gun-control deal has been reached in the Senate, with critical Republican support

• A bipartisan group of senators revealed an agreement on a framework for a weapons safety bill with enough Republican backing to pass in the Senate’s finely divided chamber on Sunday, potentially paving the way for the first big new gun law in decades.
• President Joe Biden praised the plan, which includes support for state “red flag” laws that keep firearms out of the hands of potentially dangerous people, stricter criminal background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21, and a crackdown on “straw purchases” where people buy weapons for others who can’t pass a background check.
• The framework, which was crafted in the aftermath of last month’s massacres at a Uvalde elementary school and a Buffalo supermarket, is far less ambitious than Biden and other Democrats’ proposals to ban semi-automatic, assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, or at the very least raise the minimum age to purchase them from 18 to 21.

A bipartisan group of senators revealed an agreement on a framework for a weapons safety bill with enough Republican backing to pass in the Senate’s finely divided chamber on Sunday, potentially paving the way for the first big new gun law in decades.

President Joe Biden praised the plan, which includes support for state “red flag” laws that keep firearms out of the hands of potentially dangerous people, stricter criminal background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21, and a crackdown on “straw purchases” where people buy weapons for others who can’t pass a background check.

The framework, which was crafted in the aftermath of last month’s massacres at a Uvalde elementary school and a Buffalo supermarket, is far less ambitious than Biden and other Democrats’ proposals to ban semi-automatic, assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, or at the very least raise the minimum age to purchase them from 18 to 21.

After three weeks of hard talks, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who led the negotiating effort alongside Republican Senator John Cornyn, said “the heavy lifting is behind us,” while a “substantial amount of work” remains. Murphy expressed optimism that the Senate would pass the bill by early August, if not sooner.

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Murphy told Reuters, “We’re going to go to work writing (legislative) legislation first thing (Monday) morning.”

The agreement was announced a day after tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Washington and across the country to encourage legislators to adopt gun violence legislation.

While this is a significant step forward, it does not guarantee that legislation will be passed. Legislative text must yet be hammered out that will garner enough votes to pass in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, both of which are controlled by Democrats.

Since the 1994 adoption of an assault weapons ban that expired a decade later, Republican resistance has been key in stalling Democratic-backed gun control initiatives in Congress.

Among the world’s rich nations, the United States has the highest rate of firearm deaths. However, many people in the country value gun rights, and the Second Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the right to “keep and bear arms.”

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