Governors are tired of waiting on Washington for action on gun policy.

State leaders from both parties implored federal lawmakers this weekend to listen to their states’ examples for responsible firearms legislation after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, increasingly exasperated with the slow pace of debate and halting progress in the nation’s capital.


Democrats and Republicans alike said they planned to force their way in front of both administration officials and legislators as they gather at the National Governors Association meeting in downtown Washington on Saturday and Sunday.

Even as the predictable party-line divides over the sensitive issues remained on display, the state executives were unanimous in their boiling frustration that they hadn’t been consulted more on questions of arming teachers, how to handle expanding background checks or imposing age limits on assault weapons.

“Congress needs to act,” said Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island. “But we’re not going to sit around and wait for them to act. We’re taking action on our own to keep people safe.”

As has quickly become tradition, Republicans in attendance were careful not to swerve too far into President Donald Trump’s lane: Few outwardly expressed frustration with the president personally, instead opting to praise him and focus their ire on nameless others in the administration or on Congress as a whole.

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Even John Kasich, the Ohio Republican who is mulling a primary challenge to Trump in 2020, said the president “deserves some credit, in that he’s talking about bump stocks, he’s talked about the business of checks — appropriate checks.”

Democrats were far less willing to grant Trump even an inch, already letting their concern over the White House’s guns posture spill over just minutes into Saturday morning's NGA meeting.

“As everyone in the nation’s capital has found out, reaching common ground with someone who changes his mind like everybody else changes his socks — who tells you he’s going to do something on Monday and backtracks on Tuesday — it’s very difficult,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who leads his party’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign efforts. "I sadly suspect it’s going to be the same thing here. We’ll hear some language out of the White House that does not actually transmit to action.”

Still, leaders from both sides urged immediate consideration of strengthening background checks for firearm purchasers.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, called recent mass shootings “a form of terrorism that’s been used against us” in an interview at POLITICO’s State Solutions conference. The governor said Saturday he was concerned, after meeting with Mike Pence on Friday, that the vice president's insistence that Trump would aim to improve existing background check systems implied the administration wouldn’t support universal background checks.

Utah’s Gary Herbert, a third-term Republican from a deeply conservative state, said the conversation must move in that direction.

“I certainly support better background checks: complete, comprehensive background checks to make sure that people don’t have access to guns if you’re a convicted felon, have bad behavior, or have mental problems.”

“It’s time for people on both sides of the aisle to sit down at the table, and let’s find something we can agree on, and perhaps that should be that we all agree we should be for responsible gun ownership,” added Democrat Ralph Northam, Virginia’s new governor, who campaigned in 2017 on a platform that included gun control — and much of whose gun agenda was defeated by local Republicans in his first days in office in Richmond this year. He pointed to the broad popularity of background check measures.

“If we can agree on that, then let’s move forward and talk about things like bump stocks. Let’s talk about universal background checks — which over 90 percent of Virginians encourage.”

Still, Trump’s proposal to train and arm teachers — or reward educators who opted in to such a program — was met with far more skepticism, even from pro-gun Republicans.



That was paired with outright pessimism over the prospect of a legislative deal.

“I’m not certain I see arming teachers as being the answer, because I think there’s a very small percentage of teachers who say ‘Yes, I want to do that,’” Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said Saturday. “I don’t know what the number is, but I bet it’s less than 5 percent who would say ‘I’m willing and able to do that.’”

Arizona’s governor, Republican Doug Ducey, said he doesn’t want to see teachers being armed. “I want teachers teaching, and I want there to be that resource officer. If there is a teacher with a special exception — they’re a veteran, or former law enforcement, or they’re trained, and there’s that opportunity — I would be open-minded to that.”

But, he said, “I’m looking for the law enforcement officer in that function separate from teaching, so teachers can focus on teaching and have that relationship with the kids, as well."

The governors readily acknowledged that the political ground is shifting on the issue that’s long been a hot-button matter, especially as gun control activism ramps up around the Parkland survivors in recent days.

Governors have been sharing notes on gun policy and school safety across party lines, Haslam said.

“I mean, there’s a lot of ‘What’re you doing in your state, particularly on school safety,’” Haslam said. “I think there’s a lot of talk — not just from Republican governor to Republican governor, but from governor to governor.”

Hickenlooper, who faced criticism during his 2014 reelection campaign after he was accused of expressing regret for strict gun laws he passed in his first term, now defended those moves. He added that he was optimistic about the White House’s maneuver to ban bump stocks — such as those used by the Las Vegas shooter in October — but that Congress must seriously pursue raising the age of buying automatic weapons.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican who has been consistently supported by the National Rifle Association, on Friday surprised many by announcing his intention to do just that. Trump, too, expressed support for such a move.

And Republican Rick Snyder, Michigan’s governor, appeared to go further by saying he was open to restricting access to assault rifles, stressing that he was looking for ways to work with his state’s congressional delegation.

Short of legislative action, however, governors have begun banding together on policies of their own: This week, Raimondo joined Connecticut’s Dannel Malloy, New Jersey’s Phil Murphy and New York’s Andrew Cuomo, all Democrats, in a new alliance on gun laws designed to share information as they crack down on enforcement across their states.

The sentiment behind that effort echoed a refrain from governor after governor at the NGA: that inactivity in Washington would simply have to be made up for at the state level.

“The problem is we end up making this into some kind of partisan issue. It ought to be based on common sense,” said Herbert. “The best hopes for America is the states. Look to the states for the solution."