WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis is one of four senators leading the charge on examining the country’s gun laws following two high-profile mass shootings last month that left 31 people dead.
Tillis told McClatchy on Tuesday afternoon that key areas of focus have included red flag laws, mental health, keeping juvenile offenders from purchasing guns and stricter licensing for gun dealers.
Gun reform has become a major point of contention in the United States since a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 killed 19 students and two teachers. The Texas shooting came only 10 days after a mass shooter opened fire in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10.
House members were on recess when the school shooting happened.
But Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat representing Connecticut, where a shooting in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 26 people dead, took to the Senate floor and questioned his colleagues about why they worked so hard to become a senator if they weren’t willing to do something as basic as protect students from being shot.
“This only happens in this country, and nowhere else,” Murphy said. “Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day.”
Senators left for their own recess over the last week without doing anything regarding the country’s gun laws.
But over the break Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, emerged as one of four senators working as a bipartisan group to make changes.
When the House and Senate returned to Capitol Hill this week, conversations centered around gun laws and brought in celebrities like Matthew McConaughey who urged lawmakers to pass gun reform.
Tillis spoke to McClatchy at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday and said he is working with Murphy, Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, and John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, to find changes that lawmakers could agree on. Tillis said he hopes by week’s end they will have “the contours of an agreement.”
Tillis said one of the changes they’re looking at involves red flag laws. Red flag laws allow people to petition a court to temporarily remove guns from a person if they pose a danger to themselves or others.
Tillis said the senators aren’t looking at creating a federal red flag law, but one that states can implement and then become eligible for federal funds as a result.
Tillis said the state-based red flag laws would be modeled after the one Florida passed following a 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The law gives police the means to petition the courts to stop certain individuals temporarily from buying or possessing a gun.
CNN reported that Republicans have been touting it as a best practice, and Tillis said it ensures that weapons aren’t “arbitrarily confiscated.”
Tillis said the senators are also looking at ensuring that juveniles convicted of an offense that had they committed it as an adult would have disqualified them from purchasing or possessing a gun would face the same ramifications.
Another area Tillis said the lawmakers are looking at is improving mental health access based on a pilot program Sens. Roy Blunt and Debbie Stabenow put together that allowed the creation of Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics that were funded through the health care system instead of grants.
Tillis said lawmakers are looking to expand this nationwide. Stabenow and Blunt already filed a bill last summer to make this happen.
Lastly, Tillis said they’re looking at putting in place stricter licensing for gun dealers.
“Right now we have people who are practically dealers, but they’re kind of viewed as hobbyists or various other categories,” Tillis said, pointing to a shooting spree in Odessa, Texas that spread to multiple cities.
“The person who bought the gun could not pass a background check,” Tillis said. “He went to a hobbyist who had a side business buying parts and making assault weapons in a knockoff space, and they’re doing it at a level that it’s clearly not as a hobbyist, it’s sort of a business.”
Tillis said anyone who sells guns as a business should be considered a federal firearm licensee and be required to run background checks on their potential buyers.
