WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on Congress and the mass shooting in Las Vegas (all times local):
12:10 p.m.
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he plans to meet with GOP Sen. Pat Toomey to discuss bipartisan gun background check legislation that they have collaborated on in the past.
But Manchin says that he doesn’t want to reintroduce the bill, which the Senate has rejected twice, unless there is more widespread GOP support.
Manchin also said that it will be up to President Donald Trump to set the tone for a legislative response to the massacre in Las Vegas. Thus far Trump has been noncommittal.
Manchin is the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, up for re-election in a state Trump won overwhelmingly last November.
But he denied political considerations play any role for him, saying he wouldn’t have pursued the issue to begin with if that was so.
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12:10 p.m.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein says her own daughter had planned to attend the Route 91 musical festival in Las Vegas where concertgoers were slaughtered this week - but her plans changed and she didn’t go.
The California Democrat revealed that chilling detail as she introduced legislation to ban “bump stocks” like those used by the Las Vegas shooter that can effectively convert legal semi-automatic rifles into fully automatic weapons.
Feinstein said it was a reasonable step to take, and one that could potentially attract support from Republicans. The senator has a long history on the issue after authoring an assault weapons ban that was in effect for 10 years before expiring in 2004.
She pleaded, “Mr. and Mrs. America, you have to stand up, you have to say enough is enough.”
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10 a.m.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is bemoaning the lack of action by congressional Republicans to address gun violence such as the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Pelosi said Wednesday that “the Republicans in Congress are wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America,” another gun rights group.
Pelosi said the GOP’s failure to act “is about money.” While House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders have asked Americans to donate blood in the wake of the shooting, Pelosi said Republicans “have to give some political blood. They think their political survival is more important than those 59 people. It isn’t.”
Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia said prayers were not enough, asking “how many more dead bodies will it take to wake up this Congress?”
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3:47 a.m.
Republican leaders are making it clear that Congress will take no action on gun legislation in the wake of the massacre in Las Vegas.
They refused to entertain Democratic demands to expand background checks for gun purchases and tighten restrictions on semi-automatic weapons, but also shelved their own House bill that would have loosened access to gun silencers.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he thinks “it’s premature to be discussing legislative solutions, if there are any.” His comments came after the mass shooting that killed at least 59 people and wounded hundreds more.
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