The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is poised to pass the House Friday and be signed by President Biden. It includes the most significant new gun restrictions since the mid 1990s.
The Senate on Thursday passed legislation aimed at stanching acts of mass gun violence, with 15 Republicans joining Democrats to advance a bill combining modest new firearms restrictions with $15 billion in mental health and school security funding.
The 65-to-33 vote represented an unlikely breakthrough on the emotional and polarizing question of U.S. gun laws,
which have gone largely unchanged for more than 25 years, even as the nation has been repeatedly scarred by mass shootings
whose names have become etched in history — from Columbine and Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook and Parkland.
But the May 24 killing of 19 students and two teachers inside a Uvalde, Tex., elementary school prompted renewed action, compelling a small group of senators to negotiate a narrow
bipartisan package focused on keeping guns away from dangerous potential killers while also bulking up the nation’s mental-health-care capacity with billions of dollars in new funding.
The resulting Bipartisan Safer Communities Act garnered support from all 50 members of the Democratic caucus and a cadre of dealmakingRepublicans on Thursday,
including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has opposed previous attempts to toughen gun laws after mass shootings.
This is the sweet spot … making America safer, especially for kids in school, without making our country one bit less free,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday.