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'Red flag' legislation emerges as leading option in the Senate following shootings
Senators in both parties say red-flag legislation, which already exists as law in at least 19 states, has the best chance of securing enough bipartisan support to make it to President Biden’s desk in the wake of two mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas.
A number of senators now see red-flag legislation as perhaps having a better chance of becoming law than proposals to expand background checks, reforms that the House passed in March of 2021 but have sat in Senate limbo for more than a year.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key swing vote, on Wednesday identified red-flag legislation as a promising avenue for compromise.
“If we can’t get 70 or 75 senators to vote for common-sense protection of your children or grandchildren, what in the world are we here for? What’s your purpose for being in the United States Senate if it’s not at least to protect the children?” he said, discounting calls to abolish the Senate filibuster and pass gun-control measures by strict party-line votes.
He highlighted his conversations with colleagues about red-flag laws.
“We talked about the red flag. It’s worked. It’s works in states such as Florida. It’s been very effective,” he said.
Manchin also pointed to legislation to expand background checks for firearms sales and transfers.
“Background checks is something that doesn’t infringe” on gun-owners rights, he added.
But Manchin said last year that he did not support the bill passed by the House to require background checks for all firearms sales and transfers.
The proposal he negotiated with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in 2013, and which he endorsed again last week, would not require background checks for transfers between friends and family.
“There are a lot of solid things that will work and we need to look at those and basically get a piece of legislation. We know that we can show we can be united to protect our children. That’s the thing in a nutshell,” he said.
“I’m willing to look at anything that’s practical that makes sense,” he added.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another prominent centrist, told reporters that she also sees red-flag legislation, which is on the books in Maine, as a good bipartisan proposal.
“I believe that we should look at enacting a red-flag law based on the one we have in Maine, which has due-process rights and involves a medical professional in the decision,” she told reporters Tuesday evening. “I don’t know the details of the shooter but it’s hard to believe he wasn’t mentally ill.”
Collins on Wednesday reiterated support for legislation that would create a process to take firearms away from people who are mentally unstable.
She said she told Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the lead Democratic negotiators on gun-violence legislation about the Maine law.
“That is the kind of law that could have made a difference in this case since according to press reports, if they are accurate, he suffered from mental illness. It’s my understanding he bought his weapon legally and passed a background check,” she said, referring to the 18-year-old shooter in Texas.
“I really think our focus should be on looking at what the states of done, what some states have done on red-flag or yellow-flag laws,” she said.
Collins and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) sponsored red-flag legislation with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) in 2018.
That proposal, the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, would have established procedures for requesting a court order to prohibit a person deemed an imminent risk to themselves or others from possessing a firearm.
“We’ve come close to a red-flag statute. Sen. Graham and I had a measure that we actually introduced and I think there’s common ground on a red-flag statute, which separates people from guns when they are dangerous to people or others,” Blumenthal said.
Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Angus King (I-Maine) introduced their own version of red-flag legislation last year.
Their Extreme Risk Protection Order and Violence Prevention Act would direct Department of Justice funds to incentivize states to adopt laws similar to Florida’s red-flag law, which the state enacted after 17 people died in the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Scott, who signed the law while he was Florida’s governor, says it’s since been used 5,000 times to take guns away from people deemed to be mentally unstable or dangerous.
“Here’s the way we did it in Florida: For people who threatened harm to themselves or somebody else, you could only go through law enforcement and you had to go through the courts and it wasn’t permanent,” he said of the process to take guns away from people deemed to be dangerous.
“Somebody from law enforcement told me it’s been used 5,000 times,” he said.
Scott noted that Florida also raised the age for purchasing a firearm to 21 and said such requirements should be implemented on the state level instead of nationally.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Toxic exposure: The cost of war
Before my deployment to Afghanistan in 2010, I was an avid long-distance runner. Sprinting through miles and miles of open spaces is when I felt grateful — grateful to be alive and to be healthy. Immediately after my return home, I began experiencing migraines, got winded climbing a flight of stairs, and couldn’t run without having to stop to breathe. Where did these ailments come from?
