Schumer rips GOP after school shooting in Texas
Background-check bills in motion, but little action expected
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer swiftly set in motion a pair of background-check bills for gun buyers Wednesday in response to the school massacre in Texas.
However, the New York Democrat acknowledged Congress’ unyielding rejection of previous legislation to curb the national epidemic of gun violence.
Schumer implored his Republican colleagues to cast aside the powerful gun lobby and reach across the aisle for even a modest compromise bill. But no votes are being scheduled.
“Please, please, please ... put yourselves in the shoes of these parents just for once,” Schumer said as he opened the Senate.
He threw up his hands at the idea of what might seem an inevitable outcome: “If the slaughter of schoolchildren can’t convince Republicans
to buck the NRA, what can we do?”
The killing of at least 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, has laid bare the political reality that Congress has proven unwilling or unable to pass substantial federal legislation to curb gun violence in America.
In many ways, the end of any gun violence legislation in Congress was signaled a
decade ago when the Senate failed to approve a firearms background check bill after 20 children — mostly 6- and 7-year-olds — were killed when a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Despite the outpouring of grief Wednesday after the starkly similar Texas massacre, it’s not at all clear there will be any different outcome.
“It’s our choice,” lamented Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., on “CBS Mornings.”
While President Joe Biden said “we have to act,” substantial gun violence legislation has been blocked by Republicans, often with a handful of conservative Democrats.
Despite mounting mass shootings in communities nationwide — two in the past two weeks alone, including the racist killing of Black shoppers at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store — there have never been enough lawmakers willing to set aside their differences and buck the gun lobby to work out any compromise.
Even the targeting of their own failed to move Congress to act.
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in the head at an event outside a Tucson grocery store in 2011, and several Republican lawmakers on a congressional baseball team were shot years later during a practice.
“The conclusion is the same,” said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. “I’m not seeing any of my Republican colleagues come forward right now and say, ‘Here’s a plan to stop the carnage.’ ”
It’s “nuts to do nothing about this,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Giffords’ husband, said Wednesday, using an expletive.
Republicans quickly pushed forward a bill championed by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin that would create a nationwide database of school safety practices.
Schumer, though, objected to its immediate consideration, vowing a much broader debate and votes.
Pleading with his colleagues for a compromise, Murphy said he was reaching out to the two Texas Republican senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and had called fellow Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who authored the bill that failed after Sandy Hook.
“When you have babies, little children, innocent as can be, oh God,” Manchin told reporters, noting he had three school-age grandchildren. “It just makes no sense at all why we can’t do common sense — common sense things — and try to prevent some of this from happening.”
In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, compromise legislation, written by Manchin and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, was backed by a majority of senators. But it fell to a filibuster — blocked by most Republicans and a handful of Democrats, unable to overcome the 60-vote threshold needed to advance.
The same bill flamed out again in 2016, after 49 people died a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
“My interest in doing something to improve and expand our background check system remains,” Toomey told reporters Wednesday. He said he had been in contact with Murphy.
But Toomey was an outlier. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has declined to publicly comment on potential legislation, and few others added their voices to the mix.
The Texas shooting was a secondary topic at the senators’ private GOP lunch on Wednesday.