WASHINGTON — As the Senate prepares to begin debating new gun-control measures, some of President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats are poised to frustrate his efforts to enact the most sweeping limits on weapons in decades.
These Democrats from mostly rural states with strong gun cultures view Obama’s proposals warily and have not committed to support them. The lawmakers’ concerns could stand in the way of any strong legislation before a single Republican gets a chance to vote against it.
“There’s a core group of Democratic senators, most but not all from the West, who represent states with a higher-than-average rate of gun ownership but an equally strong desire to feel their kids are safe,” said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “They’re having hard but good conversations with people back home to identify the middle-ground solutions that respect the Second Amendment but make it harder for dangerous people to get their hands on guns.”
All eyes are on these dozen or so Democrats, some of whom face re-election in 2014. They include Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. The Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings Wednesday.
Interest groups, lobbyists, lawmakers, crime victims andothers with a stake in the outcome will be watching the senators for indications on what measures they will support. Those indications will say a lot about what, if anything, Congress can pass in the wake of the shootings of 20 schoolchildren and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., last month.
At issue are Obama’s proposals to ban assault weapons, limit ammunition magazines, crack down on gun trafficking and require universal background checks for gun buyers. Leading the charge against those ideas is the National Rifle Association, which wields power in rallying public sentiment.
The political concerns of the Democrats create problems for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has his own history with the NRA.
The gun lobby endorsed him in previous elections but stayed neutral in his most recent race, in 2010. Even before Obama announced the gun proposals this month, Reid told a Nevada PBS station that an assault-weapons ban would have a hard time getting through Congress.
That comment irked Sen.Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., previously an author of such a ban.
“Clearly it wasn’t helpful,” she said last week in reintroducing her measure. But Feinstein’s original assault-weapons ban offered a stern political lesson for Reid and other Democrats. Its passage as part of President Bill Clinton’s crime bill in 1994 was blamed for Democratic election losses that year after the NRA campaigned against lawmakers who supported the legislation. When the assault-weapons ban came up for renewal in 2004, Congress, under pressure from the NRA, refused to extend it.
Reid is promising that the gun bills will go through the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose chairman is Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a gun owner and Second Amendment supporter.
Reid also is promising an open amendment process, potentially a lengthy endeavor. That has some gun-control activists concerned that the process will go so slowly that it will grind to a halt without action. Some question whether that’s exactly what some moderate Democrats want to happen.
“I’m concerned just because Harry Reid has a mixed record on these things, and we want him to be a champion,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
On the other side, the NRA, known for rewarding friends and punishing enemies, promises it will be closely watching Reid.
“He’s going to be torn and a lot of people are going to be torn, particularly Democrats, but I think as the debate goes on he’ll do more good than bad from our perspective,” said David Keene, NRA president. “All this stuff has been debated before and once you get into a debate and a discussion and say will this do anything to protect children, to prevent another Newtown, I think the answer is going to come out ‘no.’”
Baucus, Begich, Pryor and others have been cautious in their comments on Obama’s gun proposals.
Baucus called for “a thoughtful debate.” Begichtold his home state Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that passage of any element of the package will be “a long haul. ... There are some of us who just fundamentally believe in a Second Amendment right.”
Pryor has told Arkansas media that efforts on gun safety should start with enforcing existing laws.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/27/2013