Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s career has been defined by gun violence and her efforts to prevent it – from the double assassination that made her mayor of San Francisco, to a recall effort over her gun proposals, to yet another mass shooting at a college campus that took place just 17 hours before she announced her retirement Tuesday. She said that as she closes out her final year in office, she hopes to do more “to fight the epidemic of gun violence” — but stakeholders and experts believe the prospects for further progress before the end of 2024 are dim.
Upending all expectations, Congress passed bipartisan gun violence prevention legislation in 2022, the first successful gun control effort since Feinstein’s landmark assault weapons ban in 1994. But that was with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. With Republicans again in the House majority, more action is unlikely.
Feinstein acknowledged the uphill battle in a brief interview Wednesday.
“There are a lot of things that can be done. The problem is: How do you get them done in a Congress that’s been antithetical to doing what can be done to retard the use of guns in this country?” Feinstein said. When the 1994 ban passed, “there was a willingness,” she said. “I don’t think that’s here now. If I sense it is, I will try and put forward some constructive legislation.”
Other lawmakers more explicitly blamed any lack of action on Republicans.
“It goes without saying, when you have a majority party in the House that is passing out AR-15 lapel pins to their members on the start of gun violence prevention week, that things are going to be tough in the policy lane for gun violence prevention,” Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, said.
Feinstein’s personal and political history with gun violence is unique among political leaders.
She was one of the first people to reach former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk after he was shot and killed by a colleague in 1978. “I went down the hall. I opened the wrong door. I opened (Milk’s) door. I found Harvey on his stomach. I tried to get a pulse and put my finger through a bullet hole. He was clearly dead,” Feinstein told The Chronicle in 2008. “I remember it, actually, as if it was yesterday. And it was one of the hardest moments, if not the hardest moment, of my life.”
Before that, Feinstein had begun carrying a gun after a bomb was planted at her San Francisco home in 1976 and the windows of her beach home were shot out. She told The Chronicle in 2018 that she was taught how to fire a gun by San Francisco police. “It was a little 2½-inch snub-nosed 38-caliber five shot revolver.”
She once tested how fast she could find the weapon in her purse and realized, “I would have been dead” because of how long it could take to find the gun. Feinstein said it made her realize “how difficult it really is to count on a weapon” that is hidden to be “effective in a bad situation.”
Later, then-San Francisco Police Chief Cornelius Murphy melted it down with other guns and made a cross that they gave to the Pope. “And that was the end of the gun,” Feinstein said.
That background is why Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, said that despite the steep odds of gun control efforts on the hill, “If anyone can do it, Dianne Feinstein can.”
Feinstein has been trying to re-up her landmark assault weapons ban that expired in 2004, but there’s no possibility it would get the needed 60 votes in the current Senate.
“I wish I could say that it was possible to do an assault weapons ban like she achieved in the 1990s in today’s political climate. But I think it would be wishful thinking, unfortunately,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said. “I don’t know that that’s something that Sen. Feinstein is going to be able to bring over the finish line in her remaining time.”
The Republican Party’s support for the National Rifle Association and position in the majority “weigh heavily on what we’re going to be able to do. But having said that, there are still a number of responsible Republicans who understand that this is something that is important to the American people,” said Thompson, who chairs the House gun violence prevention task force. He pointed to background checks and alert systems for active shooters as potential areas of movement.
With photos of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims in the background, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaks on on Capitol Hill on Feb. 27, 2013. during a hearing on the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.
Susan Walsh/Associated PressResearchers and advocates supportive of gun restrictions are also skeptical that Congress will pass any additional legislation in the next two years.
Doing so would “be a major challenge,” said John Donohue, professor at Stanford Law School. There would need to be an event “catastrophic enough” to “overcome the choke hold the gun lobby has on the Republican Party,” he said.
The 2022 measures approved by Congress, including extended background checks for people under 21 and funding for so-called red flag laws, were “very tentative” and included provisions that would sunset over a number of years, Donohue said. “The power of the gun lobby over the Republican Party is so complete at this stage that only the most minimal steps were acceptable.”
Adzi Vokhiwa, director of federal affairs at gun control advocacy group Giffords, is focused on implementation of the 2022 law. She said she wants to see Congress hold the Biden administration’s “feet to the fire” to implement the law quickly and successfully.
Vokhiwa also said Congress could include more funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; gun violence research; and community violence interventions. She said it’s key for the Senate to continue confirming judges who support gun safety measures, which Feinstein is part of as a member of a key committee for confirmations.
Over the course of her career, Feinstein used her personal experience with guns to strengthen her arguments for gun control legislation, both in San Francisco and the U.S. Senate. She survived a mayoral recall attempt in 1983, organized by a group that was upset by her gun control efforts.
Even if reform efforts face long odds, it’s possible Feinstein could at least use gun control proposals as a vehicle to force tough conversations in the Senate. She’s had them before.
“The gentlelady from California needs to become a little more familiar with firearms and their deadly characteristics,” then-Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said on the Senate floor in 1993 while debating gun control legislation.
Feinstein interrupted him.
“I am quite familiar with firearms,” she said. “I became mayor as a product of assassination. I found my assassinated colleague and put a finger through a bullet hole … I proposed gun control legislation in San Francisco. I went through a recall on the basis of it. I was trained in the shooting of a firearm when I had terrorist attacks with a bomb at my house when my husband was dying when I had windows shot out. Senator, I know something about what firearms can do.”
A similar sparring match ensued in 2013 when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, criticized her proposed assault weapons ban. She chided him for implying she wasn’t familiar with constitutional law or gun violence. “Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in — I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode.”
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