Rep. Mike Thompson’s bill requiring universal background checks on gun purchases wins House approval

Rep. Mike Thompson, the Democrat from St. Helena, ranked the House’s approval Wednesday of a bill mandating universal background checks for gun purchases as one of the top days in his 20 years on Capitol Hill.

“This is the first gun safety legislation to pass in a generation,” he said. “This is a huge step.”

The 240-190 vote is the first of two gun control measures expected to be put to House lawmakers this week, a turning point in gun legislation after 25 years when the National Rifle Association dominated the chamber. Last year’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, prompted a wave of ?student-led activism that pressed Democrats to unite around gun control, and the activists cheered when the measure cleared the 218-vote threshold for passage.

Wednesday’s victory culminated a six-year campaign by Thompson that began in 2013 in the wake of Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed 20 students and six adults.

“For six long years, we worked on this issue, and the previous majority would not even let us have a hearing, let alone a vote to expand background checks,” Thompson said. “Today is a new day, and the show of support on both sides of the aisle for this important legislation is humbling.”

The bill moves on to the Senate, where it faces more resistance than it met in the House that was tipped to Democrats in the November election.

Thompson, a hunter and Vietnam War veteran who is chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, said he’ll be meeting with a Democratic senator Thursday to plot strategy. He said public opinion is on their side.

If Senate Republicans kill a bill that House Democrats approved, it could be campaign fodder in 2020 as his party tries to win a majority in the upper house. “I bet it would be,” Thompson said.

Millions of people who worked hard to require background checks under federal law are now going to “turn their attention to the Senate,” he said.

Support for gun buyer background checks has averaged 93 percent in Quinnipiac University polls since 2013.

David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist, said the vote was a testament to Thompson’s perseverance.

“It’s a sea change even if the bill flounders in the Senate,” he said.

After the Sandy Hook mass shooting, Thompson and New York Republican Rep. Peter King introduced an expanded background checks bill that never came to a hearing in six years under Republican control of the House.

The Senate rejected background checks in 2013, with five Democrats joining 41 Republicans in denying the 60 votes needed for approval.

Thompson’s revised bill, making background checks mandatory for nearly all gun transactions, gained 232 co-sponsors, including five Republicans.

The White House this week said President Trump could veto the bill because it would impose unreasonable requirements on gun owners. But the simple fact is, Thompson said, background checks work.

“Every day, they stop 170 felons and 50 domestic abusers from getting a gun from a licensed dealer,” he said on the House floor prior to the vote. “But in some states, those same people can go into a gun show or go online and buy a gun without a background check.

“This bill will help stop them from doing so.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco commended Thompson for his effort, calling the measure “a long overdue commonsense action to end the epidemic of gun violence in America.”

A strong bipartisan vote would “send a clear message to the families of those who have lost their loved ones to gun violence,” she told lawmakers.

Every day, Pelosi said, 47 children and teenagers are killed by guns.

Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Georgia, described the loss of her son, Jordan Davis, 17, who was shot and killed in 2012. The bill “will ensure that mothers and fathers have one less reason to worry,” she said.

McBath ran on a gun control platform and defeated a Republican incumbent in November.

Republicans disparaged gun checks as an infringement on Second Amendment rights that would not prevent most mass shootings.

Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, said the approach “fails to make anyone safer in any regard. He called the bill “at best a side step and perhaps a step backwards.”

The measure “foolishly presumes criminals who flout existing laws will suddenly submit themselves to background checks,” Collins said.

Thompson dismissed the Republican success in passing an amendment that would require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be notified when a person in the country illegally attempts to buy a firearm. In a surprising move, 26 Democrats joined Republicans supporting it.

None of the GOP members who backed the amendment ended up voting for the overall bill, Thompson said, calling their move “clearly disingenuous.”

Thompson said local police should be notified when someone who should not have a gun, such as a convicted felon, tries to buy one. He said he is preparing a separate bill to make the idea law.

This article includes information from the New York Times and the Associated Press.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.