Members of the caucus – including many involved in the House sit-in seeking gun control – said Friday the answer to the Dallas shootings must be new limits on gun sales, increased money for police training, and meetings between local leaders and Justice Department officials.
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Going beyond opposition from chamber Dems, Zeldin’s proposal and that of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calf., are being sandbagged by the House Freedom Caucus, a group of some three dozen conservative Republicans who are at odds with more moderate GOP members.
House Speaker Paul Ryan rejected Democratic calls for votes on their proposals, saying, “We are not going to pass legislation that infringes on anyone’s constitutional rights”.
Plans to bar firearms sales to terror suspects are unconstitutional, one of the most powerful politicians in the U.S. has said.
“But they shouldn’t have done that”, Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) said.
“We wanted action, and we wanted action now”, Lewis, the civil rights hero, told reporters of their message to Ryan. “And, of course, the entire process further supports the disposability of the Second Amendment and Fifth Amendment”, said a member of the caucus, Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., this week.
“We want to make sure we establish the right precedents”, Ryan said. The proposal has the approval of the National Rifle Association and Democrats oppose it as unworkable in practice.
“We’re not going away”, Larson said.
Griffith also agreed with Democrats that the rapid, three-day window allowed for judicial review under the bill was unrealistic and ultimately would prove ineffective.
The vote that was scheduled for this week but that Republicans delayed was on a separate package, the Homeland Safety and Security Act, which would notify the attorney general when a person who has been investigated for terrorism in the last five years tries to buy a firearm. Republicans refuse to protect the American people due to their subservience to the NRA’s profit motive. Democrats say it sets an untenably hard hurdle that makes the whole proposal unworkable. In an interview, Larson said Democrats won’t decide whether to resort to disruptive tactics – including potentially reviving their sit-in – until after their session with Ryan.
“They chose to plop this thing into here too quickly. I would submit it has civil liberty issues as now written, and it just plain doesn’t work legally”.
Lawmakers have been circulating a flurry of possible amendments to the bill.
“If their answer is ‘nothing, never, ‘ then we’ll take our case to the American people” in the election, Himes said. Susan Collins of ME and many Democrats that would block the sale of weapons to people whose names are found on “no fly” lists or other government terrorist watch lists.
The House Freedom Caucus, which frequently has had its way in arguments with Ryan and previously with former House Speaker John Boehner of OH, declared on Wednesday that it would vote as a bloc against the gun proposal unless it’s heavily amended and watered down.
Underscoring the pressure on GOP leaders, a mere vote on the Republican measure would be a departure.
Moreover, Republicans say that Democrats should not be rewarded with votes after holding the floor for 25 hours last month in what many believe was a blatant violation of House rules.
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Democrats have not let on about their specific plans moving forward, but they have promised to keep the heat on Republicans to schedule votes on two gun control bills in the wake of the Orlando shootings – one that would bar people on the terror watch list from purchasing guns and another that would expand background checks for firearms.
