Shooting Prompts a Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P.
Rejects Pleas to Act
President Biden said he had reached the limit of his
powers to act alone on gun violence, and needed Congress to respond.
Republicans said they had already done all they were willing to do.
Annie Karni
By Annie
Karni
Published
March 29, 2023
Updated
March 30, 2023, 12:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/politics/nashville-shooting-gop-action.html
WASHINGTON
— The mass shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville this week has
generated a broad shrugging of the shoulders in Washington, from President
Biden to Republicans in Congress, who seemed to agree on little other than that
there was nothing left for them to do to counter the continuing toll of gun
violence across the country.
But while
President Biden’s stark admission on Tuesday that he could do no more on his
own to tackle the issue was a statement of fact that aimed to put the burden on
Congress to send him legislation, like the ban on assault weapons he has
repeatedly championed, Republicans’ expressions of helplessness reflected an
unwillingness, rather than an inability, to act.
Their
answer to Mr. Biden’s plea was as blunt as it was swift, as lawmaker after
Republican lawmaker made it clear that they had no intention of considering any
additional gun safety measures.
“We’re not
going to fix it,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, told
reporters on the steps of the Capitol just hours after the shooting that killed
three children and three adults in his home state. “Criminals are going to be
criminals.”
Mr.
Burchett said he saw no “real role” for Congress to play in reducing gun
violence, and volunteered that his solution to the issue of protecting his
family was to home-school his children.
Likewise,
Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said Congress had done enough.
“When we
start talking about bans or challenging the Second Amendment, the things that
have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going with gun control,”
Mr. Rounds told CNN.
Last year,
Congress passed a narrow, bipartisan compromise that enhanced background checks
to give authorities time to examine the juvenile and mental health records of
any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21, and a provision that for the
first time extended a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns to dating
partners.
The bill
was the first major gun control legislation that Congress had passed in
decades, but it addressed only a small set of issues designed to keep guns out
of the hands of dangerous people.
At the
time, Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority
leader, noted that supporting the measure was necessary to win back suburban
voters, who broadly support some changes to the nation’s gun laws. But even
then, proponents conceded that the bill did not signify a political shift on
gun restrictions; rather, it was a measure that went precisely as far as
Republicans were willing to go in strengthening gun laws, and one pushed
through only by a fleeting political coalition that would soon dissipate.
Several of
those Republican supporters have since retired, and the House is now in the
hands of G.O.P. leaders who have no intention of allowing gun safety
legislation to reach the floor.
“Gun
violence is uniquely an American problem because of lawmakers who refuse to act
proactively to prevent it,” said Christian Heyne, the vice president for policy
at the Brady: United Against Gun Violence organization, who noted that House
Republicans this week had originally scheduled a committee vote to weaken the
government’s authority to keep short-barreled rifles off the streets. “Our
lawmakers should be working to strengthen our gun laws, not weaken them,” he
said.
But even
the Republicans who championed the law enacted last summer showed no desire to
take any further action.
Senator
John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who served as the lead Republican negotiator
on that bill, dismissed Mr. Biden’s calls for banning assault weapons as a set
of “tired talking points.”
“I want to
see the bill we just passed get implemented,” he said. One of the provisions of
that bill provided funding for states to enact so-called red-flag laws that
allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be
dangerous. But Tennessee does not have a red flag law, and would not benefit
from federal funds to implement a law that Republican state lawmakers are not
willing to consider.
“I don’t
think there’s any appetite,” Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming,
said flatly of her party’s willingness to take on gun control legislation. Ms.
Lummis voted against the bipartisan measure that Congress passed last summer,
along with all but 15 of her G.O.P. colleagues.
The
intransigence of Republicans on the issue of guns was deeply frustrating, if
not surprising, to Democrats, who pointed out that polls show that a vast
majority of voters support some toughening of the nation’s laws, such as adding
universal background checks.
“We’ve got
too many politicians in this town who work for the gun lobby,” said Senator
Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia. “The people need some public servants who
actually work for them.”
Representative
Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, speaking about gun
violence alongside other legislators outside the Capitol on
Wednesday.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times
Mr. Warnock
said he had been on a flight to Washington sitting next to a Republican
colleague when the news of the Nashville shooting interrupted their
conversation, and that they had reflected on the “human toll” of the tragedy.
“I’m still
hoping against hope that somehow my colleagues will find enough courage to put
the survival of five-year-olds and nine-year-olds ahead of their perceived
political advantage,” Mr. Warnock added.
Senator
Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, who has often encouraged his
colleagues to take a decades-long view of progress on the issue of guns, vented
on Twitter about Republicans like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who refused to
answer any questions about the shooting.
“Why seek
leadership if you aren’t willing to lead?” Mr. Murphy tweeted. “Burying your
head in the sand and hoping the carnage stops isn’t going to work.”
At the same
time, some Republicans who did speak out tried to turn away from any discussion
of guns by seeking a different culprit for the tragedy. After the mass shooting
last year at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two
teachers were killed, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said that the
issue was one of a security failure, and that the answer was for armed agents
to be stationed at schools.
In this
case, many right-wing Republicans, who have made opposition to transgender
health care and rights a focus of their social agenda, sought to shift the
focus by seizing on an assertion by law enforcement authorities that the
assailant in Nashville had been transgender.
Senator
J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, said on Twitter that the tragedy suggested that
“giving into these ideas” about accepting transgender individuals was
“dangerous.”
After
Karine Jeane-Pierre, the White House press secretary, criticized congressional
Republicans for their inaction on guns, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of
Arkansas, pointedly made reference to the issue of the shooter’s gender on
Twitter, posting a message that, “it doesn’t get much lower than blaming
Republicans in Congress for a transgender killer who targeted a Christian
school.”
In a
statement, the Human Rights Campaign said that while all the facts of the
shooting were not yet known, “we do know that every study available shows that
transgender and nonbinary people are much more likely to be the victims of
violence, rather than the perpetrator of it.”
Even as
Republicans made it clear there was no avenue to passing more gun safety
legislation, the Senate Chaplain, Barry Black, made an unusually urgent plea
for action, praying aloud to “deliver our senators from the paralysis of
analysis that waits for the miraculous.”
“When
babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and
prayers,” the chaplain said in his opening prayer on Tuesday. “Remind our
lawmakers of the words of Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for evil to
triumph is for good people to do nothing.’”
Luke
Broadwater contributed reporting.
Annie Karni
is a congressional correspondent. She was previously a White House
correspondent. Before joining The Times, she covered the White House and
Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign for Politico, and spent a decade
covering local politics for the New York Post and the New York Daily News. @AnnieKarni
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