Gun debate pressures Congress to end vacation

Washington — The August recess, as it’s known in Congress, is considered so sacrosanct that only one time in the past 30 years have the House and the Senate remained in session until late August.

But that lone break from summer tradition, in 1994, continues to reverberate in today’s politics, both in what gun-safety advocates are demanding and on the 2020 presidential campaign trail.

Congress stayed in session until late August 1994 to pass a landmark crime bill that included a ban on assault weapons, the Violence Against Women Act, tough sentencing guidelines for federal crimes, and an expansion of the death penalty.

In the wake of a trio of mass shootings in a seven-day span, Democrats are calling for the Senate to come back into session this month to consider legislation expanding background checks for firearms purchases that was passed earlier this year by the House. And some are calling on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to pull the House back to pass more aggressive proposals such as banning assault weapons.

Pelosi, who was on an official trip this week in Central America, has resisted those calls so far. Instead, she wants to apply political pressure to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has refused for more than five months to even consider the Democratic bill to expand background checks to include private gun sales.

McConnell has proposed a more methodical negotiation among Pelosi’s House Democrats, his Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump, searching for an elusive bipartisan agreement to stem the tide of the mass shooting epidemic.

“We’re going to begin these discussions over the August break,” he told a Kentucky radio host Thursday, pushing off any action until after Congress returns on Sept. 9. “And when we get back, hopefully we’ll be in a position to agree on things on a bipartisan basis and go forward and make a law.”

The senator has been recovering from a fractured shoulder after a fall at his home.

McConnell is well versed in partisan gamesmanship on August recess. Last year he announced he was canceling the summer break to process a backlog of presidential nominees who needed to be confirmed — but his advisers made clear that he also wanted to disrupt the schedules of Senate Democrats who wanted to be home campaigning ahead of the November elections.

In reality, the Senate only convened eight days during those five weeks, with that last week devoted mostly to paying tribute to John McCain, R-Ariz., after the senator’s death Aug. 25.