Congress is poised to approve new gun legislation as part of a $1.3 trillion spending package after failing for several years and despite several mass shootings to take action to address violence committed with firearms.
Lawmakers credited the unusual bipartisan cooperation on the politically charged issue to survivors of the victims of the Valentine’s Day massacre in Parkland, Fla. The family members-turned-activists have waged an aggressive effort to advance new gun regulations since 14 students and three educators were gunned down on the suburban campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
“The 17 families that have been involved in this have been very successful because of their willingness to work with everyone, even if they don’t agree with you on everything,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Thursday during a news conference. “The work that they’re doing has really been helpful in terms of breaking through ice and getting progress on things.”
The massive omnibus spending bill to keep the federal government open and operating through the end of September was expected to clear Congress and head to President Trump’s desk no later than Saturday.
Attached are the Fix NICS Act, to strengthen federal background checks; and the STOP School Violence Act, which appropriates money for programs that train educators to better prevent gun violence. The omnibus also includes legislative language clarifying that the Centers for Disease Control can study the impact of guns on public health, overturning the so-called Dickey Amendment, passed in 1996.
Remarkably, Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress didn’t insist on pairing these measures with the Conceal Carry Reciprocity Act, legislation long sought-after by gun-rights advocates that previously cleared the House. The bill would allow Americans who have permits to carry concealed weapons to travel across state lines with their guns.
Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., the principle author of the legislation, said he doesn’t think the decision to drop conceal carry from the omnibus — a decision ultimately made by Trump — is evidence of a material change in the politics of guns that for the past 20 years have provided Republicans, staunch supporters of the Second Amendment with, a powerful advantage over the Democrats in competitive campaigns.
“There has always been this group on the left that wants to have gun control and wants to always use the excuse of a shooting to try and to take away the right of law-abiding citizens,” said Hudson, who voted for the omnibus and expects to work with Trump to enact conceal carry by year’s end.
“I think the majority of people in Congress, just like the majority of Americans, have a much more nuanced position on this. We want to stop the shootings but we recognize that you don’t have to take guns away from law-abiding citizens to do it,” the congressman said.
Yet there’s no denying that Republicans were more compelled to address gun violence following the shooting in Parkland than after previous massacres. To name a few: Columbine, in 1999 (13 murdered); Sandy Hook, in 2012 (28 murdered); Orlando, in 2016 (49 murdered); or Las Vegas, last October (58 murdered).
Senate Democrats running for re-election in red states could still be stymied on the gun issue in the midterm. But for vulnerable House Republicans running in suburban battlegrounds this fall, the issue has morphed with anxiety about school safety, possibly giving the Democrats an edge on guns for the first time in a generation.
The activism hasn’t abated in the five weeks since Parkland, with a march on Washington, at the National Mall, and sister events across the country that could draw hundreds of thousands of people, scheduled for Saturday. But it’s not just Republicans who have paid the issue of gun violence more attention of late under pressure from voters.
Democrats who usually oppose bipartisan gun measures like those in the omnibus because they don’t restrict access to assault weapons or other firearms also are displaying newfound flexibility. Indeed, in the last five years, Democrats have opposed some Republican proposals similar to those included in the spending package because they though them too lenient or tilted in favor of the National Rifle Association.
But legislation is passing now, said a veteran Republican operative, “because the Democrats decided to vote for it. That’s what’s changed.”
“It amazes me that nobody is covering what this fix NICS thing got in 2016, after Orlando, or 2013, after Newtown. It was offered both times but couldn’t get 60 votes because Democrats didn’t’ go along. Republicans have always been for this,” this GOP operative said.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who joined Rubio for the news conference to detail the gun measures included in the omnibus spending bill, conceded that he supports more restrictive gun measures but had to compromise because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough votes for anything to pass.
Nelson, who is running for re-election this year, supports universal background checks and an assault weapons ban, both nonstarters with Republicans, including Rubio, who has tackled the gun issue with vigor since the Parkland shooting and is open to restrictions on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
“From my perspective, it’s a step forward, albeit a small step, ultimately to what needs to be done,” Nelson said, of the provisions inserted into the omnibus. “But you know the politics, so you’ve got to start somewhere, and so this is the first step at the federal level.”
