Key snags resolved; gun deal in Senate could become law by end of month
A tentative deal in the Senate that would toughen federal gun laws and provide billions of dollars in new money to prevent future mass shootings moved closer to reality Tuesday after negotiators settled key disagreements that had delayed the drafting of a bill, putting it on a course to be passed into law by the end of the month.
The breakthrough came more than a week after 20 senators — 10 from each party — signed on to a framework agreement that coupled modest new gun restrictions with some $15 billion in new federal funding for mental health programs and school security upgrades.
While agreement from 10 Republican senators on a deal in principle was a clear breakthrough, signaling there could be enough GOP support to beat a Senate filibuster, it did not guarantee that the negotiators would succeed in translating those elements into final text. But with the key disputes resolved, people involved in the negotiations said the text of the bill is set to be released as soon as Tuesday, with a Senate procedural vote coming just hours afterward.
“We’ve talked, we’ve debated, we’ve disagreed and, finally, we’ve reached an agreement,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the lead GOP negotiator, said Tuesday afternoon on the Senate floor. He said the text would be released widely “very soon — not soon enough for me, but very soon.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who led the talks for Democrats, said much the same to reporters Tuesday, reiterating that an agreement had been reached and the drafting was down to “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.”
If passed, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act would enact the most significant new gun restrictions since the 1990s, though it falls well short of the broader gun-control measures that President Biden and other Democrats have called for, such as a new ban on assault weapons or restrictions on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
One sticking point resolved this weekend concerned the “boyfriend loophole” — a gap in federal law that prevents domestic-violence offenders from purchasing firearms only if their victims were either their spouses or partners whom they had lived with or had children.
The framework proposed expanding restrictions to include offenders who have been in a “continuing relationship of a romantic or intimate nature” with their victims.
According to draft of the provision, the bill would bar a misdemeanor domestic-violence offender who has a “current or recent former dating relationship with the victim” from owning or buying a gun.