Washington feels heat to act on gun control

The powerful gun lobby?s iron grip on Washington showed signs of loosening Monday in the wake of the massacre of 20 children in Connecticut, but President Obama faces a long, difficult and contentious struggle if he wants to see any meaningful changes in the nation?s gun laws.

In a stirring speech on Sunday in the community devastated by the school slaughter, the President assured the nation he would deploy the full power of his office to make it harder for madmen to kill innocent people with firearms.

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But any new legislation he proposes would need 60 votes to get through the Senate, and fewer than 50 senators have a record of supporting any kind of gun laws.

In the Republican-controlled House, restrictions face an even steeper climb with the vast majority of Republicans and many Democrats earning top marks from the deep-pocketed and widely feared National Rifle

Association.

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Washington insiders say they don?t expect to see gun laws passing anytime soon.

?I?m skeptical,? said Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. ?After each (tragedy), people demand action, but after a while the issue always seems to dissipate from the political scene.?

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But amid the bleak picture for gun opponents, there were a few glimmers of hope on Monday as two NRA-backed Democratic senators appeared to change their long-held positions.

?I?ve had an NRA rating of an ?A? but, you know, enough is enough,? said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, whose state suffered its own mass tragedy in 2007, when a gunman opened fire at Virginia Tech.

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West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who also boasts an ?A? rating from the NRA, suggested he would favor limits on high-capacity magazines and signaled an open mind to limits on assault weapons.

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?I don?t know anyone in the sporting or hunting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,? he said on MSNBC?s ?Morning Joe.?

?This has changed the dialogue,? he said of the Newtown killings, adding: ?Never before have we seen our babies slaughtered.?

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Another Democrat from West Virginia, Rep. Nick Rahall, signaled an open mind to having a gun control debate in a more tepid statement on Monday.

?The circumstances of this tragedy are so horrible that it demands aggressive action,? he said. ?Our state and nation share a collective desire to try to find some way to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.?

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But for all the forceful words, the pols stopped short of backing an actual legislation or specific policies.

Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, up for reelection in 2014 in right-leaning Alaska, did not even mention gun control in a statement Monday that instead called for better services for the mentally ill.

So if Obama wants to see change, advocates say he needs to clearly articulate his vision, lay out the laws he wants passed and then act quickly before memories of last week?s massacre start to fade.

But if Obama has a plan, he wasn?t saying so on Monday. His spokesman carefully avoided any specifics.

?It?s a complex problem that will require a complex solution,? said Obama spokesman Jay Carney said. ?No single piece of legislation, no single action will fully address the problem. So I don?t have a specific agenda to announce to you today. I would simply point you to what the President said last night about moving forward in coming weeks. And I would look for him to do that.?

But while he makes up his mind, gun control advocates have a long wish list.

At the top of that list is reinstating the federal ban on assault weapons on high-capacity magazines that pack 10, 20 or even 50 bullets into a single gun.

The ban, enacted during the Clinton administration, expired in 2004, but even when it was law, critics say it was badly flawed.

The original ban contained a major loophole that let manufacturers modify parts of the military-style weapons to sell them like regular guns ? even though the rapid-fire capability that makes them so deadly was unchanged.

Also on the wish list is a ban on private gun sales because current gun laws only require licensed dealers to run background checks on gun buyers.

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Private sellers ? people selling guns to their friends or to strangers at gun shows ? don?t have to check anything.

Mayor Bloomberg, who leads a national organization called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, also called for making gun trafficking a felony.

?[It] would make it harder for criminals, drug abusers, minors and the mentally ill to get guns, and harder for them to . . . to inflict the level of carnage that we saw this weekend,? he said.

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Obama could also push Congress to pass federal versions of the most successful state laws, control advocates say.

California, for example, requires microstamping, which puts a miniscule serial number on every bullet everytime a gun is fired ? and allows law enforcement to trace weapons from spent shell casings.

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Other states limit the number of guns people can buy at one time ? some to one firearm a month, others to one firearm a year.

States can also require buyers to register with law enforcement for every purchase. A meticulously maintained database of all sales would make it well-nigh impossible for a trafficker to amass enough merchandise to make gun-running profitable, control advocates said.

To do that, however, Obama and Congress would have to push back the NRA, which has actively been lobbying on the local and state level to make it easier to transport guns across state lines.

According to a report in Mother Jones magazine, 80% of states recognize handgun permits from other states. With Glenn Blain and Joseph Straw

gotis@nydailynews.com

Source: http://feeds.nydailynews.com/~r/nydnrss/news/politics/~3/84pz1RzCDXw/story01.htm

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