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Senate’s expanded legislation aims to halt acts of mass gun violence over a key procedural hurdle on Thursday by voting to end the debate and move to a final vote on a package combining modest new $ 15 billion mental health restrictions on firearms and funding for school security.
The 65-34 vote was an unlikely breakthrough on the emotional and polarizing issue of U.S. gun laws, which have remained largely unchanged for more than 25 years, even as the nation has been repeatedly marked by mass shootings whose names remain inscribed in the story – from Columbine and Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook and Parkland.
But the May 24 assassination of 19 students and two primary school teachers in Uwalde, Texas, sparked renewed action, forcing a small group of senators to negotiate a narrow, bipartisan package focused on keeping weapons away from dangerous potential killers while accumulating capacity. of the nation’s billion-dollar mental health new funding.
The resulting bipartisan Safer Communities Act garnered support from all 50 members of the Democratic Group and 15 Republicans on Thursday, including minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Who opposed previous attempts to tighten gun laws after mass shootings.
Senate votes to advance bipartisan arms deal, breaking 30-year difficulty
“This is the sweet place to make America safer, especially for school children, without making our country a little less free,” McConnell said on Thursday. “It’s a package of common sense. Its provisions are very, very popular. It contains zero, zero new restrictions, zero new waiting periods, zero mandates and zero prohibitions of any kind for law-abiding gun owners.
McConnell’s support came despite opposition from prominent arms groups, including the National Arms Association, which said this week that the bill “does little to tackle violent crime, while opening the door to unnecessary burdens on the exercise of the Second Amendment Amendment.” law … perpetual gun owners. “
But other players on the right backed the bill, which was agreed primarily by Senators John Cornin (R-Tex.) And Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), As well as Senators Kirsten Cinema (D-Ariz.) And Tom Tillis (RN.C.) .). The conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal approved the law on Thursday, as did the National Sheriff’s Association, which has close ties to Republican leaders.
Non-partisan groups, including the Fraternal Police Order, the International Association of Police Chiefs, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the American Psychological Association, also approved the bill.
Democrats and proponents of gun control, meanwhile, hailed the bill as a breakthrough – from a political, if not a political, point of view, overcoming decades of congressional stalemate over gun laws.
“We’re about to save a lot of lives,” Murphy said. “We have been building a movement to end gun violence for 10 years, and we said we would one day be strong enough to defeat the gun lobby, and here we are.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) said Thursday that the bill “is not a cure for all the ways in which gun violence affects our nation, but it is a long-overdue step in the right direction.”
“The United States Senate was faced with a choice: we can give in to it or choose to try to build a bipartisan path forward to pass a real bill, no matter how difficult it may seem,” he said. “We chose to try to do something.
The coalition behind the gun bill reveals a sharp division of Republicans in the Senate
The exact timing of the final vote remained in question on Thursday afternoon. According to Senate rules, the final vote must take place no later than Friday night, but that schedule could be accelerated if all 100 senators agree.
The 15 Republicans who backed the bill were Senator Roy Blunt (Misito), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Susan Collins (Maine), Johnny Ernst (Iowa). ), Lindsay O. Graham (SC), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Patrick J. Tumi (Pennsylvania) and Todd K. Young (India), as well as McConnell, Cornin and Tillis.
Other Senate Republicans have expressed a number of concerns about the bill, with most arguing that the bill does not do enough to protect the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.
Some conservative senators have amended the bill, as an alternative to Senators John Baraso (R-Wyo.) And Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Who will fund school security officers and mental health programs, leaving current gun laws intact. . They or others could agree to speed up the final adoption of the bill in exchange for a vote on their amendments.
“We will not leave until we pass this bill,” Sumer said Thursday, promising to work on the vote as soon as possible.
If the Senate passes its bill, it will move to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to be passed with the support of almost all Democrats and a handful of Republicans. “While more is needed, this package must quickly become law to help protect our children,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said on Tuesday.
President Biden, who called for much more in-depth gun control measures on television this month, said he intends to sign the bill. “Our children in schools and our communities will be safer because of this legislation,” he said in a statement Thursday. “I urge Congress to complete the work and bring this bill to my desk.
But the Senate vote on Thursday was the real breakthrough – a violation of the de facto filibuster of gun control legislation that has been in place since the mid-1990s, when bipartisan majorities passed the Brady bill establishing a national system for verifying the past. A 10-year ban on weapons of attack and restrictions on the sale of weapons to perpetrators of domestic violence.
However, none of the measures included in this bill goes that far. They are best described as modest extensions and adjustments to existing laws – such as the closure of the “boyfriend door”, a loophole in a 1996 law aimed at keeping weapons away from perpetrators of domestic violence.
However, the existing law prohibits the sale of weapons only to perpetrators of domestic violence who have committed crimes against a spouse or partner with whom they have lived or had a child. The Senate bill includes those who have committed offenses against those in a “current or recent former relationship” for the first time.
Another key provision creates “enhanced” background checks on arms buyers under the age of 21, who will be the first to be searched in criminal and juvenile mental health files. Authorities will have up to 10 business days to review these records under the Senate bill, although that provision expires in 10 years – after which juvenile records must be routinely included in the federal database for immediate review.
The bill also puts an additional $ 750 million into an existing Justice Department grant program and allows it to fund state crisis intervention programs for the first time, including red flag laws that allow authorities to keep weapons temporarily away. by people who have been identified as posing a danger to themselves or their communities. Other regulations establish new federal arms trafficking offenses and clarify which arms dealers are required to seek a federal firearms license and thus conduct inspections of their customers.
The mental health-focused elements of the bill will allow states to set up “community behavioral health centers,” strengthen school intervention programs, and allow greater access to telehealth services for those in a mental health crisis, among others. programs. The $ 15 billion cost is offset by a delay in the Trump administration’s regulation of Medicare drug spending.
The Senate vote came just hours after the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 ruling, expanded Americans’ rights to carry public firearms under the Constitution – repealing a law in New York that required those seeking a license to carry a gun to legally demonstrate reason to do so.
The court’s opinion, written by Judge Clarence Thomas, states that “the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the individual’s right to carry a self-defense pistol outside the home.” But a concerted opinion, written by Judge Brett M. Cavanaugh and joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., emphasizes that the Constitution continues to allow for a “variety” of gun regulations.
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