GOP blocks efforts to deny guns to those on terrorist watch lists

WASHINGTON — At about the time Wednesday that two shooters under investigation for potentially having terrorist ties were gunning down people at a community center in San Bernardino, House Republicans blocked legislation that would help prevent people on U.S. terrorist watch lists from buying firearms legally.

Republicans blocked the bill again Thursday, without debate, fending off efforts by Democrats to pass the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2015, sponsored by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who had introduced the bill in February.

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that investigates issues for Congress, said in a report more than five years ago that from 2004 to 2010, more than 90 percent of the 1,228 individuals on terrorist watch lists who sought to buy guns were allowed to do so.

The Feinstein/King legislation is modeled on a 2007 proposal by the George W. Bush administration to allow the attorney general to deny known or suspected terrorists the right to buy guns and explosives.

The NRA and Republicans argue that there are hundreds of thousands of people on terrorist watch lists and that a blanket ban on sales of guns and explosives to such people would be an overly broad prohibition on gun ownership.

Referring to the placement of people on the terrorist watch lists, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Feinstein’s bill assumes “that the federal government never makes a mistake ... but we all know better.”

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence favors the Feinstein/King bill but said the legislation would not close a big loophole that in most states allows anyone to buy a gun online or at a gun show without a background check.

Democrats and some Republicans sought to require background checks on such sales after the 2012 shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which killed 20 children and six adults, but failed.