WASHINGTON — Advocates seeking new restrictions on the ability to buy guns were inherently skeptical of Mitch McConnell’s initial step to greenlight the bipartisan brainstorming of solutions.
As they tracked the GOP leader’s comments in Kentucky this week, their skepticism swiftly morphed into deeper distrust and doubt.
McConnell did not place guns at the center of his legislative updates to rotary clubs and business groups throughout the commonwealth. Rather, he notably appeared to narrow the conversation to “two broad categories that underscore the problem.”
“Mental illness and school safety are what we need to target,” he said in Mount Sterling on Thursday, adding that it must be “something consistent with the Second Amendment.”
Noah Lumbantobing, a spokesman for March for Our Lives, a student-led gun control group planning nationwide protests over the issue, called McConnell’s comments “an absolute cop-out.”
“On Mitch McConnell, we’ve been here before. We’ve been disappointed before. We don’t trust him,” Lumbantobing said. “If there’s a pathway forward it’s not going to be through Mitch McConnell, it’s going to be a pathway through others.”
Fred Guttenberg, who lost his 14-year-old daughter in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting, has also closely monitored McConnell’s comments since the massacre in Uvalde, Texas.
“His failure to say even the word ‘gun’ tells me that this is a charade,” Guttenberg said.
It’s these rhetoric signals from McConnell that have activists like Lumbantobing looking to Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who hails from the state still reeling from the pain and loss at Uvalde.
Cornyn, who has a desire to succeed McConnell as GOP leader one day, is part of the small McConnell-blessed working group attempting to forge a compromise that could net 10 GOP votes in the Senate.
Cornyn looks to be warming to red-flag laws, which would allow police, family members or a school official to secure a court order that permits seizure of a weapon from someone exhibiting behavior that is threatening to oneself or others.
“We need to do a lot more than we’ve done in the past,” Cornyn said on Wednesday. “First and foremost is to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally ill or criminals. To me, that should be a point of consensus.”
McConnell hasn’t mentioned red-flag laws during the Senate recess this week, but in 2019 he told a Kentucky radio program that such proposals and the expansion of background checks would be “front and center” following mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
The talks did not lead to legislation.
In the same interview McConnell added that “it’s always a challenge making federal legislation because we do have a lot of differences in our country over an issue like this.”
However tempered, there is still hope among gun control advocates that other Republicans’ appetite for action will overwhelm McConnell, who is known for acutely understanding the wishes of his 50-member caucus. In other words, if Cornyn can get to a yes vote on some type of restrictions, it could force McConnell to as well.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors reissued a 2019 letter to McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday requesting the Senate take up two background check bills that have already passed the House. Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer is one of more than 250 signatories.
And also on Thursday, McConnell began to draw protesters as he continued his week of statewide stops, where he addressed the Mount Sterling-Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.
“We cannot in good faith allow him to sit and enjoy a quiet lunch while children are fighting for their lives in schools, the elderly are praying for safety in grocery stores, and while worshippers are fighting to just be able to praise God among their peers,” said Kevin Fields, an organizer of the “Call to Action” in Mount Sterling.
March for Our Lives will hold nationwide protests on June 11, with scheduled events in Frankfort and Lexington.
But protests aren’t likely to factor much in McConnell’s decision.
Even President Joe Biden received backlash earlier in the week for describing McConnell as a “rational Republican.”
What McConnell’s opponents believe and ultimately fear is that he’ll appear cooperative of a deal and then find a reason to walk away and blame Democrats for the impasse.
For advocates, a new red flag law and universal background checks would be the floor of what is possible and should be passed.
If McConnell is serious about addressing mental health, Lumbantobing asks, “Why not expand Medicaid?”
But momentum for gun reform is time sensitive, meaning the more days pass from Uvalde, the easier it will be to slip out of the public’s minds until the next mass shooting.
“It’s our hope that Mitch McConnell won’t be able to wait out the outrage of this as he has in the past,” Lumbantobing said.