Burn pits. Giant piles of burning trash used to get rid of waste in warzones. Service members used jet fuel to burn medical and human waste, chemicals, paint and munitions, to name only a few of the many items set ablaze. These toxins are so dangerous that no corporation would ever dare introduce them within the United States for fear of economic and criminal repercussions.
Burn pits have been used extensively since 1990 for security purposes as they help leave as little footprint behind as possible. However, the poisonous fumes have affected around three and a half million American servicemembers, who continue to pay the price in visible and invisible ways.
Not all toxic exposure injuries are immediate, some do not manifest for years. Exposure to toxins from burn pits takes time to present and is one of the leading causes of long-term, chronic injuries. While the existing medical care system provides world-class care for veterans with visible wounds, it lacks the funding, authority, and readiness to address the invisible and often longer-term wounds facing our returning warfighters.
Currently, the VA has twelve toxic exposure presumptions an individual must present within ten years of separation from active service to be eligible for benefits — nine of which were only recently added to the list. Regrettably, many other dangerous illnesses caused by toxic exposures are not on that list.
Furthermore, if the veteran shows symptoms of other conditions, including some cancers, as little as five years after separating from active duty, the onus is on the veteran to prove causation. This leaves some veterans to cover the costs of the health care they need to survive out of their own pockets, causing many of them to fall into debt and file for bankruptcy.
Miscalculations, misinterpretations, and poor judgment by our leaders on both sides of the aisle set us on this path. While numerous, the highest cost levied upon our veterans is the long-term health impacts — that turns a healthy warfighter into a person who has difficulty climbing the stairs or lifting their child because they are short of breath. Others succumb to far more debilitating ailments, including cancer.
We did this to ourselves. We, in our haste for victory and security, excavated vast swaths of earth in which we placed our waste, lit it on fire, and knowingly exposed our cherished sons and daughters to inconceivably poisonous and carcinogenic fumes. It is an uncomfortable and inconvenient thought, but the harsh reality is that one of the gravest threats facing our veterans is wounds the government knowingly inflicted and willfully overlooked by disallowing care to the majority of those exposed.
Today, veterans with invisible injuries are walking through the doors of the VA, asking for health care and benefits. Eighty percent of those veterans are getting turned away and must seek care at their own expense. Congress has the responsibility to budget and authorize the funds to take care of the Americans they sent to war for two decades. Understandably, the cost implications of any legislation providing long-term care are extensive, but there is a difference between being fiscally conservative and fiscally responsible.
The U.S. had 20 years of war to budget for the care of veterans who would eventually become ill from toxic exposure. Instead, we are just now getting to it, and unfortunately, some veterans have already died. We are only asking for what is owed to us; the care and services needed to address injuries we sustained while in service — those visible and invisible.
For years, the major focus of the veteran and military community, including the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), has been the development and passage of the bipartisan Honoring Our PACT Act. This comprehensive legislation aims to ensure that our service members who were victims of toxic exposure, are cared for now and in the future.
Thankfully, some congressional leaders are trying to make a difference and ensure those who have been and will be exposed to toxic burn pits have access to the care to which they are entitled. After passing the House in March, the PACT Act is headed to the Senate floor on May 26, and will be voted on very soon.
The bill will not only take care of our current veterans suffering from toxic exposure but will establish a legacy for future generations of veterans. If our government fails our veterans now, potential future service members may not choose to sign a blank check to their government, knowing they may not be cared for when they return home with injuries.
This is when we decide what kind of legacy we want to leave behind and reflect on whether we truly mean it when we profess our support for our military. How many more must die before we do what is right and pass the Honoring Our PACT Act? Congress must take action now. In the midst of our divisive political environment, our country needs a bipartisan win that supports those who sacrificed for us, to support America’s heroes.
