Republicans in critical down-ballot races are taking a page from the Democrats’ playbook: They are talking up gun control measures.
Republican incumbents have faced increasing pressure from both their Democratic opponents and colleagues in the Senate to act on gun control legislation, particularly in the wake of several mass shootings that have occurred since late last year.
Many Republicans haven’t budged on Democrats’ calls to pass legislation, including barring suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms and expanding background checks.
But GOP incumbents facing reelection in tough battleground states are seeking to compromise on this issue, though Democrats are accusing them of addressing the issue only as a play for votes.
Still, political observers say it’s a sign of how much the gun debate has evolved over nearly two decades and this election cycle.
“It’s now become fashionable after 16 years for candidates to publicly talk about support for stronger gun laws,” said Robert Spitzer, author of the book “The Politics of Gun Control.”
“The big point is that this has become an issue that people are talking about in these campaigns and these state races.”
Last Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) proposed a bill to prevent suspected terrorists from obtaining guns. His bill would mandate that the FBI director and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces be contacted when someone who’s been investigated for terrorism tries to purchase a firearm. The U.S. attorney general could “delay” the transaction for three days and file an emergency petition, and if it finds probable cause, arrest them.
Rubio said he’s keeping his word to Fred and Maria Wright, the parents of Jerry Wright, a victim at the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that occurred in June. Following that shooting, a poll found that more than half of Americans backed stricter gun control laws.
“Today, I’m taking another step toward fulfilling my promise to the Wright family, by introducing legislation that builds on some of the best ideas that have been proposed, and improves them in ways that I hope will make a bipartisan solution more likely,” Rubio said in a statement, adding that the bill could “achieve everyone’s goals … without violating the due process and Second Amendment rights of innocent, law-abiding Americans.”
The campaign of his Senate reelection opponent, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D), quickly seized on the bill, calling it a “sham.” Murphy’s spokesman noted that it changes a part of Main Republican Sen.Susan Collins’s June compromise bill, which would allow an attorney general to deny that purchase. Her bill passed a test vote but has been stalled since.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a vocal proponent of gun control, slammed Rubio on Thursday in a series of tweets for voting against Collins’s bill. Rubio said in an interview from late June that he doesn’t “believe that guns are the cause of violence.”
Rubio’s bill “is just intended to be a footnote in a TV ad,” tweeted Murphy, who is of no relation to Rubio’s opponent.
Rubio and other swing-state Republican senators, including Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, are walking a fine line on the issue as they propose ways to curb gun violence while also protecting gun owners’ rights, an interest of the Republican base.
And prominent gun control groups point out there is an “increasing recognition that gun violence prevention isn’t just good policy, but is also the political high ground” among both major parties.
“You are increasingly seeing candidates running on this issue, and in some cases trying to get right on this issue,” said Mark Prentice, a spokesman with Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS), which was founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.
“We are going to continue to talk to voters about what is truly effective gun violence prevention policy and what is a gun lobby-backed plan that masquerades as responsible policy.”
ARS has endorsed both Democrats and Republicans this cycle who support gun-related measures and has run an ad against Ayotte, who faces a tough race against Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), for not backing a bipartisan bill from several years ago on background checks.
Ayotte pushed back with her own ad that features local law enforcement saying she supports those checks. She also helped draft Collins’s compromise legislation.
One vulnerable Republican endorsed by Giffords’s group is Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who co-sponsored legislation in 2013 with a Democratic senator to expand background checks for more gun sales.
Toomey has garnered endorsements from high-profile gun control groups and individuals, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leading advocate on the issue. His super PAC aired an ad featuring the daughter of the principal who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and explained why she’s backing Toomey.
But his Democratic opponent, former gubernatorial chief of staff Katie McGinty, has countered this narrative by noting that Toomey opposed a Democratic measure from June that sought to prevent terrorists from buying guns. Toomey instead submitted an alternative bill on the issue.
In the lower chamber, GOP Florida Rep. David Jolly has been supportive of background checks and proposed his own legislation this summer to stop terrorists from obtaining firearms.
