Congress faces familiar deadlock in wake of Orlando mass murder | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Congress confronts familiar gun-control choices, and some equally familiar political resistance, following the Orlando mass murder.

First up, Senate Democrats said Monday, will be a renewed push for legislation by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., blocking gun sales to suspected terrorists. More ideas, from assault-weapon bans to gun-buying restrictions on those convicted of domestic violence, might be resurrected, though maybe not for long.

“Our laws are riddled with loopholes,” Feinstein said Monday, adding that “background checks really aren’t enough.”

Initially prompted by last year’s massacre in San Bernardino, California, Feinstein’s measure would allow the Justice Department to block gun sales to individuals identified as “known or suspected” terrorists, if officials have a “reasonable belief” the gun would be used for a terrorist act.

Democrats will start by offering it as an amendment to a $56.3 billion bill funding the Commerce and Justice departments and other agencies for next year.

“We’ll find a way to bring this to a vote,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “The bottom line is, we have to keep trying.”

Politically, Democrats’ hope is that unusually high public revulsion over the Orlando shootings might combine with election-year pressures on vulnerable Republicans to change the Capitol Hill calculus. Until now, gun-control measures have flopped in the GOP-controlled Congress, even in the wake of gun-related catastrophes.

Last December, the Senate rejected Feinstein’s measure on a nearly pure party-line vote, 45-54. The vote occurred only a day after the San Bernardino shootings, in which Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 22. The only GOP senator to vote for it was Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, widely considered the most vulnerable Senate Republican in 2016.

“If you think that the federal government never makes a mistake, and that presumptively the decisions the federal government makes about putting you on a list because of some suspicions, then you should vote for (Feinstein’s) amendment,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said during the previous Senate debate. “But we all know better than that.”

Underscoring the point, conservative Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., has noted that his name once showed up on a government watch list, apparently because he was confused with a suspected Irish Republican Army activist.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that President Barack Obama was “intensely frustrated” at what he saw as a lack of congressional action.

“There is no one law that we can pass that would prevent every aspect of violence, but there are some common-sense things that Congress could do that would make it harder for individuals who should not have guns from being able to get them,” Earnest said in the daily news briefing.

As examples, Earnest cited closing the loophole that allows people on the no-fly list to own guns, and hiring more agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Conservative lawmakers, though, distrust the agency commonly known as the ATF, and have sometimes preferred to handcuff it rather than reinforce its roughly 5,000 employees. The agency once went seven years without a Senate-confirmed director, and it is currently headed by the deputy director.

Republican priorities were further illuminated Monday, when the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., pointed to nine bills targeting “homegrown terrorism.” None involved gun control or firearm ownership.

Democrats in the House of Representatives have several tactical options, including repeating a move tried last year to force a vote on gun-control legislation through a rarely used parliamentary procedure.

Beyond Congress, the Supreme Court also could get entangled in the post-Orlando firearms debate. Last week, in challenges arising out of California’s Yolo and San Diego counties, a divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the state’s law requiring applicants for concealed-carry permits to show “good cause” beyond a concern for safety.

Conservatives and the National Rifle Association denounced the ruling, raising the possibility of a last stand before a closely divided Supreme Court, thereby further raising the heat over the nomination of federal Judge Merrick Garland to the high court.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong day for when Sen. Dianne Feinstein made the following comment. It was Monday. “Our laws are riddled with loopholes,” Feinstein said, adding that “background checks really aren’t enough.”