WASHINGTON — Gun control advocates, who have failed for decades to impose broad limits on weapons purchases, may finally have hit upon a winning strategy as they push for a narrower ban on gun sales to suspected terrorists.
Compared with previous attempts to impose universal background checks or restrict gun show transactions, the new push has two features that make it more politically palatable: It would apply to a very small group of people instead of to all Americans; and it is tied to the nation’s broader anti-terrorist initiatives.
“Polling shows that the public overwhelmingly believes this is the way to go,” Richard Benedetto, a political science and journalism professor at American University in Washington, told McClatchy. “There is no question that the Democrats see this as a political strength for them and are playing it to the hilt, down to the occupation of the House. They basically see themselves on the side of the angels right now.”
The Democratic sit-in last week in the House of Representatives, waged as a protest against House Republican leaders’ refusal to take up measures imposing the “no fly, no buy” limits, left gun control supporters feeling like they turned a legislative loss into a political victory. As many as 168 Democratic House members and 34 Democratic senators took part, including 50 who spent the night.
“What this did was it ratcheted up the intensity in this debate higher than it’s ever been before,” Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., Democrat, said after the sit-in ended. “That’s going to continue when we leave here. It’s going to continue at home.”
Such a limited ban might not have prevented Omar Mateen from purchasing the assault rifle and semiautomatic handgun he bought on successive days from two Florida gun stores about a week before he opened fire June 12 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. By the time police shot him dead after a three-hour standoff and a gun battle, 49 people were dead. Mateen also was killed.
Mateen was reportedly on one of the FBI’s terrorist watch lists in 2013 and 2014 when agents interviewed him about alleged statements expressing sympathy with Islamic jihadists, but he had been removed by the time he purchased the weapons used in his Orlando rampage. Proposed legislation would cover anyone who’d been on the watch list in the previous five years.
Most Republicans came out against the more narrow gun-sales ban, with House Speaker Paul Ryan citing opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“In this country, we do not take away people’s constitutional rights without due process,” Ryan said. “This is not just Republicans saying this. It’s groups like the ACLU who are saying this.”
But some Repbulican lawmakers broke ranks.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., led a bipartisan group of nine lawmakers who gathered outside the Capitol on Friday to promote the Terrorist Firearms Prevention Act, a House companion bill to a Senate measure introduced earlier in the week by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
“Some of our colleagues say this is all about terrorism,” Curbelo said. “Others say this is all about guns. We are coming together to say that this is about keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous terrorists.”
Curbelo and other lawmakers said the legislation would authorize the U.S. attorney general to prevent about 3,000 suspected terrorists on the government’s no-fly list from obtaining guns.
That number, however, is far smaller than the figure cited last week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. She said the list has 81,000 names, with fewer than 1,000 of them belonging to Americans.
Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., proposed similar legislation last week. Both House measures and the Senate bill contain various provisions aimed at protecting individual civil liberties, especially for those placed on FBI watch lists erroneously. The provisions include requiring gun stores to provide them prompt notice of any snag and giving them early access to federal courts to appeal a block.
Collins’ Senate legislation also has some bipartisan support.