Washington • It didn’t work after mass shootings at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, college campuses in Virginia and Oregon, a church in Charleston, South Carolina, or at a movie theater and high school in Colorado. Or after two lawmakers survived assassination attempts. But after a gunman killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 at a Las Vegas concert, Democrats are going to try again to revamp the nation’s gun laws.
Stunned by the mass carnage caused at a country music festival by one heavily armed gunman and embittered after years of fruitless attempts at gun control, congressional Democrats on Wednesday unveiled new, narrowly tailored proposals and reintroduced old ideas to close loopholes and restrict how gun buyers undergoing background checks can purchase weapons.
The fresh push comes at a fractured moment in American politics, where virtually nothing passes Congress and both political parties remain at loggerheads. Democrats believe that the sheer scope of the carnage and pressure on President Trump to act might make this time different. At least some senior Republicans signaled an openness Wednesday to at least discuss changes in gun control policy.
As Trump flew aboard Air Force One to Las Vegas on Wednesday to meet with survivors of the shooting, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., unveiled a bill that bans bump fire stocks, devices that can be purchased online for $200 and make semiautomatic weapons fire more like automatic weapons.
At least a dozen of the 23 firearms recovered in Las Vegas were semiautomatic rifles legally modified using bump fire stocks to fire like automatic weapons.
Feinstein’s announcement played out like a scene she has staged so many times before. Just as most Republicans take cues on national security from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Democrats for decades have turned to Feinstein, whose political career is inextricably tied to gun violence.
Feinstein became San Francisco mayor in 1978 after the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. On Wednesday, she said that her own personal history with gun violence could have become even worse — her grown daughter had planned to attend the country music festival in Las Vegas with friends, but ultimately did not.
“I know what guns can do,” Feinstein told reporters. What transpired in Las Vegas, she said, “is taking it into war.”
In 2013, after 20 children and six adults were killed in the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, Feinstein introduced a bill to reinstate a federal assault weapons ban. The measure failed by a wide margin. What Feinstein unveiled Wednesday is copy-and-pasted out of the 2013 bill to focus only on fire bump stocks and similar accessories. Hunting accessories would still be permitted.
“The thing is really well-worded, because it’s short, it’s plain-spoken language,” Feinstein explained. “So, everybody will know exactly what’s banned no matter how fancy or how simple the device is.”
She called on regular Americans upset by this week’s events to speak out.
“Mr. and Mrs. America, help us. We know the power on the other side,” she said. “You have to help us.”
Feinstein said she had yet to identify potential Republican co-sponsors, saying she rushed her announcement after word of her plans leaked out in advance. But she may find potential support.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the third-ranking GOP senator, said that banning bump fire stocks “is worth having a conversation about, and some of our members agree with that.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., agreed, saying: “It’s something I’d be interested in looking at to see if a law change would matter. Would it affect things? I’d be willing to look at that.” But, Graham said, “I’d want to hear from everybody” before making a final decision.
Other Republicans indicated that the latest tragedy is not going to change their position.
“I think it’s completely inappropriate to politicize an event like this,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Tuesday as he declined to answer questions on the subject.
In a Washington Post interview Wednesday, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. — who returned to Congress last week after surviving a shooting in July — agreed. “I think it’s a shame that the day somebody hears about a shooting, the first thing they think about is, how can I go promote my gun control agenda, as opposed to saying, how do I go pray and help the families that are suffering?”
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., spoke for many conservative lawmakers Wednesday when he told reporters: “I’m a Second Amendment man. I’m not for any gun control.”
Other Democrats also announced plans to reintroduce legislation that has failed in the past. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a fierce gun control advocate ever since the Sandy Hook massacre, said he would be reintroducing a plan to close the “default to proceed” loophole that allows gun dealers to sell a weapon after three days if the FBI has not yet completed a background check on the buyer.
Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., said he intends to reintroduce a bill to change the national gun background check system. And Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said he would reintroduce legislation allowing qualified gun owners to use “smart gun” technology that can restrict who can use a weapon.
In the wake of the concert shootings, “I hope that we can harness the fury of America,” Blumenthal said.
Whether these Democratic ideas have sufficient support — even among fellow Democrats — was unclear on Wednesday. Feinstein announced her legislation at a hastily arranged news conference, saying that her staff had so far rounded up at least 25 Democratic co-sponsors and was still seeking others. She was flanked by Blumenthal and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has had a more moderate gun control record in the past.
The National Rifle Association, the nation’s most prominent gun rights organization, did not have immediate comment on Feinstein’s legislation and has remained publicly silent since Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Complicating the fresh attempt by Democrats to stiffen gun laws is their own electoral map next year. Ten Democratic senators face reelection next year in states that Trump easily won, making it difficult for them to end up on the opposite side of an issue from the president.
Spokesmen for Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., moderates facing reelection next year, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Sen. Joe Manchin, W.Va., said the senator is “looking into it” and that Manchin thinks the idea “sounds reasonable.” Spokesmen for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who faces an uphill fight next year in his swing state, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is running for reelection in a state that Trump won by 18.5 points, said they will co-sponsor the Feinstein bill.
Fully automatic assault weapons “belong on a battlefield,” McCaskill said. “They’re designed to kill people quickly. And the notion that we’re allowing an add-on that allows people to convert a semiautomatic weapon to an automatic weapon — we’ve got to address that.”
Democrats believe that Trump might also be supportive of gun law changes, citing his past support for gun control measures following the Sandy Hook shooting. In 2012, when then-President Barack Obama called on Congress to enact new gun control measures in the wake of Sandy Hook, Trump — then a private citizen — tweeted his support.
Asked about potential gun legislation in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, Trump on Tuesday did not dismiss the idea, saying, “We will be talking about gun laws as time goes by.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that Trump has a “responsibility” to take up the issue.
“In the past, he’s been very reasonable about the gun issue,” he said. Having run for president as a Republican, “he had to do what the NRA wanted him to do,” Schumer added. “But now it would be an act of courage, strength and popularity to do something. America’s yearning for it.”
But Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist who now leads the Independent Firearm Owners Association, said that the latest round of debate again is likely to focus too much attention on the tools used instead of why people lash out so violently.
“What sucks (to me anyway) is how we allow these bizarre events to focus our attention on the kind of gun, or caliber of gun instead of the person misusing the gun,” Feldman said in an email.
As he has predicted in the past, Feldman said that the continued “overreach” of liberal Democrats calling for restrictions on the Second Amendment likely will spoil attempts at reforms.
“The only people who care about guns 30 to 60 days after a tragedy are gun owners, and gun owners won’t allow the actions of a murderer to dictate the rights of the rest of us (120 million gun owners) who don’t misuse our guns,” Feldman said.