The Senate has approved a bipartisan gun violence bill.
The vote late Thursday clears the way for expected House passage Friday of what will be Congress' most far-reaching response in decades to the nation's run of brutal mass shootings. Republicans have long derailed Democratic efforts to curb firearms. But after last month's mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, Democrats and some Republicans decided that congressional inaction was untenable.
It took nearly a month of closed-door talks but a group of senators from both parties emerged with a compromise embodying incremental but impactful movement.
“This is not a cure-all for all the ways gun violence affects our nation,”saidSenate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., whose party has made gun restrictions a goal for decades. “But it is a long-overdue step in the right direction. Passing this gun safety bill is truly significant, and it’s going to save lives.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a nod to the Second Amendment right to bear arms that drives many conservative voters, said “the American people want their constitutional rights protected and their kids to be safe in school.” He said “they want both of those things at once, and that is just what the bill before the Senate will have accomplished.”
