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The mass homicide of 19 kids and two of their lecturers in Texas final week prompted Senator Minority Chief Mitch McConnell to say he’s hopeful Senators can discover “a bipartisan resolution” to the issue. But when that type of response sounds acquainted—and never significantly inspiring—that’s as a result of he’s stated it earlier than, solely to shut the door later.
McConnell instructed CNN that he “inspired” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to have interaction with Democrats Sens. Chris Murphy (CT) and Sen. Krysten Sinema (AZ) about potential areas of settlement on new gun legal guidelines.
“I’m hopeful that we may give you a bipartisan resolution,” he stated.
Whereas it’s notable that McConnell signaled his willingness to speak about modifications to legal guidelines that regulate gun possession in america, in McConnell’s case, it’s solely a small step above instantly dismissing motion on weapons.
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Again and again, McConnell’s “hope” for a bipartisan resolution has merely extended the inevitable: inaction.
In June 2016, after a person with a gun murdered 49 individuals on the Pulse Night time Membership in Orlando, McConnell instructed reporters “no person needs terrorists to have firearms.”
“We’re open to critical solutions from the specialists as to what we’d have the ability to do to be useful,” he stated.
However when a invoice that may have given the Division of Justice the power to “deny the switch of firearms or the issuance of firearms and explosives licenses to recognized or suspected harmful terrorists” was put for a vote, it failed alongside celebration traces apart from one vote. McConnell was one of many 53 Republican senators who voted no.
In August 2019, after mass shootings inside 24 hours at a Walmart in El Paso and a nightclub in Dayton, then-President Donald Trump expressed assist for “actually commonsense, smart, vital background checks.”
“At the moment, the president known as on Congress to work in a bipartisan, bicameral method to handle the latest mass murders which have shaken our nation,” McConnell stated in a press release on August 5. “Senate Republicans are ready to do our half.”
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“Solely critical, bipartisan, bicameral efforts will allow us to proceed this vital work and produce additional laws that may cross the Senate, cross the Home, and earn the president’s signature,” he stated. “Partisan theatrics and campaign-trail rhetoric will solely take us farther away from the progress all Individuals deserve.”
“What we won’t do is fail to cross one thing,” McConnell stated throughout an interview on WHAS radio a number of days later. “The urgency of this isn’t misplaced on any of us.”
Even Trump purchased into McConnell’s phrases.
“I’m satisfied that Mitch needs to do one thing,” Trump instructed reporters on August 13, 2019.
However a month later, as Trump’s ardour for the problem light, McConnell modified course.
“My members know the quite simple proven fact that to make a regulation it’s important to have a presidential signature,” he instructed reporters on September 10.
No vote was ever taken.
McConnell’s workplace declined to remark for this report.
McConnell’s behavior of deferring to some theoretical, distant idea of a bipartisan resolution has the identical impact as politicians providing their “ideas and prayers” to victims—solely it’s much less recognizable as an empty gesture of change. McConnell, nonetheless, hasn’t all the time been above providing these ideas and prayers.
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In June 2015, after a white supremacist shot and killed 9 individuals at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, McConnell took to the Senate flooring to let “the American individuals to know the Senate is considering of them right this moment and the victims that they cherished.”
“We’re additionally considering of the complete congregation at this historic church,” he stated.
No legislative change ever got here from the Charleston taking pictures.
The identical might be stated of the mass shootings later in 2015 on the Umpqua Neighborhood School in Oregon that killed 10 and the San Bernardino taking pictures that killed 16. McConnell was sympathetic for the victims and their households, however he was fast to criticize President Barack Obama’s proposed options in early 2016 as partisan.
“Within the wake of the President’s vow to ‘politicize’ shootings, it is arduous to see right this moment’s announcement as being about greater than politics,” McConnell stated.
Within the days after the Las Vegas taking pictures, which killed 59 individuals at a live performance, McConnell instructed reporters it was “inappropriate to politicize an occasion like this.”
“The investigation has not even been accomplished, and I feel it’s untimely to be discussing legislative options if there are any,” he stated.
Nonetheless, after 17 individuals at a highschool have been murdered in Parkland, Florida, McConnell was instrumental in passing one piece of reform laws: the so-called Repair NICS Act, which helped guarantee prison document info was entered into the Nationwide On the spot Felony Background Test System (NICS) by state and federal authorities. McConnell additionally oversaw the passage of a STOP Faculty Violence Act, which supplied funding to assist put together and forestall faculty gun violence.
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However these reforms have been removed from the sweeping modifications that the majority advocates consider are vital to really scale back gun violence. And as a rule, McConnell’s willingness to have interaction on points which may regulate or increase present firearms legal guidelines has been fleeting.
In fact, McConnell doesn’t all the time simply defer to a bipartisan resolution that doesn’t exist.
After the surprising Sandy Hook taking pictures in 2012, McConnell instructed reporters days later that the complete Congress was “united in condemning the violence in Newtown and on the necessity to implement our legal guidelines. As we proceed to be taught the details, Congress will study whether or not there’s an applicable and constitutional response that may higher defend our residents.”
However by January, in an interview on ABC, McConnell made it clear his focus was elsewhere when requested by host George Stephanopolous about whether or not Republicans can be open to solutions by a brand new activity drive on gun violence headed by then-Vice President Joe Biden.
“Effectively, first, we have to think about Joe Biden’s group, and what are they going to advocate?,” McConnell stated. “And after they try this, we’ll resolve what, if something, is suitable to do on this space.”
“However the largest downside we’ve got for the time being is spending and debt,” he continued. “That is going to dominate the Congress between now and the tip of March. None of those points, I feel, may have the sort of precedence that spending and debt are going to have over the subsequent two or three months.”
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