Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, said on Tuesday that he is comfortable with the first versions of a bipartisan agreement for a bill that proposes to increase controls on access to guns in the country.
The politician said he could vote in favor of the text, as long as no substantial changes are made until the official process in Congress. The agreement, announced last Sunday (12) by a group of ten Democrats and ten Republicans, could be presented early next week.
After Democratic initiatives failed, the bipartisan project is an attempt to respond to social pressure, which has included demonstrations by President Joe Biden after a series of recent massacres.
The text needs at least 60 votes to pass, and the US Senate is currently divided between 50 lawmakers from each party – that is, there can be no defections among Democrats and at least ten Republicans must support it. Therefore, McConnell’s demonstration is seen as an important impetus for approval.
Senator Chris Murphy, who leads Democrats in the group, summed up this feeling for journalists: “The hard work is done.” On the other hand, Republican John Cornyn said that negotiations for the final wording should be concluded by the end of this week.
McConnell had already praised what he called progress in the discussions, without committing to support the package of measures, as he did this Tuesday.
From what has already been announced, the text should propose an increase in the stringency of background checks for firearms buyers under 21, an increase in the repression of cases in which people with a clean record buy and transfer weapons to third parties who could not obtaining them legally, supporting state crisis intervention orders, and distributing resources to increase school safety.
Biden said over the weekend that the bill doesn’t resolve all the issues he thinks are necessary, but “reflects important steps in the right direction.” The president called the measures, if passed, the most significant gun control legislation change in decades.
The initiative was accelerated after two major mass shootings — at an elementary school in Texas, with 21 dead, including 19 children, and at a supermarket in New York, with 10 dead after a racist-motivated action.
Since the beginning of the year, the NGO Gun Violence Archive, which monitors firearms incidents in the country, has recorded 260 mass attacks, with 297 dead and 1,122 injured.
