Posted: 03/15/11
WASHINGTON -- House lawmakers joined New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday in announcing legislation to fix the nation's gun background check system. Sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), the bill will mirror legislation introduced late last month by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
"Too often, any serious discussion about guns devolves into ideological arguments that have nothing to do with the real problem," Bloomberg told reporters at a press event outside the Capitol. "Our coalition strongly believes in the Second Amendment. We also know from experience that we can keep guns away from dangerous people without imposing burdens on law-abiding gun owners. This legislation, sponsored by Senator Schumer in the senate, and now Representative McCarthy in the House, will give us a working background check system with no loopholes."
Lawmakers called the legislation a matter of "common sense," a phrase President Obama, in an oped that ran in Tucson's Arizona Daily Star this weekend, used no less than three times. Indeed, two months after the shootings in Tuscon, Obama's call for improving the background check system has given new life to the gun control debate.
"A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence was able to walk into a store and buy a gun," wrote Obama in the Arizona Daily Star. "I'm willing to bet that responsible, law-abiding gun owners agree that we should be able to keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few - dangerous criminals and fugitives, for example - from getting their hands on a gun in the first place."
Under the new legislation, all gun sales, including those by private sellers, would be subject to a background check, effectively closing the so-called "gun-show loophole." The legislation would also require states to submit a higher percentage of their records on individuals to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Financial penalties for states that fail to comply with the background check system would be increased: Instead of having three percent of federal justice funds cut, as is currently the law, non-compliers would face a 25 percent cut in the same funds by 2018.
"The majority of what we're doing is already on the books in the 1968 gun control act but we are expanding it, we're expanding it because there are loopholes," said McCarthy, whose husband was killed in a 1993 mass shooting on a Long Island train. McCarthy said she also hopes Obama's attention to the issue will help garner support for her proposal banning high-capacity clips.
McCarthy signaled she wants to introduce the legislation this session, but given the strength of the gun lobby and the Republican House, it will be difficult to get passed. It also remains to be seen whether the legislation could move forward in the upper chamber, where Democratic senators such as Bob Casey (Pa.) and Harry Reid (Nev.) are staunch backers of gun rights.
"Right now there seems to be a blanket 'no' going on to legislation," McCarthy told reporters of her Republican colleagues. "That will be my job -- to convince them to sign on to it. I do believe that I'll get members signing on."
McCarthy's bill does not currently have any Republican co-sponsors.
