Disappointed with the inaction on arms safety legislation as a result of previous tragedies, she wanted to make it clear that this path must be different. A moment later, she approached Minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and GOP Whip John Tun of South Dakota on the Senate floor and asked them who she could negotiate at the Republican conference.
“They said (Republican Sens.) John Cornin and Tom Tillis. I sent an SMS to both of them immediately, “she said, referring to senators from Texas and North Carolina. “We agreed to meet the next day.”
However, her guarantee with the press did not go unnoticed by her colleagues from the Democrats.
Thirty minutes later, she received a message from Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who has been working for a decade to reform the country’s gun laws since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in his own state.
“You serious? Do you want to work on it? ”She remembers asking.
“Thirty minutes later,” Cinema said, “he and I met at my shelter.”
What happened next month was an unexpected and even strange pair of MPs: Cinema, a Democrat who opposed his party for the destruction of filibuster and tax policy, Murphy, a Democrat who had dedicated his career to calling for radical change in arms policy as a ban on weapons of attack and universal checks of the past, and Cornin and Tillis, two conservative senators who rarely voted for proposals that did not have the support of their party’s majority.
But the group managed to do something that had confused negotiators in Washington so many times after shootings such as Sandy Hook, Pulse, Las Vegas and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, solidifying its reputation as an effective negotiator, whom fellow senators called the “top four.”
The following is based on CNN interviews with more than a dozen members of Congress and officials, many of whom are in the background to speak more freely to get the internal account and unprecedented details of how the Senate arms deal came together after more than 30 years of stagnation.
The core negotiating team was of different political backgrounds, but somehow — through a moving text chain, hours of hiding, and negotiations with staff — managed to build a close agreement on gun safety legislation that had been elusive in the Senate for three decades. Aides and members attributed the result to their temperament, their willingness to leave some hot issues out of the negotiating table, the blessings from their respective leaders, and President Joe Biden’s desire to let the Senate work at will.
“Democrats this time seemed ready to get a result on what we thought was the problem, namely school safety and mental health, and they were ready to give up their wish list with things we thought … Second Amendment rights of American citizens, “McConnell told reporters.
Although the legislation is far from the panacea that Democrats campaigned for or hoped for, the bill represents a significant change in the country’s gun laws and challenges the National Weapons Association’s claim that it has somehow become too powerful to some Republican to take advantage of.
“At the end of the day, we are the members of the Senate who have to make a decision, and I have to answer to 10 million people, and they all live in North Carolina,” Tillis said in an interview with CNN on Thursday. “Groups are important; not that I don’t respect them. I respect (the National Shooting Association), I respect (the National Sports Shooting Foundation). I respect National Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony and a number of other conservative organizations, and I will continue to stand up for them, but we just have to agree not to agree on that particular issue. “
Leadership gives its blessing
Hours after the shooting in Uwalde, majority leader Chuck Schumer was under tremendous pressure to act quickly on gun law. He took a procedural step that would allow him to move to a weapons bill passed by the House of Representatives that had no chance of being approved in the Senate, but would at least send a signal that Democrats were taking action. That, he said publicly, will become an issue that voters will have to address during the election if Washington does not resolve it.
The next day, the majority leader spoke early in the morning with his staff to consider the possibilities. Devastated by the massacre, the Democrat from New York and his team came to the conclusion that holding such a rapid vote on a doomed bill would only further divide Republicans and Democrats over gun policy, a source familiar with the conversation said. told CNN.
Instead, Sumer wanted to entertain another option. After making his introductory remarks in the Senate, Schumer called Murphy. Minutes later, the two men sat face to face in his office. The chances of a deal, Murphy told Schumer, are slim. But Murphy wanted to try. With a few warnings, Sumer wanted to let him.
The plan, according to a familiar source, was to see how far the talks could go, but to insist that they would not continue forever. If meetings cease to be regular or progress stops, Sumer was ready to pull the plug, submit to the floor the bill passed by the House of Representatives for scrutiny, and raise the issue with voters during the midterm elections.
One day later, McConnell came out with his own approval of the talks. In an exclusive interview with CNN, McConnell said he spoke with Cornin that morning after the Texas senator returned from Uwalde and “encouraged him to speak with Senator Murphy and Senator Cinema and others who are interested in trying to get a result.” which is directly related to the problem. “
It was a rare move for McConnell to announce support for bipartisan talks, which are likely to split his Republican conference just months before the interim terms, but McConnell told reporters Thursday that he also sees the political side of the talks.
“It’s no secret that we lost ground in the suburbs,” McConnell said. “We have a lot of rural and small towns in America, and I think that’s a sensible solution to the problem we have, which is school safety and mental health, and, yes, I hope it will be viewed favorably by suburban voters. which we need to regain in order to hope to be a majority next year. “
In the weeks that followed, Cornin and Tillis kept the minority leader constantly informed of their progress, with Tillis telling CNN that McConnell’s approach was largely to trust both senators – both on the Senate Judiciary Committee – to conclude a deal that will be felt by a large number of conference members.
“He has never discussed specific provisions,” Tillis said of McConnell’s role in the process. “His [message] was, if you come to a framework that we believe we can get the support of members, I want to look at it and then I will decide on it. … There were no specific instructions from him on priorities. “
For his part, Cornin also sometimes communicated directly with Sumer, at times when the two men saw each other for early training in the Senate gym, according to a familiar source.
The senators also made calls from colleagues proposing a number of ideas and suggestions they wanted to incorporate into arms safety legislation. One of these ideas came from Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, who wanted to include a provision she had for Sen. Democrat Martin Heinrich of New Mexico that created a new federal statute against buying straw. Another idea for mental health came from Sen. Roy Blunt, a retired Republican senator from Missouri, and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who has worked for years to secure more federal funding for mental health clinics across the country.
Talks about the bill were also held with people outside Capitol Hill. A familiar source told CNN that from the beginning, Republican negotiators have been regularly engaged with gun groups such as the National Arms Association and the National Sport Shooting Foundation, asking questions and concerns about what could be in the bill. McConnell also said he was involved in the talks.
“Senator Cornin and I and others discussed the issues in the bill with the NRA. These were fruitful discussions, but in the end they decided not to support it,” McConnell said.
Winning GOP votes
From the beginning, there have been more Republicans engaged in discussions on the gun security bill than in decades, a sign Murphy took as promising.
“The main number of people we talked to was different than any other time,” Murphy said. “We had 12 members sitting and talking about guns. Then the composition of the small group was really unique. The four of us have never worked on another issue before, we may not work together again after spending four long weeks together. “
Some GOP senators have insisted on including their provisions in the bill. Some Republicans were deeply skeptical of touching on anything related to the Second Amendment, but many felt that something was fundamentally changing the way voters viewed the right to bear arms in America.
“This is an issue that people all over the country are talking about,” said Sen. Lisa Markowski, a Republican from Alaska, in early June as talks heated up. “It simply came to our notice then. We own guns, we are proud supporters of the Second Amendment, but we are also mothers, grandmothers and we have children at school, so we care what happens. “
The thinking in the group of four negotiators was that in order to keep the members involved, communication is key.
“They kept in touch with members about what they were doing and why they were doing it,” a GOP senator, who wanted to speak in the background to discuss the talks freely, told CNN. “I was convinced early on that we needed to do something.”
The group wanted to prove that the votes would be there before the bill was even …
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