Assault Weapons Ban.....

Assault Weapons Ban 

Lacks Democratic Votes to Pass Senate

Jan 25, 2013

A proposed ban on sales of assault weapons would be defeated in the U.S. Senate today unless some members changed their current views, based on a Bloomberg review of recent lawmaker statements and interviews.

At least six of the 55 senators who caucus with Democrats have recently expressed skepticism or outright opposition to a ban, the review found. That means Democrats wouldn’t have a simple 51-vote majority to pass the measure, let alone the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster to bring it to a floor vote.

A ban on the military-style weapons is among the legislative goals President Barack Obama outlined in his recommendations to Congress on curbing gun violence after the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. Vice President Joe Biden said today it will take “persuasion and information” to garner the necessary support in Congress to enact the White House package.

........

At that event, Feinstein said it’s unclear whether the fight is winnable. “We don’t know, it’s so uphill,” she said. “It depends on the courage of Americans.”  

The courage of Americans???  WTF?!?

Feinstein is hoping survivor testimonials, along with the images of the slain Sandy Hook students, most of them 6-year- olds, will push these Democrats to reconsider their opposition.

“The message to Democrats is, ‘See what your silence does?’ There will be more of these. These won’t end,” Feinstein told reporters.

“If just reading the list of beautiful names and looking into the eyes of some of the pictures of the children slain doesn’t do something to the conscience of America, nothing I can say or do will,” she said.

........

The vote shortage may prompt Democrats to focus on another major goal: banning high-capacity magazines that have been used in many of the shooting massacres over the past decade to fire off numerous bullets in a matter of seconds.

Feinstein’s legislation also includes a large magazine sales ban, and Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced legislation on Jan. 22 to ban the manufacture and sale of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

Full Article...