Editorial: Significant first step

For all its sheen of freedom, democracy, equal opportunity and liberal values, America’s worst kept secret is the menace of mass shootings. It’s the nightmare of every parent as the macabre killings have been occurring in schools with unfailing regularity. However, for the first time, after decades of policy paralysis, there is now a ray of hope for Americans who are fed up with their governments’ failure to control gun violence. The Senate has approved a bipartisan legislation aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people. This is a huge development in a country where the gun lobby is more powerful and influential than any other sector. And, traditionally, the Republicans have been blocking any effort towards gun safety measures. This time, however, a small group of Republicans joined the Democrats to break through their party’s long-standing blockade and shatter nearly three decades of congressional paralysis on toughening the nation’s gun laws. The long-overdue measure was apparently spurred by a mass shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, recently. The Senate passed the measure 65 to 33, with 15 Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, breaking ranks to side with Democrats in support of the move that would enhance background checks for prospective gun buyers from 18 to 21 years, requiring for the first time that juvenile records, including mental health records beginning at age 16, be vetted for potentially disqualifying material.

The Bill would provide incentives for states to pass “red flag” laws that allow guns to be temporarily confiscated from people deemed by a judge to be too dangerous to possess them. And it would tighten a federal ban on domestic abusers buying firearms, and strengthen laws against straw purchasing and trafficking of guns. It also includes hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for mental health programmes and to beef up security in schools. Though the measure is not a cure-all for the ways gun violence affects the US, it is certainly a step in the right direction. President Joe Biden has called the Bill one of the most significant steps Congress has taken to reduce gun violence in decades. The vote tally in the Senate underscored how deeply polarising the issue of gun laws remains. It is feared that the spirit of compromise around guns on display now could be fleeting. A small group of Democrats and Republicans seized on the outrage that followed the massacre in Uvalde and a racist mass shooting in Buffalo days before that to forge a modest compromise that could succeed where earlier attempts had repeatedly failed. The compromise, the product of an intense round of talks between Democrats and Republicans, skirts many of the sweeping gun control measures that Democrats and activists have long called for.