Senators fail the American people (again)
“GUN violence requires more than moments of silence. It requires action. In failing that test, the Senate failed the American people.” President Barack Obama didn’t mince his words in a tweet on June 21st, the day after the Senate failed to pass four proposals to tighten gun control. Ever since he came to power Mr Obama has tried his best to make it harder to get hold of a gun in a country where an estimated 300m guns (of which 20m to 30m are assault-style rifles) are in the hands of civilians. And with frustrating regularity his efforts have been thwarted by legislators.
On June 20th four proposals were up for a vote in the Senate. The Democratic Party’s two proposals included a “no-fly, no-buy” draft law, which would bar anyone on terrorist watch-lists from buying a gun; the other draft law would expand background checks of gun buyers from shops to online sales and gun shows. The Republicans proposed a 72-hour delay before people on watch-lists can buy guns, to give the government an opportunity to prove, through the court system, that the purchaser is a terrorist threat; their second proposal was to redefine mental incapacity. None of the four draft laws managed to get the 60 votes required to pass.
The vote in the Senate came after 49 people were killed and 53 injured on June 12th in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. It was the bloodiest mass shooting in modern American history and the worst ever attack on gay Americans. But there was no reason to think this would have changed the minds of self-styled defenders of the Second Amendment. Previous horrors have left them similarly unmoved.
One day after 14 people died and 21 were injured in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, last December the Senate defeated a bill that would have prevented people on the terror watch-list from buying guns. Opponents argued then, as they do now, that such a law could curtail the gun rights of innocent Americans who were mistakenly placed on the terror list. In 2012 a mass shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, killed 20 six- and seven-year-old children and six staff members, leaving Americans prostrate with grief. Hopes were high at the time there would be some compromise at last. Yet even a modest bipartisan bill to enhance background checks for gun purchasers came up a few votes short in the Senate.
The inability of legislators to act on gun control is a regular reminder of the political power in Congress of the pro-gun National Rifle Association (NRA), perhaps the country’s most influential lobby group. Numerous surveys show that the majority of Americans are in favour of stricter gun laws. Even so, gun enthusiasts, who believe that the good guys must be armed to fight the baddies, tend to be far more politically active. They also make more munificent donations to politicians than do the advocates of gun control. Some of the Senate’s members who are most at risk of losing their seats at the next election thus stood firmly with the NRA at the Senate vote. Pat Toomey, a senator from Pennsylvania, Ohio’s Rob Portman and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson were among them. All three supported the Republican proposal, which the NRA condones but nearly everyone else considers unworkable, to introduce a 72-hour delay before people on watch-lists can buy guns to give the government an opportunity to prove that the purchaser is a terrorist threat.
On June 22nd Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, unveiled a compromise draft law. It prohibits gun sales to people on two terrorist watch-lists, including the no-fly list, which bans suspected terrorists from flying to or from America or crossing American airspace. According to Mrs Collins, her bill would stop about 2,700 Americans and 106,300 foreigners from buying guns. The bill also includes a five-year “look-back provision” that requires shops to alert the FBI if someone like the Orlando killer, who used to be on a broader terrorism database, buys a gun. It allows American citizens and holders of a green card to appeal if their purchase is restricted and to get their legal fees refunded if they win. Predictably, the NRA called the Collins bill "unconstitutional" and claimed that it would not have prevented the Orlando massacre.
The Senate is expected to vote on the Collins draft law this week or next. Yet even if it passes it will probably be voted down in the House where the Republican leadership has shown little enthusiasm for any type of gun-control measures. Four days after Orlando, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, said that “going after the Second Amendment” will not stop terrorism. A cartoon on June 21st in the New Yorker shows a man standing behind a lectern in the Senate. The caption reads “Thank you for the moment of outrage. And now back to doing absolutely nothing.”
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