The Senate took the first step Monday toward working on a sportsmen’s bill that would increase access to public lands and ease restrictions on hunters and fishers.
In their first legislative act for the July work period, senators agreed 82-12 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to a bill (S 2363) that would make more federal land available for hunting and fishing. Barring a time agreement, a vote on the motion to proceed would happen Wednesday.
Most Republicans voted in support of the cloture motion, while 11 Democrats broke party ranks and voted against it. Earlier in the day, Connecticut Democrats Christopher S. Murphy and Richard Blumenthal said they would oppose the cloture vote because the Senate should be debating gun control legislation.
"I can’t vote for a measure that makes owning or possessing or using guns more readily or easily usable when we failed to act – and we have failed to act – on commonsense, sensible measures to stop gun violence," Blumenthal said. A couple other Democrats – Barbara Boxer of California and Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland – expressed concerns last Congress over provisions in the bill that would affect environmental regulations.
The measure, by North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagan, also would reverse regulations opposed by hunters and fishermen, including an EPA requirement that ammunition makers limit use of lead and toxic materials and another barring hunters from bringing into the United States parts of polar bears hunted in Canada, where it was legal to hunt them before 1997. Similar legislation stalled at the end of the 112th Congress over a provision that would allow the Interior Department to increase the price of the duck stamps. The version introduced this Congress would not address stamp fees but would authorize states to issue electronic duck stamps for hunting water fowl on public lands.