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GOP leaders jockey on guns | TheHill

posted onFebruary 28, 2018
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Article snippet: The GOP leaders in the House and Senate took starkly different tacks Tuesday in their responses to the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that has reinvigorated a national debate about guns. Senate GOP Leader MORE (Ky.), holding a one-vote majority and seeking to win seats in states such as Florida this fall, embraced centrism, saying the Senate should focus on legislation that can pass. He pointed to a bill sponsored by Senate Republican Whip MORE (Conn.) that would improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which Democrats see as too modest a response to the Florida shooting. Speaker MORE (R-Wis.), in contrast, downplayed the need to pass legislation and said House lawmakers are more interested in investigating multiple law enforcement mistakes that allowed the 19-year-old charged in the shooting, Nikolas Cruz, to operate unimpeded. Ryan slammed law enforcement for missing warning signs in a “colossal breakdown,” and called into question the need to pass new laws before first finding out what happened. “We need to get to the bottom of how these breakdowns occurred,” Ryan said. “We are going to be looking at the system failures.” McConnell’s and Ryan’s diverging approaches reflect their differing political positions and priorities. By calling for a vote on a narrow proposal to improve background checks, McConnell is daring Democrats to block it — a move he would seek to make incumbents up for reelection, such as S... Link to the full article to read more

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