“God willing, it will save a lot of lives,” Biden said at the White House as he finished signing the bill.
The legislation came in the wake of recent mass shootings at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, which was in a predominantly black neighborhood. A bipartisan group of negotiators went to work in the Senate and released the legislative text on Tuesday. The bill, titled the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, was published by Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
In his remarks on Saturday, the president announced that he would host members of Congress who supported landmark gun safety legislation at a White House event on July 11, after he returned from Europe, to celebrate the new law. with the families of the victims of armed violence.
The package represents the most significant new federal legislation to address gun violence since a 10-year assault weapons ban that expired in 1994, though it doesn’t ban any guns and falls far short of what Biden and his party had advocated. , and polls show most Americans want to see.
“While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve called for for a long time that will save lives,” Biden said. “Today, we say more than ‘enough.’ We say more than enough. This time, when it seems impossible to do something in Washington, we are doing something consistent.”
Biden added: “If we can compromise on guns, we should be able to compromise on other critical issues, from veterans’ health care to cutting-edge American innovation and much more. I know there is much more work to be done.” And I’m never going to give up, but this is a monumental day.”
The law will now prohibit anyone convicted of a crime of domestic violence against someone with whom they have a “continuing serious relationship of a romantic or intimate nature” from owning a gun. The law is not retroactive. However, it will allow those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to have their gun rights restored after five years if they have committed no other crimes.
The bill encourages states to include juvenile criminal records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System with grants and implements a new protocol for checking those records.
The bill goes after people who sell guns as their primary source of income but have previously evaded registering as a federally licensed firearms dealer. It also increases funding for mental health and school safety programs.
Just before signing the bill, Biden praised the families of gun violence victims he had met with. He said his activism in the face of loss made a difference.
“I want to especially thank the families that Jill and I have (met), many of whom we sat through for hours on end, across the country. There are so many we have come to know who have lost their souls to an epidemic of violence. They’ve lost their son, their husband, their wife,” Biden said.
“Nothing is going to fill that void in their hearts. But they paved the way for other families to not have the experience, the pain and the trauma that they have had to go through.”
This story has been updated with additional developments on Saturday.
Clare Foran, Kristin Wilson, Annie Grayer, Ariane de Vogue, Lauren Fox, Ali Zaslav, Melanie Zanona and CNN’s Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.
Reference-www.cnn.com