Democrats end 25-hour House floor protest over guns

Weary but jubilant House Democrats ended their extraordinary sit-in on the chamber’s floor Thursday more than 24 hours after it began, a protest that let them broadcast their demands around the world for gun-control votes in the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida nightclub.

There were no indications that Republicans who run the House had granted Democrats’ insistence for votes on bills strengthening background checks and barring firearms sales to people on the government’s no-fly list.

Even so, 25 1/2 hours after they commandeered the chamber and blasted images of themselves on social media, Democrats filed out and declared victory.

“We are going to win this struggle,” said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the civil rights icon who helped lead the sit-in.

Hours earlier, Republicans had exited the Capitol, branding the remarkable sit-in a publicity stunt and summarily adjourning the chamber at about 3:15 a.m. EDT until after the Fourth of July.

“We are not going to allow stunts like this to stop us from carrying out the people’s business,” Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Thursday morning in dismissing the protest. Ryan held up copies of Democratic fundraising appeals based on the protest.

By 8 a.m. Thursday morning, most of the 168 House Democrats and 34 Senate Democrats who at one point occupied the U.S. House floor to push a gun vote had departed. But a few lawmakers remained in the chamber’s seats, listening to Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida urge Republican lawmakers to agree to a vote upon their return to the House on July 5.

“We’ve been on the floor a long time. I am tired, I am cold, I am hungry,” he said to soft laughs. “You know who never had a chance to be tired? The 12 people who went to a midnight show in Aurora and were slaughtered.”

Several papers were scattered on some of the empty seats: some bearing the names of victims of gun violence, others printed with a rainbow backsplash and the words “disarm hate.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who had cast aside a white blanket left over from the previous night, accused GOP colleagues of cowardice when she took the podium next.

“Our Republican colleagues cut and run. They turned the lights off,” she said. “I don’t know what they were thinking.”

A staffer walked in around 8:19 a.m. carrying recharged batteries for the multiple phones live streaming the sit-in on Periscope, switching out used packs for new ones one by one.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., walked into the chamber shortly after 8:35 a.m., draped in another white blanket and Snapchatting the proceedings on her phone.

Just over a dozen lawmakers had arrived in the chamber by 9 a.m., and several appeared to be tweeting the proceedings from their cellphones as podium speakers took turns talking.

House security officers opened up the visitors gallery shortly after 9 a.m., and about 30 people walked in and filled the seats, some accompanied by children.

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I. took the podium with Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. and recalled speaking with protestors standing outside the Capitol in the rain Thursday morning.

“We will be in this fight with you,’” he recalled them saying. “‘We stand with you. Don’t give up, keep fighting.”

Though several lawmakers speaking Thursday insisted on the commonsense nature of the gun control legislation they championed, the policy in questions has drawn criticism from groups including the American Civil Liberties Union for relying on the terror watchlist for bans.

The ACLU wrote to senators Wednesday opposing a similar “no fly, no buy” amendment in the Senate, citing concerns the watchlist would violate due process protections.

It “would impose a notification requirement that could result in a new ‘watchlist’ broader than any that currently exists,” ACLU officials wrote. The amendment would mandate that officials be “informed of each application for a firearm by any person who has been on the master watchlist at any point over the past five years—even if the person has been cleared of any wrongdoing, the investigation was otherwise closed, or the person was long ago removed from the list.”

In an unsuccessful move to halt the Democratic protest in the House of Representatives, Republican leaders adjourned the House early Thursday morning, delaying a possible vote on gun control legislation until lawmakers return July 5.

There was no shortage of emotional appeal on behalf of gun victims’ families Thursday morning.

“Just mention the name of the city and you know what happened,” Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said, listing the names of shooting sites: Aurora, San Bernardino, Newtown.

“We’re not putting up with it anymore,” he said. “We have to vote on something.”

This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 8:38 AM with the headline "Democrats end 25-hour House floor protest over guns."