A day after 12 people were killed in a mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard -- just a stone's throw away from the Capitol Building -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that legislation to address gun violence still doesn't have the support to pass in the Senate.
"We're going to move this up as quickly as we can, but we've got to have the votes first. We don't have the votes," he told reporters Tuesday. "I'd like to get them, but we don't have them now."
The push to reform national gun laws stalled in April, when the Senate rejected a bill that would have expanded background checks on gun purchases. Reid said Tuesday he would consider narrowing the scope of the bill to, for instance, focus on boosting support for local mental health resources, if that would improve the legislation's chance of passing.
"I would be willing to do that, anything we can do to focus attention on these senseless killings that take place," he said. The mental health portion of the debate, he added, is "something we will look at. But I think, to show how elementary this is, background checks, we want to stop people who have mental illness from buying a gun. We want to stop people who are felons from being able to purchase a gun. That's what that's all about."
Some other Democratic gun control advocates in Congress lamented this week that Congress failed to act following last year's mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.
"Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement Monday.
Democratic senator on Navy Yard shooting: "I hope the lesson is learned"
Obama: Washington Navy Yard shooting a "cowardly" act
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on the Senate floor Tuesday that legislation to keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally ill is "common sense" to most Americans.
"We can protect the right of law-abiding Americans to use guns in a responsible way for hunting and self-defense, but we have to keep guns out of the hands of those who would misuse them -- felons, the mentally unstable, who can't be trusted to have a firearm," he said. "But today we pause and reflect on the lives lost. I hope the lesson is learned."
While there have been six mass shootings in the past nine months, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that President Obama doesn't accept regular mass shootings as "the new normal."
"The president believes and, I think, has shown that we ought to do everything we can to implement common sense measures to reduce gun violence in America," he said, pointing out the administration drew up a comprehensive plan to do that and took certain executive actions that didn't need congressional approval.
Carney blamed congressional Republicans for blocking the background check legislation, accusing them of bowing to special interests.
"When you vote against 80 or 90 percent of the American people, when you vote against the majority of your constituents at the behest of a narrow special interest, you are serving that special interest, not your constituents," he said.
Carney acknowledged that a stronger background check system would not have stopped the Navy Yard shooter, Aaron Alexis. However, using that fact to dismiss background check legislation would be a "cop out," he said.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar