Senate

Senators tell Washington Post they regret gun votes after Sandy Hook shooting

by Lauren Irwin - 12/27/23 10:23 AM ET

Multiple current and former senators say they regret their votes against gun restrictions following the Sandy Hook mass shooting, The Washington Post reports.

Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) reflected on her experience as a newly elected official speaking with family members of the 2012 Newtown, Conn., school shooting, which left 20 children and six staff members dead.

Heitkamp told the Post she regrets voting with three other Democrats and 41 Republicans to block a background check bill the families had begged her to support just days earlier.

She said she did not agree with the “exact language” of the bill — and two others focused on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines that also failed — but that it was her “obligation looking backwards to provide leadership” and to “make those bills better.”

“And I didn’t do that,” Heitkamp said. “My activity was passive, not active, in searching for a solution, and I regret that.”

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The Post’s article highlighted stories of lobbyists who said Heitkamp broke down in sobs after meeting with families ahead of the vote. Now, she says she was “extremely sorry” for leaving the families with the feeling that she didn’t care about what they were going through.

Two other former senators and four sitting lawmakers also said their perspectives on gun policy had changed in the years since the shooting.

Former Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) also voted against the 2013 bill and said, looking back, he “would have pushed the envelope” because there was “more backroom politics” going on.

The Post said several senators said they had been influenced by the political power of the National Rifle Association at the time of the vote.

Former Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said he wished he could use a time machine to warn himself the issue would continue “to get worse and worse.” He told the Post he would “take the political heat” and vote for the ban.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a lifelong gun owner, told the Post his views changed after his son joined other high school students across the country to protest gun violence after the 2018 Parkland, Fla., mass shooting left 17 students dead.

“When your kid tells you you’re wrong with that much conviction, you need to stop and think about it,” he said.

Heinrich said the 2013 bill was not perfect, but after weighing it against a decade of deadly mass shootings caused by assault weapons, he would have voted for it. He said at the time he didn’t feel like it was his issue, but after 10 years, “it’s everyone’s issue.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said his three daughters pressured him and questioned his decision-making after each mass shooting, the Post reported.

Nearly eight months after the Parkland shooting that prompted national school walkouts and the March for Our Lives protests, Warner wrote an op-ed in the Post about his change of heart.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has also changed his stance since the Sandy Hook shooting. Bennet voted against the 2013 bill, just weeks after attending a Denver speech by then-President Obama supporting it, the Post reported.

Since then, a constituent, who lost her daughter to the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting, has persuaded Bennet to take action.

Bennet, along with Heinrich, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), introduced a bill in November that intends to regulate guns “based on the lethality of their internal mechanisms, as opposed to focusing on cosmetic features that manufacturers can easily modify.”

King told the Post that banning a particular weapon allows manufacturers to easily maneuver the ban by changing the design slightly, which is why he is pushing for functionality legislation instead.

He said the October shooting in Maine that killed 18 people “solidified my view that this is something we have to do.”