After decades of inaction, U.S. Senate passes modest bipartisan gun safety package

Mod­est leg­is­la­tion that would final­ly — final­ly! — strength­en fed­er­al law to pro­tect Amer­i­cans from the scourge of gun vio­lence received a bipar­ti­san vote of sup­port today in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, inter­rupt­ing a decades-long series of con­sec­u­tive fil­i­busters by Repub­li­cans against wor­thy gun safe­ty bills.

“Tonight, after twen­ty-eight years of inac­tion, bipar­ti­san mem­bers of Con­gress came togeth­er to heed the call of fam­i­lies across the coun­try and passed leg­is­la­tion to address the scourge of gun vio­lence in our com­mu­ni­ties,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. “Fam­i­lies in Uvalde and Buf­fa­lo — and too many trag­ic shoot­ings before — have demand­ed action. And tonight, we acted.”

“This bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion will help pro­tect Amer­i­cans. Kids in schools and com­mu­ni­ties will be safer because of it. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives should prompt­ly vote on this bipar­ti­san bill and send it to my desk.”

“This is the most sig­nif­i­cant bill we have passed on gun vio­lence in decades,” agreed Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, the third-rank­ing Demo­c­rat in the Senate.

“This bill does not do every­thing we need to end gun vio­lence, but doing noth­ing was the most extreme option on the table. The Bipar­ti­san Safer Com­mu­ni­ties Act will save lives — and that mat­ters. With this bill, we are final­ly crack­ing down on gun deal­ers skirt­ing the rules, clos­ing the boyfriend loop­hole, and tak­ing steps to keep guns out of the hands of indi­vid­u­als who have no busi­ness own­ing a gun.”

“This bill also makes crit­i­cal invest­ments in men­tal health ser­vices but let me be clear: our gun vio­lence cri­sis is a gun prob­lem, not a men­tal health prob­lem,” Sen­a­tor Mur­ray added in a state­ment laud­ing the vote. “Pass­ing the Safer Com­mu­ni­ties Act is impor­tant and mean­ing­ful progress — but we have to do more: we need uni­ver­sal back­ground checks, a ban on assault weapons, and a stronger com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty vio­lence inter­ven­tion programs.”

“On behalf of the House, we applaud the Sen­ate for pass­ing its gun vio­lence pre­ven­tion pack­age on a strong bipar­ti­san vote,” said Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi, express­ing relief to see the Sen­ate over­com­ing its usu­al paralysis.

“First thing tomor­row morn­ing, the Rules Com­mit­tee will meet to advance this life-sav­ing leg­is­la­tion to the Floor,” the Speak­er pledged. “When the Rules Com­mit­tee fin­ish­es its busi­ness, we will head imme­di­ate­ly to the Floor. And we will send the bill to Pres­i­dent Biden for his sig­na­ture, with grat­i­tude for his leadership.”

The Speak­er’s announce­ment indi­cates that House lead­er­ship is firm­ly com­mit­ted to mov­ing at light­ning speed to get the bill out of Con­gress so that not anoth­er week of inac­tion elaps­es. In the span of less than a day, this bill will have cleared both cham­bers of Con­gress. The House has already adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion that would go fur­ther than the Bipar­ti­san Safer Com­mu­ni­ties Act, so there is no ques­tion that Democ­rats will have the votes to get this bill through.

But how many Repub­li­cans will join them? That remains to be seen. Unlike Mitch McConnell, who backed the bill, Kevin McCarthy has decid­ed to con­tin­ue to be part of the prob­lem instead of get­ting on board with mak­ing even minor changes.

The final vote on the Bipar­ti­san Safer Com­mu­ni­ties Act was 65–33, and the roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Yea: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

The fif­teen Repub­li­cans who backed the bill were:

1. Lisa Murkows­ki, Alaska
2. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky
3. Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania
4. Todd Young, Indiana
5. John Cornyn, Texas
6. Lind­sey Gra­ham, South Carolina
7. Thom Tillis, North Carolina
8. Mitt Rom­ney, Utah
9. Rob Port­man, Ohio
10. Joni Ernst, Iowa
11. Susan Collins, Maine
12. Bill Cas­sidy, Louisiana
13. Shel­ley Moore Capi­to, West Virginia
14. Roy Blunt, Missouri
15. Richard Burr, North Carolina

Most of the afore­men­tioned Repub­li­cans have “A” rat­ings from the NRA. There is strength in num­bers, which will make it more dif­fi­cult for the gun lob­by to exact ret­ri­bu­tion against these Repub­li­cans for cast­ing the wrong vote.

Ron John­son of Wis­con­sin, who recent­ly announced that he’s seek­ing reelec­tion, vot­ed against the bill, as did Mar­co Rubio and Rick Scott of Flori­da, which has a red flag law on the books. Iowa’s Chuck Grass­ley (who is up) also vot­ed nay.

“His­to­ry is made. Lives will be saved,” tweet­ed activist Fred Gut­ten­berg, whose daugh­ter Jaime was mur­dered in the Park­land school shooting.

“This his­toric vic­to­ry was made pos­si­ble by the relent­less resolve of gun vio­lence sur­vivors, par­ents, stu­dents, and neigh­bors who refused to do noth­ing in the face of the gun vio­lence cri­sis that steals more than one hun­dred and ten lives each day in this coun­try,” said Every­town for Gun Safe­ty.

We agree. This bill may be mod­est in scope, but sym­bol­i­cal­ly, it’s a huge accom­plish­ment. For the first time in eons, Sen­ate Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion to gun safe­ty leg­is­la­tion has been over­come. That’s mean­ing­ful. And worth celebrating.

There’s much more to be done, but today, for the first time in a very long time, we can say the Sen­ate act­ed in gun safe­ty. Even a small step counts as progress. And often, the first step is the hard­est. Hap­pi­ly, we took that first step today.