Photo credit: Thefederalist

Ever so slightly, that is how you best describe the Republicans move towards gun control legislation at this stage.

Though President Trump’s base will shout it away with a majority both in the house and the senate, Republicans know that due to the DACA timing (ending on March 5th) they cannot be seen blocking both the Dreamers and Gun Control reform at this point.

As the pressure gets really bad, there will be some form of giving in probably. In what manner this will come remains unclear.

As always, it was the US President who put the matter on the table, tweeting yesterday that: “Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/965009332042596352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2018</a></blockquote>

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The president’s remark didn’t go unnoticed to Representative Carlos Curbelo from Florida who said on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday: “What we need is congressional leaders, specifically in my party, to allow some of these bills to come to the floor for debate.”

“There are a lot of Republicans who are prepared to support reasonable, common-sense gun safety laws, new laws, stronger laws that protect rights for responsible citizens, people who are responsible gun owners, but will prevent those who want to do harm to innocent people from obtaining these weapons.”

Also in the Senate, there appears to be movement on the Republican side, with Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina stating during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation: “We are putting more pressure on our system, to make sure that legislation gets to the floor.”

“The reality of it is that we have a sense of urgency about getting this done. And I’m very hopeful that this is the time that we see this nation’s leadership united to solve a problem that could’ve prevented atrocities.”

“The reality of it is that three incidents could have been avoided, prevented if the system itself had worked,” Senator Scott added.

Overall, there is very little Republican appetite to instate an assault weapons ban and outlaw the AR-15 overall, but a slight inch towards bipartisanship on the major issue of gun control seems to be in the works.

Source:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-florida-school-shooting-some-gop-lawmakers-renew-gun-control-talk-1518983067