TobiasFunke said:
I'm not sure what the "pairing" references. Maybe it was just a reference to the way they were presented? I'm pretty sure each amendment received a vote.
Here's the roll call on the terror watch list amendment.
A measure like this shouldn't be something that requires compromise.
The public favors it 77%-18%. Even Republicans favor it 76%-20%. I can't recall seeing low-cost legislation with those kind of numbers get voted down before. This was about one thing and one thing only- NRA money.
If anyone needs proof that Congress is a total sham it's the tweets that show the amount of money that the NRA pays congressmen. It's horrible. And of course, it's not just a republican thing. This kind of thing happens with all congressmen on all sorts of issues. Unbelievable that it's legal.
Am I reading this as the Terrorist gun sale bill was standalone? Or was it the usual BS of tacking it onto another unrelated bill?
It was an amendment to the Obamacare partial repeal and planned parenthood defund, but it was a standalone vote. Each proposed amendment gets a vote during the amendment process. They were voting up or down on the terror watch list restriction alone. If they had approved it then eventually it would have been subject to another vote rolling it in with the rest of the bill, but it never got to that stage.
This wasn't the first time around for this idea, by the way.
It's been proposed in one form or another since 2007, with gun rights advocates and members sympathetic to their cause blocking it each time. There are IMO some reasonable concerns, namely the breadth of the terror watch list. But I would argue that if we're willing to block something as fundamental as the right to travel freely under the Privileges and Immunities Clause in the name of public safety and an abundance of caution, we should be more than willing to block the right to gun ownership (especially since it says "well regulated" right there in the Amendment). And it would be simple enough to set up an appeals process.