The House is swiftly working to put its stamp on gun legislation in response to mass shootings in Texas and New York by 18-year-old assailants who used semi-automatic rifles to kill 31 people, including 19 children.
Partisan positions were clear at a Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday on legislation that would raise the age limit for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. The bill also would make it a federal offense to import, manufacture or possess large-capacity magazines and would create a grant program to buy back such magazines.
It builds on the administration’s executive action banning fast-action “bump-stock” devices and “ghost guns” that are assembled without serial numbers.
The Democratic legislation, called the Protecting Our Kids Act, was quickly added to the legislative docket after last week’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. A vote by the full House could come as early as next week.
However, with Republicans nearly all in opposition, the House action will mostly be symbolic, merely putting lawmakers on record about gun control ahead of this year’s elections. The Senate is taking a different course, with a bipartisan group striving toward a compromise on gun safety legislation that can win enough GOP support to become law. Those talks are making “rapid progress,” according to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of the Republican negotiators.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, defended his chamber’s proposals Thursday as popular with most Americans. He dismissed Republican criticism.
“You say that it is too soon to take action? That we are ‘politicizing’ these tragedies to enact new policies?” Nadler said. “It has been 23 years since Columbine. Fifteen years since Virginia Tech. Ten years since Sandy Hook. Seven years since Charleston. Four years since Parkland and Santa Fe and Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.”
“Too soon? My friends, what the hell are you waiting for?”
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the committee, said no one wants another tragedy. But he insisted the House bill would do nothing to stop mass shootings.
“We need to get serious about understanding why this keeps happening. Democrats are always fixated on curtailing the rights of law-abiding citizens rather than trying to understand why this evil happens,” Jordan said. “Until we figure out the why, we will always mourn losses without facing the problem. Our job is to figure out the why.”
A chief feature of the House bill requires those buying semi-automatic weapons to be at least 21. Only six states require someone to be at least 21 years old to buy rifles and shotguns. The shooters in Uvalde and Buffalo, New York, both were 18 and used an AR-15-style weapon.
Any legislative response to the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings will have to get through the evenly divided Senate, where support from at least 10 Republicans would be needed to advance the measure to a final vote. A group of senators has been working privately this week in hopes of finding a consensus.
Ideas under discussion include expanding background checks for gun purchases and incentivizing red-flag laws that allow family members, school officials and others to go into court and secure orders requiring the police to seize guns from people considered threats to themselves or others.
The broader bipartisan group of almost 10 senators talked again Wednesday—“a very productive call,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in an interview.
“There’s a tenor and tone, as well as real substantive discussion that seems different,” he said.
Blumenthal has been working with a Republican member of the group, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, on a proposal to send resources to the states for red-flag laws. He said he was “excited and encouraged” by the response from the group.
“It really is time for our Republican colleagues to put up or shut up,” Blumenthal said. “We’ve been down this road before.”
President Joe Biden was asked Wednesday if he was confident Congress would take action on gun legislation.
“I served in Congress for 36 years. I’m never confident, totally,” Biden said. “It depends, and I don’t know. I’ve not been in on the negotiations as they’re going on right now.”
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Nadler quote: Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, defended his chamber’s proposals Thursday as popular with most Americans. He dismissed Republican criticism.
“You say that it is too soon to take action? That we are ‘politicizing’ these tragedies to enact new policies?” Nadler said. “It has been 23 years since Columbine. Fifteen years since Virginia Tech. Ten years since Sandy Hook. Seven years since Charleston. Four years since Parkland and Santa Fe and Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. ”Too soon? My friends, what the hell are you waiting for?”
I would not consider myself a “friend” of a career political parasitic hack like Jerrold Nadler, but to answer his question as forthrightly as possible:
I, for one, am waiting for Dylan Root to be executed for killing the churchgoers in Charleston SC. To the best of my knowledge, he is still consuming oxygen, food, and shelter on the taxpayers’ dime. Maybe if he had been executed promptly after an appropriate trial had found him guilty, it might serve as a deterrent to other deranged folks. Or maybe not, but it’s worth a try and wholly justified. (And he should have already been executed not for any so-called “hate crime,” but for simply murdering other human beings, regardless of their demographic.)