WASHINGTON (AP) – The House of Representatives has sent President Joe Biden the broadest gun violence bill Congress has passed in decades on Friday, a measured compromise that both illustrates progress on the long-unresolved issue and a deep-rooted guerrilla divide that continues.
The House of Representatives, led by Democrats, approved legislation for the election year in a mostly party vote with 234-193 votes, limiting the influx caused by voters’ disgust at last month’s mass shootings in New York and Texas. The Senate approved the measure late Thursday with a 65-33 difference between the two parties.
Each House Democrat and 14 Republicans – six of whom will not be in Congress next year – voted in favor. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, stressed its importance to her party by taking the unusual step of leading the vote and announcing the result of the podium in front of the Hayes of regular Democrats in the House.
Among Republicans who support the bill was Republican Liz Cheney of gun-friendly Wyoming, who broke with her party leaders and helped lead the House of Representatives’ investigation into last year’s Capitol Uprising 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 reduce violence and increase security, adding: “Nothing in the bill restricts the rights of responsible gun owners. Period.”
It is impossible to ignore the comparison of the weapons votes during the week with several unpleasant decisions of the Supreme Court on two of the most burning issues of the cultural war in the nation. Judges on Thursday overturned a New York law that restricts people from carrying concealed weapons, and on Friday it overturned Rowe against Wade, removing the abortion protection that the case had provided for half a century.
The bill, drafted by senators from both parties, will gradually tighten demands on young people to buy weapons, deny firearms to more domestic abusers and help local authorities temporarily confiscate weapons from people who are considered dangerous. Most of its $ 13 billion spending will go to strengthening mental health programs and schools that have targeted Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida and many other infamous massacres.
It omits much stricter restrictions. Democrats have long advocated a ban on assault weapons and background checks on all gun deals, but it is the most influential measure of gun violence approved by Congress since the 1993 ban on assault passed.
The law is a direct result of the murder of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uwalde, Texas, just a month ago, and the murder of 10 black shoppers days earlier in Buffalo, New York. Lawmakers returned from their districts after the shootings, saying voters were pushing for congressional action, a rage that many felt could not be ignored.
“It gives our community the much-needed hope we’ve been crying for for years, years and years,” said spokeswoman Lucy McBatt, D-Ga., Whose 17-year-old son was shot dead in 2012 by a man complaining that his music is too strong, supporters told the Capitol. “Understand and know that this bill does not meet all our prayers, but it is hope.
Speaking with restraint, Stephen Horsford, D-Nev. Americans who are victims and survivors of gun violence. ”
For the Conservatives, who dominate the House of Representatives Parliament, it came down to the right of the Second Amendment to the Constitution for people to have firearms, a key to protection for many voters who own guns. “Today they come after our Second Amendment freedoms, and who knows what tomorrow will be like,” Jim Jordan of Ohio, a leading Republican on the House Judicial Commission, told Democrats.
Pelosi said in a ruling by gun judges Thursday that “the Trump-McConnell Court implicitly approves of the tragedy of the mass shootings and daily gun deaths that plague our nation.” It was a reference to the changing balance of three conservative judges appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate, led by majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
But Republicans in the House of Representatives used the gun debate to praise both court rulings. “What a great day for babies, and as the speaker described it, Supreme Court Trump-McConnell,” said spokesman Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis.
Representative Dan Bishop, RN.C., said the decision on firearms “electrified the country and let the radicals boil – the Constitution means what it says.”
In the Senate, every Democrat and 15 Republicans supported the compromise. Only two of these GOP senators face re-election next year.
But overall, less than a third of Republican senators and only 1 in 15 Republicans in the House of Representatives supported the measure. This means that the fate of future congressional action on weapons seems questionable, although the Republican Party is expected to win the House of Representatives and possibly Senate control of the November election.
McConnell closely monitored the negotiations that led to the bill and voted for it, in part in the hope that it would attract moderate voters in the suburbs, whose support the Republican Party will need in its November candidacy for control of the Senate. In contrast, minority leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, and other Republican leaders from the more conservative House opposed it.
The legislation has been opposed by firearms groups such as the National Rifle Association. But arms support groups like Brady and Everytown for Gun Safety were not the only ones to support him. Support also came from the Fraternal Police Order and the International Association of Police Chiefs.
Negotiations leading to the bill were led by Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., John Cornin, R-Texas, and Tom Tillis, RN.C.
Under the compromise, checks on gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 20 will now include checking their local juvenile files. The accused shooters in Uwalde and Buffalo were 18 years old.
People convicted of domestic violence who are the victim’s current or former romantic partners – not just spouses or people who have lived or had children with the abused person – will be barred from acquiring firearms. This closes the so-called “boyfriend door”.
There will be money to help states enforce red flag laws that help authorities temporarily seize weapons from people considered threatening and to prevent other countries’ violence programs. More people who sell guns will have to become federally licensed arms dealers and have to carry out inspections.
Penalties for arms trafficking have been increased, billions of dollars have been provided for behavioral health clinics and school mental health programs, and there is money for school safety initiatives, but not for staff using “dangerous weapons.”
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AP reporter Kevin Frecking contributed to this report.
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