“I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go,» said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a key negotiator of a bipartisan gun control package that passed last year.
After a shooter killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville, on Monday, lawmakers on Capitol Hill indicated there was little support for addressing gun violence through legislation.
While President Biden on Tuesday called upon Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, Republicans in the GOP-controlled House reiterated their objection to any actions that would restrict access to guns, instead stressing that mental health issues remain the root cause of the country’s gun violence problem. And Democrats, who narrowly control the Senate, said they were reluctant to push gun-related legislation unless they have significant support from the chamber’s Republicans.
“I’m a realist,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the chair of the Judiciary Committee, about the possibility of moving gun legislation through his committee without enough Republican support to overcome the 60-vote filibuster. “I know what’s going to happen on the floor.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a key negotiator of a bipartisan gun-control package that passed last year following the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., said he didn’t see anything else that Congress could do on the issue, dismissing calls to expand background checks and Biden’s plea to ban assault weapons.
“I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go” on guns, Cornyn said.
Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday also did not commit to putting an assault weapons ban on the Senate floor, saying he was seeking the votes for the legislation.
In the absence of sweeping action, some Democrats are proposing a more modest measure to boost federal research into the causes of gun violence. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), whose district has seen two high-profile shootings in 15 months, will propose a bill Wednesday that would direct $50 million each year over five years to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study gun violence. The two plan to announce the legislation at a news conference featuring former students of Michigan State University and Oxford High School, which both were the targets of shooters.
For decades, Congress prevented the CDC from researching gun violence or its causes through a funding provision that vowed financial penalties if the agency promoted gun control. The CDC kept away from the topic of guns entirely to avoid losing funds. But in the past three years, a Democratic-controlled Congress reversed that trend and allocated millions of dollars to the agency to fund gun violence research, including $25 million for this fiscal year.
Still, it is unlikely the Markey-Slotkin proposal would be taken up by the Republican House majority, whose members spent Tuesday criticizing Democrats for what they deemed politicization of the issue.
