Will Congress act on guns after Sandy Hook, Buffalo, Uvalde?
WASHINGTON » Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer swiftly set in motion a pair of firearms background-check bills Wednesday in response to the school massacre in Texas. But the 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, saying, “If the slaughter of schoolchildren can’t convince Republicans to buck the NRA, what can we do?”
The killings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, has laid bare the political reality that the U.S. Congress has proved unwilling or unable to pass substantial federal legislation to curb gun violence in America.
Congress failed to approve a firearms background check bill after 20 kindergartners were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School almost a decade ago, and that signaled the beginning of the end of federal gun-violence legislation.
Despite the outpouring of grief Wednesday after the starkly similar Texas massacre, it is not at all clear there will be any different outcome.
“We are accepting this as the new normal,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., on “CBS Mornings.” “It’s our choice.”
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, including Tuesday in Texas, and the racist killing of Black shoppers at a Buffalo, N.Y., market 10 days earlier — lawmakers have been unwilling 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, DAriz., was shot in the head at a Saturday morning event outside a Tucson grocery store, and several Republican lawmakers on a congressional baseball team were shot during morning 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.’ So this is just normal now, which is ridiculous.”
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.
“Every moment is just horrific, but when you have babies, little children, innocent as can be, oh God,” Manchin told reporters late Tuesday as news broke of the Texas shooting, 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 a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla.