Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked Democrats from passing a bump stock ban bill following a Supreme Court ruling that overturned a Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-Minn.), the author of the BUMP bill, called for unanimous approval of the proposal, but Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) blocked it.
The move came days after the Supreme Court overturned a policy enacted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) after the 2018 Las Vegas mass shooting that left 60 people dead and hundreds injured. The shooter used a gun equipped with a bump stock, which allows a semi-automatic rifle to fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
“We’ve begun another summer of Democratic sham voting,” Ricketts said Tuesday, likening the Democratic move to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York’s decision in recent weeks to hold off on a vote on reproductive rights.
Ricketts also said the Supreme Court made the right decision last week.
“Although this bill is called the BUMP Act, it’s not actually about bump stocks,” Ricketts said. “This bill is about banning as many firearm accessories as possible and giving the ATF broad authority to ban most semi-automatic firearms.”
Heinrich, who introduced the bill a year ago with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), sharply criticized the idea of bump stocks being made available again.
“There is no legitimate use for bump stocks — not for self-defense, not for law enforcement, and not for military use because they are less accurate than standard fully automatic military platforms,” Heinrich said. “Bump stocks are specifically designed for mass shooter situations.”
But it’s unclear where the legislative effort will go from here.
Schumer declined to say whether he would bring the bill to a full floor vote, saying only that he hopes Republicans will “look him in the eye” and not block Heinrich’s bill.
“Donald Trump is hardly a friend of gun safety, but I’m astonished that the Supreme Court is to the right of him,” Schumer said in remarks to Congress on Tuesday. “If Republicans decide to step in today and side with the gun lobby instead of parents, teachers and police, sooner or later we will see another tragedy.”
Justice Samuel Alito, in his concurring ruling last week, suggested that congressional action would be a “simple solution” to the problem, but that seems unlikely at this point.
Several lawmakers said Monday they didn’t see a path for a bipartisan bill to pass, given the climate of election season.
But Heinrich was quick to point out that the Senate acted following the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, two years ago, which resulted in the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most high-profile gun control legislation in nearly three decades.
“There was some skepticism about whether Congress could do this, that we couldn’t all come together to ban bump stocks, but just two years ago we proved that completely wrong,” he said. [the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act]We’ve proven that Congress can take concrete action to protect our communities from gun violence. Now it’s time for similar bipartisan action to ban bump stocks.”
