S. 374 – LonelyMachines

Feinstein’s Last Hurrah

Negotiations are still underway in the Senate for a unified package of gun-control bills to be introduced next month. One conspicuous piece of legislation that will not be part of it is S. 150, Dianne Feinstein’s revised Assault Weapons Ban.

Majority Leader Harry Reid excised S. 150 in a meeting on Monday. His rationale was,

Right now her amendment, by the most optimistic measures, has less than 40 votes. I am not going to put something on the floor that can’t succeed.

Does that mean it’s dead? No. Feinstein can still reintroduce it as an amendment to another bill. Though it’s doubtful she’ll get the votes for it, she’s sworn to bring it to a vote one way or another.

What’s becoming obvious is that Reid has an eye on the 2014 midterms, and he’s feeling the heat. He can push a more “moderate” bill to appease the Democratic base while pointing out that he opposed more “extreme” bills like S.

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Civil Rights

Pass It to See What’s in It

Charles Schumer had been in talks with Tom Coburn to introduce S. 374, also known as the “Protecting Responsible Gun Sellers” Act.

Those talks fell through, and Schumer chose to forge ahead with his own version, now entitled the “Fix Gun Checks” Act. If that sounds familiar, it’s the same bill he introduced last year, which was read on the floor but died in committee.

As I mentioned last week, we didn’t have the text of the bill because it was being written in committee. Now we do [pdf]. It passed as an amendment by a 10-8 margin, with the vote being along purely partisan lines.

Read on for a synopsis.

Civil Rights

The Sequester and Gun Control

A whole slew of budget cuts took effect on Friday. I’m a little peeved that NASA’s losing another $970 million. The beleaguered ATF will be taking a $60 million dollar hit, which would conceivably hamper their ability to enforce all those new gun-control laws folks keep proposing. Additionally, the FBI is losing $480 million, at least some of which is going to have an impact on NICS background-check processing. Expect delays.

Frankly, the whole thing reminds me of Gingrich’s boondoggle in 1995, but I don’t think the current President has the savvy to turn it to his advantage in the manner than Clinton did.

It goes without saying that this is going to be the political headliner for the near future. As such, the push for gun control in Congress is going to fade from public view and lose momentum.

That doesn’t mean it’s over, though.