Sen. Joe Manchin drew a bead on optimism Monday.
The Democrat lawmaker from West Virginia told reporters that a heralded, bipartisan bill announced the day before on Capitol Hill could eventually end up as a definitive word on gun control.
And maybe sooner rather than later, he said.
“We might have something up by Wednesday to vote on,” Manchin said of the legislation sparked, in part, by the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, last month.
Speaking in an online session with reporters, the senator said he hopes the bill, which would up the age to for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21, will finally begin to turn back the grim specter of gun violence in America.
Background checks of juvenile court and domestic violence rap sheets would also be part of the protocol for any gun shop purchase in the newly configured legislative proposal.
The nation has been roiled by several mass shootings over the decades, including above-mentioned Uvalde.
An 18-year-old, done out in tactical gear and armed with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, walked into an elementary school (a door had been propped open) and began firing.
Salvador Ramos, authorities said, killed 19 students and two teachers — before he was shot dead by a U.S. Border Patrol Team which stormed the building.
The rural town is about 50 miles from Mexican border.
As many more were wounded in the rampage, and the emergency departments of area hospitals scrambled on high alert for the surgeries required to save the lives of other victims.
Ramos was said to have legally purchased the weapon and its high-caliber ammunition — “Bullets made for war,” Manchin said — in the days leading up to the attack.
The bullets, opposed to the gun, could be considered for a ban, Manchin said, if the bill continues to garner support.
“It might be a way in,” he said.
He’s also encouraged by the across-the-aisle support, he said, ground-level as it is.
Taking aim
When the bill was announced Sunday, Manchin’s signature was among the 20 affixed to the document, with 10 of the lot belonging to Republican senators, including John Cornyn of Texas.
Arizona Democrat Krysten Sinema, who often lines up with Manchin’s voting record, also signed.
Manchin, who grew up deer hunting in Marion County and has fired weapons on gun ranges over the years, was just as pragmatic as he was optimistic on Monday.
He knows gun culture and the Second Amendment, he said.
That’s why he’s hoping for eventual compromise and consensus — and for him that goes back to 2013, after 20 children and six adults were slain in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
Then, he and Pennsylvania Republican Patrick Toomey unsuccessfully brokered a bill on expanded background checks for gun sales that didn’t get enough votes from fellow senators to pass.
In part, were the complexities of the case in Newtown.
The young shooter there had a history of mental illness — but his mother, also a gun enthusiast with no such history, legally purchased the weapons her son wielded when he entered the building a week before Christmas in 2012.
“And that’s what always came up when we talked about background checks,” Manchin said.
A Democrat senator from Connecticut, meanwhile, was part of the lead group that carved out this most recent bill.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., lined up with Cornyn, Sinema and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., in the two-week series of closed-door talks that led to the bill.
Can the bill pass now?
“It’s probably not enough,” Manchin said, “but it’s a start.”
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