House Passes Two Bills To Strengthen Background Checks

The Hill reports that “The House on Thursday approved two pieces of legislation aimed at strengthening background checks on firearm sales and transfers, a leading priority for Democratic lawmakers.” House approves two bills tightening background checks on guns:

H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act — spearheaded by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) — looks to “utilize the current background checks process” in an attempt to ensure individuals prohibited from possessing a gun are unable to obtain one.

The bill passed by a 227-203 vote with eight Republicans backing the measure and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), bucking his party to vote against it.

Arizona’s Congressional Delegation: Yeah: Gallego, Grijalva, Kirkpatrick, O’Halleran, Stanton; Nay: Biggs, Gosar, Lesko, Schweikert.

The legislation would implement new background check requirements for gun transfers between private parties.

Under current law, unlicensed and private sellers are not required to conduct background checks for gun transfers despite licensed firearm dealers being required to do so.

The bill would require “a licensed gun dealer, manufacturer, or importer” to first take possession of the gun while a background check is being conducted.

The legislation creates an exemption for transfers made as a gift between spouses.

While the bill faced pushback from a number of GOP lawmakers, three Republicans — Reps. Fred Upton (Mich.), Chris Smith (N.J.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) — co-sponsored the legislation. [Hence the “Bipartisan” in the title of the bill].

GOP Reps. Vern Buchanan (Fla.), Maria Salazar (Fla.), Andrew Garbarino (N.Y.), Carlos Gimenez (Fla.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) also joined Democrats in supporting the measure on Thursday.

Proponents argued that it’s a necessary step in curbing gun violence and ensuring that guns don’t fall into the wrong hands.

“We shouldn’t need a pandemic to reduce gun violence in this country. The way to do that ought to be through passing commonsense gun safety legislation through Congress to make it harder for deadly firearms to get into the hands of those who cannot bear them responsibly,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on the floor during debate on Wednesday.

“That’s what H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, would do. Nine out of 10 Americans support the reforms in this bill. That includes a majority of Republicans and a majority of responsible gun owners. This is one of the greatest examples of legislation that truly reflects the will of the American people.”

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The second background checks bill passed by the House on Thursday — H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act, led by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) — looks to close the “Charleston loophole.”

That bill passed in a 219-210 vote, with GOP Reps. Fitzpatrick and Smith and Democratic Reps. Golden and Ron Kind (D-Wis.) breaking with their respective parties on the vote.

Arizona’s Congressional Delegation: Yeah: Gallego, Grijalva, Kirkpatrick, O’Halleran, Stanton; Nay: Biggs, Gosar, Lesko, Schweikert.

Under the legislation, the review period in which a background check can be conducted before purchasing a firearm would be extended from the current three days to ten.

Clyburn first introduced the bill after the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where a white supremacist, [Dylann Roof], killed nine Black parishioners.

“These people who were practicing their faith, their faith that taught them to welcome in a stranger, a stranger that came to their door and they welcomed into their Bible study, he sat with them for an hour. The stranger that they had welcomed in had opened fire and killed nine of them, one of who was the pastor, a former intern of mine,” Clyburn said during debate on the floor on Wednesday. “This law would have prevented that gentleman from getting a gun.”

Both bills are backed by the Biden administration, but the legislation faces an uphill battle in the upper chamber, where they are unlikely to garner enough GOP support to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to pass.

Yet another excellent reason to do away with the anti-democratic senate filibuster rule. Common sense gun safety legislation supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, including Republicans, has been blocked by Republican senators beholden to the merchants of death lobbyists for years using the Senate filibuster rule.

UPDATE: A House-passed bill to expand gun background checks will be an early test of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s commitment to the Senate rules that enable the Republican minority to block Democratic priorities, Bloomberg reports:

Manchin, together with Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, led previous Senate efforts to expand background checks in 2013 following the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That bill was blocked by a Republican-led filibuster.

The gun fetishists and gun worshipers in the Republican Party argued that both bills are “an infringement on American’s Second Amendment rights and would do little to stop violence” – yadda yadda yadda. Same old bullshit. This is a status quo argument for the public health epidemic of gun violence in the United States: “Let’s do nothing,” just as Republicans voted to do about the coronavirus pandemic. The GQP is a death cult.