US Senate Democrats Prepare Legislation to Thwart Gun Violence

Senate Democrats are getting ready a legislative push to curb guns, each one week after a mass shooting at an Oregon community college refocused attention on the nation’s toll of firearms deaths.

“We’ve chosen principles that are effective, that will save thousands of lives, but at the same time they do not impinge on the right of legitimate gun owners”, said Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.

“Victims and their families deserve better than a Congress that just shrugs its shoulders”, Wyden said. Federal law requires background checks for sales through licensed gun dealers, but private person-to-person transactions are excluded.

“The roll call of American gun tragedies is already far, far too long”, said Sen.

The senators will demand that “all domestic abusers” are banned from purchasing firearms, and that people are not allowed buy guns without a completed background check.

“In our efforts to protect the established constitutional right of individual gun ownership though, it is also our responsibility as leaders to support public safety and put in place commonsense protections to ensure that firearms do not find their way into the hands of those that would turn them against our communities”.

“There is no single measure that will eliminate all violence or evil, but by putting the common-sense ideas we laid out today into action, we can make a real difference”, Merkley said. Keeping guns out of the hands of people legally prohibited from having them is a way to prevent violence without punishing law-abiding gun owners.

The package includes a version of the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey bill of 2013, which was introduced following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Democrats would use procedural delays to thwart legislation if Republicans refuse to permit votes on the gun proposals, a Democratic aide stated Wednesday. who was not approved to debate the plans publicly & requested anonymity. “What we need is a broad consensus to try to get something done that can bring people together, and I believe my legislation can do that by addressing the root cause of a few of these horrific events”.

Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, liberal icon Elizabeth Warren and red-state Democrat Claire McCaskill stood with other Democrats outside the Capitol building on Thursday morning at a press conference for the announcement. He told reporters he hoped to act in the next several months on the legislation once a groundswell of support is apparent. After the Sandy Hook shootings he said, “If you passed the strongest gun control legislation tomorrow, I don’t think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen”.