Dems plan gun violence forum in face of GOP inaction

House Democrats this week announced plans to stage a public forum on gun violence in the wake of a recent mass shooting in Maine that left 18 people dead. 

Without control of the lower chamber, Democrats lack the power to stage formal committee hearings on the sensitive topic of gun reform, which is opposed overwhelmingly by Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Still, proposals like expanded background checks enjoy enormous support outside the Beltway. And Democrats on the Oversight and Accountability Committee are hoping to use their gun violence roundtable to highlight both the scope of the problem, which has grown to epidemic levels, and the refusal of Republicans to address it legislatively.

“Without meaningful legislative action, more thoughts and prayers won’t do anything to end gun violence," Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the senior Democrat on the Oversight panel, said Wednesday in a statement. "Committee Democrats have proposed effective policy reforms to end the gun violence, and they are all within our constitutional power to promote public safety."

Raskin was joined by two other Democrats on the Oversight Committee, Florida Reps. Maxwell Frost and Jared Moskowitz, in announcing the event. The date remains uncertain, but Raskin said it will occur "in the coming weeks."

The gun violence issue has been thrust into the headlines once again by last week's mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, where police say a lone gunman used an AR-style semi-automatic rifle to shoot more than 30 people at two locations, killing 18 of them. The suspect then took his own life, authorities said. 

The ensuing congressional debate has mirrored those that followed other shooting massacres around the country in recent years. Democrats have responded with calls for tougher gun laws, including expanded background checks and a ban on assault-style rifles. Republicans have blocked those measures, deeming them an encroachment on Americans' Second Amendment rights. 

Those divisions are all but certain to continue under newly-tapped Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who took the gavel just last week. Johnson has a long record of opposing any new firearm restrictions, and shortly after the Lewiston shootings, he made clear that no such proposals would be considered on his watch, saying prayer is the “appropriate” response.

 “At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns. It’s not the weapons.” Johnson told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

That argument has infuriated Democrats and many victims of gun violence, who maintain that Congress has a responsibility to step in with specific policy proposals to help keep firearms from the hands of those with violent intentions. 

"Our communities, the innocent victims, and the families who have lost loved ones deserve more than our thoughts and prayers, they deserve our commitment to a path forward, to a world without gun violence,” Frost said Wednesday.