Democrats target gun violence as crime becomes big midterm issue

Democrats target gun violence as crime becomes big midterm issue

Several House Democrats will debut a package of bills today designed to help prevent mass shootings and to aid communities that have experienced them.

The legislation is the latest evidence that Democrats are making efforts to combat gun violence a priority a year after President Biden pressed Congress to pass new gun laws following shootings in Colorado and Georgia. The new push also comes as some in the party argue Democrats need to do more to show voters, particularly women, they are serious about tackling crime ahead of the midterm elections.

Biden announced new steps to restrict so-called “ghost guns” on Monday in an event in the Rose Garden and introduced his second nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Steve Dittelbach. He also called on Congress to enact a universal background checks bill, which he pledged to get passed during the 2020 campaign.

The bills that six House Democrats — Reps. Joe Neguse (Colo.), Veronica Escobar (Tex.), Ted Deutch (Fla.), Lucy McBath (Ga.), André Carson (Ind.) and Nikema Williams (Ga.) — will introduce today are more modest in scope.

The legislation would provide mental health funding in communities where shootings have occurred and expand a Justice Department grant program to include active shooter preparedness, among other measures.

In an interview, Neguse — whose district suffered a mass shooting last year that killed 10 people — told the Early that he saw the legislation as a complement to the background check bill that’s been stalled in the Senate for more than a year.

“If there are steps we can take to save lives and secure our communities, retail establishments, places of public accommodation, then we ought to take those steps,” Neguse said.

While the bills haven’t drawn any Republican co-sponsors, Neguse said he’s had conversations with a number of GOP lawmakers. 

“I anticipate that these bills will receive a positive response from at least some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle,” he said.

Gun violence advocacy groups hailed the steps Biden announced on Monday, but some of them are also pressing him to go further. 

March for Our Lives and Guns Down America — which gave Biden a D+ for his record on guns in a recent report card — are pressing Biden to create a new position in the White House dedicated to combating gun violence.

The idea has also attracted support among Democrats in Congress. 

Nearly a dozen House Democrats, including Neguse and McBath, sent Biden a letter on Friday urging him to hire a national director of gun violence prevention. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) also told Politico last week that the White House should consider taking such a step.

Ivor Volsky, Guns Down America’s executive director, told The Early by phone from the White House after Biden’s speech that he wanted Biden to name a gun czar “who can crisscross the country, meet with the impacted communities who are living with the daily bane of gun violence and communicate the president’s vision for reducing all forms of gun violence.”

“That simply has not been done,” he added.

Guns Down America and March for Our Lives have also pressed the Senate to vote on the background checks bill, which passed the House last year but has languished in the upper chamber. They want Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring the bill up for a vote even if it doesn’t have the votes to pass — an echo of the demand that voting rights advocates made earlier this year.

“We need to get people on the record and see where they stand,” said Zeenat Yahya, March for Our Lives’ directory of policy. “So I think it’s important to take a vote.”

The White House has said it plans to continue leading its gun violence efforts from the Domestic Policy Council, where Susan Rice is leading a 12-person team is working on the issue, rather than creating a new gun czar role.

Such an approach allows the administration to “avoid the silos that too often stymie progress,” Stef Feldman, a Domestic Policy Council official, wrote in a blog post last month.

Other gun violence advocacy groups also aren’t convinced that appointing a gun czar would help.

“I think the proof is in the pudding,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “Susan Rice has mobilized an entire team of people across the federal government to tackle every aspect of gun violence, and frankly we wouldn’t be here without her.”

Democrats’ renewed emphasis on guns comes less than seven months ahead of the midterm elections, with the looming possibility that the party could lose control of the House, the Senate or all of Congress.

Celinda Lake, who was one of Biden’s top pollsters in 2020, said efforts to combat ghost guns resonate particularly strongly with women — who are crucial to Democrats’ hopes of retaining control of Congress.

“Our roadmap to victory is to have women be more supportive of Democrats than men are of Republicans,” Lake told the Early. The “issue of ghost guns and gun safety is really, really strong with women.”

But Neguse said preventing gun violence was the one issue on which he didn’t care whether the issue helped or hurt his party politically.

“The politics just doesn’t come into the equation,” he said.

Biden to announce plan to ease gas prices as inflationary pressures persist

Happening today: “The White House plans to roll out new policies aimed at curbing gas prices as they brace for a crushing new report that will show inflationary pressures on millions of Americans have only intensified this year,” our colleagues Jeff Stein and Evan Halper report.

• “Biden will announce plans for the Environmental Protection Agency to allow a blended form of gasoline that uses ethanol, known as E15, to be sold this summer — a measure long resisted by some energy and environmental groups that could help deliver short-term relief at the pump.”

DeJoy says USPS will expedite midterm ballots, holds firm on electric trucks

Postmaster says: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy sat down with our colleague Jacob Bogage, in a wide-ranging interview, to discuss the state of the Postal Service and its future. Here’s an excerpt: 

Bogage: Was there doubt that the Postal Service would exist 10 years from now?

• Dejoy: I came in, and they said, “We’re going to run out of cash and we’re going to lose $20 billion in the next year.” The Government Accountability Office has put us on the high risk list for 10 years. The only way we survived was not paying employee health-care benefits. I was the person to take it seriously. Now you will read, “The Treasury Department will never let this happen.” Okay. I don’t know. Maybe? What kind of carnage are we going to have here at the Postal Service and for the nation by testing that model to see if Treasury is going to jump in? I took it seriously.

Bogage: Will the Postal Service commit to using the same “extraordinary measures” — dedicated ballot-expediting procedures — in the 2022 midterm elections that it used in elections in 2020 and in 2021?

• DeJoy: The answer is yes. It has never been in question. It’s like you tie your shoes when you walk out the door and then you see a judge who says, “You must tie your shoes in the future.” It was kind of a ridiculous accusation. And listen, that’s not me. That was the organization that was here before. Now I may have aligned the network, had more meetings, done a little more stuff. And when you look at all the changes I’m making, I’m one person. I didn’t bring in outside consultants. This is internal postal genetics. So we always use the extraordinary measures. We don’t need a judge to tell us, we don’t need a nonprofit to tell us. We use our best efforts to make sure every ballot that we get our hands on will get delivered. We have done it. It shows in the results. So we’ll continue to do that.

Maryland’s new congressional map, visualized: “Maryland has passed a revamped congressional map that changes the outlook for its midterm races — and moves thousands of voters into new, more compact districts that no longer ‘look like prehistoric animals,’ as one anti-gerrymandering group put it,” our colleagues Meagan Flynn and Nick Mourtoupalas report.

• “After a legal fight stymied a previous Democratic map, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) approved this redrawn version, which keeps one…