A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 , 2019
BY SEUNG MIN KIM,
PAUL KANE
AND JOSH DAWSEYA leaked document outlining
one Trump administration pro-
posal to expand background
checks on firearms sales p rompted
an uproar from the right on
Wednesday — underscoring the
significant challenges the White
House will face on any additional
gun restrictions it tries to advance
in Congress.
The National Rifle Association,
weakened but still influential
among conservatives, immedi-
ately dismissed the plan drafted by
the Justice Department as a non-
starter. A White H ouse s pokesman
denied that the document was a
White House product — even
th ough its top legislative official
was briefing GOP senators on the
plan’s d etails.
Many Republicans who re-
viewed the specifics of the back-
ground checks measure remained
lukewarm about it, and a handful
of GOP senators who had been
directly briefed by Attorney Gen-
eral William P. Barr on the plan
acknowledged that the proposal
was i ncomplete — at best.
“I don’t know who leaked it,”
said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Te x.),
who discussed the proposal with
Barr on Tuesday. “But obviously
that wasn’t t he idea.”
For weeks, P resident Trump has
publicly vowed to advance a pack-
age of ideas t o reduce gun violence,
as mass shootings in Te xas and
Ohio galvanized public support
for new restrictions and pressure
mounted on Capitol Hill to pass
substantive legislation addressing
the i ssue.
The administration — led by
Barr and Eric Ueland, the White
House’s director of legislative af-
fairs — began circulating a one-
page document on Capitol Hill this
week, outlining a new require-
ment for background checks on all
advertised commercial g un sales.
The plan was first reported by
the Daily Caller, a conservative
news website.
After the plan became public,
the White House immediately dis-
tanced itself. Trump, who has waf-
fled publicly and in private on
various firearms restrictions, has
not endorsed any one proposal, a
White House s pokesman said.
“That is not a White House doc-
ument,” said the spokesman,
Hogan Gidley, r eferring to t he Jus-
tice Department plan. “A ny sug-
gestion to [the] contrary is com-
pletely false.”
Barr, who returned to Capitol
Hill on Wednesday to continue
briefing senators on the proposal,
said in brief remarks to reporters
that he was “just kicking around
some ideas” i n his meetings this
week. He declined to get into spe-
cifics, saying simply: “There are a
number of proposals being consid-
ered.”
But the plan drew immediate
opposition from the NRA, where
officials were privately unhappy
Wednesday after they reviewed
the memo and expressed concern
about the White House’s handling
of the talks, according to one top
NRA executive who was not au-
thorized to speak publicly.
That concern was quickly re-
layed to allies on Capitol Hill, ac-
cording to the executive, who said
the outline “reads like a pathway
to gun registration and confirms
their worst f ears.”“This missive is a non-starter
with the NRA and our 5 million
members because it burdens law-
abiding gun owners while ignor-
ing what actually matters: fixing
the broken mental health system
and the prosecution of violent
criminals,” s aid Jason Ouimet, ex-
ecutive director of the NRA’s Insti-
tute for Legislative Action.
Even before details began to
emerge this week, congressional
Republicans had been struggling
to unite behind a firearms plan,
particularly with little direction
from the mercurial Trump when i t
came to what kind of gun mea-
sures he would endorse. One sen-
ior White House official said pub-
lic rollout of a guns package was
unlikely this week because of dis-
sension within the administra-
tion.
Although it was drafted with
some White House input, the
background checks proposal sur-
prised key White House officials
including acting chief of staff Mick
Mulvaney, who was traveling withthe president on the West Coast
and not involved in writing the
memo, said a senior administra-
tion official.
Trump’s conservatives allies
have told him that he would never
get credit for t oughening gun laws
no matter what he does, and that
endorsing additional gun restric-
tions would only depress enthusi-
asm a mong his core base of voters,
according to two White House of-
ficials.
Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump, the
president’s daughter and a White
House s enior adviser, h as been t he
biggest force within the adminis-
tration lobbying for a plan that
would e xpand b ackground c hecks,
according to a White House offi-
cial familiar with the internal dy-
namics — prompting fears from
elsewhere i n the White House that
the p resident himself w ould g o for
it because s he is pushing it.
The White House o fficials spoke
on the condition of anonymity to
freely discuss private delibera-
tions.A broad swath of Republican
senators also hail from rural
states, where the culture of gun
ownership runs deep and where
voters are averse to any measure
that would be seen a s infringing on
Second A mendment rights.
Sen. Kevin C ramer ( R-N.D.) s aid
the proposal that was being
pitched by the administration ap-
peared similar to legislation draft-
ed by Sens. Patrick J. To omey
(R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin III
(D-W.Va.) in 2013 that failed to
advance in a Senate controlled by
Democrats.
“Expanding background checks
has always been viewed by a lot of
our constituents, my constituents,
as a slippery slope and probably
something that’s not all that help-
ful,” Cramer said. “I think most
people I know, in North Dakota
anyway, prefer dealing with exist-
ing l aw a nd enforcing it better.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a fa-
vorite of the right who also met
with Barr earlier this week, de-
clined to take a position on theadministration’s p roposal and a lso
cautioned that the plan was pre-
mature.
“My question to the attorney
general [ on Tuesday] was, ‘What is
the president going to support?
What is the president going to put
forward?’ ” Hawley said. “And I
don’t k now the answer to that y et.”
The lack of enthusiasm on the
right d idn’t m ean D emocrats were
on board, e ither.
“It is strange to be shopping [a
proposal] that doesn’t have the
president’s imprimatur,” s aid Sen.
Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of
the most prominent advocates of
gun control in Congress. He said
he had yet to e ndorse o r oppose the
plan drafted b y Barr.
The two senators who appeared
even remotely w arm to the admin-
istration’s o ffer w ere Manchin and
To omey — who, along with Mur-
phy, met privately with Barr in
To omey’s office on Capitol Hill lat-
er Wednesday.
Still, the three men — each of
whom has spoken with the presi-
dent repeatedly in recent weeks —
cautioned that nothing had been
finalized.
“I think he has advanced some
ideas that are very constructive,
very thoughtful and could go a
long way toward expanding back-
ground checks in a way that poses
absolutely minimal inconve-
nience on law-abiding citizens and
increases the chances that we
would keep guns out of the hands
of dangerous people who
shouldn’t have them,” Toomey
sa id. “I think there’s some details
that still need to be worked out.”
Ye t whatever is finalized a mong
senators m ay f all s hort i n the Dem-
ocratic-led House, where the lead-
ership had demanded nothing
sh ort of a universal background
checks bill that passed earlier this
year but faces a veto threat from
the White House.
Rep. Mike T hompson (D-Calif.),
chairman of House Gun Violence
Prevention Ta sk Force, said he
would review the administration’s
plan but noted that Trump has
flirted with embracing expanded
background checks only to back
away.
seung[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Robert Costa, Erica Werner, Mike
DeBonis and Karoun Demirjian
contributed to this report.Gun-control foes dismiss background checks proposal from White House
JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr recognize Dayton, Ohio, officers this month for their response to a mass shooting.NO MISSED BATHS
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