Press Democrat: California Democrats call for action in Congress to curb gun violence

Reacting to the mass shooting Wednesday in San Bernardino, Rep. Mike Thompson faulted House Republicans for failing to support to bills intended to curb pervasive gun violence.

The St. Helena Democrat and Vietnam veteran, who chairs the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, cited a dearth of GOP backing for bills that would expand background checks on gun buyers and prevent terror suspects from buying firearms.

With dozens of Democratic co-sponsors but only a handful of Republican backers on the record, neither bill has made it to a vote in the House, a process controlled by the Republican leadership.

“We endure shooting after shooting, and they do nothing,” Thompson said in an email. “We’ll do another moment of silence but we should not be silent any longer. This majority needs to find the courage to act. Time will tell if they do or not.”

On the House floor Wednesday, before news of the California shooting broke, Thompson said he was lobbying a Republican colleague for support of a bill that would require background checks for all firearms sales, including transactions at gun shows, over the Internet and by newspaper ads.

The Republican, whom Thompson declined to name, said he would vote for the bill if it reached the floor but would not sign on as a co-sponsor. The bill, co-authored by Thompson and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has 184 co-sponsors, including Thompson and four Republicans, none of them from California.

“Republicans won’t put their name on it,” Thompson said in a telephone interview. Without an “adequate number” of co-sponsors, he said, the bill won’t pass. Thompson is among the 39 co-sponsors, including one Republican, for another bill by King that would close a loophole that allows suspected terrorists on the government’s no-fly list to legally buy guns. More than 2,000 suspects on the FBI list bought weapons in the United States over the last 11 years, according to the federal Government Accountability Office.

Thompson said House Republicans have focused attention on the Benghazi attack in Libya and defunding Planned Parenthood but done nothing about gun violence, even in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school massacre. He called that failure “the most cowardly act I’ve witnessed since I’ve been in Congress.”

Earlier Wednesday, Thompson called for an end to the ban on federal funding for research on ways to prevent gun violence. He released a letter by former Rep. Jay Dickey, an Arkansas Republican who authored the ban in 1996, calling for its repeal.

“Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable option,” Dickey’s letter said.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday noted a Washington Post report that there were 351 mass shootings in the first 334 days on 2015, defining them as an incidents involving injuries or deaths of at least four people involving firearms.

“Each time I see breaking news of yet another mass shooting, I feel it in the pit of my stomach,” the California Democrat said in a press release.

Feinstein said that Congress could take steps, such as requiring background checks on all firearms purchases, to reduce the frequency of shootings. But, she said, “Congress also has a problem — a debilitating fear of upsetting the gun lobby.”

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said the details are unclear but the assault by several heavily armed people “has all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack.”