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WASHINGTON — The back-to-back mass shootings in California have as soon as once more underscored a political actuality on Capitol Hill: Even after a pair of massacres which have shaken the nation, Congress is unlikely to muster a bipartisan consensus to enact any extra gun management measures.
On the Capitol on Tuesday, as main Democrats joined President Biden’s name for motion, Republicans — together with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose state was the scene of the newest gun rampages — remained silent. The divergent reactions mirrored the gulf between the 2 events on the difficulty, even after they got here collectively final yr to push by way of the primary main gun management laws in many years.
Negotiators regarded that modest measure, which was aimed toward protecting firearms out of the fingers of harmful folks, because the furthest they might go in forging a bipartisan compromise on the difficulty. Now that it’s regulation, the prospect of enacting different, extra aggressive steps like reinstating a ban on assault weapons seems all however unattainable.
“It’s clear that the prevalence of weapons in our nation has made tragedies like this one too frequent,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the bulk chief, mentioned on Monday, reacting to the capturing over the weekend in Monterey Park, Calif., the place 11 folks had been killed in what police known as the deadliest mass capturing in Los Angeles County’s historical past. “Whereas the Senate handed bipartisan gun security laws final yr, and that was very welcome transfer, extra needs to be executed.”
Simply hours after Mr. Schumer spoke on the Senate ground, a gunman killed seven folks in two places in Half Moon Bay, Calif.
“No different nation fetishizes violence and weapons like we do,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said on Twitter. “No different nation cares so little about who owns the equipment of mass slaughter.”
Mr. Biden mentioned on Tuesday afternoon that he was sending Vice President Kamala Harris to California and once more voiced his assist for an assault rifle ban.
“Our hearts are with the folks of California,” the president informed reporters as he hosted Democratic congressional leaders on the White Home. “The vp’s going to be going out. I’ve been speaking with Gavin Newsom and Judy Chu and Anna Eshoo and Hilda Solis, and we’re figuring out quite a few issues that we will and are going to be doing.”
He cited laws launched by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, to reimpose the assault rifle ban, which expired practically 20 years in the past.
“I’m asking you all to ship that to my desk as shortly as you may,” Mr. Biden mentioned, though he knew the probabilities of it passing a Republican Home had been slight.
Democrats have conceded that they don’t have the 60 votes vital to beat a Republican filibuster and cross a brand new ban. Even when they did, there may be little likelihood that Mr. McCarthy would carry up such a measure for a vote within the Home, the place Republicans adamantly oppose an assault weapons ban or any measure seen as infringing on gun rights.
Final yr, when Democrats nonetheless managed each chambers in Congress, Mr. McCarthy whipped his members to vote towards the bipartisan laws that went on to develop into regulation in June, which enhanced background checks for potential gun consumers ages 18 to 21. It additionally supplied incentives for states to cross “pink flag” legal guidelines that permit weapons to be briefly confiscated from folks deemed, by a choose, too harmful to own them.
By passing that invoice, the Senate shattered practically three many years of congressional paralysis on toughening the nation’s gun legal guidelines.
Even then, the laws was not seen as a harbinger of a brand new period of bipartisan compromise on an intractable difficulty , however somewhat a quick second of bipartisanship that may be tough to copy. Most Republicans opposed the invoice, and nearly all of those that backed it weren’t up for re-election.
Those that did had been branded as “RINOs,” or Republicans in Identify Solely, by former President Donald J. Trump, who’s operating for re-election, and by a number of the extra excessive members of the Home Republican Convention, which now holds the bulk.
Peter Baker contributed reporting.
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