US Air Force Veteran Jen Burch deployed to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011 and now serves as Communications and Government Associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
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In the Cold War with China, Latin America is neutral
By rights, the IX Summit of the Americas to be held in Los Angeles June 6-10 should have been the perfect occasion for President Joe Biden to showcase his understanding of and commitment to the cause of the Americas. Having visited Latin America 16 times as vice president, he knows the region well. It could also have highlighted the differences with his predecessor, who only once set foot in the region (for the 2018 G20 summit in Buenos Aires) and did not attend the VIII Summit of the Americas held in Lima, Peru.
Instead, the Biden White House is scrambling to avoid a diplomatic debacle.
Indications that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will not be invited to the summit have gone down badly. The presidents of Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras and the heads of government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations have said that, under these conditions, they will not attend the summit.
China, which by now has held three China-Latin America Ministerial Forums at the level of foreign ministers, has called out the United States for discriminating among Latin American countries, pointing out that Washington is stuck in a Cold War mindset.
The truth is that the push to make ideological distinctions between democracies and autocracies misses the point. Latin American countries prefer to form partnerships with both the United States and China. A recent poll by Latinobarómetro in 10 Latin American countries shows that while 44 percent consider the United States a superior development model to China (at 29 percent), in areas such as trade and investment, infrastructure and digital technology, more Latin Americans prefer to partner with China than with the United States.
Latin American and Caribbean countries want to keep their options open. Vaccine diplomacy is a case in point. Although Chinese vaccines in the region have garnered headlines, every country in the region has contracted with multiple source countries, diversifying to avoid the risks of supply chain surprises. Most countries are buying Chinese vaccines in about the same proportion as their general merchandise imports. In fact, the country with the highest share of Chinese vaccine contracts — Chile — did so under the leadership of conservative President Sebastián Piñera, who has kept strong relations with both the Trump and Biden administrations.
To be sure, 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and six have joined the Beijing-based Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank. But these moves are happening across the political spectrum. They include countries with strong trade and investment links with the U.S., like Ecuador and Uruguay. Rather than signaling a choice to weaken their bonds with their Northern neighbors, this shows the basic economic truth of small, middle-income countries: Diversification brings stability.
As one of us wrote in the book, “Active Non-Alignment and Latin America,” countries in the region have prioritized their own interests, resisting pressure to line up solely either with Washington, Beijing or other great powers. The neutral position of Latin American countries like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico on the war in Ukraine and on Russian sanctions has shown that active non-alignment is not a distant future-oriented policy proposal, but simply an empirical finding of what is happening in Latin America today. The region shows no appetite for being cornered into any of the competing camps of an incipient Second Cold War, as the guest list of the Summit of the Americas appears to attempt.
A more realistic approach would focus on shared goals. For example, Latin American and Caribbean countries recognize their enormous infrastructure deficit, including in transitioning to renewable energy. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recently estimated that the Latin American and Caribbean region will need to invest $2.2 trillion (or roughly 40 percent of regional GDP) to build and maintain infrastructure to meet the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
While China has traditionally held cost advantages in solar, wind and hydropower facilities, Biden’s Build Back Better World has also promised to channel capital towards these goals. The infrastructure gap in Latin America is so large that there is more than enough room for investors from both sides of the Pacific to participate.
Secondly, China’s membership in multilateral bodies such as the IDB has triggered pushback from the U.S. and the US-nominated IDB president. A more realistic response would welcome China’s participation as an opportunity to jointly meet the challenges of the day and boost U.S. firms overseas. China’s infrastructure funds at the IDB take open bidding for contractors from all members, including the U.S. By harnessing Chinese capital in a way that includes U.S. firms and honors the IDB’s world-class social and environmental governance standards, these funds could scale up development finance, promote open and transparent project bidding and incentivize joint oversight through the multilateral governance of the board.
In the last few days, announcements of the lessening of sanctions imposed on Cuba, including travel restrictions and cash transfers to the island, as well as U.S. visa processing, together with indications Washington may consider inviting a mid-level Cuban representative to the Los Angeles summit, show a retreat from the hardline positions that had painted the U.S. into a corner and threatened the success of the summit. Similar signals are being made with Venezuela. This is welcome, and points in the right direction.
