Post by DrSchadenfreude on Mar 25, 2021 9:57:36 GMT -5
Before blanket Republican filibusters, gun control laws passed the Senate with simple majorities
www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/24/2022703/-What-s-standing-in-the-way-of-new-gun-control-laws-Republican-abuse-of-the-filibuster
March 24, 2021
In the wake of two horrific shooting tragedies, Americans once again have a reminder that Republican minority rule in the Senate is standing in the way of saving lives. Earlier this month, the House sent two gun control bills designed to expand background checks and close the "Charleston loophole" for gun sales to the Senate, where they are dead on arrival due to the filibuster.
On Tuesday, President Biden urged the Senate to take action on those bills and more in remarks from the State Dining Room.
“We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a senator. It passed," Biden said. "We should do it again.”
But there's two big differences between the Senate effort Biden was part of in 1993 and now: Mitch McConnell and the filibuster. As progressive activist Joe Sudbay noted, the '93 Assault Weapons Ban cleared the Democratic-controlled Senate by a simple majority vote, 56-to-43, with 46 Democrats and 10 Republicans voting in favor of the bill. Democrats never had to clear a 60-vote threshold because the GOP Senate minority hadn't yet started deploying the filibuster to nuke every single bill that gained life in the House.
The same was true for a 1999 measure requiring background checks at all gun shows and pawnshops, which cleared the Senate by a bare majority, 51-to-50, with then-Vice President Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote. The bill passed just one month after the Columbine High School massacre left 12 students and one teacher dead—a remnant of a time when Congress was still functional enough to respond to a national crises with legislative fixes.
When both the assault weapon ban and gun show law came up for extension in 2004, they passed the Senate again by simple majority votes but died in the House. Republicans controlled both the upper and lower chambers at the time.
But by the time the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting claimed the lives of 20 children and six school employees, Sen. McConnell was running the Senate minority. Under his deranged leadership, Republicans filibustered and doomed a bipartisan bill that would have required background checks on all commercial sales of guns. The measure failed on the question of the motion to proceed to debate—a standard requiring 60 votes that hadn't been applied to most earlier gun control measures. Although the bill garnered the support of 55 senators, it fell five votes shy of the filibuster-imposed 60-vote threshold. (Then-Majority Leader Harry Reid later switched his vote to "no," a procedural move that would allow him to bring the measure up for another vote.)
As Atlantic editor Ron Brownstein tweeted, that 2013 vote perfectly highlighted how the Senate filibuster has effectively given constituents from small, rural states a minority veto over the will of the majority. "In 2013, last time Senate considered universal background checks," Brownstein wrote, "the 55 Senators voting yes represented 194 million people; the 45 voting no just 118 million; but w/filibuster the 45 won."
So the senators who voted in favor of background checks represented 76 million more people than the senators who carried the day.
Now, here we are again. Following two horrific tragedies in Georgia and Colorado, Democrats are trying to advance common-sense gun laws that will save lives, but McConnell is imposing minority rule on the will of the majority through a mechanism that was never even included in the Constitution in the first place.
It has to stop. No democratic nation can exist indefinitely in a state where a minority of the citizens impose their will on the majority in perpetuity. It’s simply not sustainable.
www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/24/2022703/-What-s-standing-in-the-way-of-new-gun-control-laws-Republican-abuse-of-the-filibuster
March 24, 2021
In the wake of two horrific shooting tragedies, Americans once again have a reminder that Republican minority rule in the Senate is standing in the way of saving lives. Earlier this month, the House sent two gun control bills designed to expand background checks and close the "Charleston loophole" for gun sales to the Senate, where they are dead on arrival due to the filibuster.
On Tuesday, President Biden urged the Senate to take action on those bills and more in remarks from the State Dining Room.
“We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a senator. It passed," Biden said. "We should do it again.”
But there's two big differences between the Senate effort Biden was part of in 1993 and now: Mitch McConnell and the filibuster. As progressive activist Joe Sudbay noted, the '93 Assault Weapons Ban cleared the Democratic-controlled Senate by a simple majority vote, 56-to-43, with 46 Democrats and 10 Republicans voting in favor of the bill. Democrats never had to clear a 60-vote threshold because the GOP Senate minority hadn't yet started deploying the filibuster to nuke every single bill that gained life in the House.
The same was true for a 1999 measure requiring background checks at all gun shows and pawnshops, which cleared the Senate by a bare majority, 51-to-50, with then-Vice President Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote. The bill passed just one month after the Columbine High School massacre left 12 students and one teacher dead—a remnant of a time when Congress was still functional enough to respond to a national crises with legislative fixes.
When both the assault weapon ban and gun show law came up for extension in 2004, they passed the Senate again by simple majority votes but died in the House. Republicans controlled both the upper and lower chambers at the time.
But by the time the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting claimed the lives of 20 children and six school employees, Sen. McConnell was running the Senate minority. Under his deranged leadership, Republicans filibustered and doomed a bipartisan bill that would have required background checks on all commercial sales of guns. The measure failed on the question of the motion to proceed to debate—a standard requiring 60 votes that hadn't been applied to most earlier gun control measures. Although the bill garnered the support of 55 senators, it fell five votes shy of the filibuster-imposed 60-vote threshold. (Then-Majority Leader Harry Reid later switched his vote to "no," a procedural move that would allow him to bring the measure up for another vote.)
As Atlantic editor Ron Brownstein tweeted, that 2013 vote perfectly highlighted how the Senate filibuster has effectively given constituents from small, rural states a minority veto over the will of the majority. "In 2013, last time Senate considered universal background checks," Brownstein wrote, "the 55 Senators voting yes represented 194 million people; the 45 voting no just 118 million; but w/filibuster the 45 won."
So the senators who voted in favor of background checks represented 76 million more people than the senators who carried the day.
Now, here we are again. Following two horrific tragedies in Georgia and Colorado, Democrats are trying to advance common-sense gun laws that will save lives, but McConnell is imposing minority rule on the will of the majority through a mechanism that was never even included in the Constitution in the first place.
It has to stop. No democratic nation can exist indefinitely in a state where a minority of the citizens impose their will on the majority in perpetuity. It’s simply not sustainable.
