Why Are These Six Democratic Senators Blocking Universal Background Checks?

After axing the assault weapons ban from the Senate’s comprehensive gun violence prevention plan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is struggling to scrape together enough votes to pass the centerpiece of the plan: universal background checks. Republicans are refusing to vote for it, and even several Democrats in red states are wavering on their support. According to Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, these key votes include Senators Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND).

Universal background checks are considered essential to the gun bill. They would close the “gun show loophole” that currently allows anyone to skip a background check if they buy a gun through a private sale. “Private” transactions between individuals or at gun shows are the origin point for 80 percent of guns used in crimes.

ThinkProgress examined data from the home states of six Democratic senators currently on the fence: Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alaska, and North Dakota. According to the most recent data available, these six states had: 1) 1,462 gun murders in 2010; 2) 351 gun deaths since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre at the end of last year; and 3) widespread support for universal background checks (following the national trend). Meanwhile, 152 gun shows are scheduled to take place in these states this year, providing criminals who can’t pass background checks in stores with ample opportunity to stock up on guns. All of the states, with the exception of North Carolina, allow individuals to buy guns at these shows without any review:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his pro-gun regulation group Mayors Against Illegal Guns recently launched an ad blitz to encourage residents in 13 key states to lobby their senators to support the proposal. Sen. Donnelly (D-IN) is reportedly considering “a bipartisan compromise on background checks.”

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How These Companies Are Keeping Employees Healthy

The Canadian phone company has approximately 26,000 employees in 13 locations across the country and offers internal fitness facilities with cardio equipment, weight rooms and group fitness classes, on-site massage and reflexology practitioners, active living challenges and mental health support.

Janet Crowe, director of wellness and work-life solutions, says encouraging employees to adopt healthy lifestyle habits is part of the culture of TELUS. "It's the overall strategy of TELUS to have a healthy work environment," she says.

Don't worry if these kinds of programs seem out of reach for your business. You don't have to build a gymnasium to encourage a healthy workforce. Crowe says wellness initiatives are possible no matter how big or small a company is and says having a healthy workforce begins with making health a priority in the workplace.

She encourages small businesses to begin by asking employees what initiatives would help them. "Don't assume what your team wants, ask them what they need to reach their goals," she says. Sraeel says reaching out to local gyms to negotiate a discount rate or hosting group lunch hour walks is something every company can do no matter the size.

Celebrating business goals with a healthy cooking class or another activity staff has identified as something they'd like to try is another way to incorporate a healthy lifestyle into the office environment, plus "group activities can be empowering and team-building," says Sraeel.

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NRA Head Fearmongers About Background Checks: ‘I Just Don’t Think You Can Trust These People’

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre offered a litany of excuses for his organization’s opposition to universal background checks on gun sales and purchases this morning, telling Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that the American Medical Association and other organizations were to blame for thwarting an expanded background check system. He also warned that universal checks could lead to a national registry:

LAPIERRE: I think what they’ll do is they’ll turn this universal check on the law-abiding into a universal registry of law-abiding people, and law-abiding people don’t want that.

WALLACE: Forgive me sir, but you take something that is here, and you take it all the way over there. There is nothing anyone in the administration has said that indicates they’re going to have a universal registry.

LAPIERRE: And Obamacare wasn’t a tax until they needed it to be a tax. I just don’t think you can trust these people.

The NRA has consistently used this as an excuse to oppose expanded background checks, even though federal law prohibits agencies from retaining information on people who pass background checks, making a national gun registry virtually impossible.

The gun lobby backed expanded background checks following the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, but LaPierre reiterated during a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the organization no longer supports those checks and told Wallace that the mental health community is also against them. “I have finally become convinced, after fighting to get the mental records computerized for 20 years and watching the mental health lobby, the HIPAA laws, and the AMA oppose it, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said. “The mental health lobby won’t let it happen.”

In addition to computerizing mental health records, LaPierre told Wallace that he would “change civil commitment laws” and “interdict” more mental health patients, an approach that would blatantly ignore concerns about patient privacy and the stigmatization of mental health patients, which drove the AMA’s opposition to some elements of universal background checks in the past. President Obama, meanwhile, issued an executive order last month that sought to rework the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to make it easier for states to report information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System while addressing concerns about privacy and stigmatization.

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