Obama makes "last-ditch" push in Connecticut on gun control

By Roberta Rampton

HARTFORD, Connecticut (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged Americans on Monday to pressure a reluctant Congress to pass new gun control legislation - one of his top domestic policy priorities - as he traveled to Connecticut, where December's school massacre took place.

Initial momentum for tougher U.S. gun control laws sought by Obama after the December 14 shootings in Newtown has stalled in Congress in the face of fierce lobbying by gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.

Obama, speaking at the University of Hartford, said that date changed everything for families of the 20 children and six adults killed at Sandy Hook elementary school.

"I know many of you in Newtown wondered if the rest of us would live up to the promises we made in those dark days ... once the television trucks left, once the candles flickered out, once the teddy bears were gathered up," Obama was to say in prepared remarks. "We will not walk away from the promise we've made."

No major gun legislation has passed the U.S. Congress since 1994 and the current White House guns push is in trouble.

"The policy window is either really close to closed, or closed entirely," said John Hudak, an expert at the Brookings Institution think tank. "In honesty, this is really a last-ditch effort by the White House."

Obama is hoping to build support among lawmakers for several gun control measures, including universal background checks for gun buyers. The Senate is expected to take up gun control legislation as early as this week.

The president has invited 11 parents of children killed in Newtown to fly back to Washington with him aboard Air Force One after his speech. The parents are set to lobby Congress this week for gun control measures, although it may be too late to rescue major legislation sought by Obama.

Some of Obama's proposals - reinstating a U.S. ban on assault weapons and cracking down on high-capacity ammunition clips - already appear to have little chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate, let alone the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

BACKGROUND CHECKS

Obama is hoping to salvage the proposal for background checks on all gun buyers to try to ensure that criminals and others prohibited from buying firearms cannot get them. There are not yet enough votes in the Senate for expanded background checks as Democrats seek Republican votes.

"Congress is only going to act on them if they hear from you - the American people," Obama will say in his address.

Around a dozen Republican senators led by Rand Paul of Kentucky have threatened to use procedural tactics to try to prevent any votes on the gun measures.

"You deserve better," Obama will say. "You deserve a vote."

Last week, Obama gave a speech in Denver trying to rally support for gun control, touting a new state law in Colorado - scene of two of the deadliest gun massacres in American history - as "a model of what's possible.

The president's speech on Monday will be followed up by a White House event on Tuesday with Vice President Joe Biden and law enforcement officials. Biden also is due to speak about gun control on Thursday on the MSNBC cable TV network.

First lady Michelle Obama is set to address gun control during a visit on Wednesday to Chicago, which has faced a spree of gun violence.

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Xavier Briand)

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Connecticut governor signs strict gun law after Newtown shooting

(Reuters) - Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is expected on Thursday to sign a tough new gun law that restricts sales of the sort of high-capacity ammunition clips that a gunman used to massacre 26 people in minutes in a December attack on a school.

Lawmakers in the state's Democratic-controlled House approved the measure, which supporters described as one of the toughest such laws in the United States, early on Thursday morning. The Senate approved the measure hours earlier.

The House debate stretched past midnight, with opponents of the law arguing that it infringed on the rights to gun ownership protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that efforts to prevent attacks such as the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting should focus on providing better mental-health services.

Connecticut's law passed hours after Maryland's House of Delegates on Wednesday approved their own gun law, which also limits magazine size and requires that gun buyers be fingerprinted.

Connecticut's Malloy, who had advocated for the law, is expected to sign it at midday on Thursday.

The Connecticut law also requires background checks for private gun sales, expands the number of guns covered by the state's assault-weapons ban and establishes a $15 million fund to help schools improve security infrastructure.

It bans the sale of ammunition clips that hold 10 bullets or more and requires owners of such clips to register them by January 1. After that date, owning an unregistered high-capacity clip will become a felony offense.

A poll released on Thursday found that 91 percent of voters support regulations requiring all gun buyers to undergo background checks. However, 48 percent of all respondents and 53 percent of those owning guns said those checks could lead to the government's confiscating legally owned weapons.

That Quinnipiac University poll of 1,711 registered voters was conducted from March 26 to April 1 and had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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