Congress reacts
California Democrats are frustrated by lack of action to prevent a too-familiar tragedy.
Anger and grief at bad news from back home.
Rep. Pete Aguilar was leaving the House floor after the first votes of the day when his staff broke the news: There was an active shooter in his district. He never made it back for the next series of votes.
“My heart aches that the out-of-control gun violence epidemic has come to our community,” the Redlands Democrat tweeted at 2:45 p.m. Wednesday before boarding a plane home to California.
By the time he landed, officials said at least 14 were dead and 17 more were wounded in the shooting at the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center. Two suspects were dead.
At the Capitol, Democratic members of California’s delegation vacillated between anger and frustration that Congress hadn’t implemented background checks and other protocols to reduce shootings. Some Republicans pointed to legislation to make it harder for people with mental illnesses to get guns, or said the government wasn’t doing enough to enforce current laws.
Rep. Norma Torres (DPomona), who once represented the San Bernardino area in the state Senate, learned about the shooting when her son called as she left the House floor.
“That was hard — very, very hard,” she said, adding that she was “just imagining the worst.”
Torres spent much of Wednesday calling people in the district. One call was to connect an intern with her parents in Fontana.
“I told Assembly member Cheryl Brown, ‘I wish I could just reach over and hug you and know that you are OK,’ ” Torres said. “That’s what is so hard, being so far away from home.”
Her district office in Ontario stayed open with heightened security throughout the day Wednesday so someone could answer worried constituents’ phone calls. She planned to fly home Thursday.
Rep. Lois Capps (DSanta Barbara) said the news took her back to the May 2014 shooting in Isla Vista in her district. “When it happens in your own community, you really are changed. It rocks you to the core.... it forever changes a community,” she said.
She said fellow members of Congress would embrace Aguilar and the community in the coming days. Dozens of lawmakers have found their districts the scenes of mass shootings.
“We become a family when this happens. Unfortunately there is a history here; it doesn’t affect just one member,” Capps said. “There’s a lot of sympathy and reaching out now, but that needs to be sustained.”
Some in Congress had bleary eyes and were visibly emotional.
Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles said the House had held so many moments of silence for the victims of mass shootings — most recently on Tuesday for three people killed at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo. — that the moments had become bitter because they weren’t followed by action.
“We’ll do a moment of silence next week when Congressman Aguilar comes back from his district, but that’s about it,” Becerra said. “There’s this emptiness to it. It’s got this hollow sense.”
Rep. Mike Thompson (DSt. Helena), head of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, said Congress was too often “silent”: “Congress has been derelict in its duty. It’s shameful and it’s cowardice.”
Several Republicans said too little was known to offer comment.
“No reason to jump to any conclusions yet. We need to figure out what’s going on,” said Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare. “Let’s just wait and let law enforcement figure it out.”
Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) put his focus on mental illness, though little was known about the shooters.
Other Republicans questioned the need for more gun control, even as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused Congress of “a debilitating fear of upsetting the gun lobby.”