SENATE REPUBLICANS PROPOSE THEIR OWN AND DIFFERENT GUN CONTROL BILL

Obama is absolutely furious at the Senate for failing to pass the expanded background check measure. Standing in the Rose Garden with some of the Sandy Hook families, the angry President vowed to continue the fight. Obama said the Senate failed to get the necessary 60 votes for passage of extended background checks because “the gun lobby willfully lied” that the bill called for a national gun registry.

The substitute bill now being proposed by Republicans includes more palatable provisions, such as criminalizing straw purchasing and gun trafficking, more resources for school safety, better mental health screenings, and allowing for sales of firearms across state lines.

This bill will do much more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill than the feel-good gun control measures proposed by Obama, Biden and other Democrats. And it kills the possibility of a national gun registry which would open the door to the eventual confiscation of firearms by the government.

SEN. GRASSLEY TO NEWSMAX: NO EXPANDED BACKGROUND CHECKS
By David Yonkman

Newsmax
April 17, 2013

Senate Republican leaders rolled out a gun safety bill on Wednesday that excludes expanding background checks to gun shows and online sales.

“It’s a reflection that we don’t want to go down that route,” Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa told Newsmax. “If everyone’s going to have to do a background check, you’re going to have national registration.”

The measure is designed to draw support away from a background check amendment sponsored by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Manchin and Toomey had struck an agreement on expanding background checks to all commercial gun sales, which supporters of gun reform had hoped would help pass a larger Democratic gun control measure.

Manchin, speaking Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," said only nine Republican votes are needed to pass the amendment, but later told an NBC reporter that “we will not get the votes today.”

The new Republican substitute bill includes more palatable provisions, such as criminalizing straw purchasing and gun trafficking, more resources for school safety, better mental health screenings, and allowing for sales of firearms across state lines. It has the support of more than 20 Republican senators.

“This bill protects the fundamental right to keep and bear arms among law-abiding citizens,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference. “I am confident that at the end of the day this bill will receive significant bipartisan support.”