WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is insisting that he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell want to “do something” to strengthen the nation’s firearm background check system in the wake of two mass shootings earlier this month.
Trump told reporters in New Jersey on Tuesday as he departed for Pennsylvania he’s “convinced that Mitch wants to do something.” He adds, “He wants to do background checks and I do too.”
Publically McConnell has only committed to launching into a discussion of the issue with the GOP-controlled Senate returns from recess next month.
Democrats pressed President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday to approve House-passed legislation expanding background checks and to take other steps curbing guns, in an offensive fueled by public outrage over this month’s mass killings in Texas and Ohio.
It seemed unlikely that Democrats’ moves would have much impact on the capital’s top Republicans. Although Trump and McConnell have expressed a new openness to unspecified gun curbs following recent back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, but their decisions will be based on the sentiment of fellow Republicans, not predictable pressure tactics by Democrats.
Still, the Democrats’ moves underscore a shift to an issue that largely unites them — responding to the massacres that killed 31 people — and away from the party’s hand-wringing over whether to impeach Trump, a question that deeply divides Democrats.
McConnell, R-Ky., came under the sharpest attacks from Democrats. They focused on his failure to let the Senate consider a measure the House approved in February requiring background checks for most private sales, including online and gun show purchases of firearms, not just for transactions involving registered gun dealers.
The White House has threatened that Trump would veto that bill.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said McConnell hadn’t moved gun curb legislation because “he’s waiting for the outrage to die down, the headlines to change, the people to turn the page and think about something else.” Congress is out of town on recess until a week after Labor Day.
No. 2 House leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Hoyer resorted to reading lyrics from “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Bob Dylan’s 1962 song. “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died,” Hoyer said, pausing for effect.
Trump told reporters in New Jersey on Tuesday that he’s “convinced that Mitch wants to do something” on guns. He added, “He wants to do background checks and I do too.”
Trump provided no specifics and it was unclear how tough a background check measure they might consider. McConnell said earlier this month that background checks and “red flags” — bills helping authorities remove guns from unstable people — would “probably lead the discussion.”
“What we can’t do is fail to pass something,” McConnell said. “What I want to see here is an outcome.”
Separately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Trump to divert $5 billion he’s wanted to build his wall along the southern border to investigating domestic terrorism and conducting research on gun violence.
“The dual scourges of gun violence and violent white supremacist extremism in this country are a national security threat plain and simple, and it’s time the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress starting treating them as such,” Schumer said in a statement.
Patrick Crusius, 21, accused of the El Paso shootings, has told authorities he was targeting Mexicans.
Hoyer said the Democratic-run House Judiciary Committee would return early from summer recess to consider gun control legislation, though he stopped short of saying they would hold votes. He said bills the panel could discuss included measures banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and proposals making it easier for authorities to confiscate guns from unstable people.
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