WASHINGTON — Bipartisan negotiators in the Senate have reached an agreement on gun-regulation legislation forged after mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.
“We’ve reached agreement and just, we’re dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s right now,” Democratic Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut told reporters at the Capitol. “I think we’re in good shape.”
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the other lead negotiator with Murphy, said, “Very soon we will see the text of bipartisan legislation that will help keep our children and our communities safer.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he’d move the legislation to the floor for debate as soon as possible.
Details of the legislation were hashed out by four Senate negotiators: Republicans Cornyn and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Democrats Murphy and Krysten Sinema of Arizona.
Murphy praised Cornyn — who led talks for his party and was booed at his state’s GOP convention over the weekend — for sticking with the negotiations.
“John has been clear from the beginning, he wants to get something done, but he’s not willing to do anything that compromises Second Amendment rights,” Murphy said. “And we’ve been able to stick to the parameters that he set — while sticking to the parameters that I set, which is that we needed to do something meaningful.”
Under the agreement, Cornyn said on the Senate floor, every state will have the opportunity for grants to help pay for crisis intervention programs, regardless of whether they set up “red flag” laws that allow judges to remove guns from potentially dangerous owners.
He also said there would be improvements to the national background check system, including giving states incentives to upload juvenile records to allow better reviews of gun purchasers ages 18 to 21.
The bill also will include billions of dollars in funding to help better secure schools and bolster mental health resources.
The “boyfriend loophole,” aimed at barring abusive dating partners from having guns, also would be closed, Cornyn and Murphy said. But in a compromise, a person convicted of a misdemeanor for attacking a dating partner could be allowed to buy a gun again after five years. The provision is modeled after current law that allows domestic abusers to be restricted if they are married to, have lived with or have a child with the victim.
Ten Republicans earlier signed on to a framework for the legislation, the number that would be needed to push legislation past an expected filibuster in the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also has signaled he could support the package.
Senators, who have long struggled to find common ground on gun safety, restarted stalled negotiations last month following the massacres at the elementary school in Uvalde and a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, that killed a total of 31 people.
