Gun control advocates demanded stricter gun laws following the nation’s worst mass shootings, The New York Times reads. After the killings, in Newtown, Orlando and Colorado, lawmakers urged for background checks, limits on magazine capacities, bans on assault weapons and tougher controls on gun shows and online firearms markets — almost always to no avail.
However, in the weeks after the June 14 shooting of Republicans at a congressional baseball practice, the response has had a twist: Conservative lawmakers, some of whom were nearly the victims of gun violence, have pressed to loosen gun controls.
Three bills introduced in the Republican-held House during the past two weeks would allow lawmakers to almost always carry a concealed weapon.
A fourth would allow concealed carry permits obtained in other states to be recognized in the District of Columbia. Still another would eliminate federal controls on silencers.
Legislation has been in development for months, and in some cases, years. But the shooting in Alexandria, that left Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority whip, grievously injured and three others less seriously wounded, served as motivation for Republicans on both sides of the Capitol to move.
To Republican advocates, it is now personal. Several pointed to a list with the names of six members of Congress that was found in the possession of the gunman, James T. Hodgkinson.
“Have they ever been shot at, multiple times, at close range, trying to save someone without any way to defend yourself?” Representative Barry Loudermilk, who was on the field during the shooting, said of gun control advocates.
“When you’ve experienced that yourself, maybe then we can have this debate,” said Loudermilk, Republican of Georgia, evoking some of the emotion often conveyed by victims of gun violence who come to Washington seeking gun safety laws.
The legislative push underlines a continuing partisan clash after highly publicized mass shootings, one in which national lawmakers tussle over gun regulation and rarely stray from party lines. Gun rights legislation after the baseball practice shooting received a lift: The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would require each state to honor another state’s concealed carry permits, reached 200 co-sponsors.
“I think what happened in Alexandria sharpened people’s resolve to make sure this right is protected,” said Representative Richard Hudson, Republican of North Carolina, who introduced the bill in January.
Politicians in the District of Columbia have spent years trying to stave off congressional Republican efforts to weaken the city’s gun control laws, but never under these circumstances.
“Washington, D.C., is the last place you want to condone or allow concealed-carry weapons,” said Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat and the District’s nonvoting House member.
“They are certainly not going to be successful if I have anything to say about it.”
She said she objected not only to the attempt to bypass the city’s strict gun laws, but also to the timing of the push.
“It says everything about my colleagues that they would use the occasion of a tragedy on one of our members to come forward the day after with one of these bills,” Holmes Norton said.
But those who were on the field during the shooting, such as Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, are motivated. Brooks, who is in a heated primary campaign for a Senate seat, introduced a bill that would allow members to carry a concealed weapon anywhere except in the Capitol and in the presence of the president or the vice president.
“Now seemed like an appropriate time to introduce it because of the obvious risk congressmen and senators face, as evidenced by the attack,” Brooks said.
When lawmakers return this week from their Fourth of July recess, the politics of guns could return with them. Just before they left, Senators Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, and Mike Crapo, Republican of Idaho, introduced a bill that would eliminate the federal regulation of silencers.
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