WASHINGTON — On the third anniversary of the 2018 March For Our Lives demonstrations around the country, Parkland parents, former Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and members of Congress want the U.S. Senate to change its rules to allow gun control legislation to become law with a simple majority.
On Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch, who represents Parkland, said he supports a return to a “talking filibuster,” forcing senators to show up in person on the Senate floor to oppose bills that do not have the support of at least 60 senators.
Recently passed House bills that would expand background checks to all gun sales and lengthen the FBI background check review period for firearm purchases from three days to 10 days could become law with a simple majority in the 100-member chamber if the Senate eliminates the filibuster.
“The Senate must act, they’ve got to overcome political barriers and procedural barriers,” Deutch said on a call Tuesday with gun control advocates and members of Congress after mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, Colorado, in the last week. “The president has also talked about the filibuster the way it went before. If that’s one initial kind of reform we can take, then let’s do that.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz also supports a “talking filibuster” but said gun control legislation might be worth doing away with the filibuster altogether. She said Republicans could avoid the filibuster debate if they vote for background checks.
“There are two fundamental issues that may be worth going further on ending the filibuster: voting rights, and preventing imminent death,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Helping prevent daily firearm suicides and regular mass shootings falls in that latter category, but I’ll leave it to my colleagues in the Senate to make any final call.”
Current Senate rules require 60 votes to cut off debate on most pieces of legislation. But individual senators can register their objections without needing to stand and speak for hours, essentially allowing the minority a powerful tool to block legislation indefinitely.
And while former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell successfully blocked bills to expand background checks in 2019 and 2020, Democrats now control the chamber. But reinstating the “talking filibuster” without additional rule changes could allow the Republican minority to continue blocking legislation.
Fred Guttenberg, a gun control advocate whose daughter Jaime was killed in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, went one step further than Deutch and Wasserman Schultz to advocate for eliminating the filibuster altogether, a change that would allow bills to pass the chamber with a simple majority.
“What we saw from Republicans in the Senate yesterday is they’re going to be irrelevant to the conversation, they just don’t care,” Guttenberg said, arguing that most Senate Republicans don’t have any intention of working with Democrats on gun control bills. “I think the Democrats in the Senate need to be prepared to move on without them even if it means eliminating the filibuster.”
After last week’s shooting in Atlanta, President Joe Biden mostly focused on rising violence against Asian-Americans after visiting victims’ families. But another mass shooting in Boulder on Monday that led to 10 deaths prompted Biden to demand Congress pass the background check bills while also banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, two ideas that have less support than the background check bills that passed the U.S. House earlier this month with bipartisan support.
“We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again,” Biden said on Tuesday. “I got that done when I was a senator. It passed. It was law for the longest time, and it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again.”
But Biden’s position on Senate rules, for now, is similar to Deutch’s. He doesn’t support eliminating the filibuster altogether.
“In terms of the filibuster, his position remains; it has not changed,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. “He is not going to allow for obstruction to get work done for the American people, but his preference and priority is working with members of both parties.”
But finding 10 Senate Republicans to join all 50 Democrats on gun control legislation could prove difficult. And at least one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has also expressed misgivings about the bills and instead supports a more limited expansion of background checks that only includes commercial sales.
Florida Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott do not support the expanded background check bills, even though Florida Republicans became more likely to buck the majority of their party on gun control bills after the 2018 Parkland shooting. Earlier this month two of Miami’s three House Republicans, Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez, voted to expand background checks.
Robert Schentrup, a gun control advocate whose sister Carmen was killed in the 2018 Parkland shooting, said it’s important for advocates and lawmakers to use the latest attention on the issue to push for change.
“It is important that we seize this opportunity,” Schentrup said. “The biggest thing I remember from that march is the feeling of hope. The feeling we felt three years ago that things might change. That sense of hope is still with me, but the last three years have taught us that change is not easy, change is not quick.”
