Recent mass shootings have spurred gun control bills. They’ll likely fail in Senate
The House, largely divided along party lines, Thursday approved “red flag” laws intended to make it easier to take guns away from people considered a threat to themselves or others.
The bill, passed by a 224-to-201 vote, was part of a wide-ranging package of gun regulation and safety laws approved Wednesday and Thursday by the Democratic-run House.
Since a gunman killed 19 fourth graders and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, last month, and another shooter murdered 10 in a Buffalo supermarket, the clamor for new regulation has persisted.
Most of the proposals are likely headed for defeat in the Senate, including a plan to raise the minimum age for buying assault weapons from 18 to 21. But among the provisions seen as having some chance of winning approval in the Senate are the red flag laws, led by Reps. Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, and Lucy McBath, D-Ga.
Negotiators from both parties continue to try to craft an agreement. But as Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., one of the group’s leaders said, “this is the hardest issue we work on.”
The Carbajal and McBath measures were combined in one bill Thursday. Five Republicans, none from California, and 219 Democrats voted yes, while 201 Republicans and Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, voted no.
Gun control
Carbajal’s plan would establish a Justice Department grant program to encourage states to adopt extreme risk protection or gun violence restraining orders. McBath’s provision would allow federal courts to issue such orders.
California, along with 18 other states, has a state law for issuance of gun violence restraining orders. Family members, law enforcement officials and in some cases other parties can ask a court to bar someone known to them from having access to firearms if there’s strong evidence that person poses a threat.
The law was enacted in 2016. In its first three years, guns were kept away from at least 58 people threatening mass shootings, said a study by the University of California Davis Violence Prevention Research Program.
It found law enforcement officers filed 96.5% of the orders. In cases where someone was a threat to others, about 30% involved intimate partners, 23% strangers and 20% family members. About 9% were school-related.
Carbajal’s bill would not only fund programs, but train law enforcement and the courts in how to use such orders.
There has been some Republican support. In Florida in 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott, now in the Senate, signed a red flag law. Scott, a Republican, took action a month after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
For Carbajal, passage of the law Thursday had a personal tinge. When he was 12, he discovered his sister after she committed suicide with her father’s revolver. “That trauma has been with me the rest of my life,” he told The Bee last week.
Thursday, he saw big possibilities for the red flag laws.
“In so many school shootings, from Parkland to Sandy Hook and Columbine to last week’s tragedy in Uvalde, there have been stark warning signs that red flag laws could have helped intervene and prevent these unspeakable tragedies,” he said.
“These laws can prevent mass shootings, reduce suicides, disarm extremists, and protect our communities.”
A Congress divided
The debate Thursday was laced with familiar political warnings for gun safety supporters, including the overwhelming “no” vote from Republicans. Since the Senate has 50 Republicans, it will take 10 to overcome a filibuster on the bill if all 50 who caucus with the Democrats stick together as expected.
The chief Republican arguments are that red flag laws deny people due process and are simply not an effective way to stop a deranged shooter.
Democrats, said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., are “taking advantage of tragedies to promote their agenda to destroy our constitutional rights, and it’s shameful.”
“That would actually solve the problem. Everything we are doing here today is a pretext. It’s a pretext for targeting and confiscating and eliminating our ability to have weapons.”
But in a Congress run by Democrats, their effort lost. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, told colleagues the bill was “another lifesaving measure aimed at preventing, preventing the next tragic shooting before it is too late.
“Too often what we know is that those who pose a risk of violence show early warning signs. A menacing message online, a troubled message to a loved one,” she said..
This story was originally published June 9, 2022 at 12:09 PM.
.jpg)