Gridlock in Washington makes timely action on guns seem unlikely.
House, Senate, president are all mired in the politics of gun control debate
WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders on Tuesday ruled out acting swiftly to respond to the shooting that killed 17 at a Florida high school, spurring the surviving students to lead calls for legislative action.
With President Donald Trump and the Senate also moving deliberately on the issue, neither House Speaker Paul Ryan nor other top GOP leaders would commit to holding a vote on modest gun-related measures that have broad bipartisan support.
The Fix NICS Act would create incentives and penalties to improve reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and has the backing of the National Rifle Association. Another bill would ban “bump stock” accessories that allow a semiautomatic rifle to mimic the rapid fire of a machine gun.
The House passed a version of the Fix NICS measure in December, in conjunction with a controversial provision that would force states to recognize concealed-carry licenses from other states. The Senate is exploring passing Fix NICS as a standalone measure as soon as this week, but Ryan would not say Tuesday whether he would bring that or a bump-stock ban up for a vote.
“We’re waiting to see what the Senate can do,” he said, adding, “We obviously think the Senate should take our whole bill, but if the Senate cannot do that, then we’ll discuss and cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Speaking on the Senate floor shortly afterward, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas — the majority whip and a co-sponsor of the Fix NICS bill — called on his colleagues to pass the legislation.
“There’s a lot of other things we can do, but the one thing we can do this week before we go home is to pass the Fix NICS bill and to send it to the House and then to the president and sign it into law,” he said. “It will save lives.”
But there are obstacles. One Republican senator, Mike Lee of Utah, is blocking the bill from rapid consideration because of constitutional objections, while in the House, hard-line conservatives have similar concerns that could make it tricky for Ryan to move the measure through the chamber.
Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing for broader legislation to improve background checks, although they are not openly threatening to block Cornyn’s bill.
“What will prevent future tragedy? Comprehensive background checks will; the Fix NICS bill will not,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “Let’s not set our sights too narrow or squander this moment.”
House lawmakers are set to finish their business for the week on Tuesday evening, and no hearings or other action responding to the massacre in Parkland, Fla., have been scheduled in either chamber. Although the Senate will remain at work later this week, House leaders cited the scheduled lying-in-honor of the Rev. Billy Graham in the Capitol rotunda on Wednesday and Thursday for cutting the workweek short.
The holding pattern comes as President Trump has floated a number of potential actions, ranging from a higher age limit on rifle purchases to arming teachers and volunteer school guards to beefing up background checks. But he has yet to formally endorse any particular course of action, which has left his Republican allies in Congress unsure of how to proceed and turning to a playbook familiar from past acts of mass violence — where initial demands for action faded with the passage of time and the emergence of new headlines.
“My impression is that they’ve not communicated a lot of very clear thoughts behind closed doors,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., one of the most prominent gun control advocates in Congress, said of the Trump administration. “My sense is, the White House is still trying to figure out where the president is.”
Murphy and Cornyn are among a number of lawmakers who plan to attend a White House summit on gun policy Wednesday. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has written a ban on military-style “assault weapons” has also been invited, an aide familiar with the meeting said.
Cornyn said he spoke with Trump over the weekend and that the president’s “got a lot of ideas” but that he hasn’t personally discussed with him any background-checks legislation that’s broader than the Fix NICS Act. Murphy, meanwhile, said he believes the White House would be willing to go beyond the barebones bill for a more expansive background checks measure.
Cornyn warned against trying to overreach. “I worry that we’re going to be leaving here by Thursday or Friday and end up empty-handed,” he said. “I think that would be a tragedy.”