Photograph by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

President Barack Obama during a meeting with Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Amir of Qatar, unseen, in the Oval Office of the White House on April 23, 2013.

One hundred days into his second term as president, today, April 30, President Barack Obama has plenty to talk about at a White House news conference.

Including what hasn’t happened at home — where his fervent pleas for new gun controls following the killing of 20 schoolchildren in Newton, Connecticut, in December have gone unheeded in Congress.

And what hasn’t happened in Syria — where the president warned months ago of a red-line not to be crossed, the use of chemical weapons by a government under siege by rebels, and now the U.S. concludes “with varying degrees” of confidence that a chemical agent, sarin gas, has been deployed.

One thing has happened: The Senate is underway with a debate over immigration, focused on precisely the sort of comprehensive reform that Obama is seeking — a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., an overhaul of visas for the low-skilled and high-skilled alike, and tougher border security going forward.

It may not be the past 100 days so much on people’s minds today, as it is the next 100.

The president will field questions from reporters at the White House at 10:15 am EDT.

Original post is Obama: 100 Days In, Red Line Deadline? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) speaks at a news briefing after the Senate defeated a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks on firearms purchases and close the so-called gun show loophole.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the state where 20 elementary school students were gunned down in December, says that advocates of new gun legislation are not giving up after being unable to overcome a Republican-led filibuster to expand background checks of gun purchasers.

“The Senate said no to America. But America won’t take no for an answer,” Blumenthal said in an interview. “We’re coming back.”

He said supporters, including families of the victims in Newtown, Connecticut, are not going away. “As one of the families’ members said, `We’re not even close to being done.”’

With polls showing 90 percent of Americasn backing expanded background checks, supporters of background checks say that yesterday’s vote continues to show the power of the gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, despite losing most of the congressional races it spent money in last year.

Former Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, said that opposition to background checks was motivated by a lot more than whether a senator would receive NRA support in the next election.

“Serious people asked a serious question: Does the solution fit the problem/” said Kyl, now at the lawyer-lobbying firm Covington & Burling LLP. Kyl did not seek re-election last year.

Original post is Blumenthal on Gun Laws: ‘America Won’t Take No for an Answer’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., left, meets in his office with families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., including Nelba Marquez-Greene, mother of victim Ana Marquez-Greene and Mark Barden, father of victim Daniel Barden, on the day he announced that he reached a bipartisan deal on expanding background checks to more gun buyers, at the Capitol in Washington, on April 10, 2013.

A majority of Americans favor stronger gun laws and believe undocumented immigrants should get a path to citizenship, according to a poll released today.

As the Senate prepares to vote on whether to allow gun legislation to be debated, amended and voted on, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed 55 percent saying that gun laws should be made more strict. That’s six times the 9 percent who said they should be relaxed. Another 34 percent said the laws should remain unchanged.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and several of his colleagues have said that they will try to prevent a debate on strengthening gun laws following the mass shootings of elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut.

The NBC/WSJ poll also showed 64 percent of Americans approving of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The number grows to 76 percent when respondents are told that those immigrants would first have to pay fines, back taxes and undergo other steps.

Bipartisan groups of senators and representatives are working separately to draft immigration legislation.

The survey of 1,000 adults was taken April 5-8 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Original post is Majorities Favor Stronger Gun Laws Republicans Vowing to Block by Political Capital.

Photograph by Timorthy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

A man looks at a shotgun during the 8th Annual East Coast Fine Arms Show in Stamford, Connecticut.

Updated at 1:15 pm EDT

Credit Sens. Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey for doing what too few lawmakers of opposing parties do these days.

Talking.

The Democrat from West Virginia and Republican from Pennsylvania have just announced their agreement on a plan for improving background checks for gun-buyers. Manchin, a former West Virginia governor and A-rated member of the National Rifle Association, was among the first in his party to speak out about the need for new controls in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.

Yet the background checks fall short of what even Manchin suggested was necessary: restrictions on assault-style weapons and mega-ammunition clips like the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle and 30-round magazines employed in the firing of 154 rounds at a Connecticut elementary school in December, killing 20 first-graders and six educators.

The Senate does not have the votes for such measures, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he does have the 60 votes needed to squash any Republican filibuster when he seeks a vote tomorrow advancing the Senate’s gun bill to debate. Americans support tougher background checks by 9-1.

