New gun laws languish in Congress

Republicans complain of getting mixed signals from White House

President Donald Trump has left Congress in the lurch once again, this time seeming to retreat just days after endorsing gun safety legislation to try to end the nation’s grim succession of school-shooting massacres.

Trump’s surprise embrace last Wednesday of gun-control measures opposed by the National Rifle Association briefly reset the debate. Then the president’s position seemed to melt — just as it had on immigration legislation weeks earlier — after a private Thursday dinner with the NRA’s top lobbyist and Vice President Mike Pence.

Now senators who days ago were eyeing a speedy and narrow floor debate on gun-purchase background checks instead, under a timeline set by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will consider an unrelated banking measure this week.

If Republicans let the issue slip away and do nothing “we’re going to get hurt because most Americans believe we should solve problems that Americans are facing like gun violence and school safety problems,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “If we don’t take this up and Democrats don’t work with us, we will all suffer, and we should.”

Many lawmakers are complaining about the mixed signals. On Wednesday, the president stunned both sides during the meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers by endorsing steps opposed by the NRA — including comprehensive legislation to expand background checks and raising the age limit to buy assault weapons to 21.

Congress has done very little to respond to mass shootings that have gripped the nation since the 1999 attack at Colorado’s Columbine High School killed 12 students and a teacher and left two dozen more injured.

In nearly 20 years since then, calls for stricter gun legislation have almost always been blocked. This time, Florida students who survived the slaughter of their classmates hope for a different outcome.

So far, the website for their effort claims to have 320 events planned worldwide on March 24.