Though Congress is officially on a week’s Memorial Day recess, the House Judiciary Committee will meet in an emergency session Thursday to vote gun safety legislation, acting as swiftly after a mass slaughter of young children as you can expect Congress to act when there’s a recess scheduled. The Senate, while still nominally having bipartisan negotiations, was in session when 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, but did not remain in D.C. to at least act as if they were going to be responsive. That does not necessarily bode well for what the House is poised to do—move the “Protecting our Kids Act.”
“We felt like we needed to do something big and comprehensive after two mass shootings in two weeks,” a Democratic aide told NBC News. That’s intended to put pressure on Senate Republicans to work in something approaching good faith with Democrats. No one should be holding their breath on that. Republicans have their marching orders on that already.
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That gun safety package the House will move out of committee this week would raise the age limit for purchasing semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21—the shooter in Uvalde bought two AR-15s on his 18th birthday, just days before his rampage. The legislation would also make it a federal office to import, sell, manufacture, or possess high-capacity magazines, with certain exceptions, and would allow local governments to have buyback programs for those magazines. It would increase also penalties for gun trafficking and straw purchases.
There are safety incentives included for gun owners in both new tax credits for the purchase of gun safes and other secure storage devices and in a criminal penalty for gun owners who break new requirements on securing guns, according to sources CNN spoke to.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn is taking the lead for Senate Republicans in talks, having remote meetings with Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy (CT) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ). Cornyn said he intends to “try to lean forward and meet my colleagues across the aisle halfway.” Then he said “One thing I hope does not happen is that the various parties sort of fall back into their typical talking points,” he added. “I hope we will try to look in a clear-eyed way at what happened, and ask this question—what can we do to fix this problem? And if we can’t fix it, what can we do to make it better?”
That’s while he was also saying “I mentioned access to mental health treatment and diagnosis is absolutely critical.” Which sounds an awful lot like a typical talking point from a Republican who does not want to acknowledge that the problem might start from the fact that it’s easier for a young person to get his hands on a semi-automatic killing machine than a six-pack of beer.
In fact, the Republican talking points trying to steer everyone away from the part of gun safety they don’t like—keeping us safe from guns—is in full force. Here’s the leader of the GOP speaking to reporters in Kentucky Tuesday:
There’s a group led by Cornyn and Murphy, he said, “discussing how we might be able to come together to target the problem, mental illness and school safety” McConnell told reporters. The problem, he says, is mental illness and school safety.
For his part, Murphy told ABC’s “This Week” that “while, in the end, I may end up being heartbroken, I am at the table in a more significant way right now with Republicans and Democrats than ever before.”
President Joe Biden is giving them room. He’s also giving McConnell and Cornyn far too much credit. “I think there’s a realization on the part of rational Republicans—and I think Senator [Mitch] McConnell is a rational Republican, I think Cornyn is as well—there’s a recognition in their part we can’t continue like this,” he told reporters Monday.
It has nothing to do with their rationality. It’s about their unwillingness to give Biden and Democrats a win on any issue. Even when it’s life and death. Of children.
When it comes down to it, the package the House will push is not going to get through the Senate, not as long as there’s the filibuster. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is a realist about this. "I am being very candid with people that this is not a negotiation where we should expect the outcome will be cleaning the table on common sense, bipartisan gun safety," said Booker. "Right now, we are at a point where our nation will never be redeemed from this violence until our love of our children is greater than our love of guns and power and money."
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