U.S. Senate to Cast New Votes on Guns…………… Tuesday May 16 8:20 PM ET
By Joanne Kenen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seizing the moment two days after the ``Million Mom March'' on Washington for tougher gun control, Democrats brought the U.S. Senate to a grinding halt until they won a promise from majority Republicans to hold a pair of gun votes on Wednesday.
``We will not do anything else,'' Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, said Tuesday as he tied the Senate up in hours of convoluted procedural maneuvers. ``Maybe the silence will get the message through.''
The Democrats, increasingly frustrated about inaction on gun control, made clear they were going to put the issue front and center and do their best to keep it there.
Republicans attacked their dilatory maneuvers, with one aide likening Democrats to a three-year-old pounding his fist on the table. Unable to continue working on the pending military spending bill, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott struck a deal with Daschle early Tuesday evening on two symbolic gun votes.
The Republican amendment stresses tougher enforcement and prosecution of gun-related crime. It also restates the right of a law-abiding U.S. citizen to own a gun. The measure will probably carry easily, with some Democratic backing.
The Democratic amendment praises the Mother's Day march for ''common sense gun control,'' and calls on the Senate to enact the gun provisions it passed after last year's Colorado high school massacre. That package has since languished in negotiations with the House, which rejected similar gun legislation.
The Democratic amendment will be a much closer vote, and Daschle did not predict victory. The most contentious aspect, the gun show background checks, passed very narrowly last year, with Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) casting the tie-breaking vote.
Neither amendment is binding, and the Senate does not usually get this bogged down with symbolic votes. The intensity of the maneuvering Tuesday underscored the potency of the gun issue in an election year -- particularly with memories of this weekend's march still fresh.
Hundreds of thousands of women rallied in the National Mall in Washington and at some 65 other sites around the country. They demanded ``common sense gun control,'' including registering firearms and licensing gun owners.
After the march, they announced a campaign to challenge the National Rifle Association gun lobby and turn their one-day event into a national movement to elect like-minded lawmakers.
The Democrats had hoped to get a more substantive, binding gun legislation on the floor but Republicans have not given them an opening, so they opted for the symbolic votes instead.
``A number of us had discussions, ever since Sunday, about how to respond to the Million Mom March,'' Daschle said. ``Many of us were very moved by what they said, how they organized, by the extraordinary personal stories that they shared with us.''
Daschle said Democrats would keep finding ways to bring the gun issue to the fore. He said they would read the names of gun victims daily and tell some of their stories.
More than 30,000 Americans, 4,200 of them children and teenagers, died of gunshot wounds in 1997, the last year for which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has statistics. The deaths included accidents, suicides and murders.
By Joanne Kenen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seizing the moment two days after the ``Million Mom March'' on Washington for tougher gun control, Democrats brought the U.S. Senate to a grinding halt until they won a promise from majority Republicans to hold a pair of gun votes on Wednesday.
``We will not do anything else,'' Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, said Tuesday as he tied the Senate up in hours of convoluted procedural maneuvers. ``Maybe the silence will get the message through.''
The Democrats, increasingly frustrated about inaction on gun control, made clear they were going to put the issue front and center and do their best to keep it there.
Republicans attacked their dilatory maneuvers, with one aide likening Democrats to a three-year-old pounding his fist on the table. Unable to continue working on the pending military spending bill, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott struck a deal with Daschle early Tuesday evening on two symbolic gun votes.
The Republican amendment stresses tougher enforcement and prosecution of gun-related crime. It also restates the right of a law-abiding U.S. citizen to own a gun. The measure will probably carry easily, with some Democratic backing.
The Democratic amendment praises the Mother's Day march for ''common sense gun control,'' and calls on the Senate to enact the gun provisions it passed after last year's Colorado high school massacre. That package has since languished in negotiations with the House, which rejected similar gun legislation.
The Democratic amendment will be a much closer vote, and Daschle did not predict victory. The most contentious aspect, the gun show background checks, passed very narrowly last year, with Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) casting the tie-breaking vote.
Neither amendment is binding, and the Senate does not usually get this bogged down with symbolic votes. The intensity of the maneuvering Tuesday underscored the potency of the gun issue in an election year -- particularly with memories of this weekend's march still fresh.
Hundreds of thousands of women rallied in the National Mall in Washington and at some 65 other sites around the country. They demanded ``common sense gun control,'' including registering firearms and licensing gun owners.
After the march, they announced a campaign to challenge the National Rifle Association gun lobby and turn their one-day event into a national movement to elect like-minded lawmakers.
The Democrats had hoped to get a more substantive, binding gun legislation on the floor but Republicans have not given them an opening, so they opted for the symbolic votes instead.
``A number of us had discussions, ever since Sunday, about how to respond to the Million Mom March,'' Daschle said. ``Many of us were very moved by what they said, how they organized, by the extraordinary personal stories that they shared with us.''
Daschle said Democrats would keep finding ways to bring the gun issue to the fore. He said they would read the names of gun victims daily and tell some of their stories.
More than 30,000 Americans, 4,200 of them children and teenagers, died of gunshot wounds in 1997, the last year for which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has statistics. The deaths included accidents, suicides and murders.
