http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...ss-senate.html
A proposed ban on sales of assault weapons would be defeated in the U.S. Senate today unless some members changed their current views, based on a Bloomberg review of recent lawmaker statements and interviews.
At least six of the 55 senators who caucus with Democrats have recently expressed skepticism or outright opposition to a ban, the review found. That means Democrats wouldn’t have a simple 51-vote majority to pass the measure, let alone the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster to bring it to a floor vote.
A ban on the military-style weapons is among the legislative goals President Barack Obama outlined in his recommendations to Congress on curbing gun violence after the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. Vice President Joe Biden said today it will take “persuasion and information” to garner the necessary support in Congress to enact the weapons’ ban and other measures.
“We have an obligation to act -- not wait,” Biden told reporters after a more than two-hour roundtable at Virginia Commonwealth University to discuss the administration’s push for new gun-safety measures.
Yesterday, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California introduced legislation to outlaw sales of assault- style weapons during a news conference where survivors of past shootings, some of them with bullets still lodged in their bodies, urged its passage.
Uphill Fight
At that event, Feinstein said it’s unclear whether the fight is winnable. “We don’t know, it’s so uphill,” she said. “It depends on the courage of Americans.”
The five Democratic senators from traditionally pro-gun states who have recently expressed skepticism about the bill are Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Independent Senator Angus King of Maine, who is caucusing with Democrats, also said he opposes a ban.
Maine Senator Susan Collins, a Republican who supported similar legislation in 2004, has indicated she is unlikely to back the proposed ban in its current form.
The 1994 assault weapons ban, signed by President Bill Clinton, expired in 2004 and, until the school shooting in Newtown, there’s been little effort in Congress to renew it.
Weapons Legislation
The new legislation prohibits the sale or transfer of 158 of the most commonly owned military-style assault weapons. It exempts all assault weapons legally possessed prior to passage of the law and excludes more than 2,200 hunting and sporting rifles.
Baucus, in a Jan. 16 statement, said that “before passing new laws, we need a thoughtful debate that respects responsible, law-abiding gun owners in Montana instead of a one-size-fits-all directive from Washington.”
“The answer isn’t simply in limiting guns,” said Andrea Helling, a spokeswoman for Tester. The senator also told the Missoulian newspaper that an assault weapons ban wouldn’t have stopped the shootings in Newtown.
Begich said he was “not interested” in a ban, during a Jan. 10 conference call with reporters.
“I don’t believe that we need to pile on new laws and suddenly that solves all the problems,” he said. Manchin told CNN on Jan. 13 that the debate can’t be “about guns and guns only and a “stand-alone ban” will “not go anywhere.”
Freshmen Skepticism
Two freshmen also expressed skepticism about an assault weapons ban.
“There isn’t any amount of gun regulation or gun executive orders that will solve the problem of identifying people who could potentially do this and making sure they get the help and their families get the help so they don’t do this,” Heitkamp told North Dakota’s KXMB-TV and KXMC-TV Jan. 15.
Scott Ogden, a spokesman for King, said the senator “remains skeptical” about an assault weapons ban, though he was waiting for more details. And Collins is concerned that the proposed legislation is “far broader in the kinds of rifles that would be banned than was the case in the law in effect between 1994 and 2004,” said her spokesman, Kevin Kelley.
Further dimming prospects for the assault weapon ban, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, both Democrats, voted against extending a previous ban in 2004. Neither has made any public statements since Newtown indicating that they will change their positions.
Victims’ Voices
Feinstein is hoping survivor testimonials, along with the images of the slain Sandy Hook students, most of them 6-year- olds, will push these Democrats to reconsider their opposition.
“The message to Democrats is, ‘See what your silence does?’ There will be more of these. These won’t end,” Feinstein told reporters.
“If just reading the list of beautiful names and looking into the eyes of some of the pictures of the children slain doesn’t do something to the conscience of America, nothing I can say or do will,” she said.
The vote shortage may prompt Democrats to focus on another major goal: banning high-capacity magazines that have been used in many of the shooting massacres over the past decade to fire off numerous bullets in a matter of seconds.
Feinstein’s legislation also includes a large magazine sales ban, and Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced legislation on Jan. 22 to ban the manufacture and sale of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds.
Tucson Shooting
In the Tucson, Arizona, shooting two years ago that severely injured former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, of Arizona, Jared Lee Loughner fired 31 bullets in 15 seconds from a Glock 19 pistol. He was tackled while reloading. Shooter James Holmes used a 100-round magazine to kill 12 and wound 58 in July 2012 at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater.
Some of these lawmakers did express support for a ban on high-capacity magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, and increased background checks.
“Congress must act to implement magazine capacity restrictions,” King spokesman Ogden said in a statement.
King is also “generally supportive of expanded background checks,” he added. Collins “supports a reasonable limitation on the number of rounds of ammunition in a magazine,” spokesman Kelley said.
Biden Trip
Biden, who Obama tapped to develop recommendations for action after the Connecticut shooting, said there would be more trips outside of Washington to discuss the issue. He called Newtown “a national tragedy and a window into a vulnerability people feel about their safety and the safety of their children.”
The White House’s campaign-style effort is designed to build political pressure on Congress to take action.
“I have no illusions about what needs to be done and how difficult it will be,” Biden said in an e-mail today to Obama’s supporters. “Each one of us needs to speak up and demand action,” he wrote, concluding: “Let’s get this done.”
The private roundtable included cabinet officials, Democratic lawmakers, and members of the state-appointed review board that investigated the 2007 shooting that killed 33 people at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, known as Virginia Tech, in the deadliest gun massacre in U.S. history.
That incident prompted enactment in early 2008 of a law improving state reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, aimed at barring criminals or mentally ill individuals from obtaining guns.
Mental Health
Biden said the group discussed the need for strengthening that system and implementing universal background checks with better and more timely information from states. He said they also talked about the “woefully inadequate” number of trained mental health professionals available around the country.
Manchin told a West Virginia radio interviewer Jan. 24 that he also is working with senators of both parties to require most gun purchasers, including those at gun shows, to undergo checks.
“If you’re going to be a gun owner, you should have a background check and be able to pass a background check,” he said. Exceptions should be made in cases where a gun is transferred from one family member to another, and when the owner is getting a gun to use at a sporting event.
Manchin said private sellers at gun shows have an “unfair advantage” because they don’t have to perform background checks while a licensed dealer does.
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