Obama renews call for Congress to act on background checks

In the wake of the shooting at a Washington naval facility that left 13 dead, President Barack Obama renewed his call for Congress to pass background check reforms to keep guns out of the hands of those who would do harm.

“The fact that we do not have a firm enough background-check system is something that makes us more vulnerable to these kinds of mass shootings,” he said in an interview with Telemundo, adding that “ultimately this is something that Congress is going to have to act on.”

Obama defended giving an address on the economy – which contained more than one barb about legislative gridlock, aimed mostly at Republican lawmakers – even as the manhunt for the shooter was still underway just a few miles from the White House.

“I think that everybody understands that the minute something like this happens, I'm in touch with the F.B.I., I'm in touch with my national security team, we're making sure that all the assets are out there for us to deal with this as well as we can,” he said, noting that he did address the shooting and offer prayers for the victims at the beginning of his Monday speech.

Via: NBC News

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Reid: ‘We Don’t Have the Votes’ for Background Checks

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday that he would need to have enough votes for any gun control legislation before bringing another bill to the floor, while leaving open the option for a narrower measure than the failed background check bill from earlier this year.

“We’re going to move this up about as quickly as we can, but we’ve got to get the votes first. We don’t have the votes,” Reid told reporters in the Capitol, just a day after a mass shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard claimed the lives of 13 people, including the shooter.

The Senate could not clear a 60-vote hurdle on a background check bill in April, falling five votes short. Reid was then asked whether he could support advancing a narrower, mental-health-related measure and the majority leader indicated he wasn’t even sure there would be votes for such a bill but did not close the door to it, saying Congress should do “anything we can to help prevent” future mass shootings.

“I was asked, what about mental-health provisions, which is something we worked hard on. Sen. [Debbie] Stabenow worked really hard on that and that’s something we’ll look at, but I think to show how elementary this is … we want to stop individuals with mental illness from buying guns. We want to stop people who are felons from being able to purchase a gun. That’s what that’s all about,” Reid said, alluding to the popular-with-the-public background check provisions.

Other senators expressed a weariness about yet another mass shooting, yet a certain resignation to futility pervaded the Capitol, with lawmaker after lawmaker shrugging his shoulders at the idea of finding enough votes to pass a bill. Top Democrats Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who chairs the committee of jurisdiction, seemed to think that Monday’s shooting did not change the Senate vote calculus. Neither did No. 2 Democrat Richard J. Durbin.

Less-battle-hardened members tried to express optimism while acknowledging the realities of a divided Congress.

Via: Roll Call

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