Pelosi: Gun action needed to ensure ‘domestic tranquility’

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that the country’s elected officials have a responsibility to “ensure domestic tranquility” and called on the Senate to return to work to vote on the House’s bill bolstering background checks for gun purchases.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Pelosi said she’s heard “grave concern” from Americans and members of Congress about gun violence and the rise of heated rhetoric, including xenophobia and white supremacy.

“The Senate has to do the job,” Pelosi said. “This is simple: They just have to take up the bill and send it to the president.”

President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have expressed a new openness to gun legislation in the wake of mass shootings this month in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

Congress is on summer recess and McConnell, the Republican leader, has said he won’t be calling senators back to session. Instead, he has asked committee chairmen to review possible bills for consideration when lawmakers return in September.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee announced Friday they will be returning early to consider other gun-violence legislation.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York said his panel will gather Sept. 4 to consider a series of bills, including one that would ban high-capacity magazines of ammunition. The panel will also hold a hearing later in September to examine military-style assault weapons, which many Democrats want to ban.

Pelosi said elected officials have a responsibility to “ensure domestic tranquility” as outlined in the Constitution.

“In the near, near future – in the immediate future – we must address the issue of gun violence and the attitudes that are making it less safe for some people in our country,” Pelosi said.

“We have to do much better in that regard, and I would hope that we can do so in a bipartisan way.”