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Posts Tagged ‘background checks’

Politico reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that targeting Democrats on gun votes could backfire and harm the party.  Bloomberg decided to ignor the warning.

Ads from the Bloomberg-funded Mayors Against Illegal Guns are going up soon in Alaska, Arkansas and North Dakota — three states with Democratic senators who broke with the White House on last month’s background checks vote.

The group is also moving as many as 60 field organizers into about a dozen states where senators — Democrats and Republicans — voted against bill, with the goal of building infrastructure and countering gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.

In Arkansas, Bloomberg is placing ads in markets in Black communities, a segment of the voters that Politico notes Democrat Mark Pryor must carry to win re-election.  Senate Democrats want Bloomberg to focus on “flipping” Republicans who voted against the gun control legislation.  Biden, in an Op/Ed in this past weekend’s Houston Chronicle wrote:

In the end, I believe we will prevail. And those who wrote off gun safety legislation last month will come to realize that moment wasn’t the end at all. It was the turning point.

Biden pointed to poll numbers that suggest those who stood with law abiding gun owners have seen their poll numbers sink and those who want to criminalize private transfers have seen their poll number hold or increase.

We will see if those numbers hold.  In the end, it’s not about what the polls tell politicians, but what their constiuients tell them, and by most accounts, senators voting against Schumer, Manchin, Toomey heard from a lot more gun owners than they heard from gun ban supporters.  So, keep holding their feet to the fire and make sure they know we are watching.

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David Hawkings of Roll Call lists the senators that could decide the fate of the Manchin/Toomey/Schumer background check amendment to the senate gun control bill.

Among the Republicans, only four have so far committed to voting for the background check compromise: Toomey, Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona.

And the rest of the lobbying attention is being focused on six of the GOP senators who voted last week to bring the bill to the floor in the first place. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Dean Heller of Nevada, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and John Hoeven of North Dakota.

Hawkings notes that a key to knowing if they have 60 votes is if they bring up the vote early (i.e. Tuesday).  If the vote is put off one day, then they are likely close.  The longer it is put off, the less likely it is they have the votes and the harder it will likely be to get to the magic number.

Hat tip NRANews.

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