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Schumer: "Lives Have Been Saved" With Defeat Of Thune Amendment
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released this statement on the defeat of the Thune Amendment, which would have allowed gun owners to carry their weapons into areas that had strict local laws against doing so:
"Lives have been saved with the defeat of this amendment. This measure, if it had passed, would have done more to threaten the safety of Americans than anything since the repeal of the assault weapons ban. It would have created havoc for law enforcement and endangered the safety of millions of Americans. We will remain vigilant to prevent any legislation like this from passing in the future."
The amendment received 58 votes in favor to 39 against, with 60 required for passage. Interestingly, nearly 20 Democrats voted for it -- including Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is coming up for re-election in 2010 in a heavily rural, pro-gun state. Schumer was the principal leader of the opposition against it.
Late Update: The roll call vote has been posted.
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They say never forget that each of the 100 Senators comes from a farm state.
Well, every one that happens to be from a farm state also comes from one that has its own gun laws. So how could a Federal law establish a right to interstate travel with concealed weapons?
It wouldn't probably last very long if it got passed. Which makes me think that Thune did this, not to get the measure passed as a rational piece of legislation, but only so he could later rage about the Libruls who voted against (if defeated) or the activist judges (if enacted) who would have been obliged to strike down his cockamamie law. And all these ruralists hate New York, so Schumer's a perfect foil for the rapscallion.
July 22, 2009 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
What ever happened to states rights? Doesn't apply if it's guns that we are talking about? Weird how the tables turned for this vote.
An aside, I'm sure Reid knew this wouldn't pass anyway. Why not vote for it (given the reasons above)?
July 22, 2009 2:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. The malleability of the Republican stance on states vs federal "sovereignty" is amazing, isn't it?
July 22, 2009 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Their apparent "malleability" as you say should be astounding. As a national party the GOP has been living off of two basic assumptions by most conservative Americans at least the ones that I have shared a culture with down here in Texas. Those two things are 1: small government 2: fiscal responsibility. Now by all obvious measures it is clear that neither Reagan, Bush I or GWBush II adhered to these two basic principals. Also a close third is the issue of state's rights vs Federal rights. The GOP has regularly complained about federal rights v states rights when it comes to issues like immigration, abortion and even homosexuality. If I was a Dem or independent I would stand on my soap box and talk about how 58 Sen mostly made of the GOP just tries to usurp states rights on Gun control for a federal mandate. That should be blaring in the MSM. Essentially this is asking for more Government, I thought the GOP did not believe the government could do anything well.
July 22, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
But the gun rights people in the Senate are always bleating about states rights EXCERPT when it covers gun rights limitation. But the Senate made the correct vote and now at least guns will be readily seen before some bloke starts an argument with some stealth gun owner. Good job Senate. I shall send each who voted no some loot for their campaign. OK, OK, only 5 bucks but I want them to know I appreciate their brave vote that will no doubt cause them to be vilified as anti constitution persons.
July 22, 2009 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, they're some crowd of hypocrites. They never intended for this to pass, though. It's all so impudent louts like Coburn can continue fantacizing aloud in their willingfully ignorant delirium about how 2nd Amendment rights are supposedly under continuous attack. Coburn, Imhofe, this Thune, and a lot of others.
July 22, 2009 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gillibrand voted against it, eh? Interesting.
I have a question about this: is it 60 votes to pass the amendment, or 60 votes to vote to pass the amendment?
You need 60 votes to pass an amendment to something, but 51 votes to then pass that something?
July 22, 2009 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am wildly uncertain about what I am about to say. But I think that:
- Normally, an amendment takes 50 votes to pass.
- Cloture is not usually necessary for an amendment to pass. However, sometimes an amendment is proposed in a way that isn't timely or otherwise violates the normal schedule. In these cases, the amendment can require cloture. Cloture takes 60 votes. The hate crimes bill last week for some reason required cloture; after cloture, it passed on an unanimous voice vote.
