Senate panel OKs Dems gun background check bill

ALAN FRAM,Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee approved a Demo­c­ra­tic bill Tues­day expand­ing required fed­eral back­ground checks to nearly all gun pur­chases, giv­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Obama an early vic­tory on curb­ing gun vio­lence in a fight that still faces dif­fi­cult odds.

The vote was 10–8, with all Democ­rats sup­port­ing the mea­sure and every Repub­li­can oppos­ing it.

As expected, the panel delayed vot­ing on a plan by Sen. Dianne Fein­stein, D-Calif., to ban assault weapons and high capac­ity ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines. The com­mit­tee was expected to approve that mea­sure Thurs­day. Fein­stein was chair­ing a sep­a­rate intel­li­gence hearing.

The back­ground check mea­sure would expand the require­ment to firearms sales between pri­vate indi­vid­u­als, such as those that occur at gun shows. Cur­rently, the checks are required only for sales by fed­er­ally licensed firearms dealers.

“This isn’t going to be a per­fect bill. But it will sure reduce crimes,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the bill’s sponsor.

Schumer said he hopes he can strike a com­pro­mise on the mea­sure with Repub­li­cans, which would enhance its chances of pass­ing in the full Sen­ate. The cham­ber is expected to con­sider gun leg­is­la­tion next month, and GOP law­mak­ers have shown lit­tle enthu­si­asm for expand­ing the require­ment to pri­vate firearms transactions.

Sen. Charles Grass­ley of Iowa, top Repub­li­can on the Judi­ciary panel, said he believes the mea­sure will ulti­mately lead to a fed­eral reg­istry of gun own­ers — which is ille­gal. He also said that requir­ing addi­tional law-abiding cit­i­zens to face back­ground checks would have lim­ited impact on pub­lic safety.

“Mass shoot­ings would con­tinue to occur despite uni­ver­sal back­ground checks,” Grass­ley said. “Crim­i­nals will con­tinue to steal guns.”

The com­mit­tee also approved a mea­sure by Sen. Bar­bara Boxer, D-Calif., pro­vid­ing $40 mil­lion a year for school safety pro­grams. The vote was 14–4, with four Repub­li­cans join­ing Democ­rats in sup­port­ing the bill

The back­ground check sys­tem is designed to pre­vent crim­i­nals, peo­ple with severe men­tal prob­lems and oth­ers from get­ting guns.

Tuesday’s meet­ing came five days after the panel approved Con­gress’ first gun con­trol mea­sure since December’s hor­rific shoot­ing at a New­town, Conn., ele­men­tary school that left 26 stu­dents and edu­ca­tors dead.

The ini­tial bill, brought for­ward by the Judi­ciary Committee’s chair­man, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and oth­ers, estab­lishes long prison terms for ille­gal gun traf­fick­ers and straw pur­chasers, peo­ple who buy a firearm for crim­i­nals or oth­ers for­bid­den to buy one.

Schumer’s back­ground check bill would exempt only a nar­row range of trans­ac­tions from the checks, such as trans­ac­tions between imme­di­ate fam­ily mem­bers or weapons loaned tem­porar­ily dur­ing sport­ing events.

It would also renew the require­ment that states and fed­eral agen­cies report records on felons, peo­ple with major men­tal health prob­lems, drug abusers and oth­ers to the fed­eral back­ground check sys­tem — some­thing that many states and agen­cies do poorly.

Schumer had hoped to win GOP sup­port for his mea­sure, and he spent weeks bar­gain­ing with con­ser­v­a­tive Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who car­ries an A rat­ing from the National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion. Those talks foundered.

Coburn’s back­ing could have helped Schumer win sup­port from other Repub­li­cans and mod­er­ate Democ­rats from states with large num­bers of GOP vot­ers — poten­tially cru­cial because the back­ground check mea­sure is likely to need 60 votes in the 100-member Sen­ate. There are 55 Democ­rats, includ­ing two inde­pen­dents who usu­ally side with them.

To pres­sure law­mak­ers, a dozen clergy mem­bers from New­town col­lected 4,000 sig­na­tures of reli­gious lead­ers from around the coun­try on a let­ter ask­ing them to sup­port expanded back­ground checks, an assault weapons ban and other restric­tions. The let­ter was pub­lished Mon­day as an ad in the Des Moines (Iowa) Reg­is­ter and was addressed to Grass­ley. The group planned to run the ad else­where as well.

The let­ter said that after gun vio­lence in New­town and other places, “To refuse to take the steps we know would reduce harm is a vio­la­tion of reli­gious val­ues so severe that we are com­pelled to speak out.”

The NRA, which opposes the back­ground check expan­sion, is encour­ag­ing its mem­bers to con­tact Con­gress, asso­ci­a­tion spokesman Andrew Aru­lanan­dam said.

Lead­ers of the GOP-run House have said they will wait to act until the Sen­ate passes legislation.

Democ­rats say back­ground checks help keep crim­i­nals and oth­ers from get­ting weapons, and say keep­ing records of pri­vate sales is the only way to ensure that those checks are actu­ally con­ducted. Cur­rently, the gov­ern­ment must destroy records of checks it con­ducts within a day, but gun deal­ers must main­tain paper records of the trans­ac­tions for 20 years.

Repub­li­cans oppose record­keep­ing as a step toward a fed­eral reg­istry. They also argue that cur­rent laws need to be enforced bet­ter with­out impos­ing record-keeping require­ments on addi­tional gun buyers.

Since the fed­eral back­ground check sys­tem began in 1998, the gov­ern­ment has received more than 118 mil­lion gun appli­ca­tions and turned down 2.1 mil­lion, or 1.8 per­cent, accord­ing to the Jus­tice Depart­ment. The fig­ures are through 2010.

Sup­port­ers of stronger curbs say those sta­tis­tics show the large num­ber of dan­ger­ous peo­ple denied firearms. They say extend­ing the require­ment to more sales would make it even more effective.

Oppo­nents say broad­en­ing back­ground checks would encour­age more peo­ple to seek weapons illegally.

A 2004 sur­vey of state pris­on­ers involved in crimes that included guns showed that around 4 in 10 got their firearms from friends or fam­ily and nearly that many got them from unreg­u­lated street deal­ers. Only around 1 in 9 got them from licensed dealers.

Posted by AP News on Mar 12 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.