WASHINGTON – Congress gave final approval on Friday to a bipartisan compromise aimed at blocking dangerous people’s access to firearms, ending nearly three decades of congressional inaction on how to combat gun violence and harden national laws. .
The chamber approved the measure from 234 to 193 a month to the day after a gunman stormed an elementary school in Uwalde, Texas, and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 19 children and two teachers, sparking outrage across the country and a wave of negotiations. Capitol Hill. The measure is now targeting President Biden, who is expected to sign it.
“This bipartisan legislation will help protect Americans,” he said in a statement Thursday night. “Children in schools and communities will be safer because of this.”
Inspired by the horror of the Texas shooting, as well as a racist attack on a Buffalo supermarket that killed 10 blacks in May, lawmakers struck a deal that did not meet the large-scale gun control measures Democrats had long demanded but were more extended. than the steps Republicans have been willing to consider in the past, given their hostility to any step that could restrict access to weapons.
The legislation will step up checks on potential buyers of weapons under the age of 21, requiring, for the first time, authorities to have time to check juvenile files, including mental health files, starting at 16 years of age.
It provides millions of dollars for states to enforce so-called red flag laws, which allow employees to temporarily confiscate weapons from people considered in court too dangerous to possess and other intervention programs. And strengthens laws against the purchase of straw and arms trafficking.
In addition, the measure pours more federal money to strengthen mental health programs across the country and increase security in schools. And the bill tightens the federal ban on domestic abusers from buying firearms, including recent or current serious dating partners, to close what has come to be called a boyfriend door.
The final adoption of the measure came a day after 15 Republican senators joined the Democrats in defeating the Republican Party to push the measure through the Senate, removing an obstacle that proved insurmountable for most past efforts to update gun laws after other horrific mass shooting. The House of Representatives passed the measure with a similarly low margin of Republican support, as senior Republican leaders called on their members to oppose the measure as a threat to the Second Amendment.
“Today they come after our Second Amendment freedoms, and who knows what tomorrow will be like,” Jim Jordan, a spokesman for Ohio, a leading Republican on the Judiciary Committee, told Democrats.
Representative Rodney Davis, a Republican from Illinois, recalled a shooting at a baseball field in Virginia in which Louisiana, a Republican whip, was severely wounded and how he wished he had a firearm with him for protection that day.
“The action on the ground that day strengthened my support for the Second Amendment,” Mr Davis said.
The final approval of the measure came after the Supreme Court overturned a New York state law restricting where gun owners can carry firearms outside the home, a decision that threw ashes for some Democrats who were thrilled with the success of the gun bill after decades of Congress failure on the issue.
“I was really excited about what happened in the United States Senate yesterday – a counterpoint to the dangerous decision of this Trump Supreme Court that they made yesterday,” said President Nancy Pelosi of California, speaking at her weekly press conference on Friday.
Although some Democrats complained that the measure did not meet their ambitions to ban the sale of high-capacity magazines or to raise the age of purchase of assault weapons, it encouraged lawmakers to support the measure as a significant step towards those goals.
“As I tell members all the time with the law, don’t judge it for what it doesn’t have, but respect it for what it is,” Ms Pelosi added. “There are many things in this legislation that need to be respected.
The compromise was reached by a small group of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, including Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kirsten Cinema of Arizona, both Democrats, and John Cornin of Texas and Tom Tillis of North Carolina, both Republicans.
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