Last week, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence praised him for filing to co-sponsor a bill to expand background checks at gun shows and online.
This could potentially give Jolly a boost in his district, which has become more favorable to Democrats this year thanks to court-ordered redistricting. He faces a tough reelection against former Gov. Charlie Crist (D).
Jolly had been accused by the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) of lying to “60 Minutes” about a party mandate that members raise $18,000 every day, a criticism Jolly rejects.
While the NRCC has since called him a “strong advocate in Washington,” Jolly has tried to portray himself as independent, using a former President Truman quote in a recent campaign ad: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” He has continued to maintain that “members of Congress spend too much time raising money.”
While some GOP candidates are trying to branch out on the issue, political observers see little movement for Republicans like Rubio on gun control issues. But, they note, the fact that the party is addressing these issues shows progress in the future of the gun debate.
“The fact that they’re even proposing legislation, and they’re promoting it as part of their election campaigns, is novel and does show how much the gun debate is shifting,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA.
Ben Kamisar contributed.
They have lost the gun control battle, its over. They can pass anything they want but folks have not been buying guns in record numbers just to turn them in. Folks are buying guns in record numbers because they know they will soon need them to defend their freedoms.
So pass all the stupid gun laws you want, but until you pry it from my cold dead hands, you have accomplished NOTHING.
Amen!
“until you pry it from my cold dead hands”
Pre-Programmed to lose……
See how they do it… 😉
Hmmmm. One way to look at it I guess,
Or
As intended, live free or die..
Thing is everything about us is programming, we are programmed from first breath, we are pre programmed by our DNA. Am I following a program, from that perspective, maybe I suppose…
So it comes down to, live as a coward or die as a man. The later sounds better to me.lol.
Yes indeed.
We all have to die eventually. But even if we are killed in a fight to defend our rights and our dignity, we still win as long as we take at least some of the aggressors down with us.
Tip to the Hat.
Two heads .. same beast ..
sooner everyone learns that , the sooner we can clean this mess up
2016 Colt /Springfield
TWO WINGS ON THE SAME FLY……………………………
Yup. When browsing the comments sections of more mainstream sites, it immediately becomes apparent that there are still far too many people who think in terms of “liberals versus conservatives,” “Democrats versus Republicans,” etc. As we know, the real struggle is still “libertarians versus authoritarians,” i.e., “freedom versus tyranny.”
More Republicans pushing for gun laws can only help people pull their heads from their asses. At first, Republicans who do so will likely be dismissed as RINOs. But as gun control advocacy becomes more mainstream among the Red Team, it will become harder for the GOP “true believers” to ignore.
“It’s now become fashionable after 16 years for candidates to publicly talk about support for stronger gun laws,”
Unchallenged.
Unfortunately, the sheeple are sufficiently dumbed down & brainwashed (‘programmed’) at this point to allow such TREASON to occur.
However, as moonlitemike pointed out…
“So pass all the stupid gun laws you want, but until you pry it from my cold dead hands, you have accomplished NOTHING.”
Also unchallenged.
“Unfortunately, the sheeple are sufficiently dumbed down & brainwashed (‘programmed’) at this point to allow such TREASON to occur.”
I will not let that one go unchallenged then.
Most people have disconnected themselves from politics and their laws, unless it is in groups that can wrestle their politicians to do something at the cost of the rights of the majority and their RIGHTS.
In case Gun Laws:
http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/connecticut-gun-law-ignored/2014/02/13/id/552558/
“As significant as the nearly 50,000 registrations appear, they likely represent approximately 15 percent of the actual number of Connecticut residents who own so-called assault weapons, The Hartford Courant reported, citing estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Acknowledging that there are no definitive figures on the number of semi-automatic rifles in Connecticut, the local newspaper reported that there are more than 50,000 and possibly as many as 350,000 unregistered assault weapons in the state.
Those who are found to be in possession of an unregistered assault rifle are committing a Class D felony under Connecticut state law.”
http://www.callthecops.net/connecticut-halts-plans-round-firearms-finding-cops-state-list/
“Plans for these confiscations hit a snag when a legislative intern dared to ask a question. “Who will be going door to door to take all the guns away?” asked the 21-year-old college senior.
