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also approved laws to ban bump stocks, the rapid-fire devices that a gunman used as he shot hundreds of people at the music festival in Las Vegas, including 58 who were killed.
But often, the debate over public safety and the reach of the Second Amendment played out in statehouses with familiar results.
In Colorado, a state rocked by the 1999 Columbine High School and 2012 Aurora theater mass shootings, lawmakers in the divided Legislature refused to compromise.
The Democratic-controlled House passed bills to ban bump stocks and enact a red
flag law that had the support of many police officers and prosecutors. But the Republi- can-controlled Senate quickly assigned those to a “kill” committee and defeated them.
“To me, the Second Amendment and individual rights demand the highest respect. That’s the basis of where I come from,” said Republican Sen. Tim Neville, a member of the committee and one of the capitol’s most ardent gun rights activists.
The Colorado House returned the favor by rejecting Republican plans to allow con- cealed guns on school grounds and repeal the state ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines, a law passed after the Aurora shooting.
Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed
by James Holmes as he celebrated his 27th birthday in the Aurora theater, said he is encouraged that the state has maintained
the post-Aurora ammunition limits and is calling for further gun control as he runs for
a Colorado state House seat. Sullivan sees long-term promise in gun-control efforts by Parkland students and survivors of other mass shootings.
“It’s like any major change. It can take 20, 30, 40 years,” Sullivan said. “I tell the Parkland kids that this is the natural progression of things.”
In North Carolina, where Republicans hold majorities in the legislature, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper asked lawmakers a few weeks after the Florida school shooting to pass new gun regulations, including more background checks and permit requirements.
But Republicans never took up gun-related proposals from him or legislative Democrats, whose efforts to force floor debate on them failed.
“We are really missing an opportunity for something serious for school safety,” said Democratic Rep. Pricey Harrison.
Republicans instead approved money to hire more campus police officers, school nurs-
es, psychologists and social workers, as well as to create a statewide phone app for students to report tips to deter school violence.
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Democratic-controlled legislatures in states with already strict gun control laws, such as Illinois and New Jersey, made them tighter in the wake of the tragedies.
New Jersey expanded background check requirements to nearly all private sales and transfers of firearms and put into a law a strict definition requiring a “justifiable need to carry a handgun” for citizens to qualify for a permit. The Illinois Legislature extended an existing three-day waiting period to buy
a handgun to rifles and other firearms, a measure signed by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Advocates for stricter gun laws pointed to the changes in Florida and Vermont, the new red flag laws, the bump stock bans and laws meant to disarm accused domestic abusers as major victories in 2018. They say many of the laws passed with bipartisan support and could mark the beginning of a slow turn in their favor.
“We’ve got a lot more work to do, but I do think we’re seeing progress and the pace of progress is increasing,” said Robyn Thomas, executive director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, who said at least 55 bills backed by her group became law.
One policy change many thought would be non-controversial turned out to be a hard- er sell: banning bump stocks.
Lobbying by gun rights activists succeed- ed in blocking many states from enacting proposed bans, which they had feared would quickly spread nationwide after the Las Vegas shooting. Congress hasn’t acted on them, either.
Hammond, the lawyer for Gun Owners of America, said that after early defeats his group also is beginning to succeed in thwarting
red flag bills. He argues that they can allow authorities to unfairly seize guns from owners who are not dangerous.
In Texas, for example, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott had said the state should consider adopting some type of red flag bill. Supporters of the legislation were hoping for a breakthrough in the most populous of the GOP-dominated states, which has seen mass shootings at a high school and a church over the past year.
Instead, the Legislature’s Republican leaders have already declared Abbott’s idea dead, and the governor has backed away from it.
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Vermont was a rare case of a Republican governor signing into law far-reaching gun control measures passed by a Democratic legislature.
The action by Gov. Phil Scott was out of step with his previous position on guns and angered his political base. The Vermont law is similar to Florida’s but also requires back- ground checks on most private firearms sales and bans high-capacity magazines.
Scott told a reporter the day after the Park- land shooting that he thought Vermont’s loose gun laws were adequate. But later the same day, he learned of what police called a near- miss high school shooting in a town along
the state’s border with New York. Police have said a former student threatened to shoot up the school, hoping for more dead than the 32 killed during the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.
The next day, a visibly shaken Scott, a life-long gun-owner and hunter, called on lawmakers to consider “gun safety” legislation. The resulting restrictions were the first signifi- cant gun ownership limits in Vermont history and came after weeks of intense debate.
Ohio’s Republican governor never got the same chance as Scott.
A coalition of groups representing stu- dents, teachers, school counselors, police chiefs, pediatricians and Catholic clergy joined in a letter to state legislative leaders urging them to pass the changes recom- mended by Kasich’s panel.
State Rep. Nickie Antonio, a Cleveland-ar- ea Democrat, said she could have told the governor it would fail. She said Republican lawmakers sound to her “like automatons” when the topic of gun control arises.
“They go to these automatic catchphrases that come right out of a pamphlet from ei- ther Buckeye Firearms or the NRA,” she said. “That’s what I think it’s about. I do believe it’s a case of follow the money.”
To express his frustration, Kasich refused to sign the next gun bill that crossed his desk, which waived certain concealed carry license fees and training requirements for current and former military members. It became law without his signature.
Asked months later about the defeat of his legislation, the governor said gun-control groups are simply not as unified as the pro- gun lobby.
“And so you,” he said, “you have disparate groups going against a force that totally knows what it wants.”
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