The Manchin-Toomey deal exempts the transfer of guns among family members, and states that there will be no national gun registry as a part of expanded background checks — expanding them for buyers at gun-shows, which account for nearly half of all transactions, and for gun-buyers shopping online.

The agreement will “prevent criminals and the mentally ill from getting firearms and harming people,” Manchin told reporters today, with Toomey at his side. Toomey added: “I don’t consider criminal background checks to be gun control — it’s just common sense.”

Twelve relatives of the 26 victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School are in Washington today to press Congress for action. Today, they saw a bipartisan announcement by a couple of NRA-A-rated lawmakers, and tomorrow they’ll see the start of a debate in the Senate about what Americans can do about all this.

It was said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today that Manchin and Toomey were seen talking last night at a surprise birthday party for host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida.

The families of Newtown hope that everyone keeps talking.

They plan to join Manchin and Toomey this afternoon in an appearance at Manchin’s Senate office. The families and senators are expected to have more to say about the bipartisan effort to close loopholes in the so-called Brady law — the background checks that were legislated after James Brady, press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, was severely wounded in an assassination attempt on the president.

Original post is Manchin, Toomey: ‘Common Sense’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid on Capitol Hill.

This is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s welcome for the Newtown 12, the relatives of children slain in the mass-shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school who have come to Washington to lobby for tougher gun controls:

Most gun owners are good, responsible people, who love target shooting and hunting or want to protect their homes and families.

— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 9, 2013

Yet he adds this as well:

It’s common sense that felons who can’t pass background check in a gun store shouldn’t be able to walk into gun show and buy deadly weapons.

— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 9, 2013

And he did have this to say yesterday:

Every idea to curb gun violence should be debated and get a vote: stronger background checks, ban on assault weapons, among others

— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 8, 2013

Original post is Harry Reid: Votes and Rights by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Family members of Newtown shooting victims step off Air Force One withPresident Barack Obama (2nd R) upon arrival April 8, 2013 at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Updated 8:55 am EDT, April 9.

On Dec. 14, police say, 154 rounds were fired inside Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

Twenty first-graders died in the gunfire, along with six educators.

Last night, 12 members of the Newtown victims’ families flew with President Barack Obama from Hartford, Connecticut, to Andrews Joint Air Base outside Washington. The president waited for all 12 to descend the stairs of Air Force One. They boarded two black vans for the ride into Washington, where they will spend some time this week calling on Congress to do what Obama asked of lawmakers today: “Vote.”

The delegation from Newtown will address reporters in a conference call today and press resistant members of Congress for action while they are in Wahington.

They are asking for votes on each of the measures the White House is seeking in the aftermath of Newtown: A ban on assault-styled weapons like the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle that claimed the lives of 20 children, four teachers, a counselor and principal, and a ban on ammunition magazines like the 30-round clips Adam Lanza spent at Sandy Hook.

(See Bloomberg’s Margaret Talev on the president’s push.)

None of these measures is likely to succeed.

The sun was setting at Andrews as the Newtown victims arrived with the president.

Obama carried a red paper bag with him.

Inside the bag, a White House official said: T-shirts reading “Team Vicki Soto,” given to him by her sister Jillian — see the White House photo below. Soto was a first-grade teacher credited with attempting to shield her students from the shootings.

At her funeral in December, Paul Simon sang one of Soto’s favorites with an acoustic guitar:

“The Sounds of Silence.”

It’s a sound the Newtown 12 are attempting to break in Washington this week.

Photo of POTUS and Jillian Soto leaving from AF1 last night. Jillian’s sister was a teacher killed at Sandy Hook twitter.com/petesouza/stat…

— petesouza (@petesouza) April 9, 2013

Original post is Newtown 12: Sounds of Silence Echoing in Washington by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

President Barack Obama wipes tears as he speaks about the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Dec. 14, 2012, in the press briefing room of the White House. Photo by Charles Dharapak / AP

Consider the possibility that these two things are true:

– Nine in 10 Americans support the idea of more stringent background checks for gun buyers. The polls say so, and a share such as nine in 10 is so far beyond margins of error in polling that opinion on this appears clear.

– Better background checks won’t prevent people from picking up weapons of mass destruction and slaughtering 20 children in five minutes, as was done in Newtown, Connecticut.

