Gun bills advance after OK in House
WASHINGTON — The House approved a pair of bills Thursday aimed at expanding and strengthening background checks for gun buyers, as Democrats pushed past Republican opposition to advance major gun safety measures after decades of congressional inaction.
In two votes that fell largely along party lines, the House passed legislation that would require background checks for all gun buyers and extend the time the FBI has to vet those flagged by the national instant check system.
Despite being widely popular with voters, the measures face what is expected to be insurmountable opposition in the Senate, where Republicans have resisted imposing any limits on guns.
The House voted 227-203 to approve the expansion of background checks and 219-210 to give federal law enforcement more time to vet gun buyers.
All four members of Arkansas’ delegation voted against both measures.
Both pieces of legislation are aimed at addressing gaps in existing gun laws, including the so-called Charleston loophole, which restricts to three days the period the FBI has to conduct a background check, allowing many buyers to evade them. The provision allowed Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine people in 2015 at a historically Black church in Charleston, S.C., to buy a handgun even though he should have been barred from doing so. The bill would extend the amount of time the FBI has to complete a check for an additional week, to 10 days.
The other measure passed Thursday would require buyers shopping for firearms online or at gun shows to have their backgrounds vetted before they could receive the weapon. They are not currently required to do so, although in-person buyers, who make up the majority of such transactions, are.
“Let’s not add more names to this registry of grief,” Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, said, reading from a lengthy list of recent mass shootings and noting that they had fallen sharply in the past year.
Democrats first passed the legislation in 2019, shortly after they recaptured control of the House, making it a centerpiece of their agenda as they sought to capitalize on an outpouring of student activism in favor of stricter gun safety measures after a school shooting in 2018 in Parkland, Fla.
Last month, President Joe Biden called on Congress to enact the bills in a statement commemorating the three-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting.
Still, the legislation will join a growing stack of items on the liberal agenda that appear destined to languish in the 50-50 Senate, where Democrats must win the support of 10 Republicans to pass most major measures. It is part of a concerted strategy by Democrats to increase pressure on those in their ranks who are resistant to eliminating the legislative filibuster, and to force Republicans to take politically unpopular votes before the 2022 midterm elections.
“A vote is what we need, not hopes and prayers,” said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the Senate Democratic leader, during a news conference Thursday.
House Republicans almost uniformly opposed the measures, arguing that the legislation would not make it harder for criminals to improperly receive weapons, but would impose a significant burden on law-abiding citizens attempting to purchase a firearm.
Eight Republicans voted to advance the universal background legislation, while one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, opposed it. Two Republicans supported extending the length of checks from three to 10 days, while two Democrats, Golden and Ron Kind of Wisconsin, broke with their party to oppose it.