- The Senate is allowed to basically set its own rules for how a vote will work. I'm pretty sure that if the Senate felt like it, they could propose some bill or amendment or other require 40 votes to pass, and if there were unanimous consent to the proposal then the vote would be held requiring 40 votes to pass. I can't imagine why that specifically would happen. But one thing I'm pretty sure I've seen the Senate do is take some bill or amendment that's subject to a filibuster threat, and bring it up for vote under a rule where it requires 60 votes to pass. In exchange for the adoption of this rule, whoever threatened the filibuster will voluntarily waive their right to a cloture vote-- since the bill needs 60 to pass either way. This might make sense if a bill is kind of behind schedule (as this one is) and the Senate wants to avoid the effort of holding a real vote after the cloture vote, or the extra unanimous-consent vote after the cloture vote like with the hate crimes bill, or just the additional procedural messiness that comes with cloture.
So, I'm wildly guessing, and I'm not sure how much of this I have right. But it might be that because some Senators (the ones from CA in particular) were threatening to filibuster the Thune amendment, Reid talked them down from the threat by bringing up the amendment under a rule with a 60 vote threshold. (The Thune amendment vote was a normal roll call vote, not a cloture vote, but the senate page lists "Required For Majority: 3/5" on it.)
July 22, 2009 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
'Say, Wyatt, here it is 1881, and now that you're the Tombstone city marshal, and two of your brothers are deputies, what are your plans about bringing law and order to this hell hole?'
'I'll be posting notices tonight that no firearms will be allowed in Tombstone's city limits.'
'What about the second amendment? The Clanton gang says that guarantees its rights to carry Colt .45s.'
'I'll try to explain it when Doc and I get to the O.K. Corral.'
July 22, 2009 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
This was grandstanding on Thune's part. States are free to make reciprocal agreements with one another for almost any reason that is within the law. Thune was probably doing his master's bidding and setting up all the nay votes for NRA attack ads next election cycle. Keep tabs on this and I guarantee you this comes up.
July 22, 2009 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Grandstanding or no it looks like it very nearly passed. And they've been banging on this one for awhile, it may not be going away. I'm worried they might try to attach it to every bill from here on out for the next six years...
I don't know as much about this issue as I feel like I ought to before commenting, but: it seems like even in the presence of reciprocity agreements gun owners might have a legitimate desire to have there be some kind of "default" federal reciprocity agreement. Two states with similar concealed carry restrictions might fail to reach a reciprocity agreement simply because the local governments failed to get it done. If I look up which states do or don't honor each other's CCW permits it seems like something of a confusing patchwork; maybe a federal framework would be desirable just so that people don't need a PDF of 51 charts just to determine how to follow the law. I wonder if there's some way to put in place a federal framework without taking away from states the ability to place legitimate restrictions on CCW access (like, lack of a conviction or completion of safety classes).
This aside what I think is kinda funny about this amendment is that if it had passed, it might have caused some states to ban concealed carry altogether (thus freeing them from obeying the Thune amendment) rather than give up their existing restrictions on who can receive a concealed carry license.
July 22, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is interesting, because while related to my comment above, you're drawing a broader and slightly even more cynical conclusion: it's not so much about Thune, but about the NRA getting *somebody* to propose a completely unworkable law to get voted down, so they would then have an updated enemies list to use for fund-raising and campaigning against.
I betcha Thune enjoyed himself, though. He's trying to capitalize on Ensign's meltdown in a big way http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/072209morning-fix-thune.html?hpid=topnews and getting to be the weirdo that proposes something like this is a real feather in the cap of a Republican ruralist cuss who'd like to replace one of the innumerable Republican leadership failures of late (McCain, Palin, Ensign, Sanford, Jindal, Limbaugh, Coleman, DeMint, Steele, who else?).
If power abhors a vacuum, there's a lot of space there to rush into and if Thune won't, somebody else will. So he's probably delighted that NRA gave him the nod.
July 22, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just love the fact that we have 58 Senators to vote for this bill which approves of federal right over states rights and we have all this talk about how hard it is to get health-care reform.
Let's see concealed gun laws according to these 58 Sen appear much more pressing than the health and well-being of Americans and their Health-care system. I am afraid, but still optimistic, that this just shows how much our culture is failing.
July 22, 2009 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
And not surprisingly, all of the states with two 'yea' votes are states where I would never want to live. Isn't there some way we can get all the anti-tax, pro-greed, gun-totin', Jesus-loving types to move to these states and we can keep the rest for the sane people? Just asking.
July 22, 2009 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's interesting that all of the Democrats who voted for the amendment are the expected conservatives from western and southern states, with one big glaring exception: Russ Feingold. WTH???
July 22, 2009 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink