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A preliminary Senate agreement that will tighten federal gun laws and provide billions of dollars in new money to prevent future mass shootings came closer to reality on Tuesday after negotiators settled key differences that delayed drafting the bill, putting it in a sliding way to be passed by law by the end of the month.
The breakthrough came more than a week after 20 senators – 10 from each party – signed a framework agreement that combines modest new arms restrictions with about $ 15 billion in new federal funding for mental health programs and school security improvements.
Although the agreement of 10 Republican senators on the deal was generally a clear breakthrough, signaling that there may be enough support from the Republican Party to defeat a Senate filibuster, it does not guarantee that negotiators will be able to translate these elements into a final text. But once key disputes have been resolved, negotiators said the text of the bill would be released as early as Tuesday afternoon, with the initial Senate procedural vote coming just hours later.
“We talked, we discussed, we disagreed, and we finally reached an agreement,” Senator John Cornin (R-Tex.), The Republican’s lead negotiator, told the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. He said the text would be released “very soon, not soon enough for me, but very soon”.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Who led the Democrats’ talks, told reporters almost the same thing on Tuesday, reiterating that an agreement had been reached and the draft was limited to “allocating I points and crossing T”.
If passed, the Two-Party Safer Communities Act will introduce the most significant new gun restrictions since the 1990s, although it does not meet the broader gun control measures that President Biden and other Democrats have called for. called, such as a new ban on assault weapons or restrictions on high-capacity munitions stores.
The senators are concluding a bipartisan arms deal, heralding a potential breakthrough
One issue resolved over the weekend was the “boyfriend door” – a loophole in current federal law that prevents perpetrators of domestic violence from buying firearms only if their victims were their husbands or partners. lived or had children. The framework proposes extending the restrictions to include offenders who have been in a “long-term romantic or intimate relationship” with their victims.
Determining exactly what such a connection is, however, was a challenge, as was responding to the Republican Party’s desire to establish a process that would allow violators to regain their gun rights.
According to the draft text of the provision, received from The Washington Post, the bill will prohibit a perpetrator of domestic violence who has a “current or recent former relationship with the victim” to own or buy a weapon.
What constitutes a “dating relationship” is not precisely defined in the draft text, which would instead allow courts to make this decision based on the duration and nature of the relationship, as well as the “frequency and type of interaction” between the people involved. The text excludes “casual acquaintance or simple twinning in a business or social context”.
These violators will automatically have the right to regain their gun rights after five years, as long as they do not commit other violent violations or other disqualifying crimes.
Legislative talks have faced a self-imposed deadline for writing the bill and submitting it to the Senate this week so it can be discussed and adopted ahead of a planned two-week break that begins Thursday. Although senior officials say senators may stay a day or two to complete work on the bill, the longer delay is seen as insolvent by senators on both parties.
Despite the widespread publicity of the gun regulations in question, Republicans are facing a backlash from the most conservative elements of their electoral base.
Democrats, for their part, fear they will sink into lengthy talks because of deep skepticism about the Republican Party’s desire to make an arms deal. They also fear that this could distract political capital from their other priorities this summer – including a possible resurgence of Biden’s party economic program, formerly known as Build Back Better.
After their last personal meeting on Thursday, the four leading negotiators – Cornin, Murphy, Kirsten Cinema (D-Ariz.) And Tom Tillis (RN.C.) – promised to work all weekend to reach a deal.
Murphy, the Democrat’s lead negotiator, said he was optimistic that progress was continuing. “We will find a way to do this.” he said. But Cornin, a leading Republican negotiator, has publicly taken a tougher stance, telling reporters as he left the room that he had “finished” talks on key issues before leaving for Texas for the weekend.
The next day in Houston, Cornin was heartily booed as he gave a speech at the Texas Republican Party’s annual convention, a stark public demonstration of the significant political risk he and other Republicans take by simply announcing a deal to tighten federal gun laws. . .
While the subgroup of party activists attending the event is not representative of the electorate as a whole, in Texas or elsewhere, the episode illustrates some of the political forces that have struggled to compromise on new gun laws over the past three decades – despite public discontent. the recent wave of mass shootings and persistent street violence involving firearms.
“Under no circumstances will I support new restrictions on law-abiding gun owners,” Cornin told the audience at the Houston Convention. “And despite what some of you may have heard, the framework we are working on is in line with this red line.”
Still, the crowd was whistling. Social media posts caught the audience chanting “No red flags!” – a reference to a pre-deal provision that is particularly unpopular on the right – as well as trash cans full of Cornyn cords. The state also passed a resolution opposing the deal, condemning participating Republican senators on the grounds that “all arms control is a violation of the Second Amendment and our God-given rights.”
However, Cornin told the Texas Tribune the same day that the talks were “very close” to completion.
“I think next week we will be on a slippery slope to have an account on the floor,” he said. He later retweeted a report he told fellow Republicans: “I have never surrendered to the mob and I will not start today.
In an attempt to demonstrate to conservatives that the deal will preserve, not limit, their rights, Cornin focused on provisions that are not part of it: excluding bans on assault weapons or high-capacity ammunition cartridges, universal past checks and safe … storage requirements.
“The list goes on and on and on,” Cornin said Friday. “I said no, no – a thousand times, no.”
As negotiations continued last week, there was reason to believe that the deal could remain isolated from a right-wing reaction. On the one hand, the framework won preliminary support last week from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), An important public vote of confidence by a powerful Republican player who played a key role in stifling previous compromise attempts. Of the 10 Republicans who signed the framework last week, four are not seeking re-election, and another five are not in favor of re-election by 2026.
McConnell says he is likely to back the arms deal as the Senate rushes to vote
However, translating the framework into legislation has proved difficult.
In addition to the “boyfriend door” issues, another complex area involved federal state subsidies, which Democrats have publicly presented as an effort to promote red flag laws that allow authorities to keep guns away from people considered dangerous. for themselves or others.
Many conservatives are deeply skeptical of these laws, so Republicans have called for the grants to be structured so that the money is equally available to states that pass red flag laws and those that don’t.
According to the bill’s summary, the Ministry of Justice’s existing grant program will be expanded to allow funding for state “crisis intervention programs”, including not only red flag laws, but also drug courts and veterans’ courts. The bill provides $ 750 million in new funding for these programs, the summary said.
The third major provision on weapons concerned how past checks were carried out on arms buyers under the age of 21. Although this group is already banned from buying pistols, people aged 18 and over can still buy rifles and shotguns, including semi-automatic military-style rifles, which have been used in numerous recent mass shootings.
The framework deal included an agreement to require, for the first time, searches of juvenile justice and mental health documents for the youngest arms buyers. But due to different state systems and standards for searching for and maintaining documents for minors, negotiators are struggling with the mechanisms of this provision.
The bill will include an “enhanced search” window for arms buyers under the age of 21 to allow local authorities to search confidential databases, according to the bill’s summary, with a total of 10 working days available to complete the review of these young buyers, if demand initially raises a potentially disqualifying issue.
Although this structure is particularly controversial for arms rights defenders, who have long opposed the prospect of creating a de facto waiting period for arms purchases, the “increased demand” provision expires in 10 years – after which the architects envisage the bill. juvenile documents will be routinely included in the existing system of immediate verification.
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