WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats pushing for gun curbs after the latest mass shooting in the United States are co-opting a Republican mantra to build public support and defang opposition: it’s time to get tough on national security.
Shoring up national security has long been a pillar of Republican orthodoxy, as has staunch opposition to gun control.
But the massacre of 49 people in Orlando, Florida, last Sunday, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, by a gunman who pledged loyalty to Islamist militants may be leaving Republicans on shakier ground.
With national security driving the debate, Democrats see a more powerful argument than simply advocating the need to curb gun violence in a country of 320 million that has more than 310 million weapons.
Although the Orlando gunman, Omar Mateen, is believed to have had no help from extremist Islamist groups in targeting a gay nightclub, he had been investigated by US authorities for possible links to terrorism and subsequently cleared.
That prompted Democrats to clamor for legislation to expand background checks and prevent people on US terrorism watch lists from buying guns. Votes on four measures were scheduled Monday in the US Senate, two sponsored by Democrats and two by Republicans. Many Republicans, and some Democrats, oppose strict gun curbs partly on constitutional grounds.
“Every senator is now going to have to say, whether they’re for terrorists getting guns or against terrorists getting guns,” Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer told reporters on Thursday.
“The terrorists that we need to fear are not on the streets of Aleppo, or Mosul or Fallujah. They’re on the streets of the United States and they will have guns unless we pass tough laws,” added Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.
President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson all took the tack this week that gun measures were a safeguard against terrorism.
Republicans have long criticized Obama for not being tough enough on national security and doing more in the fight against Islamic State.
The Orlando massacre and the San Bernardino, California shooting in December by a couple inspired by Islamic State captured the attention of the American public in a way previous mass shootings have not, said Tom Diaz, a former member of the National Rifle Association gun rights lobby who now backs gun control.
“They’ve changed the dynamic of this whole issue,” said Diaz, an author and expert on terrorism and the gun industry.
That shift in sentiment has heartened the families of the 20 elementary school children and six staff members killed in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, who championed the last big, and ultimately unsuccessful push, on gun control.
About 71 percent of Americans, including eight out of 10 Democrats and nearly six out of 10 Republicans, favor at least moderate regulations and restrictions on guns, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from Monday to Thursday. That was up from 60 per cent in late 2013 and late 2014.
