WASHINGTON — The Senate cleared the first hurdle Tuesday to pass a bipartisan measure Aiming to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous people, he agreed to accept a compromise bill whose enactment would break a years-long deadlock on federal legislation to address gun violence.
While the bill falls short of the sweeping gun control measures Democrats have long demanded, its passage would amount to the most significant action in decades to reform the nation’s gun laws. The 64-34 vote came just hours after Republicans and Democrats released the text of the legislation, and after days of feverish negotiations to work out its details.
Advocates hope to pass it by Saturday, and Democratic leaders sped it up in the normally slow-moving Senate.
The 80-page bill, titled the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” would improve background checks, giving authorities up to 10 business days to review the mental and juvenile health records of gun buyers under the age of 21. , and would commit millions to help states implement them. -so-called red flag laws, which allow authorities to temporarily confiscate weapons from people considered dangerous, as well as other intervention programs.
The measure would also, for the first time, ensure that serious dating partners are included in a federal law that prohibits domestic abusers from purchasing firearms, a priority that has eluded gun safety advocates for years.
Senators agreed to provide millions of dollars to expand mental health resources in communities and schools, in addition to funds earmarked for improving school safety. Additionally, the legislation would toughen penalties for those who evade licensing requirements or make illegal purchases by buying and then selling guns to people who are prohibited from buying firearms.
The margin of votes, and quick endorsement from top leaders of both parties, indicated the measure has more than enough support to climb the 60-vote threshold needed to break a Republican filibuster that has thwarted such legislation in the past and reach the final. step in the next few days.
Fourteen Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, joined Democrats in promoting the bill. Two Republican senators were absent; one of them, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, announced his support in a statement.
Advocates hoped to get final Senate approval for the legislation before the scheduled July 4 recess, and the House was expected to do the same quickly. The National Rifle Association almost immediately announced its opposition, and the vast majority of Republican officials fell in line behind it.
But both Senate leaders quickly issued statements of public support, suggesting that public sentiment in favor of toughening gun laws, particularly in the wake of recent mass shootings, had finally found its way into Congress. Mr. McConnell called the bill “a common sense package of popular steps that will help make these horrific incidents less likely while fully upholding the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said he expected the legislation to pass by the end of the week.
“This bipartisan gun safety legislation is progress and will save lives,” he said before the vote. “While it’s not all we want, this legislation is urgently needed.”
The flurry of negotiations was fueled by two mass shootings in the past two months: a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead, and a racist attack that killed 10 black people at a supermarket in buffalo. The human devastation brought gun violence back to the forefront on Capitol Hill, where years of efforts to enact gun restrictions in the wake of such attacks have fallen short amid Republican opposition.
Since 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats announced their agreement on a bipartisan framework less than two weeks ago, the main negotiators: Senators Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both Democrats, and John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, both Republicans, have spent hours working out the details and struggling to keep their fragile coalition together.
“Today we finalize bipartisan, common-sense legislation to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across the country,” the four senators said in a statement. “Our legislation will save lives and will not infringe on the Second Amendment rights of any law-abiding American. We look forward to gaining broad bipartisan support and passing our common sense legislation into law.”
The talks had teetered on the brink of failure repeatedly in the past week as lawmakers, in late-night meetings and calls, grappled with how to translate their outline into legislative text. The group spent the three-day weekend haggling over the details.
The bill’s title reflected that careful negotiation: It heavily emphasized “safety,” not any particular limit on an individual’s right to own or purchase a firearm. This was in line with the way Republicans have been discussing the framework agreement, emphasizing all the Democrats’ efforts to limit access to guns that they have managed to keep out of the final bill.
In its final form, much of the spending in the bill went toward investment in mental health, according to a summary reviewed by The New York Times. It includes $60 million over five years to provide mental and behavioral health training for primary care physicians, $150 million to support the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, and $240 million over four years to Aware Projecta program that focuses on mental health support for school-age children, $28 million of which is set aside for trauma care in schools.
Two provisions have proven particularly tricky in the final days of talks: whether to extend red-flag law enforcement funding to states that don’t have such laws, and exactly how to define a boyfriend or intimate partner, as lawmakers sought to shut down what which has come to be known as the “boyfriend loophole”.
Current law only prohibits domestic abusers who have been married to or lived with the victim, or had a child with them, from purchasing a firearm. Lawmakers expanded the definition to include “a current or recent dating relationship with the victim,” though the change cannot be applied retroactively.
Negotiators also agreed to allow dating couples convicted of a misdemeanor to regain the right to buy a gun after five years, provided they were first-time offenders and had not been convicted of any other misdemeanor or violent crime.
And lawmakers agreed to allow states to access federal funds to implement red flag laws or support what Cornyn described as “crisis intervention programs,” including programs related to mental health courts, drug courts and veterans’ courts.
The bill will be funded by delaying the implementation of a Medicare rule signed by former President Donald J. Trump that would limit hidden discounts negotiated between drug companies and insurers.
Most Senate Republicans still opposed the measure, arguing that it infringed on the rights of gun owners. Over the weekend, Texas Republicans booed Cornyn and proceeded to formally “reprimand” him and eight other Republicans for his role in the negotiations.
Some progressive Democrats, particularly in the House, where they have advanced much more ambitious gun reform legislation, have raised concerns about the notion of “toughening up” schools or further stigmatizing mental health struggles.
But gun safety activists and groups like the NAACP, which support more radical gun legislation, said they would back it in a bid to address at least some aspects of the crisis that has gripped the country.
“When schoolchildren, churchgoers and grocery store shoppers are gunned down, perfect cannot be the enemy of good,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.
“This bipartisan legislation passes the ultimate test: it will save lives,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement. “Now we are one step closer to breaking the 26-year logjam that has blocked action by Congress to protect Americans from gun violence.”
Margot Sanger-Katz contributed report.
Reference-www.nytimes.com