Looks like it’s being introduced by Begich (D-Alaska), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). We will certainly be following this bill closely.
UPDATE: Someone was asking about a bill number. We don’t seem to have one yet, as best I can tell from searching on Thomas. There’s a lot of possibilities with this bill, but I would expect a few things to be true:
- This won’t be attached to a must pass bill. I think the Republicans will want send Obama a clean bill in order to bring forth a veto of a gun rights bill in an election year. But will he have the guts to veto it? It’ll be much harder for the left to claim a pro-gun-rights record if he vetoes a key piece of legislation.
- It will be very interesting to see what Harry Reid does. His political instinct should be to protect the White House in an election year, and just being recently re-elected, he has four more years for people’s memories to fade. Reid has generally been with gun owners, but he’s not always been reliable. If I were to wager, I’m going to bet Reid publicly supports the bill, but works behind the scenes to prevent it from getting scheduled. I would imagine the White House will put a lot of pressure on Reid to keep that bill off the President’s desk.
- The Senate is running its own bill because, in an election year, those Senators will want to get their names on it. They won’t want to vote for a House Bill that has other people’s names on it. This is good and bad. It’s good because the it’s a signal the politicians value gun owner votes. It’s bad because it means the differences will have to be worked out in conference. It would be simpler for the Senate to just pass HR822, but in politics, everyone want to take credit for a politically important bill, so you get what you get.
- UPDATE: It’ll also be interesting to see what Leahy will do to this, as it will get referred to the Judiciary Committee. Leahy hasn’t been a pro-gun stalwart, despite coming from Vermont. He voted “no” on the Thune Amendment in the 111th Congress in 2009.
UPDATE: From NRA.
Reach out to the members of the Judicary Committe (http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/contact.cfm) and ask them to get this on the agenda ASAP.
I called today and got told by a Committee staffer, …”that with all the pending judicial appointment, he can not estimate when this will get on the Commitee’s schedule.”
Please contact the Committe Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)at his Washington, DC office (202) 224-4242 and respectfully ask him to move this through though the Committee quickly to facilitate a floor vote prior to the elections in November.
This bill will never get a full vote in the Senate. Reid’s number one job is to protect the POTUS this election year. Given the timing with the upcoming summer and election season – it bill is DOA.
That NRA non-endorsement of Sharron Angle really paid dividends, didn’t it?
But on the bright side, we did go further into debt to build a gun range in Las Vegas, available to 0.3% of the American people!
Changes from the House version (working from memory here): the House version specifies reciprocity must be equal to that of the “least restrictive” permit issued in a state. Some states have restricted permits. Also, this bill does not include the “findings” portion of the House bill, which could be important when courts look to iron out challenges.
Obama isn’t running alone. There are a couple very pro-gun D senators, like Montana’s Tester, who are going to be targeted hard by the NRA for their Sotomayor votes. I don’t think there’s much chance of the president signing this, but if he were looking a little further ahead politically he would be doing everything he could to keep seats like Tester’s in the D category. Probably not gonna happen though.
It will be very interesting to see this bill. As the mayor of Anchorage, Begich was not a friend to gunowners. He was actually a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns at the time, and he attempted to limit constitutional carry w/in Anchorage. In 2007, he withdrew his support from MAIG, but I’m skeptical of leopards claiming to have changed thier spots.
There are very few politicians that have any real conviction on this issue. They go where they think the politics needs to be in order to win and maintain their seat. For a statewide office, that’s going to be different than a city.
Begich has been reliable since being elected Senator, AFAIK.
I didn’t vote for him in any election but I do believe he was one of those who joined MAIG based on the name, without realizing their real positions, and that group included some mayors otherwise known to be good on the issue otherwise. He dropped them quickly enough when called on it.
As for the ConCarry opposition, Anchorage has enough squishy’s and “Only One’s” for him to have needed to get out ahead as “concerned”, regardless of his true beliefs. In any event, he has always appeared to me to be someone who can admit when he’s wrong on something like carry (which doesn’t really challenge his “Alaskan-Democrat” base principles anyway).
Now, should it come to Judicial appointments, as long as the nominee mouths the proper deferential mantra about the 2nd Amendment I wouldn’t count on him bucking the party, but I do feel confident he’ll stay solid against actual anti-gun legislation and push pro-gun bills. I can believe he intends this bill to move forward, not just be a stunt.
But we’ll see how vocal he and the rest of the “pro-gun” Dems are about it.