Yet, ultimately, the run-up to the IX Summit of the Americas shows that the zero-sum, exclusionary approach to the development challenges of the Americas initiated by the Trump administration and continued by Biden is a dead-end street. What is needed is an inclusionary approach that respects the enormous diversity of this vast continent and works with all parties on such difficult issues as economic reactivation, pandemic control and climate change mitigation.
Jorge Heine is a research professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, a former Chilean ambassador to China and the author of, “Active Non-Alignment and Latin America.” Rebecca Ray is a senior academic researcher at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Watch live: Biden delivers remarks after signing police reform executive order
President Biden and Vice President Harris will deliver comments Wednesday afternoon on a broad executive action that sets standards for police procedures, with the goals of community trust and equality. The signing ceremony for the order happens on the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The event is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. ET.
Watch the live video above.
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O'Rourke confronts Abbott at press conference on Texas school shooting
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke confronted Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) at a press conference in Uvalde on Wednesday following the elementary school shooting that left 21 people, including 19 children, dead.
Abbott had been providing information on mental health in the wake of the shooting when O”Rourke rushed up to the podium.
“This is on you,” O’Rourke exclaimed.
Abbott then asked O’Rourke to leave and he was escorted out of the auditorium. O’Rourke later addressed the press outside.
DEVELOPING
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Watch live: FBI director Wray testifies before Senate panel
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday will appear before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee to discuss President Biden’s proposed fiscal 2023 budget.
Before his testimony, Wray is expected to address the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
The proceedings begin at 2 p.m. ET.
Watch the live video above.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Global oil and gas companies join pledge for cyber resilience
More than a dozen global companies in the oil and gas industry are uniting for the first time to promote cyber resilience amid growing cyber threats.
The energy companies announced their commitment on Wednesday at the annual global conference of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
The pledge aims to encourage global firms to collaborate and take collective steps to strengthen cyber resilience across the industry. The initiative was led by the WEF’s cyber resilience in oil and gas, which seeks to incentivize the oil and gas industry to adopt cyber resilience practices.
“The Cyber Resilience Pledge is a landmark step as it signals recognition of the complexities of building a cyber-resilient industry ecosystem and a commitment towards collective action to achieve it,” said Alexander Klimburg, head of cybersecurity at the WEF.
The energy corporations participating in the pledge include Galp, Petronas, Occidental Petroleum and Aker BP, among others.
Organizers behind the pledge said the initiative is in response to major cyber breaches that occurred in the past two years highlighting the vulnerabilities of critical sectors.
In 2020, Russian-state sponsored hackers exploited the vulnerabilities in software updates from tech company SolarWinds. The hackers were then able to penetrate the networks of nine federal agencies and at least 100 private sector organizations for nearly a year.
The following year, the Colonial Pipeline was hit by a destructive ransomware attack forcing it to shut down for nearly a week. The incident caused gas shortages in several states as fuel prices spiked.
The U.S. federal government and the private sector have since then made major investment in cybersecurity including passing legislations aimed to address cyber vulnerabilities.
“The oil and gas industry is going through a digital revolution that has been a catalyst to the energy transition and sustainability,” said Felipe Bayón, CEO of Ecopetrol, the largest oil and gas corporation in Colombia.
“Cyber resilience is key in this revolution, as staying ahead of vulnerabilities is fundamental to our business,” he added.
The pledge follows another leadership initiative led by senior cyber coordinators from NATO who held their first-ever meeting in Brussels last week. The coordinators met to discuss the cyber threat landscape following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“As the world deepens its digital footprint, cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated,” said Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company that also participated in the pledge.
“But one company, working alone, is effectively like locking the front gate while leaving the back door wide open,” he added.
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Trump says he will still speak at NRA conference in Texas after school shooting
Former President Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he will still be speaking at a National Rifle Association (NRA) conference this weekend after a shooting on Tuesday that took place less than 300 miles away from the site of the event left 19 children and two adults dead.
