2A/GUNS/POLITICS: “Lawmakers return to Washington on Monday [2-26-18] to find a familiar contentious issue—guns—taking a priority over spending and immigration legislation that were expected to preoccupy their time for the next several weeks.
The Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and President Donald Trump’s subsequent calls on Congress to take action are expected to reboot an effort to tighten the national firearm-purchase background-check system. While no bills are assured of moving forward, even debating and voting on gun legislation will be politically fraught for many lawmakers of both parties just eight months before midterm elections.
Congress is most likely to consider a measure from Sens. John Cornyn (R., Texas) and Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) that would encourage states and federal agencies, including the military, to submit criminal-conviction records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. Mr. Cornyn introduced the bill after the background-check system failed to prevent the gunman in a Texas shooting last November from purchasing weapons, despite his history of domestic abuse. Those records are required by law to be uploaded, but they can slip through the cracks…
The most immediate question is whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) will bring up the bill—known as ‘Fix NICS’—on its own, without the concealed weapons provision. On Monday, Florida’s two senators, Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Bill Nelson, plan to try to bypass Senate procedures and pass the bill with the unanimous consent of all 100 senators.”
–Kristina Perterson and Natalie Andrews, “Congress Returns to Washington Under Pressure to Act on Guns,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 25, 2018 05:40pm