Washington feels heat to act on gun control

Washington feels heat to act on gun control

AP Photo

President Barack Obama pauses during a speech at an interfaith vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012 at Newtown High School in Newtown, Conn. A gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children.

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.

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.

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.”

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.