Scott Powers
Florida’s U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, an Orlando resident, is trying again to get a gun bill going, this time with a measure for which he’s putting together some bipartisan support.
The newest measure, announced this afternoon at a press conference in Washington, D.C., would again seek to create a no-fly, no-buy exclusion to prevent people on federal no-fly lists from buying guns. Such a measure was included in bills the Senate rejected Monday.
It also includes Nelson’s initiative to require gun shops to report any gun sales to individuals who have been on federal watch lists within the past five years. That could have alerted the FBI that Omar Mateen bought guns just days before he used them to kill 49 people and wound 53.
The new bill will include four Republican co-sponsors, four Democrats and one independent. They are Democrats Nelson and Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Tim Kaine of Virginia; Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine.
The effort comes the day after the Senate rejected four different proposals, two from Democrats and two from Republicans, seeking various ways to tighten the ability of someone like Mateen to buy guns. The bills each went down with largely partisan splits in voting.
Nelson said he cannot give up.
“I owe it to the people of Orlando to try to get something done. I owe it not only to those families of [the] 49, but I owe it to those families of people still in the hospital, some of which may not make it. I owe it to those law enforcement officers that stormed that nightclub, and one of which I met has a scar, one-inch-long on his forehead that his Kevlar helmet stopped that bullet,” Nelson said at the press conference.
“And I owe it to those surgeons in the trauma center, and of course you’ve see the bloody shoes of one of those surgeons. I owe it to people who have come up to me as I have been on South Orange Avenue in the heat of summer and have just been engulfed in tears as they hugged and said: ‘Please do something,'” he added.
