House Republican leaders are steadily expressing their opposition to the recently announced bipartisan gun safety bill and are planning to urge other members of the GOP to vote "no" in order to prevent the passage of the bill despite the Senate moving forward on the matter this week.
In a statement during a closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana said that they would vote "no" on the Senate's bipartisan gun deal. In other remarks, House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York said that also planned to oppose the legislation.
Bipartisan Gun Deal
The situation means that the top three members of House Republican leadership are all in agreement to oppose the bipartisan gun deal. Also, House GOP leaders plan to formally organize against the Senate's bipartisan gun bill. A formal whip notice is expected to go out on Wednesday.
Despite House GOP leaders opposing the bill, there are already some Republican lawmakers who have indicated their support of the bill and their planned yes votes. Furthermore, the Democrat-led House is expected to be able to pass the legislation once it passes in the Senate, as per CNN.
The situation suggests that the Senate is on track to pass the measure as early as this week and if so, it would amount to the most significant new federal legislation to address gun violence since the expired 10-year- assault weapons ban of 1994.
However, the new deal fails to ban any weapons and falls far short of what Democrats and polls show most Americans want to see. In a post on Twitter on Wednesday, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales said that he intends to vote yes on the bipartisan gun bill. He said that as a Congressman, it was his duty to pass laws that never infringe on the Constitution while protecting the lives of the innocent.
According to Yahoo News, the Senate members in support of the bill titled the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, hope to pass the legislation prior to the Jul. 4 recess. All 50 members of the Democratic support the bill and are joined by 14 Republican lawmakers.
Threat of Gun Violence
The bill's chief negotiators, Sens. Chris Murphy, John Cornyn, Kyrsten Sinema, and Thom Tillis, released a joint statement celebrating the agreement. They said, "Today we finalized the bipartisan, common-sense legislation to protect America's children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country."
The lawmakers said that the bill will save lives and not infringe on any law-abiding Americans' Second Amendment rights. They added that they were looking forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing the bill into law.
On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who tapped trusted leadership deputy Cornyn in the aftermath of the May 24 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, made clear that the time had come for Republicans to cut a deal on gun violence.
He said that this time was different because Democrats came their way and agreed to advance some common sense solution without rolling back rights for law-abiding citizens, the Washington Post reported.
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