House passes background checks bill
Democrats OK legislation similar to Toomey’s, but Senate GOP balks
WASHINGTON – The newly Democratic U.S. House on Wednesday approved the chamber’s first major gun control legislation since the 1990s, sending to the Senate a bill seeking to tighten rules for background checks on gun purchases.
Supporters of tougher gun laws heralded the 240-190 result, even as the legislation faces an uphill climb in the Republicancontrolled Senate, where GOP leaders have said they are unlikely to take it up.
Unlike the House, the Senate has repeatedly wrestled with gun legislation following recent mass shootings, most prominently in 2013, when Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin pushed to expand background checks after bloodshed at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Since then, Republicans have gained control of the U.S. Senate. Roughly one-quarter of the senators who supported the Toomey-Manchin measure in 2013 are no longer in the Senate, and most have been replaced by more conservative successors. Two of the four Republicans who backed that bill — Toomey and Susan Collins of Maine — remain in office.
Toomey since has said repeatedly that he sees no path forward for the bill in the Senate, but that he still supports the measure and continues to talk privately with colleagues. After Democrats regained House control in November, he said a House vote could increase pressure for Senate action.
Asked by a reporter this week in the Capitol hallway if he would reintroduce his background check bill, Toomey said he would prefer a version with “broader Republican support,” perhaps by tweaking his original version.
“So I just might end up reintroducing the old bill, but I’m still in discussion with colleagues to see if there are ways to tweak it so that we could have more support,” Toomey said.
The measure that passed the House on Wednesday, HR 8, is similar but not identical to the Toomey-Manchin bill from 2013. Both would expand background checks to commercial firearms sales over the internet and at gun shows. Under Toomey’s measure, private individuals still could sell their guns to family, friends or other acquaintances. The House-approved bill has a narrower exemption for transferring firearms between family members without a check.
Toomey’s prior measure also included other provisions intended to encourage GOP support, such as allowing interstate handgun sales by dealers and tweaking laws for transporting legal firearms across state lines.
Additional provisions in the bill called for creating a national commission to study mass violence and for improving the national database used for background checks. (A provision signed into law last year sought to better ensure that records are submitted to that database.)
The Toomey-Manchin bill drew 55 votes in 2013, and seven fewer when Manchin reintroduced it in 2015, following a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., in which 14 people were killed.
Wednesday’s House vote reflects the polarized positions on gun legislation: of the 240 supporters, eight were Republicans. They included Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent whose district is based in Bucks County. Two Democrats voted no.
Democrats said gun owners have a responsibility to ensure firearms are properly handled. The bill includes exceptions allowing temporary transfers to prevent imminent harm or for use at a target range.
“No other industrialized country in the world treats gun violence so casually, and neither should we,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat representing Montgomery County.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who was gravely wounded in a 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice, said stricter background checks would not have prevented his shooting or other tragedies.
“What it would do is make criminals out of law-abiding citizens,” Scalise said.
The House is expected to approve a second bill Thursday that would extend the review period for background checks from three to 10 days.
Groups supporting tougher gun controls have been emboldened by a 2018 midterm election in which candidates across the country campaigned on stricter regulations.
“Voters are watching carefully,” former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has advocated for tougher gun laws since she was severely wounded in a 2011 shooting, said in a statement after the House vote.