The Slatest

House Will Vote on Gun Legislation, But Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

House speaker Paul Ryan at a press conference with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill on June 24.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

House Democrats’ surprise protest gun-legislation sit-in seems to have paid off in a limited sense, at least, as speaker Paul Ryan has announced that the chamber will hold a previously unscheduled terror-list-related gun-control vote when it reconvenes next week. From The Hill:

In a conference call Thursday, Ryan told rank-and-file Republicans that the House will take up a terrorism package that will include measures to disrupt radicalization and recruitment, as well as a provision to prevent suspected terrorists from purchasing guns, according to a source on the call.

Whether anything useful will come of the vote remains to be seen, though; Ryan apparently didn’t say what specifically would be proposed, and five different gun amendments have already failed in recent weeks in the Senate. While a Republican-backed watch-list bill could conceivably get through the GOP-dominated House since it wouldn’t be subject to a Democratic filibuster or filibuster threat like the Senate bills were, a GOP House bill would probably only allow gun purchases to be blocked in cases in which the Justice Department could prove within three days that the purchaser was on the verge of committing a crime, a standard that Senate Democrats and gun-control activist groups have denounced as essentially meaningless. So: Expect more squabbling and speech-giving, and maybe some voting, but not a whole lot of actual gun legislating.