The bipartisan proposal isn't gaining steam in the House. Gun control bill in peril

The tough gun-control bill that President Barack Obama wants now has little, if any, chance of passing this Congress – it’s struggling in the Senate and facing outright rejection in the House.

Vice President Joe Biden worked the phones Monday to try to salvage a bipartisan bill in the Senate but has come up short. Personal appeals from parents of Newtown victims and former Rep. Gabby Giffords haven’t worked either.


And even if Senate negotiators get to 60 votes, the House is certain to rewrite the bill – or discard it altogether.

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A defeat would mean that in just five months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, the best chance for new gun controls in 20 years is slipping away.

The reasons are many:

The National Rifle Association hasn’t budged, and it warned supporters of the compromise Senate bill — authored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) — that the group would remember their vote when they are next up for reelection.

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Speaker John Boehner’s House Republican Conference is turned off by back-room deals and many House Republicans come from the South and the Mountain West, where gun ownership is a way of life.

And moderate red state Democrats and reluctant conservatives couldn’t be persuaded to support even a bipartisan bill that falls far short of what gun control activists wanted.

It also, once again, displays the competing interests in the Capitol: A Senate attuned to national politics, and a House consumed with local, gerrymandered, constituencies.

And it shows the limits of Obama’s power — he campaigned in Connecticut, and Colorado to urge Congress to give the victims of Newtown a vote.

This bipartisan proposal, which expands background checks and closes the controversial “gun show” loophole, is gaining nearly no steam in the House, and in the Senate, it’s no better.

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Senate Democratic leadership considered pushing back the vote to Thursday or later. Manchin and Toomey said Monday evening that they were short of the votes they needed.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Toomey said. “We’re not there at the moment, but we’re were working on it.”

Manchin said he is “talking to everybody” about supporting the bill.

He will also appear Tuesday with Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a January 2011 shooting, to press Congress to pass the bill.

Reid is likely to lose three of his 55 Senate Democrats — Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana. All three said on Monday that they were still reviewing the proposal and would not commit to backing it.

Other members of Obama’s party still undecided include freshmen Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who is up for reelection in 2014, has also not said whether she would back the bill.

Reid got some good news Monday, when . 89-year-old New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a longtime gun-control proponent who has been out for several weeks with serious health problems, is expected to return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Democrats said.

Democratic Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Jon Tester of Montana, who had been swing votes, voiced support for the proposal as well.

“He’s not only supporting the bill, he’s asking other colleagues that come from hard-core red states to read the bill, which is what he did frontwards and backwards, and found out that if you’re a law-abiding gun owner, and you want your Second Amendment rights protected, this bill does that and does that with expansion, if you will,” Manchin said of Tester.

Late Monday night, the New York Times reported that Manchin and Toomey are considering a possible revision to their bill that would exempt residents in rural areas living hundreds of miles from licensed gun deals from some of the requirements of the bill.

The revision, which would be added only as amendment if the Manchin-Toomey proposal is adopted, is designed to appeal to Begich and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said aides familiar with the issue. Manchin huddled with both Alaskan senators on the floor after a vote Monday night.

However, only four Republicans are voting for the bill at this time. They include Toomey, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona.

Other Republicans are on the fence and undecided, such as Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Dean Heller of Nevada. Democrats believe they will pick up some of these Republicans.

Heller said that he is was still unsure of how he would come down on the Manchin-Toomey bill.

Flake on Monday night said he will oppose the measure, citing the way commercial sales are defined.

“Manchin-Toomey would expand background checks far beyond commercial sales to include almost all private transfers – including between friends and neighbors – if the posting or display of the ad for a firearm was made public,” Flake said in a statement on his Facebook page. “It would likely even extend to message boards, like the one in an office kitchen. This simply goes too far.”

Of the 16 Republicans who crossed the aisle last week and voted with Democrats to begin a debate on gun control, 10 of them have now formally said they will vote against Manchin-Toomey. They include Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

Still, Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are working on an agreement for the floor procedure for the Manchin-Toomey proposal.

”I am voting no,” Chambliss said Monday night. “It’s not the right thing to do.”

This leaves Reid with supporters in the mid-50s range for the Manchin-Toomey cloture vote, not nearly enough to overcome the Republican filibuster.

If Reid and McConnell work out a process for votes, it would make it easier to pass the bipartisan proposal —especially if less controversial votes come up first.

Reid and McConnell are negotiating over whether to allow each side three to five amendments on the main legislation.

Reid would push for votes on the Manchin-Toomey proposal; a ban on assault weapons; a prohibition on high-capacity ammunition magazines; a plan by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to expand mental health funding; and a similar measure by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).

McConnell wants a vote on an alternative gun bill by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), designed to peel off GOP support for the Manchin-Toomey bill; a proposal by Begich and Graham to prevent the mentally ill from getting guns; a provision to created a federal “concealed carry” permit; and potentially others.

Failure to pass a gun bill could present a political opportunity for Obama and the Democrats. They can use the issue to run against GOP obstructionism in 2014. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other gun-control groups have dumped tens of millions of dollars in to the fight, and Democrats to appeal to them to give heavily to their incumbents — and Democratic super PACs — next year.

Republicans, for their part, will use any vote for more gun-control laws to target red state Democrats up this cycle. With control of the Senate at stake, and a map that is favorable for the GOP, the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups will play heavily in battleground states.

Ginger Gibson contributed to this report.