9/7/19
How Congress Passed an Assault Weapons Ban in 1994
Breaking Newstags: Congress, gun control, mass shootings, Congressional history, legislative history
President Bill Clinton had just been ambushed by his own party. It was August 1994 and a coalition of House Democrats wary of any new gun restrictions joined Republicans to unexpectedly sink the administration’s big crime bill on a procedural vote that was usually a test of party loyalty.
Afterward, Speaker Thomas S. Foley and his top lieutenants, all Democrats, trooped down to the White House with a message for a shocked president who was already struggling on his signature health care proposal: Drop a divisive ban on assault weapons or the crime bill won’t pass.
“To his credit, Clinton said, ‘No, we are not going to do that,’” recalled Rahm Emanuel, who was then a senior policy adviser to the president and was at the Green Room get-together with Mr. Clinton and House leaders. “That’s when we decided to go to the Republicans. At the time, it was novel to try to work with the Republicans.”
With Congress prepared to again clash over gun safety, in the aftermath of a murderous August, the circuitous route to passage taken by the assault weapons ban 25 years ago illustrates just how perfectly the legislative stars must align for contentious gun measures to become law. It also shows what such an effort entails — true bipartisanship, a committed White House, a readiness on all sides to compromise and a willingness by some lawmakers to take a significant political risk.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- A girl named Greta and the seriously sexist history of Time’s Person of the Year
- Poll: Majority of Democrats think Obama was better president than Washington
- Civil War Soldiers Used Hair Dye to Make Themselves Look Better in Pictures, Archaeologists Discover
- Monumental statue of black man defies Confederate monuments
- From Consensus To Deadlock: Is Impeachment Still A Check On Presidents?
- Black Scholars Respond to Dr. Lorgia García Peña Tenure Denial at Harvard
- Historians Kirsten Weld and Erik Baker Interviewed About Harvard Graduate Worker Strike in Chronicle of Higher Education
- Kate Shaw: Andrew Johnson Was Impeached for Being a Racist Demagogue
- Bullets That Killed John F. Kennedy Immortalized as Digital Replicas by Smithsonian
- 37 books for history lovers: 11 Historians Select Their Favorite Books of 2019