The bill is on its way to the House.
Earlier this week, a new gun safety bill with bipartisan backing was sent to the United States Senate for deliberation. Yesterday, in a surprising show of cooperation, the bill was passed handily with a 65 to 33 vote. With this, the bill is now on its way back to the House of Representatives, where it will go through one last bout of deliberation before it can reach the President.
“I don’t believe in doing nothing in the face of what we saw in Uvalde and we’ve seen in far too many communities,” said Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who called the bill a response to the recent mass shootings. “Doing nothing is an abdication of our responsibility as representatives of the American people here in the United States Senate.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already signaled her intent to push the bill through, and while Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been attempting to raise support against the bill, it is currently predicted to pass. “First thing tomorrow morning, the Rules Committee will meet to advance this life-saving legislation to the floor,” Pelosi said in a statement.
“I am proud of these two complementary victories that will make our country freer and safer at the same time,” Senate minority leader Mitch McConnel said about the passage. “Law-abiding Americans will go to bed tonight with significantly stronger Second Amendment rights than they had this morning, while new commonsense guardrails around convicted criminals and mental illness are now on their way to becoming law.”
