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Vulnerable Dems send Pelosi letter begging her to bury sweeping radical gun reform before midterms

June 3, 2022 | | Print Article

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s push to pass sweeping gun control legislation is already facing trouble thanks to growing opposition within the party.

A group of 21 House Democrats submitted a letter to Pelosi and three other top Democrats on Thursday requesting that they not lump all gun control legislation into one giant omnibus package and instead pass each gun control bill separately.

“We write as Members of Congress who intend to support, solemnly and proudly, every component of the intended ‘Protecting Our Kids’ legislative package. … However, we ask that you not combine these bills into one large package, but instead immediately bring each individual bill forward for a standalone vote on the House Floor,” the letter reads.

“While we wish every Member of Congress in the House and Senate would join us in supporting all these bills, we know that is not our current reality, and given the composition of the U.S. Congress, we know we must have bipartisan support for bills we want to become law. In this moment of urgency and loss, the American people deserve to have legislators focused on results — getting bills to the President’s desk — and that only happens when we work to build coalitions of support for our legislation.”

“As Members of the majority party, we must make a good faith effort to invite our colleagues across the aisle to join us in debating the merits of each bill and in voting for each bill. Importantly, the American people also deserve to know how their Members of Congress will vote on each of these provisions — and a summary package eliminates that possibility,” the letter continues.

“We fully expect each of these bills will pass in the House, but as we focus on actually delivering for a hurting America, passing each bill individually will ensure that every commonsense measure we are putting forth arrives in the U.S. Senate with the maximum bipartisan support it may garner, recorded through individual votes – giving us the maximum chance of passing gun violence prevention legislation in the Senate and into law.”

The 21 House Democrats believe that Democrats will be more successful in passing some — any — gun control legislation if they allow each measure to be voted on separately.

The reason why is because some Republicans support one or two of the individual bills, such as the ones pertaining to red flag laws and background checks. But if forced to vote on an omnibus package that includes legislation that they don’t support, these Republicans would undoubtedly vote no.

The effort to pass individual bills is reportedly being led by vulnerable swing-state Democrats, including Reps. Abigail Spanberger, Katie Porter, Susan Wild, Cindy Axne, Elissa Slotkin, etc.

Spanberger is the same Democrat who made headlines after the 2020 election for warning her colleagues that they’d get “f–king torn apart in 2022” unless they stopped embracing radical ideas such as “defund the police” and socialism.

The letter submitted Thursday was addressed specifically to Pelosi, Majority Leader Jim Clyburn, Majority Whip Steny Hoyer and Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler.

Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in Congress, appears for her part to not be interested in playing ball.

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that lawmakers will vote on sweeping gun control bills next week in response to a series of horrifying mass shootings in the U.S. that have left dozens dead,” according to CNBC.

“Leading the gun control legislating in the House is Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the chair of the Judiciary Committee. He and his deputies are scrambling to pass an omnibus bill, a mix of various gun bills known as the Protecting Our Children Act, out of committee before day’s end.”

“Saving our children can and must be a unifying mission for our nation,” she wrote. “To all those in the Congress who would stand in the way of saving lives: your political survival is insignificant compared to the survival of our children. We will not rest until the job is done,” the speaker reportedly said.

Given her rhetoric, critics say that it seems as if the Democrat leader is more interested in scoring political points against Republicans than in actually passing any meaningful legislation.

Vivek Saxena
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