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McConnell Signals Support for Gun Legislation Framework
Posted
June 14, 2022
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June 14, 2022
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1:02Now PlayingSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he is supportive of the framework of a bipartisan response to last month’s mass shootings.
The proposal falls far short of tougher steps long sought by President Joe Biden and many Democrats. Even so, the accord was embraced by President Joe Biden and enactment would signal a significant turnabout after years of gun massacres that have yielded little but stalemate in Congress.
The compromise would make the juvenile records of gun buyers under age 21 available when they undergo background checks. The suspects who killed 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo and 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde were both 18, and many perpetrators of recent years' mass shootings have been young.
The agreement would offer money to states to enact and put in place “red flag” laws that make it easier to temporarily take guns from people considered potentially violent, plus funds to bolster school safety and mental health programs.
Some people who informally sell guns for profit would be required to obtain federal dealers' licenses, which means they would have to conduct background checks of buyers.
Convicted domestic abusers who do not live with a former partner, such as estranged ex-boyfriends, would be barred from buying firearms, and it would be a crime for a person to legally purchase a weapon for someone who would not qualify for ownership.
The agreement was quickly endorsed by groups that support gun restrictions including Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety and March for Our Lives, which organized rallies held around the country on Saturday.
The National Rifle Association said in a statement that it opposes gun control and infringing on people's “fundamental right to protect themselves and their loved ones,” but supports strengthening school security, mental health and law enforcement.
The group has long exerted its sway with millions of firearms-owning voters to derail gun control drives in Congress.
The agreement represents a lowest common denominator compromise on gun violence, not a complete sea change in Congress. Lawmakers have demonstrated a newfound desire to move ahead after saying their constituents have shown a heightened desire for congressional action since Buffalo and Uvalde, but Republicans still oppose more sweeping steps.
Democrats were pushing for banning assault-style firearms such as the AR-15 style rifles used in Buffalo and Uvalde, or raising the legal age for buying them.
AR-15s are popular and powerful semi-automatic weapons that can fire high-capacity magazines and have been used in many of the nation’s highest-profile slaughters in recent years. One of them, the killing of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, occurred six years ago Sunday.
Democrats have also wanted to ban high capacity magazines and to expand required background checks to far more gun purchases.
None of those proposals has a chance in Congress.
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