Congress sends landmark gun violence bill to Biden
WASHINGTON » The House sent President Joe Biden the widest-ranging gun violence bill Congress has passed in decades Friday, a measured compromise that at once illustrates progress on the long-intractable issue and the deep-seated partisan divide that persists.
The Democratic-led chamber approved the election-year legislation on a mostly party-line 234-193 vote, capping a spurt of action prompted by voters’ revulsion over last month’s mass shootings in New York and Texas. The Senate approved the measure late Thursday by a bipartisan 65-33 margin.
Every House Democrat and 14 Republicans — six of whom won’t be in Congress next year — voted for the measure. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., underscored its significance to her party by taking the unusual step of presiding over the vote and announcing the result to huzzahs from rank-and-file Democrats on the chamber’s floor.
Among Republicans backing the legislation was Rep. Liz Cheney of gun-friendly Wyoming, who has broken sharply with her party’s leaders and is helping lead the House investigation into last year’s Capitol insurrection by supporters of then-president Donald Trump. In a statement, she said that “as a mother and a constitutional conservative,” she believed the bill would curb violence and enhance safety, adding, “Nothing in the bill restricts the rights of responsible gun owners. Period.”
Impossible to ignore was the juxtaposition of the week’s gun votes with a pair of Supreme Court decisions on two of the nation’s most incendiary culture-war issues. The justices on Thursday struck down a New York law that has restricted peoples’ ability to carry concealed weapons, and Friday it overturned Roe vs. Wade, eliminating the protection for abortion that had ensured for nearly a half-century.
The bill, crafted by senators from both parties, would toughen requirements incrementally for young people to buy guns, deny firearms from more domestic abusers and help local authorities temporarily take weapons from people judged to be dangerous. Most of its $13 billion cost would go to bolster mental health programs and for schools, which have been targeted in Newtown, Conn., Parkland, Fla., and many other infamous massacres.
It omits far tougher restrictions Democrats have long championed, such as a ban on assault-type weapons and background checks for all gun transactions, but is the most impactful firearms violence measure Congress has approved since enacting a now-expired assault weapons ban in 1993.
The legislation was a direct result of the slaying of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, a month ago and the killing of 10 Black shoppers days earlier in Buffalo, N.Y. Lawmakers returned from their districts after those shootings saying constituents were demanding congressional action.
“This gives our community the sorely needed hope that we have been crying out for, for years and years and years,” Rep. Lucy Mcbath, D-GA., whose 17-year-old son was shot dead in 2012 by a man complaining his music was too loud, told supporters outside the Capitol. “Understand and know that this bill does not answer all of our prayers, but this is hope.”
Speaking haltingly, Rep. Steven Horsford, D-nev., said he was backing the bill for his father, shot to death 30 years ago to the day, the 58 people killed in a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas “and so many other Americans who are victims and survivors of gun violence.”
In the Senate, every Democrat and 15 Republicans backed the compromise.
But overall, fewer than one-third of GOP senators and just one in 15 House Republicans supported the measure. That means the fate of future congressional action on guns seems dubious, even as the GOP is expected to win House and possibly Senate control in November.
Sen. Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., kept careful tabs on the negotiations that produced the bill and voted for it, partly in hopes it would attract moderate suburban voters whose support the GOP will need in November. In contrast, Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy, R-calif., and other GOP leaders of the House opposed it.