Democrats are salivating at the prospect of Speaker Pelosi wielding the gavel in the House again in January and for the next two years. And while they have plenty on their plate in an effort to appease their ever left-drifting voters, one of their primary objectives is to introduce more gun control bills and get more votes on the record.
Toward that end . . .
House Democrats plan to prioritize a bill that will require a background check for every gun sale, according to multiple sources close to the matter. The legislation represents an aggressive shift in strategy by Democrats and their gun reform allies, who in previous years had tended to pursue more modest background check bills that would have exempted large numbers of gun purchases.
TERMINOLOGY NOTE: remember the approved term of art is “gun reform” now. Please don’t use any outdated labels such as (i.e. gun control, registration, confiscation, Second Amendment limitations) that might spook middle-of-the-road voters, mkay?
Anyway, Dems have wanted to take another swing at universal background checks ever since the Manchin-Toomey bill went down in flames after Sandy Hook.
…(W)ith (Speaker) Ryan leaving Congress and Democrats winning control of the House, (California Rep. Mike) Thompson now plans to introduce a bill that will go further than any of those earlier proposals: It will require a background check for every gun sale or transfer, regardless of who’s doing the selling or transferring. The move has been in the works since before the election, when Thompson met with outside gun reform allies like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, the Center for American Progress, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Giffords to talk about what they might push for if Democrats won the House.
A bill that will go further than earlier proposals? How much further?
The precise details of the legislation have not been finalized; Thompson is still discussing the bill with his fellow Democrats and plans to release more specifics sometime before the end of the year. Pelosi’s office told Mother Jones it could not confirm details about when the bill would be introduced in the next session, but its emergence makes good on a promise Pelosi made to the student survivors of the Parkland shooting—with whom she regularly discusses gun reform priorities—about passing universal background checks if Democrats regained control of the House.
In other words, Thompson’s sitting down with Bloomberg’s minions as well as a couple of others from Giffords and Brady to draft something that will jack up the hassle and expense factors to keep as many Americans from navigating the system as possible.
Will the Dems’ go as far as including something like what New York is proposing by requiring a check of prospective gun buyers’ social media accounts? Don’t put anything past them. They seem to think the midterm results gave them a mandate to push for more gun control. At least that’s the story they’re telling their media cheering section stenographers.
As Mother Jones concedes, the UBC bill will likely never come to a vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, let alone be signed by President Trump. They’re just looking to be able to tell their increasingly left-leaning constituents back home that they’ve addressed the problem of “gun violence” while getting House Republicans on the record with a no vote. They could then use those votes opposing such a — wait for it — common-sense gun reform measure against them in the 2020 election cycle.
Good times.