House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to support a universal background check bill.
The two Democrats said in a joint statement that they had spoken to the President and “told him the best way forward to address gun violence in our country is for Leader McConnell to let the Senate take up and pass the House-passed universal background checks legislation and for the President to sign it into law.”
Pelosi and Schumer noted that President Trump had assured them that he would look into the bipartisan legislation passed by the House, as well as that he understood their “interest in moving as quickly as possible to help save lives.”
Their talk with the President comes amid efforts by Democrats to press Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring the chamber back from recess in order to vote on the house-passed bill, The Hill reports.
Pelosi made a similar plea to Trump in a letter she sent the President on Thursday.
“Today, as Speaker of the House, I am writing in good faith to request that you call the United States Senate back into session immediately under your powers in Article II Section 3 of the Constitution to consider House-passed bipartisan gun violence prevention legislation,” she wrote.
Eight House Republicans supported the universal background check measure. In the Senate, the bill has 42 co-sponsors, all Democrats.
The Senate majority leader rejected Democratic calls to call the chamber back into session early, saying that over the next few weeks, senators and their staffs would try to find areas of agreement that could get 60 votes.
McConnell stressed that he expected background checks and so-called red flag laws to be “front and center” in the chamber’s debate. These laws would prevent potentially dangerous individuals from buying a weapon.
“The discussion is focusing on two things: One is these red flag warnings. … There’s also been some discussion about background checks. There’s a lot of support for that … so those are two items that for sure will be front and center as we see what we can come together on and pass,” McConnell said.
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