SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Leading gun control advocates have offered their support for U.S. Senate negotiators' framework on legislation announced on Sunday morning, calling the proposal some of the most meaningful federal reforms in decades.
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Twenty senators – including 10 Republicans, raising the possibility of passage in the 50-50 chamber – announced their support for the agreement, which would provide funding to states that pass red flag laws, bar all convicted domestic abusers from purchasing firearms, enhance background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21 and require all commercial sellers to conduct background checks.
Christian Heyne, Vice President of Policy with the nonpartisan gun control group Brady, told KCBS Radio's Dan Mitchinson during an interview on Sunday morning that the proposal – which is yet to be written into a bill – "would be the most meaningful federal legislation we've seen Congress pass" since 1996, when the Gun Control Act of 1968 barred convicted many – but not all –domestic abusers from purchasing guns.
"Certainly, it feels like we are in an important moment in history that Democrats and Republicans are feeling a responsibility to come together and get something done," Heyne said. "I do take it as a very serious sign that these 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats signed their names on to specific policies that they want to work together to get done."
Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords and March for Our Lives all largely praised the agreement. Although organizers with the latter two groups said they wished the framework had gone further, all three groups urged the Senate and House of Representatives to quickly turn the bipartisan pact into law.
Gun control advocates also praised the pressure lawmakers faced following a string of deadly mass shootings over the last month, headlined by a teenage white gunman killing 10 Black victims at a Buffalo, New York supermarket in a racist attack and another killing 21 students and teachers at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school.
The latter is the deadliest at an American school since 26 students and teachers were killed at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut in 2012. Congress didn’t pass gun safety measures in the wake of that shooting, nor did bicameral legislation advance to former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s desks in the aftermath of high-profile mass shootings like the killing of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida six years ago on Sunday or the killing of 60 at a Las Vegas music festival on Oct. 1, 2017.
But following Sunday's announcement, advocates took solace that Congress appears on the verge of finally answering the calls for change.
Not that they want federal lawmakers to stop there.
"It will be incumbent upon the American people to ensure we keep the pressure up," Heyne said. "Republicans are hearing from donors, they’re hearing from constituents, they're hearing from people around the country who are just sick and tired of seeing gun violence in the way we experience it here in America unlike any other industrialized country in the free world."
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