You might title retitle this story from The Hill “The NRA Wins Again”:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday declined to voice support for Democratic legislation that would ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.
Reid said he would bring gun-violence legislation to the floor and open it to a lengthy amendment process. But he declined to endorse the assault weapons ban introduced last week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), which has the support of the 2nd- and 3rd-ranking Senate Democratic leaders.
“She’s talked to me about her assault weapons. The new one. She believes in it fervently and I admire her for that. I’ll take a look at that,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’re going to have votes on all kinds of issues dealing with guns, and I think everyone would be well advised to read the legislation before they determine how they’re going to vote [on] it.”
Feinstein’s bill would ban the sale and manufacture of more than 150 types of semi-automatic weapons, including handguns with fixed magazines capable of holding more than 10 bullets.
Republicans have raised doubts that Reid will even bring gun-control legislation to the Senate floor. Reid helped defeat an effort five years ago to renew the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.
Reid dispelled the GOP speculation.
He said he has told his colleagues he will do everything in his power to “bring legislation dealing with guns and violence, generally, to the floor.”
You can place your bets now in Vegas on this one: there will be no assault weapons ban.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.