Blumenthal, Murphy Join Renewed Gun Control Push

WASHINGTON — A recent string of mass shootings has Democrats and gun safety advocates, including both Connecticut senators, renewing their call for legislation and retail policies to require background checks for firearm purchases.

Some senators are asking retailers to stop completing “default sales” to customers, in cases when a federal background check is not done within 72 hours. Those sales are currently allowed.

“A growing number of firearms dealers — including Wal-Mart, the country’s largest — do not allow these default sales,” Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy said in a joint release Tuesday.

Eleven senators, all Democrats, sent a letter to Cabela’s, EZ Pawn and Bass Pro Shops, asking that they refrain from default sales.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who did not sign the letter, is reviving a bill he co-sponsored that requires criminal background checks for people who buy a firearm at a gun show or over the Internet. He conceded, however, “That bill’s not going to come back up … unless Republicans vote for it.”

In 2013, after Adam Lanza killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Manchin joined with Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., to write the bill. Both senators had A ratings from the National Rifle Association.

Despite overwhelming public support, the bill failed to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Democratic-led Senate, falling to a 54-46 vote as it faced implacable opposition from the NRA and other gun rights groups.

After mass shootings in recent weeks in Charleston, S.C., Chattanooga, Tenn., and Lafayette, La., some Democratic senators have argued that it’s time to revisit the issue.

On Tuesday, New York’s Chuck Schumer, Blumenthal and Murphy stood alongside leaders of Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action at a Capitol Hill news conference to call for a vote on federal background check legislation “to keep guns out of dangerous hands.”

The grim reality for gun control advocates is that it’s even less likely now than in 2013. Republicans have taken over the Senate after picking up nine seats in the midterm election last November. With few exceptions, they overwhelmingly oppose the bill, including swing state Republicans like Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Rob Portman of Ohio.

No senator appears to have changed his or her mind since the 2013 vote.

“Everybody’s on the record,” Manchin said.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted against the Manchin-Toomey bill in 2013, didn’t return an email asking if the Kentucky Republican has any interest in revisiting the issue.

Even as he saw long odds, Manchin stood by his proposal.

“It’s pure common gun sense,” the senator said. “We’re not taking about gun control. We’re talking about, strictly, filling the holes and the gaps that we have in commercial gun transactions, which is at gun shows and the Internet. That’s all. Very simple.”