A group of Democrats remains determined to bring up gun control legislation despite past failures to muster support, The Hill reports.
The group, which includes House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, wants to require background checks on all gun sales.
“When you don’t pass background checks, it’s just much more likely that someone will get their hands on an illegal gun and use it to kill their neighbors or their classmates,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “Ninety-five school shootings since Newtown, and what has Congress done?”
In the past, similar legislation has failed to get past the Senate.
Even after the Newtown shooting, most Americans did not view gun control as an urgently important problem for the country to address.
A recent Pew poll found that a steadily increasing majority of Americans say they feel safer with a gun in their home: the percentage has doubled since 2000.
Murphy admitted that the chances of passing legislation are “a little bit less likely given November’s results, but we are not going to cease fighting until we remove the stain of Congress’s inaction from this town.”
“Congress’s failure to act makes it, in fact, an aider and abettor to those deaths that could be prevented,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The Hill.
Washington state recently passed a law requiring background checks for all gun sales. As a consequence, a local museum was forced to end one of their displays involving guns because they no longer had the proper authority under the law to possess the WWII-era weapons.
