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Revamped Gun Control Measure Passed Senate 68-31
bkoenig:
AFAIK no amendments have been offered yet, although you can be sure Schumer, Feinstein, etc will try to tack on some nasty ones.
I'm not as upset as some about this coming up for a vote. I would prefer it never made it out of committee, but at least this way Senators will have to go on record whether they support or oppose the 2nd.
Husker_Fan:
I sort of hope they add a mag/assault weapons ban. There is no way that bill gets 60 votes. The current bill probably would.
AAllen:
OK a brief description of what we know and what we expect.
There was an attempt to keep this from coming up for discussion, filibustering the idea, which failed yesterday. Our Senators both voted to not even bring this up, good for them. Now to what we expect.
S. 649 has very little chance of passing as it is written, and therefore there will be lots of attempts to amend it to get something out of the Senate. What amendments are expected:
Fenstein will bring two, one her assault weapons ban the other the magazine capacity limit, neither of these have enough support to get added to the bill.
Senators Pat Toomey (R) and Joe Manchin (D) with the help of Chuck Schumer will have a "Bipartisan" amendment. This is a bad amendment and unfortunately the exact text has not been seen. Lots of possible problems that have been discussed elsewhere.
Senator Grassley and others will bring an NRA endorsed background check improvement measure as an amendment. Personally not a fan but this does not hurt us, if we could get the rest of the bill stricken and it replaced by this it would be a win. The odds of that happening are low though.
Other amendments are expected as well, mental illness treatment options, National recognition of CCW permits, and many more have been discussed. What this bill may end up looking like in a couple of weeks it is hard to tell, but it does not sound like there is enough votes to go to cloture if the bill goes real hard anti gun, and a couple of pro gun measures must be included. For us fortunately we are being supported by both of our Senators, how will the go when a final bill is produced it's too early to predict.
The good news is that if this is not a very pro gun measure it sounds like it will have little chance of passing in the House, so this may all be an exercise in futility.
AAllen:
One other note to add on how the procedures work in the Senate. They put together a package of amendments, called the amendment tree, which gets a vote to get added to the bill. So an amendment will be proposed and a vote taken to see if it gets added to the tree as a branch, that amendment can then be amended etc. Then the amendment package or tree gets voted on as a package to get added to or replace the bill in question.
Harry Reid has a history of "pruning" the amendment tree, meaning he limits who or what amendments can be brought up. For the purposes of this bill it sounds like he is going to all any and all possible amendments to be proposed and discussed, this is good for us.
AAllen:
the Toomy bill/amendment text is finally available :
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/posted-full-text-public-safety-and-second-amendment-rights-protection-act_716249.html
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