Dems ponder bills on guns and abortion

After a week that thrust gun control and abortion rights to the forefront on the Hill, Democrats are beginning to address both on multiple legislative tracks while liberal advocacy groups work to redefine the two often-incendiary issues.

Guns and abortion have become linked as political hot buttons in the media, and partisan divisions on social issues have deepened since the GOP took over Congress 13 years ago. Holding the Senate by a thread and anticipating a crucial presidential contest, Democrats now must decide how they should interpret the Virginia Tech shootings and the Supreme Court’s Wednesday abortion-ban ruling.

{mosads}After several years of downplaying the gun-rights issue, many members remain reluctant to jumpstart a debate on gun control so soon after the campus violence in Blacksburg, Va. Despite initial coverage suggesting that Democrats might eschew a legislative response, two proposals are gaining momentum.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) has urged House leadership to take up her bill upgrading the national criminal-background database that gun dealers use to check on buyers’ records. The Senate’s No. 3 Democrat, Charles Schumer (N.Y.), said yesterday that he would drop a companion bill as soon as next week.

“To be able to go after rogue gun dealers who sell a large proportion of criminal guns” is important, Schumer said. The bill would give more prominence in the database to mental-health problems, which raised red flags in the case of the Virginia Tech gunman.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the influential Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, also plans to reach out to Sens. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on the McCarthy bill, according to Democratic sources. The bill passed the House in 2003 but died in the Senate while Hatch held the Judiciary Committee gavel.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) supported McCarthy and Schumer’s gun-database effort in 2003. That could pose a new dilemma for the White House hopeful as he continues wooing conservative primary voters.

“House leaders are taking a closer look at [McCarthy’s bill] and others to determine the best legislative way forward,” a Democratic leadership aide said.

Another gun-control option for Democrats is legislation to bolster school security grants to states, authored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and backed by Schumer as well as Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

Boxer said this week that Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has agreed to examine the bill again in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) mentioned the Boxer bill during a briefing that was otherwise wary of a new gun control push.

Unlike gun control, abortion rights appeared to cede political ground this week after the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold Congress’s 2003 ban on certain late-term abortions. But the decision only galvanized the women lawmakers who yesterday joined Boxer and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) to reintroduce their bill codifying Roe v. Wade.

Boxer and Nadler acknowledged that gaining the vocal support of many fellow Democrats would be a difficult task. But Boxer pointed to her victory on a 2003 vote that saw 52 senators affirming the principles of Roe.

“We don’t necessarily have to have anything scheduled in order to offer it” in the Senate, Boxer said. Eight sitting Republicans backed her in 2003, including Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) and Ted Stevens (Alaska).

To the advocates mobilizing their interest groups on Boxer’s behalf, discussing guns and abortion under the same culture-war umbrella is too outmoded for the newly resurgent Democratic Party. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, framed the Supreme Court ruling in libertarian terms.

“This is an issue about freedom and privacy,” Keenan said in an interview, pointing out that she ran for office in the red state of Montana. “What people in this country know very clearly is that government is not to intrude.”

Rather than tie the issue to gun control, Keenan connected abortion rights to stem cell research, the Patriot Act and the GOP’s Terri Schiavo intervention — examples in which she thinks Republicans “overstepped” and alienated the majority of voters.

“If you read the decision, it not only tolerates government interference, it applauds it,” said Jackie Payne, director of government relations for Planned Parenthood.

Similarly, gun control advocates have challenged lawmakers to take the partisan sting out of gun-rights measures and interpret the Virginia Tech violence as a call to action.

“When politicians and pundits deny that a problem exists and is susceptible to policy revisions and cling to their ideological fence-posts instead of coming to the table … it is they who must stop the political posturing,” Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote on the group’s website yesterday.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) pointed to this week’s Supreme Court abortion ruling as evidence that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito lied to senators during their confirmation hearings when they said they respected precedent.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization of Women, tied another name to the precedent question: Bob Casey Sr., the former Pennsylvania governor and defendant in the high court abortion case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. That 1992 decision was treated as a precedent in portions of this week’s ruling. Casey’s son, Bob Jr., was recruited by Schumer, who is also the Democrats’ Senate campaign chief, last year to run against former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). Casey opposes abortion rights in most cases as well as embryonic stem-cell research.

Gandy takes issue with the conventional wisdom on the numerous conservative-leaning Democrats who successfully ran in 2006, and she says their numbers in Congress would not hinder progress on abortion-rights bills this year.
Yet Gandy has hardly reversed her frustration that Schumer, who is personally in favor of abortion rights, tapped Casey to run.

“If he hasn’t already seen it as a mistake, he will see it as a mistake,” Gandy said. “I don’t think Casey will restrain himself for long.”

Jonathan E. Kaplan contributed to this report.