Congress

Senate Democrats plan votes on groundwork checks for gun buys

'That's why we were elected,' Bulk Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois said after the Texas school shooting

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., right, speaks to reporters in the Capitol last July, with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Senate Bulk Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., right, speaks to reporters in the Capitol last July, with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Posted May 25, 2022 at 12:26pm

Spurred by the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade, Senate Democrats made plans to agree votes next month on House-passed measures to expand criminal background checks prior to gun purchases.

Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, at a Senate Judiciary Commission hearing the day after a gunman killed 19 students and two adults at a Texas elementary school, said there would likely be a floor vote on those bills subsequently the bedroom'southward Memorial Day break.

"Information technology's too late to forestall the last shooting. We've already failed those victims and families," Durbin, the commission chairman, said Midweek. "We need to act to prevent the next shooting. Nosotros need to place the risks and threats and finally exercise something."

Durbin nodded to the years of gridlock that has stopped gun control bills from passing Congress, including HR 8 and HR 1446, both of which the Firm passed in March 2021. The first pecker would expand background checks for gun sales; the other would increase to 10 days the time a purchaser must await for that background cheque.

"I think it's time for the Senate to vote on it," Durbin said. "Information technology takes bipartisanship to pass annihilation in the United states Senate in an evenly divided Senate, but we should vote. That's why nosotros were elected."

Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, blamed Republicans for blocking the background cheque bills just urged some of them to discover a way frontwards.

"It is unacceptable to the American people to think that there are not x of my Republican colleagues, just x, one out of five over here, who would be ready to work to laissez passer something that would reduce this plague of gun violence," Schumer said.

Merely if in that location's not a bipartisan bill, "we will keep to pursue this issue on our ain," Schumer said. "We have no choice. It'due south too important. Lives are at stake."

Schumer on Tuesday took a procedural step to open up up options for the two groundwork bank check bills, including the possibility of setting upward floor votes. President Joe Biden urged congressional action in remarks Tuesday nighttime.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in floor remarks Midweek, did not mention any potential legislation or other activity the Senate could have in the wake of the shooting. The Kentucky Republican chosen the shooter a "maniac," and said information technology is "literally sickening" to think about the innocent lives lost.

"The investigation is notwithstanding underway. The government will continue to learn exactly what happened and how," McConnell said.

He called on a higher power than the Senate when he referenced comments from the Uvalde school superintendent about how Uvalde is a pocket-sized customs and needs prayers to "get through this."

"Nosotros pray fervently that in the midst of this nightmare of grief, our heavenly father will make manifest to those families his hope in Psalm 34: that the lord is well-nigh to the brokenhearted," McConnell said.

Subsequently Wed, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer appear that the House will hold a vote on a gun-related bill when it comes back in session in June. "Congress must practise more to #EndGunViolence," Hoyer tweeted.

The Maryland Democrat pointed to a bill that would found a national and so-chosen carmine flag constabulary from Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., which was approved by the House Judiciary Committee in October. The legislation would allow for a federal court to society the seizure of firearms from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.

At the Judiciary Committee hearing, ranking member Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, criticized the Biden assistants'southward approach to combating gun violence and plugged his own proposal, titled the Eagles Human action, which he offset introduced in response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Schoolhouse in Florida in 2018 and reintroduced concluding year.

"It would requite schools and police force enforcement additional resources to make sure unsafe individuals can't exercise what happened yesterday," Grassley said.

The beak would expand the mandate of the Clandestine Service'due south National Threat Assessment Center to include school violence. Nether the bill, the Hugger-mugger Service would apply the center's resources to train other law enforcement agencies to place potential threats in advance and provide warnings when an assault may be imminent.

Both House and Senate versions of the Grassley bill have bipartisan co-sponsors. Neither bedchamber has acted on the proposals this Congress or when information technology was previously introduced in 2019.