How to pass a bill in three easy steps: 1) Make sure, before
introducing the bill, that you have enough votes to ensure its passage. This
process is made easier if your party controls the chamber from which the bill is
launched; 2) if the votes are insufficient, redraft the bill to acquire more
votes; 3) then and only then introduce the bill.
In the case of the gun restriction bill introduced and
rejected by the U.S. Senate, something went wrong between steps 1 and 3.
The gun restriction bill rejected in the Democratic
controlled U.S. Senate was a much watered down version of its Connecticut
cousin.
The Connecticut gun restriction bill, S.B. No. 1160, includes in part the following
features: 1) universal criminal background checks for the sale of all guns
including the private sales of rifles and shotguns. Background checks also
would be required to buy ammunition and magazines; 2) the bill establishes the
first statewide dangerous weapon offender registry in the nation. Persons who
have been convicted of any of 40 weapons offenses must register with the state
for five years after their release; 3) people involuntarily committed by court
order to a hospital for psychiatric disabilities within five years would not be
allowed to possess a gun; 4) in a follow-up measure, owners of weapons will be
legally required to protectively store and secure a firearm in cases in which a
resident on the premises poses a risk of personal injury to themselves or
others.
The Connecticut bill added to a long list of more than 60 guns
already banned in the state additional weapons, including the semi-automatic
long rifle used by Adam Lanza in his assault on Sandy Hook Elementary school
children and their wards. The bill, accepted on a bipartisan vote in
Connecticut’s Democratic controlled General Assembly – 26-10 in the Senate and
105-44 in the House -- moved the state to the number one position among states in
the nation that restrict guns purchases by non-criminals.
The national gun restriction bill was a considerably
stripped down version of Connecticut’s law containing ONLY a mandate for
expanded background checks. And yet the bill failed by four votes in a chamber
controlled by Democrats. Four Democrats – including Majority Leader of the U.S.
Senate Harry Reid, an “avid Nevada sportsman,” according to his biography --
voted against the bill. Mr. Reid said he voted against the bill so that later
he would be able to vote for a similar amendment and then withdrew the bill.
Following defeat of the bill, President Barack Obama
reverted to his default campaign mode. Despite U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s
ringing declaration that the National Rifle Association (NRA) was, at least on
the point of background checks, a toothless and clawless paper tiger, Mr. Obama
traced the defeat of the bill to an empowered NRA, the villain in every
Democrat’s closet.
“Instead of supporting this compromise,” Mr. Obama said, the
gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. They claimed that it
would create some sort of big brother gun registry – even though the bill did
the opposite" and "in fact, outlawed any registry," Obama said. So
all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington…” not to mention –
and no Democrat did – the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate.
Fear ruled the day. “Angered by a resounding defeat
Wednesday of proposed gun control legislation that grew out of the Sandy Hook
Elementary School massacre,” the Harford Courant reported, “President Barack
Obama stood outside the White House with parents of murdered Newtown
first-graders and vowed: ‘This effort is not over.’"
Indeed, the upside of the losing vote in the Democratic
controlled Senate is that Democrats who favored the Senate bill believe they will
be able to use the no vote as a Deus ex machina that will lift them into
Congress. And the vote against the bill in the Senate by Democratic Senate
leader Reid certainly will not hurt his re-election chances in Nevada, whose
lesser Republican U.S. Senator, Dean Heller, also voted against the measure.
Mr. Heller telegraphed his “No” vote on April 16, causing the Las Vegas Sun to
cough up a hairball:
“Nevada Sen. Dean
Heller will vote against the Manchin-Toomey amendment on gun control, his
office announced Tuesday afternoon. The announcement potentially seriously
complicates Sen. Harry Reid’s efforts to get 60 senators to vote for what many
have surmised is the best chance the Senate has to approve expanded background
checks, an idea recent polls show has wide support — almost 90 percent — in the
general populace.”
In the absence of
federal legislation at least as strong as that in Connecticut, the state is
left with a bill that constantly will be compromised by criminals who can with impunity
purchase in other states weapons denied to Connecticut citizens, and that arrangement
leaves the state at the mercy of criminals undeterred by a public that, obeying
the laws, will be less able to defend itself. It is as if at High Noon the
legal authorities were to disarm Grace Kelly and leave Gary Cooper to the
tender mercy of the Miller gang.
Good show, guys.
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