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Senators aim for improved gun law
Bipartisan effort focus is to make background-check system work
Senators usually on opposite sides of the guncontrol debate are teaming up on bipartisan legislation to improve the national background-check system by increasing how often states and federal agencies report offenses that would legally prohibit individuals from buying a firearm.
Sen. Chris Murphy, DConn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, are the main forces behind the legislation, which Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also played a role in crafting.
The trio is expecting to pull more Republican support for their measure before formally releasing it.
Their bill is narrow in its focus, reiterating and reinforcing the requirement that federal agencies report all infractions into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and creating financial incentives for states to do so as well.
The deficiencies of the NICS database have come into sharp focus since it was revealed that a 2014 domestic violence conviction should have prevented the shooter in this month’s fatal attack on a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, from buying a firearm.
But the Air Force never reported the conviction to the background check system.
The problem isn’t confined to the military: The NICS database is missing millions of such records, according to an estimate by the National Rifle Association, citing a 2013 report from the National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics that found “at least 25 percent of felony convictions ... are not available.”
“What our bill does is it attempts to fix that both at the federal level and provide additional incentives to the local states,” Cornyn said last week. “It may be as simple as just getting them to do what they’re already required to do.”
Federal agencies are required to report various felonies, indictments and other crimes — including domestic assaults — into the federal database, but Congress has no power to compel states to do the same.
The Murphy-Cornyn legislation would offer direct financial incentives, as well as favorable future access to other federal assistance programs, to states that report infractions into the system.
Cornyn offered to work with Murphy on the measure recently, after Murphy complained on the Senate floor about Congress’ inaction in the wake of mass shootings, stressing that lawmakers must at least be able to fix the background check system to reflect existing law.
Murphy has been one of Congress’ most vocal advocates for expanding background checks and other gun-control measures since he joined the Senate just a few weeks after a shooter killed 26 schoolchildren and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in his home state.
Cornyn, on the other hand, is considered a reliable ally of the NRA. Their partnership suggests a broad coalition could form around the bill.
But Congress has had difficulty joining forces around gun-control legislation.
Last month, in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 58 concertgoers in Las Vegas, Republican and Democratic lawmakers called for a restriction on bump stocks — the attachment that can turn a semiautomatic weapon into a nearly automatic firearm. But the effort to consider a bill has faltered.
The Senate’s appetite for addressing Cornyn, Murphy and Blumenthal’s bill may be better, as the NRA has long been clamoring for the federal government to do a better job of enforcing existing gun laws.
Blumenthal said the senators are trying to expedite the measure to the Senate floor, instead of putting it through the Judiciary Committee.