The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Battle lines form again
Las Vegas massacre renews gun debate
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, DConn., took the lead Tuesday of a reinvigorated Democratic effort on Capitol Hill to pass tougher gun laws, even though the political terrain for such legislation is less hospitable than ever.
“I think there will be a popular uprising in the country after what happened in Las Vegas, because everyone is under threat,” said Murphy, who pledged at a Capitol news conference to reintroduce a universal backgroundcheck bill soon. “Republicans are starting to realize the political liability of being on the wrong side of this issue.”
Murphy and Blumenthal spoke just hours after House Speaker Paul Ryan said the House has no plans to bring up a bill that would have eased restrictions on purchases of gun silencers.
“That bill is not scheduled now; I don’t know when it’s going to be scheduled,” Ryan said, without linking it to events in Las Vegas.
With Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, Murphy, Blumenthal and other Democrats were looking for anything — even delay on the silencer bill — as a sign that momentum is again on their side.
“I think the gun industry expects to get something from Donald Trump and a Republican House and Senate,” said Murphy. “There’s no doubt that we’re going to be playing defense.”
Nevertheless, “to the extent we can stop the gun lobby from getting their priority list, that certainly is a victory.”
The back-and-forth over guns came two days after a gunman in Las Vegas opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. The gunman killed 59 people and himself, and wounded more than 500.
A call to close loopholes
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is said to have designated Connecticut’s senators as the leads on Democratic gun-related efforts postVegas, in large measure because of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown that took the lives of 20 children and six adult staff members.
That tragedy galvanized support behind stricter gun laws, particularly universal background checks aimed at eliminating the “gunshow loophole.” And it identified Connecticut closely with the effort to usher in a tightening of gun laws to prevent further mass-shootings — an aspiration so far largely unfulfilled.
Although federally licensed gun dealers must run background checks on all sales, unlicensed individuals may sell guns without background checks as long as such sales are not their livelihood.
At the news conference, Blumenthal said he would introduce a measure to close yet another loophole, which he called the “Charleston loophole.’’
He was referring to Dylan Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine people in 2015 at a church in Charleston, S.C. Roof was able to purchase a .45 caliber handgun even though he did not pass a background check.
Roof got his weapons because federal law stipulates that if a check is not completed in 72 hours, the sale can proceed.
Blumenthal called the measure “very modest,” adding: “Closing loopholes one by one, making our laws effective one by one, is a way to make our nation safer.”
The Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, had an arsenal of 23 guns, at least two of which were equipped with a “bumpstock” device that turns a semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull) rifle into a fully automatic machine gun (continuous burst of fire with each trigger pull).
Though technically legal, the device effectively circumvents strict federal regulation and prohibition of machine guns that date to 1934.
‘An end-around’ on the law
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has called for legislation to bar the conversion device. Her measure quickly gained support from other Democrats Tuesday, but it remains unclear whether it would gain bipartisan support.
Murphy and Blumenthal both expressed support for the Feinstein proposal. Murphy said he could not imagine Republicans voting against it.
The bumpstock device is “an end-around on a law supported by both parties,” Murphy said. “The prohibition on the purchase or distribution of automatic weapons is supported by both parties. So both parties should support ending this new way to get around the prohibition.”
So far, Republicans do not appear to have much interest in Democrats’ gun proposals. Asked about measures to stop gun violence, Ryan said mental health assistance put in place by Congress last year is “a critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things from happening.”
Asked about Trump overturning an Obama-era rule that permitted the Social Security Administration to enter the names of mentally ill individuals into the FBI’s backgroundcheck system, Ryan responded the rollback was necessary because gun rights were being “infringed.”
After the Newtown shooting, Connecticut Democrats predicted that a groundswell of revulsion and support would usher their gun-related priority list through Congress. That didn’t happen, even with the Senate under Democratic control and a Democrat in the White House.
But Connecticut’s senators argued that after Las Vegas, a political upheaval may be underway.