In the U.S. Senate today, gun control measures failed to get enough votes to advance. Alaska’s U.S. senators voted with their fellow Republicans, saying the two Democratic proposals would have infringed on Second Amendment rights.
Sen. Dan Sullivan says the limits focus on the wrong problem.
“What we’re talking about in terms of Orlando or San Bernardino, it’s not a gun control issue. It’s a terrorism issue,” he said. “And the one thing that would have prevented those mass murders — which is what they were, and they’re horrible, and everybody knows that. The one thing that would have prevented that is not having the rise of ISIS.”
One of the amendments would have denied gun purchases if the attorney general has a reasonable belief the buyer was likely to engage in terrorism.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski says that would have denied thousands of Americans the right to buy guns, some because they were wrongly put on a terror watch list.
The defined group was “way too broad,” Murkowski said. “And the potential for false positives, in my mind, is just extraordinarily high.”
Another measure that failed would have closed the so-called “gun show” loophole by requiring every buyer to undergo a background check. Murkowski and Sullivan say the measure would have had imposed unreasonable limitations on Alaskans.
Democrats called the amendments small steps to help keep firearms out of dangerous hands.
A Republican amendment aimed at keeping terrorists from buying guns also failed to get enough votes to advance. It would have allowed federal authorities to block the sale of a gun to a person on the terrorism watch list for three days while they investigated. Democrats claim the short period made the provision meaningless. Alaska’s senators, like nearly all Republicans, voted for it, saying it allowed due process for suspects.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
