Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Only in America can something that has near universal support among the American people get bogged down in Congress by politicians bought and paid for by lobbyists.
POLITICO Tiger Beat on the Potomac reports Senate talks on universal background checks fall apart:
Sen. Chuck Schumer is ending the bipartisan gun control talks with Sen. Tom Coburn without a deal, a major setback to President Barack Obama’s effort to pass universal background checks.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) will instead file a placeholder background checks bill he proposed before the Coburn talks began that does not incorporate any of the input from Coburn (R-Okla.), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). There will be no co-sponsors when the legislation is introduced for Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee markup.
Meanwhile Kirk, Manchin and Schumer will search for conservative Republicans to back the bill they negotiated with Coburn, but with the record-keeping requirement the Oklahoman opposed. The three do not plan to introduce the bill until others have signed on. Manchin admitted Monday that it will be difficult for any Republican to join gun-control friendly Kirk and moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) without cover from a more conservative colleague.
Kirk and Manchin released a joint statement saying they will not support the bill Schumer introduced alone but will continue the work the three began last month.
“We are committed to continuing to work in a bipartisan effort with Senators Schumer, Coburn and others in order to find a commonsense solution for enhanced background checks, however, Senator Schumer’s current proposal is one we cannot support as it stands today,” the Kirk-Manchin statement reads.
“Our goal is to pass a bill that will close loopholes in the current background check process in a way that does not burden law-abiding citizens,” they added.
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The end of the bipartisan background checks talks also raises the possibility that all that can pass is the gun trafficking legislation introduced earlier this week. That bill is seen as far less important than the background checks proposal, yet much easier to pass.
A Schumer aide said Coburn and the group never could agree on whether to require private sellers of guns keep sales records, as is required of gun dealers.
“Senator Schumer is not prepared to negotiate away the record-keeping requirement in its entirety, lest it make the law unenforceable,” the aide said.
Translation: the NRA does not want a federal data base of gun purchases to track the life of a weapon from cradle to grave, because these paranoid delusionals believe a government that knows who owns a gun is "comin' to get your guns!" How long is this country going to tolerate this insane behavior?
This idea that it is a burden on law abiding private gun sellers to maintain sales records is B.S. People keep copies of their income tax records for seven years in case of an IRS audit. It can't be any more of a burden than income tax records.