It seems that Attorney General William Barr isn’t having an easy go of trying to sell President Trump’s trial balloon proposal on background checks and “registration” or record-keeping requirements to Republicans on Capitol Hill.
As The Hill reported this morning,
A proposal floated by Attorney General William Barr to dramatically expand background checks for gun sales is falling flat with a key conservative: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has warned of potential backlash from the right.
Cruz is worried that Barr’s proposal, which largely mirrors the 2013 background check amendment sponsored by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), could move Democrats in the direction of supporting confiscation of certain firearms.
Cruz is instead pushing his own proposal with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to fix holes in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and crack down on straw purchasers of firearms who turn around and sell them to prohibited individuals or middlemen.
America’s gun owners are simply heartbroken to hear that the rush to enact more restrictions and hurdles to lawful firearms purchases isn’t going well. Maybe that’s because the proposals being floated are so obviously based on false premises and some could actually be unconstitutional (see Matt Larosiere’s excellent breakdown of the half-baked ideas below).
Bottom line: none of this would impact “gun violence” or mass shootings in the slightest. If enacted, the proposals would, instead, make civilian purchases and ownership of firearms more expensive and onerous. And anything that moves us closer to registration is both illegal and dangerous.
It seems even United States senators are capable of discerning that.
As a result, the White House is now actually trying to distance itself from the entire thing.
As far as the document circulating on the Hill, (White House spokesman Hogan Gidley) added: “That is not a White House document, and any suggestion to the contrary is completely false.”
All of which is probably why Trump is now tamping down expectations . . .
By Zeke Miller – Associated Press
President Donald Trump is pouring cold water on prospects for a bipartisan compromise on gun legislation, even as his aides circulate a draft plan on Capitol Hill.
Trump tells Fox News in an interview aired Thursday no deal is imminent. Six weeks after mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, Trump says, “We’re going very slowly.”
Trump says he doesn’t want “bad people” to have weapons, but won’t allow any plan to move forward that takes guns away from law-abiding people.
Trump says Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s call last week to confiscate AR-15-style rifles has made it more difficult for Republicans to make an agreement. Trump says: “A lot of people think this is just a way of taking away guns.” He adds he won’t let that happen.