Today’s voting in the U.S. Senate on gun restrictions will likely mark a re-run of the April 2014 vote after the Newton massacre when universal background checks for gun purchases was rejected.
In 2014, the polls showed public support for closing the so-called gun show loophole up around 90 percent. Today, the polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans favor the Senate legislation that would block people on the government’s terrorist watch list from buying guns.
Despite the worst mass shooting in U.S. history in Orlando last week, the new bill will also probably fail, mostly because of what’s known as the intensity gap. That is the gap between the passions and political effectiveness on the pro-gun side vs. the do-gooder approach on the gun control side.
Another obvious factor: fear of the NRA on the part of senators, particularly vulnerable Republicans facing re-election in November.
The votes that were promised by the Senate Republican leadership last week after a 15-hour Democratic filibuster will take place in a session that starts at 3 p.m.
James Hohmann of The Washington Post explains the impact of the intensity gap by citing a couple of polls and then he contrasts that with a Pew Research study.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted after the San Bernardino attack in December found 83 percent of registered voters supported banning gun purchases for those on the terrorist watch list. Nearly 90 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans, as well as 80 percent in gun-owning households, supported such a move by Congress.
A Gallup poll in December, according to Hohmann, found 71 percent of adults agreed that a ban on gun sales to people on the federal no-fly list would be “very” or “somewhat” effective in the U.S. campaign against terrorism. This action was nearly as popular as increasing airstrikes on ISIS and received far more support than preventing Muslims from entering the U.S.
But a Pew study from 2013 found that people who place a priority on gun rights are four or five times more likely to contribute money to advocacy groups, contact public officials, sign petitions and express their views on social media than those who want gun control.
Donald Trump quickly learned this lesson when he said on Sunday that he had changed his mind, after just a few days, and no longer supports restrictions on gun ownership tied to the terrorist watch list. “The NRA has the best interests of our country” at heart, the presumptive GOP nominee said. “These are great people.”
What will be different in today’s gun battle on the Senate floor compared to the highly emotional session of 2014 is that the Republicans, already jittery about some post-Orlando test polling that shows a potentially big backlash against those senators who oppose legislation linked to the watch list, will be offering alternative measures. Whether these GOP bills are just for show may be sorted out before the day is over.
The Post’s congressional reporter Karoun Demirjian explains that Democrats have rallied behind a bill from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would let the attorney general deny firearms to any suspected terrorist. The alternative from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) would let the attorney general do the same — but only if she could prove to a judge within three business days of the attempted sale that there is probable cause to suspect the buyer of ties to terrorism.
“Republicans argue Feinstein’s bill doesn’t do enough to protect against situations where someone is mistakenly on a terror watch list,” Demirjian wrote. “But Democrats maintain the time limitations in Cornyn’s alternative would make it functionally impossible to actually prevent suspicious individuals from purchasing firearms.”
