The Way Forward for Gun Control in the Senate

Roll Call has this article today that says the focus now turns to Harry Reid as he must consider how to bring the four bills reported out of Senate Judiciary to the full Senate.

Still unclear is whether all of the gun legislation reported by the Judiciary Committee will be considered on the Senate floor and whether it would come up as a package or in individual parts.

Reid has to figure out how to bow to the President's desire, repeated yesterday, that the victims of recent shootings "deserve a vote" while protecting his vulnerable members up for re-election in 2014.

Many beleive the so-called "assault weapons" ban is dead on arrival.  But the bill includes a ban on standard capacity magazines, referred to as "high capacity" magazines.  Some think if that part was split off into a separate piece of legislation, that it might garner the necessary 60 votes to clear a filibuster and pass. 

During Thursday’s markup, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., floated the idea of splitting Feinstein’s bill into two in order to boost the prospects for getting close to the 60-vote threshold needed to thwart a filibuster in the Senate.


The duo voiced support for holding a separate floor vote on the ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines contained in Feinstein’s bill. They suggested that the measure could garner sufficient support if untethered from the larger proposal to reinstate and expand the federal assault weapons ban that lapsed in 2004.

And that is just one danger still ahead for gun owners.  The more we hear that the so-called "assault-weapons" ban cannot pass, the greater the concern is that complacency will set in.  This fight is not over until it is over.  And folks, it has only begun. Now that we have the bill numbers on which to focus, we must redouble our efforts to defeat them all.  Please reference the specific bill numbers in your letters, emails, and phone calls to congress.

The bills in question are: "Assault weapons" bill (S 150), "Gun trafficking" (S 54)" and Schumer's bill criminalizing private sales (S 374).

Two Virginia Reps Take Diffferent Roads on Background Checks

Yesterday, VSSA issued a legislative alert asking gun owners in the Rep. Scott Rigell's 2nd Congressional District to call him and urge him to oppose proposals that infringe on our rights.  The Washington Post's Plum Line Blog reported that Rigell had joined with anti-rights Democrats to sponsor legislation to targeting "gun trafficking."  According to the New York Times, Rigell defends his joining with anti-rights Democrats this way:

“To the extent that people slow down and take a look at it, read it — unless you’re a gun trafficker, unless you’re a person who’s a straw purchaser, there’s really no problem with this,” Mr. Rigell said.

But, Plum Lines's Greg Sargent also reported that Rigell is "open" to President Obama's proprosal to impose background checks on the private sale of firearms.  He has not yet decided whether he will support it.  That is the part that caught VSSA's attention.  One VSSA member contacted Rigell's office immediately after receiving the alert and was told that was not true.

On the other hand, we have this CNN report of Congressman Eric Cantor arguing that the Virginia approach after the Virginia Tech shooting, would have a greater impact on insuring that those who should not have firearms don't get them. 

"I think that we can take a lot of lessons from what Virginia did and put it in place at the federal level, because there are a lot of states that aren't doing what Virginia is doing to try and beef up the database for the background checks to make sure that we actually can do something that does have a chance at reducing the likelihood and hopefully eliminating it from happening again," Cantor said.

Since changing the law on reporting mental health information to the National Instant Check System, Virginia leads the nation in reporting such information.

So, we have Rep. Rigell, who campaigned as a friend of freedom and who welcomed the support of gun owners in his bid to become a congressman now openly working with those who would infringe our rights at every turn and maybe even requiring us to do background checks on our friends and fellow gun club members to sell or trade a firearm with them.

Congressman Cantor is talking about what has worked in Virginia and what can work nationally if it is tried.

During the 2nd District Republican Primary in 2010, some questioned rather Mr. Rigell was truely conservative and if he would stay true to the principles he professed in the campaign.  Some may be wondering now if they were right.