going to deny President Obama permission to increase the government’s borrowing limit.
The pretense had been clear since last summer, when 174 House Republicans voted for a budget deal that guaranteed that the debt limit would continue to increase this year unless two-thirds of the House and Senate voted otherwise — a practical impossibility.
But that didn’t stop many of those same 174 Republicans from marching to the floor Wednesday afternoon to vote for a resolution “disapproving” of the very same debt-limit increase they had already blessed. It was a model of deception: claiming to oppose something they had guaranteed would take effect.
“My resolution that is before this chamber will send a message that the constant borrowing from our children, our grandchildren, must come to an end,” declared Rep. Tom Reed (N.Y.), one of the 174 Republicans who voted to allow the borrowing last summer.
“During my time in Congress, I voted nine times against raising the debt limit because it was not tied to spending controls. This is another time to say no,” argued Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), who said yes last year to the increase he voted against on Wednesday.
“If we do nothing, American prosperity will drown in debt,” said Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (Pa.), another of the 174 Republicans who had authorized the drowning.
“The culture of Washington must be reformed from the ground up,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) thundered in opposition to the debt-limit increase to which he consented last summer. “The future of our nation depends on it.”
Actually, if the culture of Washington is to be reformed, a good place to start would be for Kinzinger and his colleagues to be more honest about their shenanigans.
The role of calling out Republicans for their two-faced behavior fell on Wednesday to one of their own, conservative Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), who, unlike most of his colleagues, was perfectly consistent: He opposed increasing the limit last year, and he continued to oppose it on Wednesday.
“This vote has been called a charade,” Flake said on the floor. “That is true. It is. Let’s face it.”
Flake, one of the few grownups in the chamber, was not done with his fellow Republicans. “I think we have to admit that even if the Senate had passed the House-passed budget, the so-called Ryan budget, we would still have to raise the debt ceiling,” he reminded them. “I don’t think anybody really disputes that. We are going to have to raise the debt ceiling again and again.”
Then Flake did something truly heretical: He reminded Republicans that “we were headed toward this cliff long before the president took control of the wheel.”
What Flake said was demonstrably true: Both parties created the debt mess, and to fix the problem both would have to be honest. Instead of being honest, however, House Republicans were staging a show so that they could tell voters they opposed the very debt limit hike they had authorized.
Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) accused the Republicans of donning “flip-flops.”
“I do prefer Crocs, if anybody cares,” Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) retorted.
Apparently, most of the 174 Republicans who blessed the debt-limit increase last year were embarrassed about going to the floor to argue against it, because most of those who spoke were from that GOP minority who voted against the debt-limit increase last year, too.
“We should never have passed that Budget Control Act the way we did,” said Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who voted no last summer. As a result, he said, Obama is “raising the debt ceiling without us being able to do a thing about it. We made a big mistake.”
Maybe they made a big mistake. Or maybe they did the right thing last year in reaching an agreement that kept the federal government from defaulting.
Reed, the floor leader for Republicans on Wednesday, wanted to have it both ways. “It’s so important, in my opinion, for the future of this nation, the future of the world,” he pleaded, with an urgency that he apparently lacked last summer. “The national debt is a serious threat to our very existence as an American nation.”
Reed and 232 fellow Republicans then voted to “disapprove” of the debt-limit increase — well short of the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a presidential veto. The House’s first legislative act of 2012 had been utterly pointless — which was just the point.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 18, 2012
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