MORGANTOWN – Sen. Shelley Moore Capito met virtually with West Virginia reporters Thursday and most of the questions and answers dealt with the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting.
Sen. Joe Manchin addressed the issue in a different venue and his office shared audio of that conversation.
Capito referred to the “sobering week” the nation has endured, calling it “sad, unimaginable, horrifying.”
She sees things differently this time, she said, and there seems to be a difference in the Senate in how to respond and move forward. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer refrained from quickly tossing a doomed bill to the floor as a political gesture, Instead he’s looking for bipartisan consensus on what can move forward.
“I do think there is appetite for that,” she said.
She said there are already some bills out there that may serve as a starting point. One is the failed bipartisan Manchin-Toomey bill of 2013, which proposed background checks for gun show and online sales. News reports indicate Sen. Mitt Romney is open to discussing that.
Capito didn’t throw her support behind any particular legislation, saying she’s not familiar with what all is out there, but background checks, mental health, “school hardening,” types of guns and purchasing age limits are all on the table.
“I’m hopeful that we can reach some kind of consensus between the parties where we can move forward,” she said. Polling shows that the public wants a bipartisan Congressional response.
Capito was asked about red flag laws – under which a person may petition for a court to temporarily take away another person’s right to possess a firearm. She said some states have some form of those but they raise questions about Second Amendment rights and it would be important to examine their legality and effectiveness.
“We can’t just slap something up that’s not going to have any effect,” she said.
School hardening refers to enhancing school safety measures. “I think school hardening is something we need to look at,” she said. It’s more difficult to get into schools now than 25 years ago, but hardening isn’t foolproof. The Texas school resource officer didn’t stop the attack there.
Schools received federal COVID funds, she said, and if they can’t use it for school safety measures Congress should act to make it available for that,
She opposes a national gun registry. On the question of arming specific teachers trained to handle guns, she said, “I’d like to hear from the education community how that feel about that.” No teachers have told her they support it, and it poses many questions, “I don’t think it’s maybe quite as simple as it sounds.”
Sen. Joe Manchin spoke with D.C. press about the issue and his comments largely mirrored Capito’s. He also mentioned his Manchin-Toomey bill, mental health, background checks, red flag laws and the many bills already out there or being proposed.
He doesn’t know what he will support at this point, he said. “Something needs to be done. I’m going to look at what they bring forward and makes sense. … Looking at everything we can to bring everyone to the table to find a plausible way to move forward.
Lawmakers need to put aside their worries about politics and getting votes in November, he said. “It’s way past time. It should never be open season on children. … This is about basically protecting children.”