“America needs real solutions and real leadership in this moment, not politicians and partnership,” Trump said in a post made on his social media platform Truth Social.
“That’s why I will keep my longtime commitment to speak in Texas at the NRA Convention and deliver an important address to America. In the meantime, we all continue to pray for the victims, their families, and for our entire nation – we are all in this together!”
Beginning on Friday, the NRA is set to hold a slew of meetings and events in Houston, less than 300 miles from Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman shot and killed 19 children and two adults.
Trump is among the listed speakers for a Friday NRA-ILA leadership forum. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who is also listed, confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday that she will be speaking at the event.
Other lawmakers who were named as speakers for the forum, however, will not be attending. A spokesperson for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Hill that “prior to the tragedy in Uvalde we had already informed the NRA he would not be able to speak due to an unexpected change in his schedule.” A spokesperson for Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) similarly told Politico that the lawmaker had notified the NRA of a schedule conflict before the shooting.
The shooting comes roughly six months ahead of the 10-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 28 people dead and two others injured in Connecticut.
And it comes less than two weeks since a separate gunman killed 10 people and wounded three others, most of whom were Black, in Buffalo, N.Y.
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Here are the gun bills stalled in Congress
Tuesday’s massacre at a Texas elementary school in which a gunman killed 19 children and 2 adults reignited calls to pass gun control legislation that has been stalled in Congress, in some cases for decades.
Numerous Democrats urged the Senate to act on stalled House-passed legislation, or for Congress to bring up other gun control measures. No major gun legislation has been approved by Congress in more than a decade, despite widespread calls to do so after mass shootings.
Two major control measures were passed by the House last year: The Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021 and the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021. Both measures stalled in the Senate.
After the massacre on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) initiated a process to fast-track both bills onto the Senate’s legislative calendar. But that does not guarantee that either bill will receive a vote in the Senate, and Schumer on the floor Wednesday indicated that he would not immediately bring gun-control bills to the floor.
Enacting any bill will be tough. The evenly-split, 50-50 Senate requires support from at least 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster, and Republicans have not shown support to implement new limits on the sale or ownership of firearms.
“This is a people problem, it’s not a gun problem,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters Tuesday night.
Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021 (H.R. 1446)
Led by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the bill would close the so-called “Charleston loophole,” which allows some gun sales to proceed even without a background check, if that screening is not completed within three days.
The legislation is a direct response to the 2015 shooting at a historic Black church in Charleston, S.C., where the gunman, Dylann Roof, would have failed a background check had a screener received notice that Roof had been arrested previously for drug possession.
The bill passed the House in March 2021 in a 219-210 vote mostly along party lines, with GOP Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Christopher Smith (N.J.) voting in favor of the bill and Democratic Reps. Jared Golden (Maine) and Ron Kind (Wis.) voting against it.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in December sought to pass the bill by unanimous consent, but Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) objected.
Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021 (H.R. 8)
The second major gun reform bill passed by the House and awaiting action in the Senate would significantly expand background checks for all gun sales and transfers.
Under current law, licensed gun dealers are required to run potential buyers through an FBI database — the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) — to screen out felons, illegal immigrants, spousal abusers, the severely mentally ill, or another category that would bar them from buying or owning weapons. But unlicensed gun sellers — like those frequently operating at gun shows or on the internet — are not required to conduct the same screenings.
That distinction, according to gun reform advocates, creates an enormous loophole that poses a severe threat to public safety. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group, more than 20 percent of recent gun purchases in the U.S. were made without any background check.
The bill also passed the House in March 2021 227-203, with eight Republicans joining Democrats to vote in favor of the bill and one Democrat, Golden, voting against it.
The measure is more expansive than a failed compromise measure that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) worked on after the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in 2012. The Manchin-Toomey legislation would have expanded background check requirements in some instances, such as through gun show sales and internet sales, but not for transfers between friends and family members.
It failed in the Senate in 2013 in a 54-46 vote, with four Democrats who are no longer in office joining Republicans to block the legislation.
