safetyfirst2125
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View: https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/1531609855387222020?s=21&t=sGq9LnisU3y1muecGUMa9A
“The House Judiciary Committee will be holding an emergency hearing on Thursday to mark up a package of gun-control bills as Congress wrestles with the twin massacres in Uvalde and Buffalo, as well as soaring gun violence nationally.
The panel will consider a robust package of eight gun-related bills which Democrats are calling the “Protecting Our Kids Act.”
The omnibus package includes bills to raise the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21; ban the import, sale, manufacture, transfer or possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines, although existing magazines are “grandfathered” in; requires existing bump stocks be registered under the National Firearms Act and bars the manufacture, sale, or possession of new bump stocks for civilian use; amends the definition of “ghost guns” to require background checks on all sales, as ATF is trying to do through rulemaking; beefs up federal criminal penalties for gun trafficking and “straw purchases”; and establishes new requirements for storing guns at home – especially with minors present – while providing tax credits for storage devices.
House Democratic leaders plan to bring the bills to the floor early next week and are confident they have the votes to pass them. There’s still a debate, however, about whether members will vote on the bills individually or as one package. Several members want to vote on the bills individually, we’re told.
Of course, this package doesn’t have the 60 votes it would need to advance in the Senate. But Democratic sources said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team felt they had to do more to act after the horrific massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last week, which came just days after a racist shooting in Buffalo. Nineteen children and two teachers were murdered in Texas by a lone 18-year-old gunman, who was later killed by police. Ten Black people were murdered by a racist gunman in a Buffalo grocery store.
Four top Democratic leaders – Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburnand Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark – held a call Thursday to discuss how to respond.
Since then, the leadership along with House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Reps. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), have been working the phones to ensure that various aspects of the package have enough votes to pass both out of committee and on the floor. Some of the bills have been approved by the Judiciary Committee in the past but have never gotten a floor vote.
Deutch, whose district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was particularly critical in garnering support for the bill to regulate high-capacity magazines over the Memorial Day weekend, we’re told. Seventeen high-school students were murdered in a 2018 mass shooting at that high, with another 17 injured.
Deutch has introduced this bill previously along with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on the Senate side. High-capacity magazines have been used by gunmen in many of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, including Las Vegas, Orlando, Boulder, Parkland, Sandy Hook, Fort Hood and Virginia Tech, among others.
The House will vote on this package of bills in some form – either together or separately – when it returns next week. The chamber will also vote on red flag law legislation, as Hoyer previously announced.
Again, this package won’t go anywhere in the Senate due to Republican opposition. And it comes as a bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Chris Murphy(D-Conn.), are trying to cobble together a much more modest bill in response to the Uvalde massacre. That Senate proposal could include a program “incentivizing” states to adopt “red flag” laws, and potentially expanded background checks, although it will be tougher to get GOP support for the latter.
What’s currently not included in the House package? A ban on assault weapons. We’re told House Democratic leaders haven’t ruled that out but they don’t have the votes right now to pass it.
The full list of bills included in the “Protecting Our Kids” package:
→ The Raise the Age Act (H.R. 3015, Rep. Anthony Brown of Maryland)
→ Prevent Gun Trafficking Act (H.R. 2280, Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois)
→ The Untraceable Firearms Act (H.R. 3088, Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island)
→ Ethan’s Law (H.R. 748, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut)
→ The Safe Guns, Safe Kids Act (H.R. 6370, Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan)
→ The Kimberly Vaughan Firearm Safe Storage Act (H.R. 130, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas)
→ Closing the Bump Stock Loophole Act (H.R. 5427, Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada)
→ The Keep Americans Safe Act (H.R. 2510, Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida)
