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Reid Supports Gun Curbs; Background Checks in Peril
Drive for Gun Control Blocked in Senate
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — As the Senate began debate on a number of gun measures on Wednesday, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, broke his long bond with the National Rifle Association and said he would vote for a ban on assault weapons.
WASHINGTON — A wrenching national search for solutions to the violence that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Conn., in December all but ended Wednesday after the Senate defeated several gun-related measures.
“We must strike a better balance between the right to defend ourselves and the right of every child in America to grow up safe from gun violence,” Mr. Reid said from the Senate floor on Wednesday morning.
In rapid succession, a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for would-be gun purchasers, a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity gun magazines all failed to get the 60 votes needed under an agreement both parties reached to consider the amendments.
“I’ll vote for the ban because maintaining the law and order is more important than satisfying conspiracy theorists who believe in black helicopters and false flags,” he said. “I’ll vote for the ban because saving the lives of police officers, young and old, and innocent civilians, young and old, is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.”
Senators also turned back Republican proposals to promote concealed weapons permits nationally and focus law enforcement on prosecuting gun crimes.
The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon on gun measures that may determine the shape of legislation inspired by the shootings in Newtown, Conn.
Among the victims and survivors of recent mass shootings looking on from the gallery, Lori Haas, whose daughter was shot at Virginia Tech, and Patricia Maisch, a survivor of the mass shooting in Tucson, shouted, “Shame on you.” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who presided over the votes, then asked for decorum.
By late Tuesday, a bipartisan amendment to the legislation, which would expand background checks for gun buyers, seemed all but doomed as two members who the measure’s sponsors had hoped would support it announced that they would not.
“They need to be ashamed of themselves,” Ms. Maisch said as she was being escorted from the Capitol. “They have no souls. They have no compassion.”
Senator Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, citing constitutional worries, said he would vote against it. And Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said she, too, would reject the amendment, and she threw her support behind a competing Republican measure. A handful of Democrats who were central to its passage would not commit to voting for it, and they seemed increasingly likely to turn against the measure as its prospects for passage dimmed.
Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was severely injured in the Tucson shooting, wrote in a Twitter message: “Senate ignored will of the people & rejected background checks. Im not giving up. Constituents will know they obeyed gun lobby and not them.”
Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said Wednesday that he was still scrambling for votes on the background check amendment that he created with Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania.
The Senate’s opponents of gun control, from both parties, said that they cast their votes based on logic and that passion had no place in the making of momentous policy.
Under an agreement reached Tuesday evening, the Senate will vote on as many as nine amendments in an afternoon rush. Three are largely Democratic: a provision expanding background checks to firearms bought at gun shows or on the Internet, a reinstatement of an assault weapons ban, and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
“Criminals do not submit to background checks now. They will not submit to expanded background checks,” said Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa. A provision to expand background checks was widely seen as the substantive measure with the greatest chance of passing.
Others are Republican: a mandate that any state permit for carrying a concealed weapon be honored by virtually every other state, a broad alternative gun measure aimed at mental health care and school safety, and another helping veterans clear their names to obtain firearms.
Its failure was a striking defeat for one of President Obama’s highest domestic priorities, on an issue that has consumed the country since Adam Lanza opened fire with an assault weapon in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Two other measures are bipartisan, one to crack down on gun trafficking and another to bolster mental health treatment.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader and longtime gun-rights advocate who had thrown himself behind the gun control measures, planned to pull the gun bill from the Senate floor and move on.
The outcome of the votes could determine the bill’s fate. If Republicans prevail and the measure shifts too far in the direction of new gun rights, the Democratic-controlled Senate may end up killing its own bill.
Faced with the difficult decision either to gut the bill of any real gun controls or to let it fall to a filibuster next week, Senate leaders opted to put it into a deep freeze. Democratic leadership aides promised the effort could be revived if a public groundswell demanded it.
Republicans are lining up behind an amendment that would effectively create a national conceal-carry law, a goal that gun groups have been pressing for years.
“The world is watching the United States Senate, and we will be held accountable,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who helped lead the gun control effort after Newtown.
“You could actually expand the Second Amendment” with the bill, said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
But with the families of Sandy Hook students in the Senate gallery and a barrage of gun-rights phone calls flooding Senate offices, it was hard to imagine how much more emotion could be brought to bear. Aides said only outside circumstances such as another mass shooting could force those who voted no to reconsider their positions.
Senate Democrats, trying to simply hold their ranks together behind a background check amendment written by Senators Manchin and Toomey, met for an emotional luncheon on Tuesday. Mr. Manchin gave a tearful, impassioned appeal for his measure as former Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona looked on. Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, retold in detail the story of the professor at Virginia Tech who threw his body in front of a door to save students during the massacre there in 2007.
“It’s almost like you can see the finish line, but you just can’t get there,” lamented Andrew Goddard, whose son, Colin, was shot but survived the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. “It’s more annoying to be able to see it and not get to it.”
“It was really dramatic and convincing,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Most legislative battles are fought with one party on offense, the other on defense. On guns, both parties see an opportunity to press their agendas, pursuing opposite goals and battling over the votes of the same conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans. In 1999, after the Columbine High School shootings, the Senate voted to expand federal background checks to purchases at gun shows, only to see a bipartisan coalition in the House vote to loosen existing background check rules. The legislation ultimately died.
The same dynamic could be developing this time. Republicans, increasingly confident that they will be able to sustain a filibuster on expanded background checks, have turned their attention to their own priorities, especially a conceal-and-carry measure being drafted by Senator John Cornyn of Texas.
Under that measure, any state with a conceal-and-carry rule would have to recognize the permit of any other state. Only Illinois and Washington, D.C., prohibit concealed weapons.
But while some state standards are low, other states maintain restrictive rules on concealed weapons and grant local law enforcement officials latitude to deny such permits, as they do in New York City, said Jonathan Lowy, the director of the legal action project at the Brady Center, a gun control group. The Cornyn amendment would allow a gun owner in Texas to carry his firearm in Times Square. Gun control advocates say the Cornyn measure would foster a race to the bottom, as gun owners in more restrictive states argue that they should not be held to standards that visitors are not held to.
Advocates see no difference between that rule and regulations that make each state recognize driver’s licenses from all other states, and it will almost certainly be backed by a number of Democrats. In 2009, a similar measure received 58 votes, including those of 20 Democrats, 13 of whom are still in the Senate. That was two votes short of the 60 needed for passage.
Mr. Reid supported it then, and Mr. Manchin said he would support it now.
Mr. Reid did not rule out voting “yes” again, but he added, “I think we’ve all learned a lot in recent years, about first graders mowed down, people watching a movie being victims of an attack, a courthouse in Las Vegas.”
Republicans were also readying their own background check amendments as alternatives to the Manchin-Toomey provision, which would extend such checks to firearms bought at gun shows or on the Internet. If the Manchin-Toomey version is defeated, the gun measure on the floor would be left with a more expansive background check provision with even less support, and the overall gun bill would have an even steeper climb to passage.
