Dems aiming for most aggressive changes to gun legislation in 25 years
After winning control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, the Democrats are now planning to push for the most aggressive changes to gun legislation in decades.
The Democratic Party is aiming to shake up current laws with the biggest changes to current regulations in the last 25 years.
Dems are preparing for the big push ahead of the new term, which begins January, but Republicans are unlikely to make it easy for them.
A fresh wave of gun-grabbing politicians will enter the House next year after the Democratic party took it back in Tuesday’s elections but the GOP still controls the Senate which passes federal laws, and they will most likely work hard to defend the Constitution.
However, with the Thousand Oaks, California mass shooting where 12 people died just the day after the midterms, politicians have suggested they’ll be aggressively pursuing action to enforce tougher gun control, according to the Daily Mail.
“This new majority is not going to be afraid of our shadow,” California Democrat, Mike Thompson, told the Wall Street Journal.
“We know that we’ve been elected to do a job, and we’re going to do it.”
As the chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, the man who represents Napa County and parts of other counties in Napa Valley, he’s keen to make universal background checks mandatory when the new Congress is in progress.
The desperation for the Democrats to regain control of the House was reflected in the funding that went into the midterms campaigns.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety and Americans for Responsible Solutions – a group founded by former Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in 2011 – spent $37million combined in the 2018 elections.
However gun-rights advocacy only spent approximately $20million.
NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said much of the funds went on backing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
It helped Atlanta Democrat Lucy McBath defeat Republican Karen Handel.
She left her job as a Delta Air Lines flight attendant and now advocates for gun control after her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed.
The story plays out in a Netflix documentary titled 3 ½ Minutes, 10 Bullets, and details how the man who killed her son was involved in an altercation because the child was playing music too loud.
He was later convicted of murder.
While her initial ads were on gun control, she focused on health care as Tuesday’s elections approached.
“Voters absolutely understood where Lucy stood on the issue of gun safety,” Everytown President John Feinblatt said.
“There was no question in voters’ minds about Lucy’s story.”
Democrat minority leader Nancy Pelosi told CNN on Thursday that she does believe there will be significant action.
“Because in this Congress, the one that we’re in right this minute, there is bipartisan legislation to have common sense background checks, to prevent guns going into the wrong hands,” she said in an interview.
Others keen for change include Jason Crow of Denver – who has been vocal about the mass shootings at Columbine High School and the Aurora, Colorado movie theater – and former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger.
The Virginia woman supports a ban on certain firearms with military-style features.
However, Bloomberg News reports Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said Friday that the Thousand Oaks shooting this week is unlikely to have an effect on gun ownership at a federal level.
He told their National Political reporter it’s “highly unlikely there will be restrictions passed.”
“The biggest Second Amendment implication of the election is that the pro-Second Amendment majority in the US Senate will continue to confirm pro-Second Amendment judges to the lower courts all the way to the Supreme Court,” NRA spokesperson, Baker, added to WSJ.
The New York Times reports El Paso, Texas rep Veronica Escobar said: “If the president or the Senate chooses not to support it, frankly, it’s on them but we have to try and we have to continue to try until we get it done.”
Some Democrats, including Representative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, and Katie Hill from Southern California, are taking a more middle ground approach.
They are suggesting banning items that make semiautomatic rifles fire like automatic weapons.
“As Democrats, we should not try to make this a political issue that is about gun legislation because any of the gun legislation we’re advocating for would not have prevented this,” Hill said.
“We lose credibility if we try to make it as if it would’ve.”
The man who killed 12 people at the Borderline Bar & Grill Wednesday was a legal gun owner.