Jacob Sullum, Reason: The Dubious and Doomed 'Assault Weapon' Ban That the House Approved Today May Cost Democrats This Fall
The bill, which passed the House by a vote of 217 to 213, has no chance in the evenly divided Senate, where support from at least 10 Republicans would be required to overcome a filibuster. House approval of H.R. 1808 is therefore a symbolic act aimed at energizing Democrats and encouraging them to vote in this fall's elections. But several House Democrats, whose objections nearly derailed today's vote, worried that it would hurt their party's candidates more than it would help them. In the end, five Democrats joined all but two Republicans in voting against the bill.
The fear that today's gesture could alienate more voters than it attracts seems rational given what happened after Congress approved similar legislation in 1994: Democrats lost control of the House and Senate. Polling data provide further reason to think that the House vote to revive the ban, which expired in 2004, could be politically perilous.
"There was uncertainty that an assault weapons ban has the votes in a chamber where Democrats have only a razor-thin four-member majority," The Washington Post noted on Wednesday. "Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), who recently lost his primary bid to a liberal Democrat, has publicly said he would vote against the ban. Other front-line members representing rural districts also expressed hesitancy in backing it."
Schrader argued that approving H.R. 1808 would cost Democrats in November. "This is a bill that destroyed the Democrats in '94," he told Politico earlier this month. "Do we really have a death wish list as Democrats?"
Vic Fazio, a former chair of the House Democratic Caucus who represented two California districts from 1979 to 1999, agrees with Schrader's take on what happened in 1994. By folding the "assault weapon" ban into the 1994 crime bill, Fazio told The Daily Beast in 2019, "we put a lot of folks on the line…In really strong gun states, it was seen as poison."
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