The duo has not brought the Manchin-Toomey legislation back up in this Congress. After the Buffalo shooting last week, Manchin suggested focusing on mental health provisions instead. On Tuesday after the Texas elementary school shooting, he expressed frustration at partisan gridlock on gun measures and openness to other legislation.
“It makes no sense at all why we can’t do commonsense — commonsense — things and try to prevent some of this from happening,” Manchin said.
Toomey cracked open the door to taking action on background checks on Wednesday.
“I think the thing that would have the best chance would be the thing that has gotten Republican support before, which is expanding background checks,” he told reporters.
Jamie’s Law
While current law prohibits certain people from purchasing ammunition, there’s no real mechanism in place to enforce it because background checks aren’t required prior to those sales. Gun reformers on Capitol Hill want to close that loophole with legislation expanding mandatory background checks to include ammunition.
Sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), “Jaime’s Law” — named after Jaime Guttenberg, a victim of the 2018 mass shooting at high school in Parkland, Fla. — would do just that. It was introduced last year but has not been considered by either chamber.
“There have been a number of these shootings where the shooter purchased the gun legally. But we haven’t addressed ammunition,” Wasserman Schultz told The Hill last week, before the Uvalde shooting. “At the very least, if you can’t buy a gun you shouldn’t be able to buy ammunition.”
Red flag laws
If there’s been one constant factor underlying virtually every mass shooting in recent years, it’s that the perpetrator has displayed signs of trouble leading up to the tragedy. Red flag proposals are designed to prevent the next shooting by empowering family members and law enforcers to seek “extreme risk” protective orders barring people from buying or possessing firearms if a federal judge deems them to be a threat to themselves or others.
One such bill, sponsored by Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), who lost a son to gun violence, has already been passed by the House Judiciary Committee. And the concept is getting some early attention in the wake of the Texas shooting, not least because some of the other proposed responses — including the background check expansion — would have been ineffective since the gunman had reportedly purchased his firearms legally after passing a screening.
Following Tuesday’s shooting, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) praised the red flag law adopted in her home state, noting it “requires due process and a medical professional to be involved.” She said she’s already spoken with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) about moving on the idea.
“That is the kind of law that could have made a difference in this case since, according to press reports, if they are accurate, it appears that he suffered from mental illness,” Collins told reporters Wednesday in the Capitol.
Other bans
The suspect in Tuesday’s shooting reportedly purchased a pair of military-style semi-automatic rifles just days after his 18th birthday. And that news is likely to renew the push among gun control advocates for several long-standing reform proposals, including a ban on assault rifles; a prohibition on high-capacity magazines; and a hike in the age requirements surrounding gun ownership. Additionally, advocates are eyeing a ban on so-called “ghost guns,” a growing category of homemade firearms that can’t be traced.
It’s unclear if there’s any appetite among Democratic leaders to consider those proposals, particularly in an election year when a number of incumbents are facing tough races in purple districts, where such proposals could prove a liability at the polls. But that will do little to prevent more liberal lawmakers from pressing Republicans — and their own leadership — for votes.
“GOP policies have allowed the most dangerous people to access the most dangerous weapons,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). “It is long time to pass violent history checks and an assault weapons ban.”
GOP alternative
Republicans, who worry that new gun control measures could infringe on Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, have proposed alternate legislation that aims to aid the current background check system rather than implementing new restrictions.
The Protecting Communities and Preserving the Second Amendment Act of 2021 from GOP Sens. Grassley, Ted Cruz (Texas), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) aims to improve submission of records to the NICS, would create federal task forces to target those who illegally attempt to purchase firearms, and would study the causes of mass shootings. But the legislation also codifies protections for gun owners, such as allowing interstate firearm sales and transportation, and further defining mental health provisions that restrict some individuals from owning firearms.
The measure was first introduced as the Grassley-Cruz amendment in 2013 in response to Sandy Hook. It failed in a 52-48 vote in the Senate, with 9 Democrats in favor and two Republicans against.
Source: TEST FEED1