Reportedly multiple people in the room in the most sarcastic voices they could muster said “the police”.
The unnamed intern then pointed at the list and said, “my dad’s name is on the list, and he is the police chief. I see three other names on this list of family members, all cops.”
With in hours a print off of all sworn Law Enforcement officers in the state was obtained. Comparisons of the list of gun owners who failed to comply with registration requirements and sworn LEOs showed a startling figure. Just over 68% of Connecticut cops had failed to register firearms according to the new law. ”
http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/21/what-will-gun-controllers-do-when-americ
“When New Jersey went a step further and banned the sale and possession of “assault weapons,” 947 people registered their rifles as sporting guns for target shooting, 888 rendered them inoperable, and four surrendered them to the police. That’s out of an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 firearms affected by the law. The New York Times concluded, a bit drily, “More than a year after New Jersey imposed the toughest assault-weapons law in the country, the law is proving difficult if not impossible to enforce.”
Some advocates of restrictions will object that they “don’t want to take away” existing guns—they just want to prevent the acquisition of new ones. That narrative becomes complicated when officials like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo muse that “Confiscation could be an option”—a sentiment echoed by the New York Times editorial board.
But let’s go with it. So, the government somehow defines “assault weapons” in a meaningful way and bans sales of new ones. How is that going to be effective given the millions of disfavored weapons already in circulation? That includes roughly 8 million AR-15-style rifles alone—out of somewhere north of 300 million firearms in general. It’s not like they’re going anywhere. Plenty of 19th century firearms are still in working condition.
And their numbers will increase, even if commercial production and sales are outlawed. People have been 3D-printing AR-15 lower receivers (the parts legally classified as a firearm) for years. More durable receivers are CNC-milled by hobbyists from partially finished blanks as well as raw blocks of metal. These techniques were developed in anticipation of the laws now proposed, with the specific purpose of rendering them impotent.
Molon labe, remember?
So, a United States the morning after, or a year after, or a decade after a successful effort to ban “assault weapons” will not be the scene of the “domestic disarmament” favored by prominent communitarian sociology professor Amitai Etzioni. It will be more like Prohibition-era America, but with hidden rifles substituting for stockpiled hooch and 3D printers standing in for moonshiners’ stills. And probably a bit more tense.
Those defiant gun owners will also be included in the jury pools chosen to sit in judgement of unlucky violators scooped up by law enforcement. That situation will likely replicate the difficulty prosecutors had in getting convictions of Prohibition scofflaws in the 1920s and marijuana law resisters today. “[I]f juries consistently nullify certain types of criminal charges (charges for possession of a small amount of marijuana, for example), this can render an unpopular law ineffective,” wrote John Richards at the LegalMatch blog after a jury couldn’t even be seated in Montana.
“If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don’t follow them, then you have a real problem,” Connecticut Sen. Tony Guglielmo (R-District 35), told the Hartford Courant when large numbers of state residents flipped the bird to lawmakers and defied the new gun law.
Well… yes, you do. And like their restriction-inclined predecessors, gun controllers will have quite a mess on their hands.”
The politicians may swear to protect the piece of paper the words are written on and each and everyone of that class is first and loudest to claim so, the PEOPLE themselves protect the words and their meaning…
It is their Contract. And they can make the famous quote happen.. A riffle behind EVERY blade of grass, relentlessly taking our Tyrants and Thugs, until they are spend stone dead, or without morale. This includes mercenaries from foreign countries send into the US obligated by contracts with foreign Tyrants.
“According to historian Saul Cornell, states passed some of the first gun control laws, beginning with Kentucky’s law to “curb the practice of carrying concealed weapons in 1813.”
No one raised any objections back THEN.
“The first major federal firearms law passed in the 20th century was the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934.”
Nor THEN.
“The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) was passed after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and African-American activists Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s.”
Nor even THEN!!!
What part of “they ALLOWED this TREASON to occur” did I get wrong???
They believed.
An Era that has ended.
To be more concise,… they allowed the TREASON to CONTINUE to occur.