While Gun Ban Bill Passed House, Odds Are Against Senate Passage

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- While a giddy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi smiled broadly on passage of H.R. 1808, which bans the future manufacture and sale of so-called “assault weapons,” it is not likely to pass the Senate, where the requirement for a 60-vote majority to overcome a filibuster should stop it cold, most media reports are predicting.

According to the New York Times, where the headline declared the bill is “doomed” in the Senate, “It stands no chance of passing in the evenly divided Senate, where such a sweeping gun control measure would not be able to win over the 10 Republicans it would need to overcome a filibuster.”

CNN acknowledged the legislation “is not expected to amass the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.”

Reuters concurred, noting in its lead paragraph, “The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation banning assault-style rifles that have been used in mass shootings, sending it to the Senate where it faces likely defeat.”

Over at ABC News the forecast was just as negative: “While the bill cleared the House, it’s unlikely to advance in the Senate, where Democrats would need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome the filibuster.”

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms told Ammoland News with certainty, “It will not pass the Senate.”

However, he expects grassroots gun rights activists to especially focus their attention on Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

“I expect gun owners will contact all 100 of them (senators),” he said via email.

The likelihood of Senate passage being doubtful, Gottlieb does not anticipate any need to start planning for a legal action.

Indeed, with last month’s Supreme Court announcement that it has granted certiorari to a Maryland case challenging that state’s semi-auto ban—a case with CCRKBA and its sister organization, the Second Amendment Foundation leading the way—vacating the lower court’s decision to uphold the ban and remanding it back for further consideration based on doctrine set in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, it might be premature for the gun prohibition movement to start handing out party favors.

The House vote was a narrow victory for anti-gunners, with five Democrats voting against the measure. They were Representatives Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Kurt Schrader (D-Oregon), and Ron Kind (D-Wis.) Two Republicans jumped ship to vote with Democrats: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Chris Jacobs of New York.

The final tally on the otherwise party-line vote was 217-213.

Following the vote, major gun rights organizations issued bristling reactions. CCRKBA and SAF issued a joint statement:

“Passage today by the U.S. House of Representatives of a ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ is a slap in the face to tens of millions of law-abiding firearms owners, including the 24 million citizens who lawfully own such firearms and have harmed nobody.

“Supporters of this outrageous legislation have once again demonstrated their willingness to throw honest gun owners and their Second Amendment rights under the bus, rather than deal with the genuine problems of gang violence, lenient prosecutors and judges, and the weakening of our law enforcement agencies.

“Today, House Democrats literally voted to penalize law-abiding gun owners for crimes they did not commit, while blaming firearms rather than criminals and their enablers. It will do nothing to reduce or prevent crime, and will instead further erode the Second Amendment, which appears to be the ultimate goal of these gun control proponents.”

The National Rifle Association had this to say:

“Barely a month after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen, gun control advocates in Congress are spearheading an assault upon the freedoms and civil liberties of law-abiding Americans. The promises made in HR 1808 are nothing short of a lie based on willful ignorance of the disastrous 1994 Clinton Gun Ban, which failed to produce any significant drop in crime. With more than 24 million potentially-banned firearms in common use, these draconian restrictions fall in blatant opposition to the Supreme Court’s rulings in Bruen, Caetano v. Massachusetts, and DC v. Heller. Their refusal to recognize this reality places everyone at risk. Any legitimate attempt to address our nation’s surge in violent crime cannot commence until anti-gun legislators step away from the radicals who defund our police departments, support prosecutors who refuse to prosecute dangerous criminals, and promote no cash bail policies that have turned once proud communities into a playground of lawlessness and fear.”

And the National Shooting Sports Foundation was equally critical:

“NSSF^®, the firearm industry trade association, condemns the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of H.R. 1808, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022, as amended. The legislation ignores the Constitutional right, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, for law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms that are in common use. NSSF estimates that there are over 24.4 million Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) in circulation in America between 1990 and 2020.

“This legislation is as dangerous as it is revealing of the contempt for which the House Democrats hold for the Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Chairman Jerrold Nadler admitted during debate in his committee that he didn’t care the legislation was unconstitutional and defied Supreme Court precedent. Democratic representatives are not fulfilling the interest of ‘the People,’ instead representing special-interest gun control groups that seek to disarm law-abiding citizens and scapegoat them for crimes committed by others.”

“The MSR remains the most-popular selling centerfire semiautomatic rifle in the United States today. There are more MSRs in circulation today than there are Ford F-Series trucks on the road. The Supreme Court upheld that commonly-owned firearms are lawful for private ownership in both the Heller and Bruen rulings. Banning of an entire class of semiautomatic firearms can be viewed as nothing short of an outright infringement of Second Amendment rights – rights which belong to the people and not the government. This legislation, however, also includes some semiautomatic shotguns and handguns.

“This legislation does nothing to improve public safety, as it doesn’t address criminals acting without regard for law or innocent life. Instead, it will put the lives of those who obey the law at greater risk by denying them an entire class of firearms that are used for home defense.”

Now the question can legitimately be raised about whether this was an election year ploy. Democrats can go home to tell their constituents they tried, perhaps knowing the bill will not pass in the Senate. If that’s the case, it could backfire by bringing gun owners out of the political woodwork to vote vulnerable Democrats out of office, much like the rout of 1994 following the passage of the Clinton Crime Bill, which contained a 10-year ban on so-called “assault weapons.” That year, Democrats lost more than 50 seats, including that of then-House Speaker Tom Foley, a Spokane career politician who was photographed hunting waterfowl with the publisher of an outdoor newspaper.

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.