With the National Rifle Association holding its annual convention in Nashville starting Friday, members are expected to celebrate the election of a decidedly pro-gun Congress in November — and to call for replacing President Barack Obama in 2017 with someone they regard as friendly to legislation expanding gun owners' rights.
Despite their party suffering major losses in November's midterm elections, many congressional Democrats favor enacting new restrictions.
USA Today reports the NRA and other gun-rights advocates say that is just not going to happen.
"Last November, Americans sent a clear message to Washington that they do not want more gun control by defeating anti-Second-Amendment candidates at the ballot box," said Chris Cox, executive director of the
NRA Institute for Legislative Action.
Cox said the group's efforts in the next two years are focused "on electing a pro-Second Amendment president and growing our pro-Second Amendment majority in Congress."
The last time Congress considered major gun legislation occurred two years ago after the mass shootings in
Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 28 people.
Despite a major push from gun-control advocates, legislation to limit high-capacity magazines, ban assault weapons, and expand gun background checks all failed in the spring of 2013
— in a Congress that was much less sympathetic to gun rights than the current one.
That's why a major focus of gun critics has been getting states to pass laws restricting those rights. Since the Newtown slayings,
37 states have passed 99 gun-control laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
But the Republican-controlled Congress, USA Today noted on Tuesday,
"is far from irrelevant" with both sides pushing their own brands of gun-related legislation.
Some of the measures proposed on Capitol Hill this year include:
- Legislation introduced in February by Democrats, including three from Connecticut, to ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
- An NRA-backed proposal from Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn that would treat concealed-weapon permits like drivers' licenses, allowing people with a permit in one state to carry in any other state that issues such permits.
- Legislation introduced by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio to repeal Washington, D.C.'s gun-control laws.
- There are also measures to exempt ammunition from EPA regulation, allow guns to be carried on land managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and steer federal conservation funds toward opening more public lands to sportsmen.
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