Staff Reports
After the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the Democratic majority of the House Judiciary Committee will reportedly hold an emergency session on Thursday to mark up a series of gun control bills.
Democrats want to vote on gun control and use the GOP’s opposition to it as a campaign issue. This comes after a crazy gunman killed 19 elementary school children and two teachers in Texas last week. They have put forward eight bills related to the problem, and the group of all of them is called the “Protecting Our Kids Act.”
The bills would raise the age you have to be to buy a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21; make it a federal crime to import, sell, make, transfer, or have high-capacity magazines, with an exception for magazines already in circulation; require existing bump stocks to be registered under the National Firearms Act; ban new bump stocks; codify the Biden administration’s new rules on so-called “ghost guns”; crack down on “straw purchases” of guns; and make it harder for
Punchbowl News says that Democratic leaders plan to bring the sweeping gun control bill to the floor of the House early next week, where it is expected to pass. Right now, they are working out the details of whether all the bills will be brought up at once or whether each one will be voted on separately.
After the shooting at Robb Elementary School last week and the killing of 10 people in a Buffalo grocery store two weeks before because of their race, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her leadership team reportedly talked about what to do about guns.
“We felt like we needed to do something big and comprehensive after two mass shootings in two weeks,” a Democratic aide told NBC News.
But everyone knows that major gun control laws have no chance of passing the U.S. Senate, where it takes 60 votes to stop Republicans from blocking a bill. Even without the filibuster, it’s not clear that the 50-member Democratic majority could pass a gun control bill. For example, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has opposed measures that would expand federal background checks because they would apply to private transactions.
Still, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) gave his OK for bipartisan talks to start last week on some kind of gun law. Reports say that there may be a small agreement between Democrats and Republicans on a bill that would encourage states to pass “red-flag” laws. These laws would let police or family members of people who are thought to be dangerous to themselves or others get a court order to take away that person’s guns.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on The Blaze News.
