Democrats hope narrow gun approach will pressure Republicans to act

“As we focus on actually delivering for a hurting America, passing each bill individually will ensure that every common-sense measure we are putting forth arrives in the U.S. Senate with the maximum bipartisan support it may garner, recorded through individual votes,” wrote the Democrats, led by Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.) and Abigail Spanberger (Va.), two members of the class of 2018 that flipped the majority away from Republicans.

Late Thursday, in a short but forceful tweet, a former federal prosecutor with a high profile summed up the tactical approach in a more blunt fashion. “Raise the age,” said Preet Bharara, the Manhattan prosecutor fired by President Donald Trump in 2017, referring to proposals to increase the minimum age for purchasing certain semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21.

These Democrats believe the traditional approach to crises, compiling comprehensive bills that try to tackle multiple facets of a particular problem, has become a thing of the past over the last decade or so of congressional action. Or, in most cases, congressional inaction.

Rather than too big to fail, these mega-proposals turn into something that is too big to succeed. Lawmakers and lobbyists pick apart these 1,000-page or more offerings to find some particular political weakness, then watch the vast legislation slowly die amid various points of opposition.

Immigration and border security proposals, including sweeping proposals in 2006, 2007 and 2013 and several attempted negotiations during the Trump administration, regularly die of their own massive weight on Capitol Hill.

That proved to be the case with the recent Democratic agenda when President Biden tried unsuccessfully to cajole lawmakers into approving a roughly $2 trillion package that would have impacted almost every part of the domestic agenda.

Many of the individual proposals were very popular with voters, such as lowering the cost of prescription drugs and providing new dental benefits for seniors through Medicare, but the overall package scared many middle-of-the-road voters every time Biden or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised it would be “transformational.”

On Friday night, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) unveiled a compromise approach on how to debate the gun proposals. Votes will be held on each proposal and then a final vote on the massive combined package, likely beginning in the coming days in a still-undefined process.

“The House will vote on each title as well as on passage of the full bill to place Republicans on record on each of these issues relating to gun safety,” Hoyer wrote to his colleagues. He said out loud what the junior Democrats were hesitant to state on the record: There is some political gain to be had by voting on each proposal.

Democrats hope that these votes will produce either a solid amount of Republican support, well above the single-digit tallies of recent years, or give them new political ammunition to use against a couple dozen Republican incumbents in largely suburban districts where Biden has seen his approval rating plummet but where these gun proposals are overwhelmingly popular.

Pulling out the proposal to raise the federal age from 18 to 21 to buy a semiautomatic rifle and requiring every member to cast a vote, will be a politically difficult vote for some Republicans.

In the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., each alleged gunman was an 18-year-old who had purchased an AR-15-style weapon legally. In Uvalde, the alleged gunman bought his semiautomatic weapon a day after turning 18, and within three days of that birthday had purchased 375 rounds of ammunition. A couple days later, he killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers.

In 2019 and again in 2021, House Democrats approved two gun proposals that were meant to provide more thorough background checks on those purchasing weapons. Just eight Republicans joined all but one Democrat in supporting the popular measure, with many Republicans dismissing the proposal since many of the mass shootings involve legally purchased guns that would have been approved by every possible background check.

The background check bill lacks enough Republican support to clear the 60-vote hurdle needed to end debate in the Senate, leaving it in political limbo with a clear majority but unable to get past a filibuster. But in the aftermath of the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, raising the age for purchasing semiautomatic weapons will likely be more difficult for Republicans to oppose.

Federal law sets 21 as the minimum age to purchase handguns, but 18 for rifles, even those with high capacity such as the AR-15, but some states have raised the age minimum to 21, including Florida in the wake of the 2018 Valentine’s Day mass shooting in Parkland where a 19-year-old former student of the high school killed 17 people.

According to Hoyer, the House will likely begin the gun debate with a proposal to provide funding and guidance to encourage every state to adopt “red flag” laws that allow law enforcement to seize guns from people who have demonstrated they pose a threat to themselves or others.

Following background check enhancement, red flag laws and raising the age to purchase semiautomatic weapons are the most popular proposals, according to experts working in groups trying to rein in gun violence. A Reuters poll late last month found 72 percent of Americans support raising the age limit and 70 percent approve of red flag laws.

If a robust number of Republicans join Democrats on some of these votes, that could bolster the momentum of bipartisan negotiations in the Senate that have also focused on red flag laws and some other new gun restrictions.

For Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), this has been a long effort of stops and starts, always ending in failure, ever since he led negotiations after a 20-year-old in Newtown killed 20 elementary school students and six educators with a legally purchased assault-style weapon.

“I’ve failed a lot in these negotiations. But these talks feel different, because I think members on both sides realize that there’s a real risk to the legitimacy of government if we don’t act,” Murphy told The Washington Post in an interview that published Friday. “All I know is that there are signs all around me that this moment is different. Whether that results in the logjam being broken, I don’t know. But there are more signs that this could be the moment than at any other time in the last 10 years.”