“Maybe it’s a personal responsibility not to shoot people with guns,” said Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, “and maybe people who don’t live up to that responsibility should go to jail for a very, very long time — like forever.” .”
Aside from the elective office, some Republicans seemed to have had enough. Bill Frist, a former Tennessee senator who was majority leader from 2003 to 2007, wrote on Twitter“I can’t imagine this being what the Founding Fathers hoped or intended. We can find ways to preserve the intent of the Second Amendment while protecting the lives of our children.”
Such sentiments were hard to find among elected Republicans.
Mr. Schumer framed his call for negotiations as strategic. A quick vote on legislation passed by the House to bolster background checks would almost certainly be filibuster. Republicans would complain about wasting time with political show votes. Democrats would reprimand Republicans for their opposition. Nothing would be accomplished and the Senate would move on.
Negotiations could at least keep arms security a hot topic for a while.
“When things like this happen, I think it raises sensitivities to the bigger picture — I won’t say greater good, but the greater collective response,” said West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of the Uvalde bloodshed. “I think we’re probably all struggling with that right now.”
But it was not clear that much had changed. Mr. Manchin indicated he would not drop his opposition to changing Senate filibuster rules, which would allow Democrats to push gun control laws over the united Republican opposition. He insisted that with goodwill a broad compromise could be reached and that no such step would be necessary.
“If we can’t get 70 or 75 senators who don’t vote to protect your children and grandchildren with sanity, then what the hell are we for?” asked Mr. Manchin. “What is your goal to be in the United States Senate? If not at least to protect the children?”
The first start of the conversations has begun. Mr. Murphy contacted Mr. Toomey and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, two of the four Republicans who voted for the bipartisan background check co-sponsored by Mr. Manchin in 2013.