PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
Where the 2016 Democratic candidates stand on gun laws :: 11/14/2015
After the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama and Democrats in Congress launched a concerted effort to strengthen gun control laws. The centerpiece of their legislative agenda was a proposal that would have closed loopholes in the background check system for purchases online and at gun shows, but other measures - like limiting the size of ammunition magazines and banning military-style semiautomatic assault rifles - were offered as well.
The proposals went nowhere. Those that came up for a vote in the Senate were killed, and none were even considered in the House.
Apart from a few executive actions taken by the president, the state of America's gun laws today is scarcely different than it was three years ago, despite a daily parade of gun deaths and a number of mass shootings in the intervening time. The three Democratic presidential candidates have put forth proposals to reduce gun violence.
They've tussled with each other over their past records on guns, and they've each offered competing plans to change gun laws. Some have vowed to renew the push for stronger background checks, a ban on assault rifles, and other legislative remedies. Mindful of GOP opposition, they have also considered the use of robust executive action to curb gun violence.
Here's a look at what the three candidates - Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley - have proposed.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton's approach would rely on a combination of legislative and executive action. She's said that she would renew the push for legislation strengthening background checks of the sort that was voted down in the Senate in 2013. Her website labels that outcome "reprehensible," and promises, "Hillary is not giving up."
If Congress won't act, Clinton has added, she will act on her own to close the loopholes in the background check system that allow people to buy guns online or at gun shows without undergoing any scrutiny. She's also said she will close the "Charleston loophole," named after the deadly shooting at a black church in Charleston earlier this year, which allows a gun sale to proceed without a background check if it takes more than three days to finish the check.
She's vowed to overturn a 2005 law that absolved gun manufacturers of any legal liability when someone uses their products during the commission of a crime. She's used the issue to take a shot at Sanders, who voted in favor of the 2005 law.
"It wasn't that complicated to me," Clinton said during the first Democratic debate after Sanders said the law was "large and complicated." "It was pretty straightforward to me that he was going to give immunity to the only industry in America. Everybody else has to be accountable, but not the gun manufacturers. And we need to stand up and say, 'Enough of that. We're not going to let it continue.'"
To crack down on illegal gun trafficking and straw purchases, Clinton has said she will increase funding for inspections of gun dealers and revoke the licenses of dealers that repeatedly violate the law. She's also said she will make straw purchases - in which someone buys a gun on behalf of an individual who would not be allowed to purchase it himself - a federal crime.
She would support new legislation to expand the ban on gun sales to domestic abusers in certain instances. And to prevent the mentally ill from acquiring guns, she would push the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to "finalize its rulemaking to close loopholes in our laws and clarify that people involuntarily committed to outpatient treatment...are prohibited from buying guns."
Finally, Clinton would support the reinstatement of the ban on military-style semiautomatic assault weapons - a bill that was originally signed into law in 1994 by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and lapsed in 2004.
Bernie Sanders
Sanders has a mixed record on gun control, and he's explained his moderation on the issue by pointing out that Vermont is a rural state with a long tradition of hunting and firearm ownership. While he's taken some heat from his fellow Democrats for some of his prior votes - like his vote against the 1993 Brady Bill, which established the national background check system, and his support for the 2005 bill that granted legal immunity to gun manufacturers - he has offered his own plan to reduce gun violence. And he's pitched his moderate approach to the issue as the best way to corral the American public behind a solution.
"Some people want to ban every gun in America and some people believe in nothing at all," Sanders said last month. "I think the vast majority of the American people, as the president indicated, including gun owners -- and I know that's true here in Vermont -- want sensible gun control legislation and they also believe that we should have more access to mental health facilities and counselors than we presently do."
Like Clinton, Sanders supports closing the gun show and online sale loopholes in the background check system. He also supports banning semiautomatic assault rifles - he voted for the original measure in 1994 and has argued it should be reinstated - and he has supported measures to limit the size of ammunition magazines.