“Criminals aren’t going to be checked,” the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre argued on “Meet the Press” last weekend. And Adam Lanza, who carried a military-styled assault rifle, other weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, wasn’t a known criminal until he had killed his mother, 20 first-graders, six educators and himself.

Authorities in affidavits filed in Connecticut this week reported that Lanza, 20, fired 154 rounds from his Bushmaster XM15-E2S semi-automatic rifle, and 10 magazines each capable of holding 30 bullets were found at the scene, many partly or fully emptied. At his home, where he had shot his sleeping mother in the head with the rifle, police found a holiday card from her with a check for him apparently for a semi-automatic pistol.

Yet almost four months since the shootings, polls show waning public support for tougher gun restrictions, and Congress shows less resolve for action with each passing week.

“Shame on us if we’ve forgotten,” President Barack Obama said at the White House yesterday.

What’s happened in the three and a half months since Newtown is that the debate over gun control in Washington has been condensed to the possibility of approving those background checks that most people still support and which the NRA warns will do no good.

So nothing will be done about assault weapons, or 30-bullet magazines, under this scenario, which of course is the NRA’s goal in representing not only the rights of gun-owners but also the business aims of gun manufacturers.  And by constricting the debate to what is potentially a feckless response to the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, the gun lobby will chalk up another hard-fought victory.

It could also be true that real advocates of gun control should listen to the NRA on this one: Background checks for gun-buyers won’t stop another couple dozen children from dying in five minutes.

Removing weapons of mass destruction from the streets of America might.

Original post is Sandy Hook’s Legacy: Status Quo by Political Capital.

Photograph by George Frey/Bloomberg

A man holds a semi-automatic assault rifle for sale at the Rocky Mountain Gun Show in Sandy, Utah.

Vice President Joe Biden, who has suggested that anyone interested in assault weapons for home protection should go buy a shotgun instead, also sees no value in mega-clips for hunters.

“If you can’t get the deer in three shots, you shouldn’t be hunting,” Biden says. “You are an embarrassment.”

Biden, in an interview airing on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” holds out hope that public pressure will prevail as Congress demonstrates diminishing resolve for any sort of new gun regulation in the aftermath of the Newtown schoolhouse killings.

Addressing the Senate leadership’s rejection of a vote on an assault weapons ban, Biden says:  “y experience, having been the only guy that did this once before, along with Dianne Feinstein and others, is that this doesn’t necessarily happen in one fell swoop.”

“”We are going to continue to push for logical, gun safety regulations,” Biden tells NPR. “Eventually the will of the people is going to prevail and we’re going to keep at it.”

On the proposal for universal background checks for gun-buyers, facing daunting odds in the House, he says: “When the Brady legislation passed back in ’94…the NRA and a significant portion of the opposition were absolutely opposed to it.”

On the checks: “Two million felons have tried to buy a gun and, because of the background check, have been denied. And even with that there is probably a 40 percent loophole that exists in the law.”

On high-capacity ammunition magazines: “It in no way violates anyone’s constitutional right. What is the downside of saying, you can have clips with only 10 rounds in it? What does that violate? Hunting? Sportsmanship? If you need more than 10 rounds to hunt, and some argue they hunt with that many rounds, you shouldn’t be hunting. If you can’t get the deer in three shots, you shouldn’t be hunting. You are an embarrassment.”

On the gun lobby’s fear of gun registration: “You don’t need to register guns to have logical gun safety laws. This is not – there is a healthy gun culture in this country with regard to hunters. They husband their guns and their weapons. They lock them up, they use them responsibly, they pass them down to their children, like my dad. This is about keeping guns out of the hands of people who, constitutionally, the government is able to prohibit from owning those guns.”

Original post is Biden on Gun-Rules: ‘Will of the People’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 24, 2013, to introduce legislation on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

Ted Cruz, the first-year Republican senator from Texas who has taken on some senior lawmakers in rhetorical fisticuffs during his debut on Capitol Hill, ran into one contender today who showed little patience for his brashness.

Cruz put a question to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senior senator from California and former mayor of San Francisco who witnessed bloodshed in her own tenure at City Hall and is pushing a ban on assault weapons and mega-sized ammunition clips in the aftermath of the shootings of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, with a Bushmaster.

