Democrats try to turn outrage over shooting into action but face long odds
Just shy of a decade after the Senate’s failure to respond to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Democrats are once again trying to transform outrage over the gun deaths of children into action to curb gun violence in America.
But with most Republicans opposed and a Senate even more conservative than the one that filibustered bipartisan legislation to strengthen background checks for gun purchasers, the odds appeared long.
Echoes between the Newtown, Conn., mass shooting in December 2012 that left 20 children and six adults dead and the Uvalde, Texas, tragedy that killed at least 19 children and two teachers are painful. In both cases, a loner from the community attacked an elementary school, overpowering children and adults with an arsenal of weaponry.
After Newtown, Vice President Joe Biden was tasked with persuading a bipartisan coalition of at least 60 senators to act — and break a threatened filibuster from conservative Republicans. On Tuesday night, an anguished President Biden made the case for “common sense gun laws,” including an assault weapons ban, and declared, “It’s time to turn this pain into action.”
Then, as now, bipartisan legislation exists, authored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.VA., and Patrick Toomey, R-PA., to impose universal background checks on gun purchasers, closing loopholes for gun shows and online gun sales. Then, as now, the barrier was the Senate’s requirement of 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster.
The frustration after massacres too numerous to list is great, but in some quarters, so is the resignation.
“Maybe the thought of putting yourself in the shoes of these parents instead of in the arms of the NRA might let you wriggle free from the vise-like grip of the NRA to act on even a simple measure,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said Wednesday in addressing his Republican colleagues. “For the sake of these children, these 9-year-olds, these 10-year-olds, these 11-year-olds, these beautiful children, please, damn it.”
Schumer pledged Wednesday to move forward with or without Republican lawmakers but he acknowledged, “we’ve been burned so many times before” when it came to negotiating a bipartisan compromise.
The vast majority of Republicans have steadfastly opposed any substantial measure to limit access to guns or more strictly regulate them, grounding their position in the Second Amendment right to bear arms. There is little indication that the children killed in Uvalde will shake that stance.