Manchin opposes House gun safety bills, underscoring Democratic divide over gun control

[Celerity]

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/23/politics/manchin-house-gun-bills-democrats/index.html

(CNN)Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, said Tuesday that he does not support the two gun safety bills the House passed earlier this month and instead is still pushing to pass the more narrow Manchin-Toomey compromise bill that he developed with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey -- but failed to pass -- after the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting.

"No, I don't support what the House passed," Manchin told CNN as he left the Senate floor. "Not at all."

Manchin's opposition underscores a major divide among Democrats over how to tackle gun control -- a key priority for their voters -- even as the party now controls Congress and the White House and faces intense pressure to take action in the wake of a massacre at a Colorado supermarket that left 10 dead, including a store manager and a police officer.

The chances the Senate could pass any gun legislation remain highly unlikely given that would require significant Republican support to overcome a filibuster. But Manchin's stance shows that Democratic leaders would not even be able to count on votes from their entire caucus for gun legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled House, making any effort to pass the bills even more challenging and divisive for their party.

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[badhair77]

1. Lots of blood on those hands.

[dflprincess]

2. Rachel took him to task tonight

And showed a clip of his crocodile tears when he met with some of the Sandy Hook parents.

[onecaliberal]

3. She fried him rightly so. This fucking madness has to stop.

These fringe people in the senate are going against the support of 90% of the population. Who are they to say we have to deal with worrying about going everywhere and being killed by one of these psycho assholes with a gun.

[crickets]

4. Screw Manchin. I am so sick of this man.

I long for a successful push to elect more Senators in 2022 so that the votes no longer balance on a razor's edge, and Manchin's contrary opinions can be shoved right back into his pie hole.

[Carlitos Brigante]

5. Could someone just bribe this dickbag already??! nt

[qazplm135]

6. I mean let's be honest

If he voted for the house bill, he'd be out of congress after the next election.

[SharonClark]

7. There is no Democratic divide on gun control.

The vast majority of Americans support the Democratic position. It’s the horrid people in the Senate who deny what the people want.

[Ilsa]

8. Rachel Maddow raked him over the coals tonight.

A Block segment. I doubt he'll ever do her show again.

[Maraya1969]

9. What would happen if someone primaried him? I loathe to think he has so much

power - the little slug.

[CrackityJones75]

10. We would lose the seat and

We would lose the seat and finally move on from him. We need to start looking to gaining seats elsewhere so that he isn’t such a pain anymore.

[tritsofme]

11. Biden got less than 30% of the vote in WV.

Democrats have no credible threat to bear. We just need to elect more Democrats.

[Hoyt]

12. Better that McConnell is a MINORITY leader, but it Manchin is growing old.

[gratuitous]

13. By golly you're right Sen. Manchin

Have we really tried doing nothing to see if anything changes? Granted, we've been doing nothing for a long time, and these massacres keep happening, but how can we be sure if that's due to all the nothing we've been doing, or if there's another reason? Let's not be hasty, is all I'm saying. It's not like anyone has die--er, I mean, thoughtsandprayers.

[doc03]

14. Gun laws have zero chance of passing without Manchin so I would suggest

dropping the idea before we lose both the House and Senate.

[SunImp]

15. Even if they do pass RWNJ Sheriffs and law enforcement officials will furiously oppose it

[BGBD]

16. Manchin isn't going to move

on a bill that includes a ban on weapons.

However, he introduced a bill banning things like hi caps a few years ago. That's where there is room to talk.

But make no mistake. WV loves guns and if Manchin voted for a ban he'd lose and he's not the only one.

I expect we'd lose in places like PA, WI, MI, and NC as well.

We talk about how terrible it is that rural areas give republicans so much more power than they deserve while also going out of our wayt o make sure that we can't compete in rural areas. We go as far as to skewer those in our party that we should be using as the model for competing in these areas. We whine about how unfair the system is instead of cultivating a strategy to win in the system that we have.

[Celerity]

17. I refuse to accept that we are forced into a national suicide pact. The vast

majority of Americans support the House bill. Fuck gun humpers, and also Manchin isn't even up for re-election for almost 4 years, and will quite likely lose anyway, or certainly has FAR from certain odds of winning. Why the hell should we destroy vast parts of our chances to do things over the next 2 years whilst we have control of all 3 entities? All for a pig in a poke long down the road.

Fuck holding the nation hostage to fucked up West Virginia MAGAt values. If Manchin ends up blocking those big 3 voters right bills, and the SCOTUS guts current voters rights law (likely), plus a large amount of those hundreds of voter suppression bills in 43 states get passed, plus partisan RW gerrymandering post 2020 census occurs (it wil,l as we did fuckall at state assembly level in 2020, we won zero state Houses or Senates back, and lost both chambers in NH, which now is another Rethug trifecta state, one of 23, with AK basically one as well, for the 24th), then we are well fucked as a Party more than likely for multiple elections to come.

2022 would likely be a shitshow more than it already may be (see 1994 and 2010, the last two first midterms for a Dem POTUS), and we so damage our POTUS chances in 2024. People forget that if you just flipped 22,000 D votes to R votes in 3 states then Trump would still be POTUS. Imagine we lose both the House (likely) and the Senate in 2022, then lose the POTUS in 2024, all after we fail to enact those 3 voter bills. If Manchin is indeed the architect/principal force behind those bills not being passed (plus other vital bills like gun control, etc etc) and my far-from-longshot scenarios play out, Manchin will go down as the most hated Democratic Senator since Dixiecrat days.