This is the Tom Hartman program.

And welcome to our program.

Tom Hartman here with you.

There's so much going on we're going to get into today and the Congress and Mark

Pocan is with us. Congressman Pocan, welcome to the program.

Thanks Tom, glad to be here. First of all I'm curious, guns of course are at

the tips of everybody's tongue right now.

And I believe that something was passed out of the House that's waiting for action from

Mitch in the Senate.

But what's the status of gun-related legislation right now? Well we made a priority of the first 10 bills. the those 10 bills were measures around gun violence prevention and we passed a couple

bills I think our first month or two sent them to the Senate and like all good

legislation apparently gets put in the back of a pickup and buried in some backyard in Kentucky and we never see it again

and Mitch McConnell has not allowed any votes to come up with this happening

It's not just two actually that I think there are four shootings in a week if you count one in Wisconsin and O' Clair where two households were shot and in another shooting.

I mean this is just something that Congress has an inability to deal with mainly because I think of the

NRA and yet people are starting to figure out the NRA so you know at minimum the

Senate needs to take up these measures that have 80 and 90 percent public support but also

prima jai Paul and I as co-chair as the Progressive Caucus said we should be

taking up the assault weapon ban as well I mean these are things that the public supports we need to deal with and just because we all too often are afraid to take on powerful special interest in Washington. We meaning Congress collectively, these things don't happen and then you have yet

another mass shooting. So this is something we need people while members are

home during this August period to really put pressure on numbers of the House and Senate to take up this

legislation. Yeah it seems like a big issue. So let's pick up some phone calls

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