Democrats eyeing suburban women to launch new gun control effort

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says the Senate is going to make another attempt to pass gun control legislation in response to a new round of mass shootings.

At least 10 people were killed in separate shootings in Baltimore, Fort Worth and Philadelphia over the weekend and July 4, while shootings in Lansing, Mich., and Wichita, Kan., left dozens more injured. The Gun Violence Archive has counted 20 mass shootings across the nation since July 1, leaving 19 people dead and more than 100 injured.  

It was just a year ago that lawmakers passed gun control measures in response to a wave of shootings that year. Now they are considering new steps as more Americans die from gun shootings across the country.

“Leader Schumer was proud to have passed a significant bipartisan gun safety bill through the Senate last summer but more must be done. Schumer continues to work with his caucus to find a path forward that can garner enough Republican support and combat the scourge of gun violence, save lives and bring meaningful change,” said Schumer spokesperson Allison Biasotti. 

The prospects for significant gun control legislation remain dim, though some prominent Republicans, such as former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), say the political dynamic is beginning to shift among GOP voters. 

“It’s clear from today’s data — especially the growing incidence of mass shooting events involving high-capacity magazines and assault weapons — that it’s time to consider policy changes,” Frist wrote in a recent Forbes op-ed where he called for a federal assault weapons ban and expanding background checks to all firearms purchases.

 Frist told The Hill in an interview that Republican voters’ views of gun control are changing. 

“Something is changing over the last three years compared to 20 years ago when I was here. There is a willingness to have civil discussions on what have been highly contentious issues that I didn’t see 15 years ago,” he said. 

“More needs to be done on gun safety today,” he said. “Something more needs to be done because the overall governance of gun safety is outdated and it’s incomplete.” 

Polls show that suburban voters, whom Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-My.) views as a critical bloc of the electorate, support tougher gun laws. 

A recent poll conducted in early May by All In Together, a nonprofit women’s civic education group, and Echelon Insights, a GOP polling firm, found that guns are the number one concern of women voters ahead of the 2024 election.  

Forty-two percent of independent women voters said a candidate needed to share their view on guns to get their vote, rating the issue as important as a candidate’s view on abortion and the cost of living.  

The poll of 1,227 likely voters also showed that 61 percent of Republican women support restricting the ability to purchase certain types of guns — a far higher percentage than the 41 percent of Republican men who feel that way. 

House Democrats are trying to muster enough bipartisan support for discharge petitions to push gun control bills through the House despite the opposition of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). So far, they haven’t had any success in convincing moderate rank-and-file House Republicans to buck their leadership.  

House GOP leaders and an overwhelming majority of House Republicans instead backed a Congressional Review Act resolution that would have blocked the Biden administration from regulating pistol braces more strictly.  

The legislation passed the House mostly along party lines, 219 to 210, and then failed in the Senate, 49-50, in another party-line vote.  

As a result, moving a bill through the Senate may represent the best chance of passing new legislation to crack down on gun violence ahead of the 2024 election.  

“Leader Schumer called a special caucus meeting last month solely dedicated to combatting gun violence which produced many good ideas. Now, we’re determining the best path forward that could garner enough Republican support,” said a Senate Democratic aide. 

Even if Schumer can’t round up 60 votes to overcome a GOP filibuster, he could move legislation to draw a contrast between the parties.  

“There are a number of things that they can do. They could put a vote out to see where folks will be on the record. They can proactively ensure — even outside of their work in the Senate — ensure that this is an issue that voters are going out and paying attention to during elections,” said Christian Heyne, vice president of policy at Brady Campaign, one of the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention organizations. 

Heyne said the views of suburban women voters on gun violence is weighing on Republican lawmakers, noting that last year’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act passed with the support of 15 Republican senators, including McConnell.  

“That is one of the absolute critical reasons for why we have seen this issue change,” he said. “Suburban women are not only wildly supportive of gun violence prevention policies but we’ve seen numbers that it’s a huge motivator to bring people to the polls. 

“It’s why the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act had such overwhelming majority support,” he added. 

Heyne noted that gun violence policy is also “a top tier issue” for younger and Generation Z voters. 

Senate Republicans so far haven’t shown much appetite to work on another gun violence bill, even though they’re getting more pressure from constituents to do so. 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who played a leading role in negotiating last year’s gun violence legislation, said an assault weapons ban has no chance of passing Congress.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. And, truthfully, the so-called assault weapons ban — what are they going to do about the millions of semi-automatic rifles that are already out there? I don’t think a prospective ban will have any of the intended effect of the proponents,” he said. “Basically what they’re advocating for is confiscation from law-abiding citizens.

“I’m willing to look at whatever the proposal is but I’m not willing to erode the rights of law-abiding citizens,” he added.  

Frist, however, told The Hill that “a majority of Republicans” support improved “gun safety.” 

“It really is having people own guns if they want them and be able to do it in a way that is safe and secure,” he said.  

Some of the highest-profile mass shootings in recent months have taken place in traditional red states such as Tennessee, where a shooter fired 152 rounds at a Christian elementary school, and Texas, where a neo-Nazi used an AR-15 style rifle to kill eight people at a shopping center near Dallas. 

The shooter who killed three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville used a pistol brace, something that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will now regulate more strictly.  

“The visibility with the increase in shootings, the lethality of the incidents that happen, the numbers of people [killed or injured] make it a real teaching point,” Frist said.