House to take up school safety bill after Fla. shooting
WASHINGTON » The Republican-controlled House will vote on a school safety bill next week as Congress struggles to respond to the deadly assault on a Florida high school.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday the House will take up a bill creating a federal grant program to train students, teachers and school officials how to identify and intervene early when signs of violence arise. The bill would implement federal schoolthreat assessment protocols designed to prevent school shootings.
If approved, the STOP School Violence Act of 2018 would be the first gun-related action in Congress since the Feb. 14 attack on the Florida high school that left 17 dead.
The bill’s sponsors, Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., said the bill could help officials prevent school shootings before they occur.
“The best way to keep our students and teachers safe is to prevent violence from ever entering school grounds,” said Rutherford, a former Jacksonville sheriff.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, RUtah, has sponsored a similar bill in the Senate, although senators are expected to turn first to a bill strengthening the federal background checks system for gun purchases.
No votes on gun bills are scheduled in the Senate.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and the lead sponsor of the background checks bill, said Tuesday he is frustrated that lawmakers keep attempting to add gun-related proposals to his bill, a relatively modest measure that would bolster the National Criminal Instant National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
The “Fix NICS” bill would penalize federal agencies that don’t properly report required records and reward states that comply by providing them with federal grant preferences. The bill is a response to a shooting last November in which a gunman killed more than two dozen people at a Texas church. The Air Force has acknowledged it failed to report the gunman’s domestic violence conviction to the National Criminal Information Center database.
“People want to make this bill a Christmas tree, trying to decorate it with other legislative ornaments that look nice to their political base but stand no chance of passing this body or the House,” Cornyn said on the Senate floor. “I think we have to call that what it is. It’s political posturing. It’s not about getting a result. It’s not about passing a bill which will actually improve the background check system.”
Fix NICS has passed the House, and President Donald Trump has indicated he would sign it, Cornyn said, citing a phone conversation with Trump last Thursday. The call came a day after Trump put Cornyn and other Republicans in the hot seat as he called for speedy and substantial changes to the nation’s gun laws in a televised meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the White House.
Trump later appeared to back away from some of the proposals to tighten gun laws, saying in a tweet that “Many ideas, some good & some not so good” were discussed. Trump also tweeted that he’d had a “Good (Great) meeting in the Oval Office” the next night with the National Rifle Association, which opposes many of the proposals discussed at the Feb. 28 White House meeting with lawmakers.
Still, Trump and Congress are under pressure to act in the wake of the Valentine’s Day attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Surviving students and gun-control supporters have scheduled a march and rally in Washington and other cities March 24 to urge new gun laws.