“These are people bound by brutality, and their numbers are growing”.
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Murphy ended his 15-hour filibuster after announcing Republican leaders committed to hold votes on expanding background checks to gun shows and online gun sales, and banning sales to suspected terrorists. About 40 senators, majority Democrats joined him on the floor during the effort. “And I called, and I didn’t get a call back”.
McConnell dismissed the effort as a “campaign talk-a-thon” which slowed down work on a spending bill.
Democrats spoke of the need for new gun legislation. Forty-nine people were killed in the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida Sunday. But the two sides mostly talked past each other, and efforts to forge consensus quickly sputtered out.
President Ba rack O ba ma, who was travelling to Orlando to meet survivors, relatives, victims and first responders, has been pressing for these changes and renewed his call after Orlando.
He said it had taken seven years for Congress to approve a ban on assault weapons which expired in 2004.
Democrats took to the floor of the Republican-controlled Senate Wednesday to launch a procedural obstruction, known as a filibuster, to press colleagues to accept so-called “no-fly no buy” legislation. “Preventing gun violence is one of them”. “Nobody wants terrorists to have firearms”, he said. Even after the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings of schoolchildren, the Senate could not pass a bipartisan background checks bill.
Trump’s intervention was praised as an apparent move to the middle by one of his most severe critics, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a former presidential candidate. The Senate has already voted both down in December after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. She also said the vote could come Tuesday. Republicans will offer an alternative by Sen.
Senators are expected to vote on Cornyn’s proposal, as well as competing measure from Sen.
Both of the measures Booker and Murphy sought have been considered in the Senate before and failed, and Booker said the 60-vote hurdle needed to pass would likely be hard.
But Republicans were coolly dismissive of Democrats’ demands.
This time around, however, the intent is not to delay the appropriations bill, but to force action on gun control measures.
Republicans, holding a 54-person majority in the 100-seat Senate, have blocked Democratic-backed gun control measures over the years, saying they infringe on a right to bear arms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Attempts at compromise appeared to collapse within hours of surfacing in the Senate Wednesday, underscoring the extreme difficulty of resolving the divisive issue five months from November’s election. Sen.
“The question is, is going after the Second Amendment how you stop terrorism? No”.
But many Democrats say Cornyn’s proposal would do little to stop suspected terrorists from buying firearms.
House Democrats gathered Wednesday morning in a room in the basement of the Capitol to plot a path forward.
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Collins told reporters on Thursday that barring everyone on terrorism watch lists from weapons purchases carried with it the risk of affecting people who have been swept onto the lists without good cause.
