Senator Joe Manchin III so craved a pro-gun-rights Republican as a partner for a bill to expand background checks on gun buyers that he took to buttonholing senators on the in-house subway that ferries them from their offices to the Capitol, making his pitch while his colleagues were trapped with him in the tiny car.
Repeatedly rebuffed, Manchin, a conservative West Virginia Democrat, decided to call on his friend Senator Patrick J. Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican known almost exclusively for his conservative fiscal positions. On a recent Amtrak trip from New York City to Washington, where they happened to intersect, Toomey agreed to listen.
The two gun owners, long favorites of the National Rifle Association, came together in a last-ditch effort on a background check compromise that opened the door to a rare Congressional consideration of gun law changes. While their agreement ensures only that the measure will reach the Senate floor for debate, it rescued gun law changes sought by President Obama and gun control groups from an early defeat.
Lawmakers who represent neighboring states, allies on energy issues and temperamentally aligned, Manchin and Toomey announced they had gingerly put together a bipartisan deal that would expand background checks to cover unlicensed dealers at gun shows as well as all online sales. It would also maintain record-keeping provisions that law enforcement officials find essential in tracking guns used in crimes, but that some Republicans had balked at. Unlike the initial Democratic plan, it does not cover sales between family members and neighbors.
For Toomey, a Republican toiling in a swing state chock-full of suburban women who often favor gun safety legislation, a relatively modest measure to expand background checks seemed both politically viable and in need of a Republican imprimatur. Gun legislation was “not something I sought,” he said. “I’ve got to tell you, candidly, I don’t consider criminal background checks gun control,” said Toomey, who led the conservative advocacy group Club for Growth after a stint in the House. He acknowledged that it was hard to take heat from fellow conservatives over his reach across the aisle. “There have been people who’ve called the office expressing disappointment,” he said in an interview. But some have expressed support, too, he said..
For Manchin, whose signature campaign ad in 2010 featured him shooting environmental legislation with a hunting rifle, Toomey represented his best hope of a credible Republican ally who may be able to bring along fellow conservatives to the bill. “I wanted to make sure whoever I was with came from a gun culture such as mine,” Manchin, who opposes most gun control legislation, but wants to close background check loopholes, said in an interview. “I just appreciate Pat so much for being able to get there.” Manchin, who wept during a meeting with family members of victims of the Newtown shooting, has been lauded by gun control advocates for his help.
The politics of the deal are so fragile that Toomey asked that one of the Democratic co-sponsors of the amendment, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, not appear at a news conference, Senate aides said. Schumer agreed, and told Manchin at the fiftieth-birthday party of the television host Joe Scarborough that he would not be attending.
The details took so much fine tuning that, as the two senators negotiated, “I was concerned we couldn’t do it,” Manchin said, but managed to put it over the line late Tuesday night.
The gun bill will receive its first procedural vote in the Senate on Thursday. The House leadership sounded cool on the measure but, for now, the fight is in the Senate.
The bill also enhances some gun rights. For instance, it would allow gun owners who have undergone background checks within the past five years for a concealed-carry permit to use the permit to buy guns in other states, and it would relax some of the restrictions on hunters traveling with their guns through states that do not permit them. It would also allow active members of the military to buy firearms in their home states, currently prohibited when they are stationed outside their state.
The compromise, which two weeks ago seemed elusive, is intended to pull in as many members from both parties as possible, including Democrats running for re-election in Republican-leaning states.
“There was the danger that we might not accomplish anything,” Toomey said, adding that he and Manchin have consulted with the National Rifle Association. The group released a statement painting it as a defeat for the White House and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, but also saying the proposal was ultimately ineffective.
“While the overwhelming rejection of President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg’s ‘universal’ background check agenda is a positive development,” the group said, “we have a broken mental health system that is not going to be fixed with more background checks at gun shows. The sad truth is that no background check would have prevented the tragedies in Newtown, Aurora, or Tucson.”
The compromise was met with cautious optimism by President Obama, who has made new gun regulations a centerpiece of his second term, and gun control advocates.“This is not my bill,” Obama said in a statement, “and there are aspects of the agreement that I might prefer to be stronger.” The President said the Senate proposal “does represent welcome and significant bipartisan progress” and recognizes that some in both parties agree “we’ve got to do something to stem the tide of gun violence”.
Michelle Obama stepped into the gun debate as well, speaking before hundreds of business leaders in Chicago, her hometown. “Right now my husband is fighting as hard as he can and engaging as many people as he can to pass common-sense reforms to protect our children from gun violence,” Mrs. Obama said. “And these reforms deserve a vote in Congress.”
Many issues remain unresolved in the Senate proposal, chiefly how such new regulations would be enforced, and how law enforcement officials would be able to easily tell the provenance of some guns. But the measure would close many of the loopholes in gun laws.
Families of the Newtown shooting victims continued to meet with senators to encourage them to support the bill, and Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a freshman Democrat from Connecticut, chose to focus his first speech on the Senate floor on gun violence, bringing large photographs of some of the twenty children killed in the massacre to the floor.
Toomey, who said he had long supported background checks, described Manchin as a great partner. “It’s going to be intense for the next few days,” he said.
Rico says that intense is probably an understatement...
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