Gun legislation is bound for Biden’s desk
— Exactly one month after a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers in a Uvalde elementary school, the most significant new gun laws in decades were headed to President Joe Biden’s desk Friday after the U.S. House cleared a bipartisan package of reforms requiring greater scrutiny of young buyers, closing the so-called boyfriend loophole and more.
The gun laws, authored by a group of senators including Republican John Cornyn of Texas, easily passed the Democraticcontrolled House on a 234-193 vote just hours after 15 Senate Republicans joined every Democrat in approving the bill in the Senate late Thursday night. Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.
“When I met with families from Uvalde, they asked me how it was possible for the man who murdered their loved ones to get a dangerous weapon so easily,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-san Antonio, said in a statement. “Today, Congress has voted to pass historic gun safety reforms that will save lives and keep deadly weapons out of the hands of people who present a clear danger to their communities. We need to make more progress on gun safety, but today’s vote is an important step forward.”
The legislation is the first tightening of federal gun laws since 1994. It bolsters background checks on buyers under 21 years old and restricts access to firearms for dating partners convicted of domestic abuse. The bill
creates stiffer penalties for gun trafficking and “straw” purchasing, in which someone buys a firearm for someone prohibited from owning one.
The bill also provides funding for mental health programs and school security and for states to enact red flag laws or other intervention methods meant to stop shootings before they happen.
Just 14 Republicans voted for the bill in the House, where GOP leaders had urged members to oppose the legislation. Only one Texan was among them: U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of San ANTOWASHINGTON
nio, whose district includes Uvalde. The rest opposed the legislation.
Gonzales said earlier this week that he looked forward to supporting the bill in a series of tweets in which he said he is a survivor of domestic abuse.
“As a congressman it’s my duty to pass laws that never infringe on the Constitution while protecting the lives of the innocent,” Gonzales tweeted Wednesday.
Supporters of the bill argued it will save lives without trampling Second Amendment rights. For
the first time, background checks will include juvenile records. The shooter in Uvalde and the shooting suspect in Buffalo, N.Y., before that were 18-yearolds wielding Ar-15-style firearms.
“I don’t believe in doing nothing in the face of what we’ve seen in Uvalde and other communities,” Cornyn said during a floor speech Thursday night. “Doing nothing is an abdication of our responsibility.”
Cornyn said Republicans had to go “outside our comfort zone” on some provisions, but “the potential we have to save lives is worth any sort of concession we might have had to make during negotiations.”
Other Republicans tried to shame those who supported the bill, saying it could open the door for the government to confiscate guns by offering money to states to create red flag laws.
“My colleagues on this side of the aisle, the handful that are going along with it, should be ashamed of themselves,” said U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, an Austin Republican whose district includes parts of San Antonio. “Because right now, today, we have a duty to stand up here to defend our right to defend ourselves against the very tyranny that you ignore.”
The reforms in the legislation are far more modest than those in other bills that have passed the House since the Uvalde shooting, which would raise the age to buy semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21, ban high-capacity magazines, create requirements for safe gun storage in homes, crack down on so-called “ghost guns” and more.
But those measures were never going to draw support from Republicans, and Democrats said the Senate bill was a start they were more than willing to support — while emphasizing that it shouldn’t be the end of Congress’ action on firearms.
“We can stand on this because it was bipartisan,” said U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat. “We understand that this legislation is only the concrete beginning.”