Democrats will take what they can from Republicans…
The bill does not ban assault weapons….
It doesn’t even have gun control in it’s title….
The Senate has NOT approved a permeant ATF head for over 10 years, by the way…..
The National Rifle Association is against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which has the support of 14 Republican Senator’s right now….
The rash of media exposure to the weekly mass shootings seems to have pushed things that have languished for decades on Federal gun control action….
Proponents hoped to win final Senate approval for the legislation before a scheduled Fourth of July recess, with the House expected to follow suit quickly. The National Rifle Association almost immediately announced its opposition, and the vast majority of Republican officeholders fell in line behind it.
But both Senate leaders swiftly 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 broken through in Congress. Mr. McConnell called the bill “a common sense package of popular steps that will help make these horrifying incidents less likely while fully upholding the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”
Senator 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 ahead of the vote. “While it is not everything we want, this legislation is urgently needed.”
The flurry of negotiations was spurred by two mass shootings in the last two months: a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, and a racist attack that killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. The 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 assaults have fallen short amid Republican opposition.
Since 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats announced their agreement on a bipartisan outline less than two weeks ago, lead 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 hammering out the details and toiling to keep their fragile coalition together.
The title of the bill reflected that careful negotiating — it notably emphasized “safety,” not any particular limits 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 Democratic efforts to limit access to guns they have succeeded in keeping out of 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 The New York Times. It includes $60 million over five years to provide mental health and behavioral training for primary care clinicians, $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 school children, $28 million of which is set aside for trauma care in schools….
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen
@NoLieWithBTC
NEW: Marjorie Taylor Greene just called for Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and 12 other Republican senators to be voted out of office after they voted to advance a gun reform bill. She called McConnell “a complete failure to Repbulicans.”
Senate Passes Bipartisan Gun Bill
“The Senate approved bipartisan legislation on Thursday aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people, after a small group of Republicans joined Democrats to break through their party’s longstanding blockade of gun safety measures and shatter nearly three decades of congressional paralysis on toughening the nation’s gun laws,” the New York Times reports.
“It would enhance background checks for prospective gun buyers ages 18 to 21, requiring for the first time that juvenile records, including mental health records beginning at age 16, be vetted for potentially disqualifying material. The bill would provide incentives for states to pass ‘red flag’ laws that allow guns to be temporarily confiscated from people deemed by a judge to be too dangerous to possess them. And it would tighten a federal ban on domestic abusers buying firearms, and strengthen laws against straw purchasing and trafficking of guns.”
House rubber stamps Senate ‘Gun’ Bill that will get Biden’s signature…..