(WWJ) – President Joe Biden on Monday held a “celebration” on the White House lawn Monday, highlighting the toughest new control measure passed in decades.
The bill, which passed the Senate and House last week, will “incrementally toughen requirements for young people to buy guns, deny firearms from more domestic abusers and help local authorities temporarily take weapons from people judged to be dangerous,” according to the Associated Press.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act also bolsters mental health support.
Among those attending Monday’s ceremony in Washington, D.C., was Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter, who called the latest measures “important steps.
“It won’t solve all the issues, but I really do think it has the potential to save lives across our country,” Coulter said live on WWJ Monday afternoon.
Coulter says in addition to strengthening background checks on potential gun owners 21 and under and beefing up mental health programs, the new act also “encourages states financially to pass red flag laws,” which Michigan doesn’t currently have.
Red flag laws allow judges to take guns out of the hands of people the criminal justice system has deemed to be dangerous, either to themselves or others.
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Coulter said red flag laws are “common sense reforms” he’d like to see the Michigan legislature adopt.
“It isn’t easy; you’d have to go before a judge to get a gun taken away from somebody, you’d have to demonstrate that they’re a danger,” Coulter said. “But I think in those kinds of situations, that would be a really important law for Michigan to adopt, and I’d like to see the legislature do that.”
Coulter told WWJ’s Tony Ortiz there’s “at least the potential” that such laws could have prevented the Oxford High School mass shooting last November 30 that claimed the lives of four students and injured six others and a teacher. Coulter said “hindsight is 20/20,” but it’s possible it could have helped.
“It’s not clear, but in many situations, the shooters are young or they are people with troubled histories that could be identified through something like red flag laws,” he said.
While Biden lauded the new legislation, he also lamented the latest mass shooting to rock the country, a shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
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