WASHINGTON — Gun control advocates in the U.S. are scrambling to regroup after losing soundly to the National Rifle Association gun lobby on their best opportunity in years to tighten gun laws.
An angry President Barack Obama spoke at the White House last week after the Senate rejected background checks and other gun restrictions, including a new assault weapons ban.
“I see this as just round one,” the president said. “Sooner or later, we are going to get this right.”
But if the deaths of 20 young children in a Connecticut school shooting in December, the pleas of grieving family members and Obama’s passionate pleas weren’t enough to push gun restrictions through a divided Congress, the road ahead is sure to be difficult.
The NRA is powerful as ever. Sentiment for stricter gun laws, which rose after the shootings, has slipped as the shock fades. Obama’s willingness to stick with the issue when he has immigration, budget and other pressing matters is uncertain.
Gun control advocates are pinning their best hopes on two broad paths forward:
—Trying to counter the NRA’s grass-roots network of nearly 5 million members by summoning more passion from people who support restrictions such as an expansion of background checks for gun purchasers. Unless public demand for tougher gun laws “becomes a permanent fixture in politics to counterbalance the NRA, it’s only going to be by luck and happenstance that gun control actually wins,” said Dartmouth government professor Ron Shaiko, who has written extensively about the lobbying industry.
—Strengthening gun laws at the state level, where gun control advocates have had a number of significant victories in the months since the Connecticut shooting. States including Connecticut, New York and Colorado have strengthened gun laws. “We’re seeing leadership that is coming from the states, and we’re going to be there to help that momentum and to make sure that momentum is felt here in this city, in Washington,” said Mark Kelly, who founded a gun control group with his wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, after she was shot in the head by a gunman two years ago.
The NRA says public support naturally trends its way.
“The reality is that the majority of Americans support gun rights and support self-defense laws,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.
Polls paint a mixed picture.
In an Associated Press-GfK poll this month, 49 percent favored stricter gun laws, 10 percent wanted less strict laws and 38 percent thought things should remain as they are. The poll found some slippage in support for stricter laws from earlier in the year.
On some measures, though, there is broad backing. Polls show 90 percent of those questioned support expanded background checks, for example.
Opponents of gun restrictions have been far more passionate, and far more apt to vote solely on the issue, than those on the other side.
“It’s where politics trumps policy,” said Richard Feldman, head of the Independent Firearms Owners Association, which supported the background check bill.
Lawmakers’ wariness to act harks back to passage of the last assault weapons bill, in 1994.
After Congress approved the 10-year ban on 19 types of military-style assault weapons, some Democrats quickly came to believe that it contributed to their loss of the House of Representatives a few months later. When the ban lapsed in 2004, congressional Democrats made no serious effort to renew it.
Harry Wilson, a Roanoke College professor and expert on gun politics, said the NRA’s clout comes from its motivated members who vote.
“If the NRA was only money and [leaders] Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox, nobody would care,” Wilson said.
After last week’s loss in Congress on guns, Obama said people were “going to have to sustain some passion about this.”
“You outnumber those who argued the other way,” he said. “But they’re better organized.”
Plenty of outside groups are ready. They include a mayors’ group financed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Organizing for Action, the grass-roots organization that grew out of Obama’s re-election campaign; and a variety of other gun control groups.
The specifics of what happens next in Congress remain murky. There are far more signs of life in the states.
California is considering legislation to strengthen bans on assault weapons and regulate ammunition
Delaware Gov. Jack Markell is considering signing a bill requiring background checks for private sales. Maine lawmakers are considering requiring background checks for gun show sales. New Hampshire lawmakers are considering repealing a law giving armed citizens greater latitude in firing their weapons.
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois and Rhode Island are also considering gun restriction bills.
“It’s unquestionable that the trend is toward strengthening state gun laws,” said Laura Cutilletta of the gun-control advocacy group Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
