House Democrats have pledged to use their new majority to pass gun control legislation, with a bill to expand background checks on gun purchases named as one of their top legislative priorities next year.
But the Republican-controlled Senate is likely to block even moderate, bipartisan gun control measures from becoming law.
It’s “highly unlikely there will be restrictions passed”, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Friday, according to Bloomberg News, when he was asked if the Senate would take any action after another mass shooting. The attack at a country music bar in California on Wednesday left a dozen people dead.
Congress has not passed any substantial federal gun control legislation in nearly 25 years, even as researchers say high-profile mass shootings appear to be growing more frequent.
A bipartisan bill to expand background checks, co-sponsored by the Democrat Mike Thompson of California and Republican Peter King of New York, was likely to pass in the House, Drew Hammill, the current House minority leader’s deputy chief of staff, told the Guardian.
Even passing gun control legislation in just the lower chamber of Congress would represent major progress. Just two years ago, after a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando left 49 people dead, House Republican leaders refused even to allow a vote on gun control legislation, prompting Democrats to lead a 26-hour sit-in on the floor of the House.
Polls show that overwhelming majorities of Americans – Republicans, Democrats and gun owners of both parties – support expanded background checks on gun sales, as well as laws to prevent people with mental illnesses from buying guns.
But Republican legislators have continued to refuse to support any gun new control measures, swayed by the influence of pro-gun Republican primary voters and by the political clout of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its organized and vocal membership.
Two senior Democratic aides in the Senate said they were not expecting to see any progress on gun control next year.
“Given that the Senate is going to have even more Republicans, I think the prospect for meaningful gun safety measures in the next Congress is minimal,” one aide told the Guardian.
In the Senate, Republicans are usually only open to discussing possible legislation when a high-profile shooting happens in their state, the other aide said.
Even after House Republicans were themselves targeted in a mass shooting during a baseball practice in Alexandria in 2017, the lawmakers continued to oppose gun control and pushed for laws to make it easier for Americans to carry guns in public.
“I was a strong supporter of the second amendment before the shooting,” the House majority whip, Steve Scalise, who was seriously injured, said afterwards. “And frankly, [I am] as ardent as ever after the shooting in part because I was saved by people who had guns.”
Ted Deutch, a Democratic congressman from Florida who represents Parkland, where a February school shooting left 17 dead, said this week that he expected House Democrats to focus on bills with more bipartisan support. Those measures included bump stock bans and “extreme risk protection orders”, also known as red flag laws, which give law enforcement and family members a way to petition a court to temporarily bar an unstable person from buying or owning guns.
The House’s new Democratic majority includes Lucy McBath, a prominent gun violence prevention advocate and spokeswoman for the country’s largest gun control group, who lost her teenage son in a shooting in 2012. McBath won a closely contested House race in suburban Atlanta on a platform that included gun safety.