WASHINGTON — The Senate Tuesday passed the first hurdle to pass a bipartisan measure aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people, agreeing to pass a compromise bill whose enactment will spark a years-long stalemate over federal legislation to tackle gun violence.
While the bill falls short of sweeping gun control measures Democrats have long demanded, its approval would represent the most significant move in decades to overhaul the country’s gun laws. The 64-to-34 vote came just hours after Republicans and Democrats released the text of the legislation, and after days of frenzied negotiations to work out its details.
Proponents hope to approve it before Saturday, and Democratic leaders are putting it on a fast track on the normally sluggish Senate floor.
The 80-page bill, titled the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” would improve background checks, give authorities up to 10 working days to review the youth and mental health records of gun buyers under the age of 21, and direct millions toward the assisting states in implementing this law. -the so-called red flag laws, which allow authorities to temporarily confiscate weapons from people deemed dangerous, as well as other intervention programs.
The measure would also, for the first time, see serious dating partners included in a federal law banning domestic abusers from purchasing firearms, a longtime priority gun safety advocates have eluded for years.
The senators agreed to provide millions of dollars to expand mental health resources in communities and schools, in addition to funds spent on improving school safety. In addition, the legislation would tighten penalties for those who evade licensing requirements or make illegal “straw” purchases, buy guns and then sell them to people who are not allowed to buy guns.
The ballot — and the quick support from top leaders of both parties — indicated the measure has more than enough support to pass the 60-vote threshold needed to break a Republican filibuster who has had such legislation in the past. thwarted and finalized. passage in the coming days.
Fourteen Republicans, including minority leader Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, joined Democrats in advancing the bill. Two Republican senators were absent; one of them, Pennsylvania Senator Patrick J. Toomey, announced his support in a statement.
Proponents hoped to get final Senate approval for the legislation before a scheduled July 4 recess, and the House was expected to follow suit soon. The National Rifle Association almost immediately announced its opposition, and the vast majority of Republican office holders rallied behind it.
But both Senate leaders were quick to issue statements of public support, suggesting that public sentiment for tougher gun laws, particularly in the wake of recent mass shootings, had finally broken through in Congress. McConnell called the bill “a common sense package of popular steps that will help make these horrific incidents less likely while fully respecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”
Majority leader New York Senator Chuck Schumer said he expected the legislation to be passed by the end of the week.
“This bipartisan gun safety legislation is progress and will save lives,” he said before the vote. “Although it’s not all we want”† this legislation is urgently needed.”
The flurry of negotiations was sparked by two mass shootings in the past two months: a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which killed 19 children and two teachers, and a racist attack that killed 10 black people at a supermarket in Buffalo. Human devastation brought the issue of gun violence back to the forefront on Capitol Hill, where years of efforts to enact gun restrictions in the wake of such attacks have failed amid Republican opposition.
Since 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats announced their agreement on a bipartisan outline less than two weeks ago, 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 toiling to keep their fragile coalition together.
“Today we completed bipartisan, common-sense legislation to protect American children, keep our schools safe and reduce the threat of violence in our country,” the four senators said in a statement. “Our legislation will save lives and will not violate US Second Amendment law. We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and enacting our common sense legislation.”
Talks faltered repeatedly last week to the point of failure as lawmakers struggled during nightly meetings and phone calls on how to translate their outlines into legislative text. The group spent the three-day weekend negotiating the details.
The bill’s title reflected that careful negotiation — it placed particular emphasis on “security,” not specific restrictions on a person’s right to own or purchase a firearm. This was in line with the way Republicans discussed the framework agreement, emphasizing all Democratic efforts to limit access to guns that they managed to ban from the final bill.
In its final form, much of the spending in the bill was directed toward mental health investment, according to a summary reviewed by DailyExpertNews. It includes $60 million over five years to provide mental health and behavioral training to primary care providers, $150 million to support the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, and $240 million over four years for Project AWARE, a program that focuses on mental health support for schoolchildren, of which $28 million is earmarked for trauma care in schools.
Two provisions proved particularly tricky in the final days of negotiations: whether to allocate money to implement red flag laws to states that do not have such laws, and how precisely to define a friend or intimate partner, as lawmakers tried to close what has come to be known as the ‘boyfriend loophole’.
Current law only prohibits domestic abusers who have married or lived with the victim, or had a child with them, from purchasing a firearm. Lawmakers have expanded the definition to include “a current or recent former dating relationship with the victim,” although the change cannot be applied retroactively.
The negotiators also agreed to regain dating partners convicted of a felony the right to purchase a gun after five years, provided they were first-time offenders and found not guilty of any other violent crime or misdemeanor. .
And lawmakers agreed to give states access to federal funds to either implement the red flag laws or support what Mr. 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 implementation of a Medicare rule passed under former President Donald J. Trump that would limit hidden discounts between drug companies and insurers.
A majority of Senate Republicans still opposed the measure, arguing that it infringed on gun owners’ rights. Over the weekend, Texas Republicans booed Mr Cornyn and decided to formally “reprimand” him and eight other Republicans for their role in the negotiations.
Some progressive Democrats, particularly in the House, where they have passed much more ambitious gun reform legislation, have expressed concern at the idea of ”hardening up” schools or further stigmatizing mental health struggles.
But gun security activists and groups like the NAACP, which support more sweeping gun legislation, said they would support it in an effort to address at least some aspects of a crisis gripping the country.
“When schoolchildren, churchgoers and shoppers are shot, the perfect cannot be the enemy of good,” Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, said in a statement.
“This bipartisan legislation meets the most important test: It will save lives,” John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement. “We are now one big step closer to breaking the 26-year blockade that has blocked congressional actions to protect Americans from gun violence.”
Margot Sanger-Katz reporting contributed.
