Senate follows Orlando terrorist attack with vote on gun laws, limits on second amendment
The U.S. Senate will vote on four new gun proposals Monday after Muslim terrorist Omar Mateen murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando and injured many others.
These are the amendments to a Justice Department spending bill.
The New York Daily News began their coverage of the Orlando shooting by attacking the NRA
► An amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would allow the attorney general to deny a gun sale to anyone if she has a “reasonable belief” — a lesser standard than “probable cause” — that the buyer was likely to engage in terrorism. The proposal is popularly known as the “no-fly, no-buy” amendment, but wouldn’t just apply to people on the “no fly” terrorist watch list.
► From Republican Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, which would require that law enforcement be alerted when anyone on the terror watch list attempts to buy a weapon from a licensed dealer. If the buyer has been investigated for terrorism within the past five years, the attorney general could block a sale for up to three days while a court reviews the sale.
► An amendment by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, would make it more difficult to add mentally ill people to the background check database, giving people suspected of serious mental illness a process to challenge that determination.
► An amendment by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., that would close the “gun show loophole” by requiring every gun purchaser to undergo a background check, and to expand the background check database.
The last time the Senate held votes on gun legislation was last December, a day after a Muslim husband-and-wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, targeting a Christian-themed Christmas party. All four proposals were defeated.
Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook – the San Bernardino Islamic terrorists
In was the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that killed 20 children and six teachers, which inspired gun control proposals in 2013. Those failed, too.
This is the new pattern: Mass shooting or terrorist attack, followed by gun control proposals and unsuccessful Senate votes.
“I admit that the background checks bill is going to be tough to get 60 votes on, but we still have hope that we can get Republicans to support the bill, stopping terrorists from getting weapons,” Murphy told ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “But in the final analysis, what may be most important is that our filibuster helped galvanize an entire country around this issue.”
More likely to pass is the Cornyn amendment, a Republican-backed measure which has been endorsed explicitly by the National Rifle Association and implicitly by the presumed GOP presidential nominee, Donald Trump.
The NRA said in a statement that “if an investigation uncovers evidence of terrorist activity or involvement, the government should be allowed to immediately go to court, block the sale, and arrest the terrorist. At the same time, due process protections should be put in place that allow law-abiding Americans who are wrongly put on a watchlist to be removed.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested last week that the Cornyn proposal, which also calls for the detention of terrorists if a judge finds probable cause, is the best response to the Orlando terrorist attack. “Of course no one wants terrorists to be able to buy guns. Let’s get real here,” he said last week. “So if Democrats are actually serious about getting a solution on that issue, not just making a political talking point, they’ll join with us.”
A protester from Code Pink interrupts a press conference following the Sandy Hook shooting, photo screenshot CNN coverage
[…] recess as the Democrats continued to occupy the well and refused to leave. Over in the Senate, the parties united to vote against four different measures designed to curtail the second […]