Democratic presidential candidates to tackle gun violence as impeachment talk looms large

[October 02, 2019]  By Joseph Ax

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Ten of the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination will gather in Las Vegas on Wednesday for an all-day forum on gun violence, tackling an issue that has increasingly become a chief concern for their party's voters.

But the specter of the impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine could overshadow policy debates on the campaign trail, while threatening to imperil negotiations between the White House and senators on legislation to expand background checks for firearm purchases.

All of the Democratic candidates who qualified for last month's debate – including former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the trio setting the pace for the 19-person field – will answer questions for half an hour at the event, co-sponsored by the gun safety advocacy group Giffords and March For Our Lives, a student-led organization.

The forum is being held one day after the second anniversary of the Las Vegas massacre that killed 58 people, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

A spate of mass shootings this summer in Texas, Ohio and California, along with the everyday deaths that have made the United States an outlier among developed nations, have prompted candidates seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination to embrace gun restrictions, a position once seen as politically untenable.

But in Washington, the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate has shown little appetite for new limits for fear of angering the gun lobby. Trump, whose election campaign in 2016 was bolstered by millions of dollars from the National Rifle Association, has offered mixed signals.

The focus in Washington has been on policies that enjoy overwhelming support among Americans, including background checks and "red flag" laws that allow courts to confiscate weapons from individuals deemed to be dangerous.

Many of the Democratic candidates for the White House have gone further. Former U.S. Congressman Beto O'Rourke has called for mandatory buybacks of assault-style weapons, while Warren and U.S. Senator Cory Booker have advocated for licensing requirements.

Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, who has been one of his party's leading voices on gun safety since 20 schoolchildren were massacred in 2012 in his home state of Connecticut, is one of three senators, along with Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Pat Toomey, who have been negotiating with the White House on background checks. In an interview, he conceded the impeachment inquiry could prove an obstacle.

People look at a Remembrance Wall at the Las Vegas Healing Garden during the one-year anniversary of the October 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. October 1, 2018. REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo

"Clearly the White House is consumed by this growing crisis, and so I'm not surprised I haven't heard from the White House on background checks for a few weeks," he said.

But Murphy said Trump may be more inclined to support legislation to demonstrate that the impeachment investigation is not "the functional end of his presidency."

Murphy said a senior administration official called him after the House of Representatives decided to open an impeachment inquiry and told him the White House remains interested in finding a compromise on background checks, despite the lack of progress in recent weeks.

Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, noted the House has continued to hold hearings on gun safety even amid the growing impeachment probe.

"Congress should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time," he said.

And asked about the worry that impeachment will suck all the oxygen out of the Democratic primary campaign over the coming weeks and month, Ambler said: “I think that’s up to the candidates. I think what the voters want to hear from the candidates is obviously not ignoring impeachment, but not being obsessed with it.”

At a remembrance event in Las Vegas on Tuesday, however, several residents said they feared impeachment would stand in the way of progress on gun violence.

"I'm very concerned," said Wendy Starkweather, 70, clad in a red "Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America" T-shirt. "We had a lot of momentum going. It's going to be hard for any issue."

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Leslie Adler)

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