Obama's New Gun-Control Strategy: Petitions

Organizing for Action is planning on delivering petitions to Congress next week demanding that gun legislation be brought up again.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yanked his bill after the failure of amendments dampened its chances of passing.

“Two weeks ago, 45 senators sided with the gun lobby and voted to block the expansion of background checks for gun sales. Every single one of those senators expects the issue to fade away — that, over time, we’ll all forget,” President Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, wrote in an email to supporters. “We won’t, and next week, OFA will hand congressional leaders physical proof of it: the names of hundreds of thousands of people who aren’t backing down.”

The email redirected to a petition form on the OFA site:

To: Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker John Boehner, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

The vast majority of Americans from all corners of the country are united in support of expanded background checks for gun sales. I’m calling on you to listen to the American people and act to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It will make our communities and schools safer. Please take action to expand background checks today.

“I’ve spent enough time in Washington to know that the way you win a fight like this, faced with some of the most powerful special interests, is just to refuse to give up,” Messina added.

When asked at this week’s press conference if his second-term agenda, including gun control, had lost juice, Obama wryly quipped, “Maybe I should just pack up and go home. Golly.”

“Republicans control the House of Representatives. In the Senate, this habit of requiring 60 votes for even the most modest piece of legislation has gummed up the works there,” he said. “And I think it comes to no surprise, not even to the American people, but even members of Congress themselves that right now things are pretty dysfunctional up on Capitol Hill.”