‘Vote in November’: After Demanding Action, Schumer Says Nothing Senate Dems Can Do on Gun Control

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has backed off his posturing a day prior, when he called for a quick vote on gun control legislation already passed by the House. Instead, he’s calling on Americans to vote for more pro-gun control candidates in November.

Within hours of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday in which a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school, Schumer pledged to push ahead on bills requiring background checks on gun buyers and on programs to track and prevent domestic terrorism.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Schumer castigated his Republican colleagues for their “obeisance” to anti-gun control lobby groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA), saying that “too many members on that side care more about the NRA than they do about families who grieve victims of gun violence.”

“My Republican colleagues can work with us now,” Schumer said of new gun control legislation. “I know this is a slim prospect, very slim, all too slim - we’ve been burned so many times before - but this is so important.”

However, given the 50-50 split in the Senate and the refusal of Democrats to confront the filibuster rule requiring them to get a 60-vote supermajority to pass legislation Republicans disapprove of, the Democratic leader said there was nothing immediate the upper legislative chamber would be doing.

Schumer told reporters he was “sympathetic” to an “accountability vote” obtained by voting on a bill about a prescient issue that is doomed to fail, as Democrats did with the Women’s Health Protection Act earlier this month, but wouldn’t be using that option. “Sadly, this isn’t a case of the American people not knowing where their senators stand. They know.”

“Americans can cast their vote in November for senators or members of Congress that reflect how he or she stands with guns with this issue, this issue, at the top of the voters’ lists,” he added.

However, other Democrats are more optimistic. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who furiously slammed his colleagues for their inaction on the Senate floor after news of the Uvalde shooting broke on Tuesday, said: “I know I have Republican partners. I know there’s 10 Republicans that will vote for something under the right circumstances, with the right leadership.”

In response, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz claimed gun control “doesn’t work,” telling CNN that the solution is to devote “far more law enforcement resources to stopping violent criminals.”

In March, the House passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which would expand federal background checks required for gun purchases, in response to the ongoing epidemic of gun violence. As of May 25, the US has seen nearly 200 mass shooting events, including the Tuesday massacre of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. However, it hasn’t yet been brought up for a vote in the Senate.

You’ll never guess which Democrat stands against it: that’s right, it’s West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who’s derailed one Biden administration agenda item after another by voting with the Republicans.

Last week, in the wake of another mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, Manchin said he continues to support the 2013 bill he negotiated with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) under National Rifle Association (NRA) tutelage, known as The Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act, or simply “Manchin-Toomey.” The bill is a watered-down version of Schumer’s, which he says goes too far by requiring ID checks on gun transfers between family members and friends.

“It’s astonishingly frustrating,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told The Hill. “These are things that most gun owners want and yet this rabid goddamned NRA won’t let the Republicans move.”

According to data collected by The Trace, in the 2020 US elections, the NRA spent $16.3 million fighting Joe Biden or supporting Donald Trump, and $12.2 million across 145 different congressional races. However, even that is just a fraction of what it shelled out in 2016 when the gun lobby group put $30.3 million into getting Trump elected and a total of $54.4 million into the election.

Ironically, Manchin has a “D” rating from the NRA, which went to war with him during his 2018 reelection campaign over the compromises in the Manchin-Toomey bill.