BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today congratulated the US Senate for soundly rejecting a $15 million “gun buy-back” scheme sponsored by anti-gun Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), noting that there is no evidence this program has taken a single gun from criminal hands.
The Senate’s 65-33 vote against Schumer’s proposal was a crushing defeat for the New York senator, who has campaigned throughout his congressional career to strip American citizens of their firearms rights. Schumer’s “Buyback America” plan would have continued a program started two years ago under former President Clinton. The Bush Administration recently announced it was ending that effort.
“Schumer’s attempt to slip this amendment into a measure designed to finance housing, environment and veterans’ programs simply proves that he is clinging to a philosophy that has been proven to be not only ineffective, but politically and morally bankrupt,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb stated. “His arrogance and ego backfired, and he created a victory for gun rights.”
Buyback America would have been added to a $113.4 billion funding measure that the Senate ultimately approved, 94-5. A similar House measure, approved last week, also contained no money for gun buybacks.
“We’ve never gotten 65 pro-gun votes in the Senate before,” Gottlieb noted. “This proves that Schumer is so far out of the mainstream that he could not even get many of his fellow Democrats to support his measure.”
Opponents said the program was a failure that had taken money away from more worthy efforts to upgrade housing or offer assistance to homeless persons.
“The media is spinning this defeat by insisting that it was ‘not a clear referendum on the Senate’s sentiment on gun issues’,” Gottlieb observed. “However, I think it clearly was a referendum on Charlie Schumer and his worn-out rhetoric against gun ownership. By pushing this wasteful spending proposal, Senator Schumer can no longer claim to be a moderate on the gun issue, and is now exposed as the extremist he has always been.”