Obama push for gun controls reaches dead end
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's push for tighter gun controls was pulled from consideration in the Senate on Thursday...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s push for tighter gun controls was pulled from consideration in the Senate on Thursday after lawmakers blocked measures that would have expanded background checks on the sale of firearms, banned assault-style weapons and limited the capacity of ammunition magazines.
An angry Obama after Wednesday’s vote said the National Rifle Association gun lobby “willfully lied” to the American people. With the issue all but dead, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to pull the measure from further immediate consideration.
The defeat of a centerpiece issue of Obama’s second term — they would have been the most meaningful gun curbs approved by Congress in two decades — is especially stinging because the Senate is controlled by the president’s own Democratic Party.
After giving little attention to the always sensitive issue of gun control during his first term, Obama made it a top priority this year after a series of mass shootings capped by the December attack at a Connecticut school that left 20 first-grade children and six teachers dead. At the time, Obama called the attack the worst day of his presidency.
“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” the president said Wednesday. “Who are we here to represent?”
A rare bipartisan effort by a handful of senators had crafted a proposal that would have tightened background checks for gun buyers, expanding the checks to sales at gun shows and online. Polls show a majority of Americans support the move. The checks are already required for sales by federally licensed gun dealers and are designed to block sales to criminals or those with a history of mental illness.
The Senate voted 54-46 in favor of the measure, but that was well short of the 60-vote supermajority now commonly needed to advance most legislation.
The Senate did approve two minor amendments Thursday. One would cut aid to state and local governments that release information on gun owners. A second would strengthen federal mental health programs.
Aware of Americans’ passions for the constitutional right to bear firearms, key supporters of stricter gun controls had made an effort to show that they, too, were gun owners and had no intention — despite the NRA’s warnings — of taking away guns that were purchased legally. The Obama administration even circulated a photo of the president firing a gun while skeet shooting at Camp David.
Families of victims of the Connecticut shootings joined Obama on several occasions and privately lobbied lawmakers in Washington.
“Our hearts are broken,” Mark Barden, who lost his 7-year-old son, Daniel, in the Connecticut shooting, said Wednesday. “Our spirit is not.”
Before the Wednesday votes, conservative tea party Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Obama had used parents of the Connecticut school shooting victims as “props, and that disappoints me.” The president responded: “Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don’t have a right to weigh in on this issue?”
Watching the defeat Wednesday was former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a gun owner who became a vocal gun control supporter after being shot in the head two years ago.
In a piece published late Wednesday on the New York Times’ op-ed page, Giffords said she was “furious” that the Senate blocked the gun legislation. She accused senators who opposed new gun regulations of “cowardice,” saying their decisions were “based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association.”
Opponents of the restrictions said the curbs were defeated because they wouldn’t have worked.
Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe said most proposals were “predicated on one assumption that somehow we think that the criminal element will single out this one law to comply with.”
The NRA had told lawmakers it intended to keep track of how the votes were cast and consider them in making decisions about whom to support in the midterm elections for Congress next year.
“This effort isn’t over,” Obama has vowed. Democratic aides said in advance the issue would be brought back before the Senate, giving gun control supporters more time to win over converts.
Numerous polls in recent months have shown support for enhanced gun control measures, including background checks, but it may be weakening.
An Associated Press-GfK poll this month showed that 49 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws, down from 58 percent in January. In that recent survey, 38 percent said they want the laws to remain the same and 10 percent want them eased.
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Associated Press writers David Espo and Alan Fram contributed to this report, along with AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and news survey specialist Dennis Junius.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
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