Despite the criticism, Sanders has not disavowed his vote on the 2005 bill that granted immunity to gun manufacturers, but he's said he's open to adjustments that clarify its intent.
"Here's the reason I voted the way I voted: If you are a gun shop owner in Vermont and you sell somebody a gun and that person flips out and then kills somebody, I don't think it's really fair to hold that person responsible, the gun shop owner," he told NBC News last month. "On the other hand, where...there is evidence that manufacturers, gun manufacturers, do know that they're selling a whole lot of guns in an area that really should not be buying that many guns. That many of those guns are going to other areas, probably for criminal purposes. So can we take another look at that liability issue? Yes."
Martin O'Malley
Many of the legislative measures Martin O'Malley has offered to reduce gun violence are similar to Clinton's proposals, but he has also detailed a number of executive actions he would take in addition to pushing Congress to act.
Like Clinton, he would close loopholes in the background check system that allow people to purchase guns online or at gun shows without scrutiny. He would close the "Charleston loophole" that allows a gun sale to proceed if the background check takes more than three days. And he would push states to be more assiduous in sharing information about people who are prohibited from obtaining guns.
He would push to repeal the 2005 law that granted immunity to gun manufacturers, and he supports the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. He also supports raising the minimum age for gun ownership to 21 years. And like Clinton, he would push to ban unmarried domestic abusers and convicted stalkers from purchasing a gun.
To crack down on gun trafficking, O'Malley would increase ATF funding to empower the government to inspect gun dealers more frequently revoke the licenses of dealers that violate the law. He would also increase federal penalties for gun trafficking.
One of O'Malley's more ambitious proposals involves the creation of a national firearms registry, which is actually explicitly banned under current law, to make it easier to trace guns involved in crimes back through their chain of ownership. Conservatives and Second Amendment advocates have vehemently opposed the creation of such a system, because they fear it would be a step toward federal confiscation of firearms.
Under O'Malley's proposed executive actions, gun manufacturers seeking federal contracts would be required to make their products safer through design changes, such as assigning hidden serial numbers to firearms that can't be defaced. O'Malley would also ban the manufacture and sale of so-called "cop-killer" ammunition, which is coated and more effectively penetrates hard surfaces.
In order to track those who attempt to buy firearms but don't pass required background checks, O'Malley will also propose creating an electronic alert system which informs local law enforcement agencies of failed sales. The system would then identify individuals who should be prosecuted further.
So what's the problem?
As the failed push for gun control in the wake of Newtown and the absence of any action in the wake of Charleston attests, getting new gun control measures through Congress is extraordinarily difficult.
The Republican Party, with the support of the powerful National Rifle Association, is almost unanimously opposed to anything that smacks of gun control - GOP candidates have instead emphasized the need expand mental health services in the U.S. to prevent unstable people from obtaining firearms. Where restricting gun ownership is concerned, they don't believe we need new laws, they argue we simply need to enforce the laws that are already on the books.
To the extent that the Democrats' solutions to curb gun violence require legislative action, they should be pressed on how they are going to achieve that. If dead schoolchildren and dead churchgoers did not impel Congress to act, gun control advocates have wondered, what will? What makes these Democrats think the political landscape will be any friendlier to a push for gun control in 2017 than it was in 2013?
And in the case of proposed executive actions, like Clinton's proposal to unilaterally close loopholes in the background check system or O'Malley's proposal to force design changes on gun manufacturers, candidates must be pressed on whether the actions will stand up to judicial scrutiny.
Republicans are already up in arms over Mr. Obama's unilateral moves on immigration, the environment, and other issues, arguing that they've contributed to a lack of trust that makes legislative cooperation unlikely. Is it possible that a Democratic president taking executive action on gun control could poison the political environment and make it even more difficult to force a bill through Congress?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-the-2016-democratic-candidates-stand-on-gun-laws/
