(FiveNation.com)- After last Tuesday’s mass murder in Uvalde, Texas, Senate Democrats wasted no time calling for immediate votes on gun control legislation. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer crushed their dreams by saying he wanted to wait until Senators could reach a bipartisan deal that could reach the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster.
Schumer must have finally figured out that rushing to call a vote on bills that are destined to fail makes him look like an idiot. He made that mistake last month when he rushed a vote on the radical bill that would have legalized abortion during all nine months of pregnancy. That bill only received 49 votes.
Admittedly, Schumer didn’t say he wanted to hold off on a vote to keep from looking like an idiot. Instead, he blamed the delay on Senate Republicans, saying because Republicans are beholden to the NRA, they will filibuster the current legislation.
It isn’t the NRA that is stopping Republicans from joining the effort to undermine the Second Amendment. The pushback on gun control laws isn’t coming from the NRA; it’s coming from American gun owners.
But Democrats remain convinced that linking the Republicans to the NRA is a winning strategy.
Schumer also claimed that Democrats have gotten burned by Republicans in the past when they tried to push gun control legislation through the Senate, and he didn’t want to get burned again.
Even that isn’t true.
In 2013 when the Senate tried to pass gun control legislation in the wake of the Sandy Hook mass murder, the measure failed, not because of the filibuster, but because it only received 40 votes in a Democrat-controlled Senate.
That isn’t the Democrats getting burned by Republicans. That’s Democrats getting burned by Democrats.
As the bills stand now, Schumer can’t even guarantee all 50 Democrats will vote for them.
Besides, if they rush a vote, Senate Democrats won’t have the gun issue to campaign on in the midterms. Schumer would rather drag it out for as long as he can so the Democrats Senators facing reelection in November can campaign on “common-sense gun reform” while attacking Republicans and the NRA.
