House Democrats hoped their protest would force their GOP colleagues to hold a vote on bills that would expand background checks in gun purchases and block sales to some suspected terrorists. It became clear that Senate proponents of gun restrictions did not have the 60 votes needed to advance a bill, according to lawmakers and aides.
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Democratic House whip Steny Hoyer accused Republicans of having “left in the dead of night with business unfinished”. Here’s another one: if Democrats want a vote for a bill on the floor, there is a way to get one.
“Let us not miss an opportunity to get something done”, she pleaded on the Senate floor. But Republican leaders, unmoved, were ready to move on.
“Because this resolution seeks to block the progress represented by this rule and deny retirement savers investment advice in their best interest, I can not support it”, Obama said in a statement at the time. Lewis and a handful of other House Democrats planned the protest over the last several days, recognizing that it had to be dramatic. But when Mr Ryan gavelled out about 20 minutes later, Democratic voices trailed after him: “shame, shame, shame!”
“We felt like we had to take a stand on behalf of the American people because we’ve seen mass shooting after mass shooting”, he says, “.and the answer from the Congress is always the same. That’s all this is about, here we are again, seeking the right to vote. “The fight is not over. This is just one step”.
Criticizing Ryan, Lewis noted that Lester Maddox and George Wallace, two governors who fiercely opposed the civil rights movement, had called that movement a “publicity stunt”, too.
“In the galleries around the chamber, you had families of victims of gun violence, including a mother of one of the children that was killed in the Newtown shooting”. Placards with photos of gun victims and the phone number of the Capitol switchboard were prominently displayed on the floor. Around 10 p.m., Speaker Ryan and House Republicans entered the chamber to vote on an unrelated procedural motion. “Today was also a low point for public access to government and free speech when House Republicans cut off the C-SPAN broadcast of the House floor and prevented the public from seeing the House Democrats’ protest”.
Democrats recalled Lewis’s historic walk as they vowed to keep pressing the issue. It only fuels the notion that the powerful National Rifle Association’s influence extends well into both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. The civil rights leader proclaimed that this “is a struggle, but we’re going to win this struggle”. The assailant also died in the incident.
Pelosi, who participated through the course of the long protest and hadn’t slept at all, said the Democrats are simply “tired and frustrated” by the congressional inaction that’s followed a long string of mass shootings in recent years, including the near-killing of their own colleague, former Rep.
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., left, accompanied by Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., center, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., gestures as he speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 23, 2016, after House De.
House Democrats have ended their 25½-hour sit-in on the chamber’s floor that they’ve been staging to demand votes on gun control. Interestingly enough, C-SPAN has picked up the Periscope feed, noting that it doesn’t control the official feed from the House.
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“We won’t stop until the job is done”, the Californian declared to fellow Democrats camped out in the well of the House in the early hours of the morning, saying the party had changed “the dynamic of what happens” concerning guns.
