WASHINGTON - The Senate voted to advance a scaled-back version of the gun-safety agenda President Barack Obama proposed after the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
Senators on Thursday voted 68-31, with at least 60 needed, to move the measure toward debate. Sixteen Republicans joined 50 Democrats and two independents in voting to cut off the debate and proceed to consideration of the legislation. The legislation would expand background checks of gun purchasers, increase funding for school safety and set new penalties for gun trafficking.
Arkansas’ two senators, Democrat Mark Pryor and Republican John Boozman, voted to filibuster the bill.
“The hard work starts now,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said immediately after the vote. Earlier, he said, “We have a responsibility to do everything in our power to keep guns out of the hands of those who suffer from severe mental illnesses” and of convicted felons.
The nationwide debate over gun control was reignited by the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to fire 154 bullets in less than five minutes, court documents said. Obama sought to renew a ban on assault weapons and size limits for ammunition magazines. Those proposals were dropped from the Senate measure amid opposition from the National Rifle Association.
Relatives of those killed in the Newtown shootings were in the visitors’ gallery as the Senate voted.
Shortly after the Senate voted, Obama spoke by phone with the families, many of whom have been in Washington lobbying lawmakers.
“The president congratulated the families on this important step forward, noting that the bipartisan progress would not have been possible without their efforts,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Carney said Obama told the families he would “keep fighting for the votes they deserve.”
Carney called the vote the first step toward passing “sensible, common-sense” legislation to curb gun violence.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, served as the voice of the opposition, reading letters from gun owners who fear infringement, like a pair of first-time-gun-owning senior citizens.
“Protecting our rights, the few the government has left us, is of utmost importance to us,” Lee said.
Even if the Senate passes a gun measure, it would encounter stiff opposition in the House, where Republican leaders haven’t even committed to taking up gun legislation.
“If the Senate passes a bill, the House will certainly review it,” Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Thursday. He said he wouldn’t make a “blanket” commitment to take a bill to the House floor.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday that Republicans “do intend to address the issue, but how exactly we’ll do it has not yet been determined.” In February, he said that he opposed expanded background checks and that his committee wouldn’t hold hearings on the proposal.
In Thursday’s Senate vote, Republicans joined 52 Democrats in voting to move forward with the bill. Two Senate Democrats facing re-election in 2014, Pryor and Mark Begich of Alaska, joined 29 Republicans in opposition.
Pryor’s support of the filibuster is election-year politics designed to appeal to gun-rights supporters, said David Ray, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Arkansas. After the vote, the Arkansas GOP released a video criticizing Pryor for supporting an extension of a ban on assault weapons in 2004 before coming out against a similar ban that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in March.
“It’s a complete joke to say that all the sudden here comes Mark Pryor to save the Second Amendment,” Ray said.
Pryor’s spokesman, Michael Teague, responded that “the Republican Party of Arkansas and the state’s Republican U.S. senator are in complete disagreement.”
Teague referred to a newspaper story that appeared Wednesday in which Boozman is quoted as saying that Pryor’s support of the filibuster reflected the will of Arkansas voters.
He said Pryor opposed the latest attempt at banning assault weapons because it was more overreaching than the 1994 law, and listed some of the 30 pro-gun votes he said Pryor had made as a senator, including legislation to protect gun manufacturers from being sued, to allow people with concealed weapons licenses into national parks and to block the creation of a national gun registry.
Boozman said he hoped the legislation would be changed through an “open” amendment process that would limit required background checks. He said he was especially concerned about the prospect of potential gun buyers’ mental-health records being collected and maintained by the federal government.
“You’re not only talking about losing Second Amendment rights, you’re also talking about losing other rights if all this information is shared,” he said.
Boozman said more stringent background checks wouldn’t stop gun violence.
“I don’t think any of the tragedies we’ve had … that this would have made any difference,” he said. “People that are going to do the right thing are going to play by the rules. Others aren’t.”
The vote, while a short term victory for gun-control advocates, in no way presages passage of new gun laws. The impending bill will again need 60 votes to end the debate after consideration of contentious amendments offered by both supporters and opponents of new laws.
Should it climb that mountain, 51 votes would be needed to get to final passage, and many Democrats from conservative states who face re-election campaigns next year have indicated that they do not intend to vote for the bill.
Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday that debate and votes on the gun legislation may stretch into the week of April 22. “We have people waiting in the wings to offer amendments,” he said Thursday.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sought to block the measure, calling it a “clear overreach that will predominantly punish and harass our neighbors, friends and family.”
Thursday’s vote came after Wednesday’s bipartisan compromise by two senators on a plan to expand background checks of firearm purchasers. The proposal by Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., would require background checks for gun sales over the Internet and between private parties at gun shows.
Noncommercial person-to-person firearms sales wouldn’t be covered. Democrats wanted to require background checks for almost all gun sales. The proposal will be offered as the first amendment to the Senate bill, Reid said.
“I don’t consider criminal background checks to be gun control; it’s just common sense,” Toomey said at a news conference with Manchin on Wednesday. Toomey’s backing may help draw the support of Republicans and Democrats from pro-gun states. Manchin has an “A” rating from the pro-gun rights NRA.
Still, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said, “Make no mistake about it. We have a tough fight” to pass the gun measure. “It will be a struggle to prevent bad amendments from getting added.”
Schumer, the third-ranking Senate Democrat, said one of the greatest risks to the legislation is “pernicious” amendments or a barrage of amendments by senators seeking to stall the voting process.
Obama is campaigning to preserve momentum for what’s left of the gun-control measures he proposed in January after the massacre in Newtown. His proposals to ban military-style semiautomatic rifles and limit ammunition-magazine capacity will be offered in the Senate as amendments, which stand little chance of adoption.
Lawmakers who sought to block the bill “should be ashamed of their attempt to silence efforts to prevent the next American tragedy,” a group of victims’ relatives said in a statement Thursday. “No one should have to experience the pain we have endured - commonsense gun laws will help spare others from the grief we live with every day.”
“I’m not interested in a symbolic gesture which would offer the families of the Sandy Hook shootings no real solutions that they seek,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican.
The NRA, which has opposed expanded background checks, said in a statement Wednesday that “expanding background checks at gun shows will not prevent the next shooting, will not solve violent crime and will not keep our kids safe in schools.”
The NRA’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox, urged lawmakers to reject the Toomey-Manchin proposal, calling it “misguided.” Cox said the group would take into account votes on the measure and others it considers as infringing gun rights in rating lawmakers’ records.
Hoping to bring pressure on Congress to act on gun control, supporters of new restrictions have been demonstrating in Washington. They have erected a mock graveyard with thousands of crosses on the National Mall, symbolizing victims of gun violence.
Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., said at a news conference Thursday that he and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., plan to introduce companion legislation to the background-check amendment in the House.
Information for this article was contributed by Heidi Przybyla, James Rowley, Derek Wallbank and Roger Runningen of Bloomberg News; by Jennifer Steinhauer of The New York Times; and by Alan Fram, Erica Werner, Charles Babington and Laurie Kellman of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/12/2013