The U.S. Senate voted late Tuesday to advance a gun control bill with 14 Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joining Democrats to approve the measure.
The vote was reached after weeks of negotiating a bipartisan bill in response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers.
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The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday evening to pass the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” a package of gun control bills developed in response to the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.
The House voted on pieces of the legislation separately.
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A bill written by a Georgia congresswoman that would provide for a host of gun control measures is making its way through the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.
“A family or household member of the applicable individual, or a law enforcement officer, may submit to an appropriate district court of the United States a petition requesting that the court issue an ex parte Federal extreme risk protection order or long-term Federal extreme risk protection order with respect to an individual,” says the text of H.R. 2377.
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In the U.S. Senate, some Republican senators appear open to signing off on Democrat-proposed efforts to increase gun control restrictions in the wake of several recent mass shootings.
Politico reports that the negotiations are being led on the Republican side by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas). Cornyn has already briefed Republican leadership on what he has discussed with other senators over last week’s recess, and recently held a meeting with Democrats Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to move talks forward.
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New York GOP Rep. Chris Jacobs announced on Friday that he would not seek re-election after his support for an assault weapons ban generated backlash within his own party.
Jacobs announced last week, in the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., that he would back a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, according to the New York Times. Jacobs represents the 27th Congressional District of New York, which includes some of the Buffalo suburbs.
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Jake Evans, the Trump-endorsed candidate in the Republican primary runoff election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, criticized his opponent Rich McCormick’s stance on the 2nd amendment on The John Fredericks Show on Tuesday.
“[McCormick] is backed by special interest groups. AMA is one of them, the American Medical Association. If you look at their website they are clear. They are a liberal organization. Make no bones about it,” Evans said.
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White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday Joe Biden has no interest in Republican proposals that focus on “hardening schools,” i.e., installing greater security and safety measures, because “the problem is with guns.”
Asked if she could elaborate on Biden’s promise to meet with members of Congress on new gun laws, Jean-Pierre said gun violence is an “epidemic” across the country.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) rejected a school safety bill proposed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) Wednesday, one that had been promoted by several of the parents of victims of the 2018 Parkland school shooting.
Schumer dismissed the legislation, first introduced in 2019, on which the Parkland victims’ parents had collaborated, claiming the bill “could see more guns in schools” and touting, “I blocked it.”
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The senseless murder of 19 children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas is leading to calls for more gun control. To some, “red flag” laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, seem like the obvious solution. These laws allow judges to seize a person’s guns without a trial, based solely on a written complaint that the person might be a danger to themselves or others. All a judge needs is “reasonable suspicion.”
“We know that we can show we can be united to protect our children,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a famously moderate West Virginia Democrat.
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Gun sales reached a five-year high in Connecticut in 2021, the year that the FBI saw the second-highest number of recorded background checks.
According to Mark Oliva, director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there were 21 million background checks for gun sales in 2020 and 18.5 million in 2021, nationwide. Those figures are the top two highest on record.
“Background checks skyrocketed in March 2020, when there were 2.3 million background checks recorded,” Oliva told The Center Square. “That was the most ever recorded in a single month. That, of course, was the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns. People became concerned for their safety when police were warning they would not be able to respond to all emergency calls because they were seeing COVID infections rise.”
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The gun control activist who President Joe Biden is expected to nominate to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) claimed last year that members of the Branch Davidian sect shot down two helicopters during a standoff with federal agents in Waco in 1993.
David Chipman, the expected nominee, posted the comments as part of a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event. He also called for tighter gun control measures, including restricting gun sales only to licensed gun stores and a ban on the manufacture and sale of so-called assault rifles.
Biden is expected to announce Chipman’s nomination on Thursday during an event where he will lay out a series of executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence.
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President Biden on Thursday announced executive order’s he signed on gun control, including ones to address the issue of homemade, untraceable firearms knows as “ghost guns” and strengthen so-called “red flag” laws that allow police or family members to ask a court to order the temporary removal of guns from a person they say presents a danger to themself and others.
“Enough, enough, enough,” Biden, a Democrat, said in a Rose Garden event before announcing the orders, and following a recent series of mass shootings.
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Within a week of blaming “white supremacy” for the murder of six Asian and two white women by a white man in Georgia, progressives are now blaming “assault weapons” for a mass shooting in which a Trump-hating Muslim immigrant with a history of violence, mental illness, and racial animus gunned down 10 white people in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket.
Beyond the duplicity of highlighting race only when the killer is white and the victims are not, progressive lawmakers, activists, and journalists are using a litany of falsehoods in an attempt to ban common semi-automatic guns used for home defense and hunting.
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Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden have vowed to act on gun control in the aftermath of two mass shootings that left 18 people dead, but despite their majorities in Congress, Democrats’ proposed bills would be extraordinarily unlikely to overcome a Republican Senate filibuster.
Partisan gridlock on guns is nothing new. No major gun control legislation has passed in over 25 years, when Congress passed a 10-year assault weapons ban under former President Bill Clinton. But despite the constant stalemates, some Republicans have offered alternative plans, meaning that the possibility of some form of bipartisan gun legislation may still exist.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey said Tuesday that while he did not think the two bills passed by the House would overcome a filibuster, there was still opportunity for compromise.
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Last week, the Biden administration promised gun control groups that it will soon roll out a massive push for limits on firearm purchases and other measures. President Biden reiterated that promise on Sunday. And the television networks aren’t waiting to lay the groundwork for this effort.
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Democratic congresswomen from New York and Texas each introduced several pieces of legislation that they say are aimed at curbing gun violence.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents New York’s 12th Congressional District, introduced a package of five bills, three of which she also tried to get passed two years ago, shortly before the third anniversary of the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida where 17 people were killed and another 17 injured by a former student.
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Republican challenger Scott Taylor and incumbent Representative Elaine Luria (D-Virginia Beach) faced off Tuesday night in their first televised debate. The 2nd Congressional District race is currently a toss-up.
Political reporter Joe St. George served as the moderator. Questions featured were presented in three segments: from the moderator first, then viewers, and lastly from Taylor and Luria.