Senate to weigh background checks
McConnell says President Trump called him to discuss ideas in wake of Texas, Ohio killings
Washington — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday he wants Congress to consider legislation to expand federal background checks and other gun violence measures when lawmakers return in the fall.
The Republican leader told a Kentucky radio station that President Donald Trump called him Thursday morning and they talked about several ideas. The president, he said, is “anxious to get an outcome and so am I.”
Republicans have resisted expanding background checks but face enormous pressure to do something in the aftermath of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend that killed 31 people.
“Background checks and red flags will probably lead the discussion,” the Senate leader said, referring to legislation that allows authorities to seize firearms from someone deemed a threat to themselves or others.
The Republican leader has been under pressure to call senators back to Washington from their summer recess to work on gun measures. He rejected that idea, saying it would just lead to senators “scoring points and nothing would happen.”
Instead he wants to spend the August recess talking with Democratic and Republican senators to see what’s possible.
“What we can’t do is fail to pass something,” McConnell said. “What I want to see here is an outcome.”
More than 200 mayors, including two anguished by mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, are urging the Senate to return to the Capitol to act on gun safety legislation amid criticism that Congress is failing to respond to the back-to-back shootings.
In a letter Thursday to McConnell and the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, the mayors wrote, “Our nation can no longer wait for our federal government to take the actions necessary to prevent people who should not have access to firearms from being able to purchase them.”
The mayors urged the Senate to vote on two bills expanding background checks for gun sales that passed in the House earlier this year. It was signed by El Paso, Texas, Mayor Dee Margo, Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Nan Whaley and others where mass shootings have occurred, including Orlando and Parkland, Fla., Pittsburgh, Pa., and Annapolis, Md.