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President Donald Trump on Thursday poured cold water on prospects for a bipartisan compromise on gun legislation, even as Attorney General William Barr circulated a draft plan on Capitol Hill to expand background checks for gun sales. In a Fox News interview, Trump said no deal is imminent, more than six weeks after mass shootings in Texas and Ohio killed more than 30 people. "We're going very slowly," Trump said, adding that while he doesn't want "bad people" to have weapons, he won't allow any plan to move forward that takes guns away from law-abiding people or restricts Second Amendment rights. (9/19)

“No, we’re not moving on anything,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re going very slowly in one way because we want to make sure it’s right.” The result is that almost two months after the back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio, when Mr. Trump said he wanted to pass “very meaningful background checks,” warnings from gun rights advocates and Republican lawmakers about the political blowback that would result from doing that have led to indecision about what to do and what the time frame is for sharing it. (Karni and Haberman, 9/19)

"A lot of Republicans and some Democrats now are afraid to do anything, to go down that slippery slope," he said. "A lot of people think this is just a way of taking away guns, and that's not good -- because we're not going to allow that." Trump also asserted that though he doesn't want "bad people" or "crazy people" to have access to firearms, and that his administration is "going to protect the Second Amendment." (Vazquez, 9/19)

Beto O’Rourke lit into Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on gun control on Thursday, accusing him of doing “absolutely nothing” on the issue. “Ask Chuck Schumer what he’s been able to get done,” the Democratic presidential candidate told reporters after a town hall here, responding to Schumer’s recent dismissal of O’Rourke’s call for a mandatory buyback of assault weapons. “We still don’t have background checks. Didn’t have them when he was in the majority, either. So the game that he’s played, the politics that he’s pursued have given us absolutely nothing and have produced a situation where we lose nearly 40,000 of our fellow Americans every year.” (Siders, 9/19)

Colt, a U.S. firearms company that traces its history to the 1830s, announced Thursday that it would suspend the production of rifles for the civilian market — including the AR-15, a weapon infamous for its popularity among the country’s mass shooters. There are already so many of the weapons in the country that the market is saturated and executives decided “it is good sense to follow consumer demand,” the manufacturer’s president and chief executive said in a statement. (Thebault, 9/19)

Gov. Tony Evers rolled out red-flag legislation Thursday and said he would consider requiring gun owners to sell off some of their weapons. Republicans who control the Legislature immediately rejected both ideas, much as they resisted an earlier proposal from Evers for expanded background checks. The red-flag legislation Evers touted Thursday would allow judges to take guns away from people who are deemed to be a danger. (Marley, 9/19)