“The right of the people” to keep and bear arms, Cruz said, is a term of art in the Second Amendment that is sounded in the First Amendment as well.

“The question that I would pose to the senior senator from California is, would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment,” Cruz said.

“Namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights? Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?”

“I’m not a sixth grader,” Feinstein replied. “Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode. In Sandy Hook, youngsters were dismembered.”

“Look, there are other weapons” that people can purchase, she said. “I’m not a lawyer, but after 20 years I’ve been up close and personal to the Constitution. I have great respect for it. This doesn’t mean that weapons of war and the (Supreme Court’s) Heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here.”

“And so I — you know, it’s fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution,” she said. “I appreciate it. Just know I’ve been here for a long time. I’ve passed on a number of bills. I’ve studied the Constitution myself. I am reasonably well educated, and I thank you for the lecture.”

The bill, she said, specifies more than 100 banned weapons — yet it exempts more than 2,000 weapons.

“Isn’t that enough for the people of the United States?” she asked. “Do they need a bazooka?.. I come from a different place than you do.”

“I would note she chose not to answer my question,” Cruz said, pressing his luck.

“The answer is obvious — no.” Feinstein said.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee joined in, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, pointing out to Cruz that, in his home state of Texas, the state Board of Education “tells people which books they can and cannot read.”

The ban on assault weapons and clips with more than 10 rounds of ammo passed the committee by a vote of 10-8 along party lines, only Democrats backing it.

President Barack Obama congratulated the committee:  “ These weapons of war, when combined with high-capacity magazines, have one purpose: to inflict maximum damage as quickly as possible.  They are designed for the battlefield, and they have no place on our streets, in our schools, or threatening our law enforcement officers. ”

The ban is likely to die in the full Senate.

Original post is Cruzing for a Lecture: Feinstein on Guns by Political Capital.

Photograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A class taught by King 33 Training at a shooting range on Feb. 24, 2013 in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Connecticut’s gun manufacturers unleashed an advertising campaign this week intended to remind residents of the jobs the industry provides — along with a not-so-subtle hint that the companies could pick up and leave.

The campaign kicked off as leaders from Connecticut’s General Assembly are meeting to draft a gun control bill intended to respond to the Dec. 14 shooting that left 20 school children and six adults dead in a Connecticut elementary school.

Democratic leaders in the Legislature, who hold majorities in both chambers, have said a bill will likely include elements the industry abhors, including limiting magazine capacities to 10 from 30 and expanding the state assault weapons ban.

Jake McGuigan, a government relations director at the National Sports Shooting Foundation, an industry trade group, said in a statement that banning assault weapons “presents the real prospect of decreasing good-paying jobs in our state.”

He added: “The value of our companies’ brands and national consumer acceptance of firearms made in a state that bans them within its own borders are serious business issues.”

In one commercial, Joseph Bartozzi, a senior vice president at O.F. Mossberg & Sons, a North Haven-based gun manufacturer, says: “Many other states have called here repeatedly asking us to move there.” He quickly adds: “Now the Mossberg family resisted those efforts. We want to be part of the solution.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn have both written to weapons manufacturers located in states considering gun control legislation inviting them to move. At least one Connecticut gun company has also heard offers from Virginia, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Carolina, said Michael Bazinet, a spokesman for the National Sports Shooting Foundation. He declined to specify the company.

The Connecticut gun companies have not responded to the invitations, Bazinet said. “All are waiting to see the results of the ongoing discussion in the General Assembly,” he said in an email.

The trade group spent about $50,000 buying airtime in Connecticut for the advertisements. They produced three commercials — each featuring a different company. One highlights Colt Defense LLC, showing West Hartford-based company’s brick factory. Another stars Stag Arms, a gun company based in New Britain.

“We directly employ a couple hundred people. But we indirectly employ thousands throughout the state,” said Mark Malkowski, the president and founder of Stag Arms in the commercial.

One element missing from the commercials: The completed assault weapons that many Democratic lawmakers in Connecticut want to ban. The longest the camera lingers on a weapon is in the Mossberg commercial, where viewers see .45 caliber pistols made for the U.S. Marine Corps.

See the ads from Colt:

Mossberg:

and Stag Arms:

Original post is Connecticut Gunmakers: Think Jobs — Lawmakers: Thinking of Kids by Political Capital.