WASHINGTON, D.C. (KDVR) – The Texas Elementary school shooting has reignited calls for Congress to act on gun reform immediately.
While some argued that new gun laws won’t solve the problem, senators are meeting to see what possibilities lie ahead of them. FOX31 talked to Colorado’s senators about what could be next. The two Democrats are not a part of the negotiations but they hope the nation follows Colorado’s lead.
“Our failure to act has helped create these conditions and we can’t wait any longer. The senate needs to act, there’s nobody else to act,” Senator Michael Bennet said, pleading for gun reform on the U.S. Senate floor last year after the King Soopers Shooting.
He is once again calling for action, this time urging his colleagues to pick up a measure sent over by the House.
“Where I’d be starting it with would be a vote on the floor of the United States Senate on background checks. 90% of the American people support background checks. Colorado passed them years ago,” Bennet said.
The background check measure that has sat in Congress since last year, unaddressed, would stop transfers between private parties unless a licensed dealer or manufacturer conducts a background check first.
A bipartisan group of Senators has been negotiating on Capitol Hill, trying to reach an agreement on the background check and other options like a red flag law.
Colorado’s Senators are not part of the group of ten Republicans and Democrats but one of the pair said it is a shame the group even had to be formed.
“I’m appalled,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper who signed Colorado’s universal background checks in 2013 following the Aurora theater shooting while he was the state’s governor. “What’s to negotiate? Universal background checks: are we going to make them a little less universal? Are we going to let them have some sort of loophole like they already have like at gun shows?”
Senators said there is a real sense of urgency to do something this time around but we will have to wait to see what comes of the talks after Memorial Day.