Democrats on Tuesday again introduced legislation to require federal background checks for all gun purchases, a proposal that made little progress while Republicans controlled the Senate.
Sen. Chris Murphy reintroduced the Background Check Expansion Act, which is co-sponsored by 43 Senate Democrats. The bill would require unlicensed or private sellers to conduct a background check on the purchaser before selling them a firearm, including those selling online, at gun shows, and out of homes.
The background check requirement would not apply to law enforcement officers transferring guns between each other, individuals borrowing a gun for hunting, immediate family members gifting guns to each other, transferring guns through inheritance, or loaning a gun temporarily for immediate self-defense.
“Joe Biden and hundreds of congressional candidates from both parties ran on the issue of background checks. This is the year to get this bill passed into law,” Murphy said in a statement.
“This legislation has the chance to bring this country together — even 85 percent of gun owners believe in expanding background checks, and a growing anti-gun violence movement, made up of both Democrats and Republicans, is demanding change,” the Connecticut Democrat added.
Rep. Mike Thompson, a California Democrat, reintroduced similar legislation in the House on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden campaigned on enacting universal background check legislation as well as closing loopholes that allow ineligible individuals to purchase firearms. Now, Democrats are seeking to take advantage of their position in both chambers of Congress to push through legislation.
In February 2019, the Democratic majority in the House passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which would have similarly tightened background check requirements for transfers of firearms between private parties. Murphy first introduced his Senate bill in January of 2019, but the legislation never made it out of committee, and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell never granted the bill a vote in the Senate.
Critics of Democrats’ universal background check legislation have argued that the law would violate the Second Amendment by hamstringing the ability of law-abiding Americans to own a gun. Republican lawmakers have pointed out that it would not have prevented many of the recent mass shootings in the U.S., including the Parkland school shooting in February 2018 that killed 17 students and staff. Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn noted that the shooters in the Dayton and the El Paso shootings both passed background checks.
“I wish that background checks stopped criminals or stopped school shootings but they don’t. They failed in Texas with the church shooting. They failed at Columbine,” Rep. Tom Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said in 2018.
Enforcement of universal background checks would also be nearly impossible, critics say, since a criminal who wants a gun in order to commit a crime is less likely to submit to a background check or comply with other legal requirements such as even registering the gun. Opponents of the legislation have also argued that the money that would go into ramping up the background check system would be better spent addressing the root causes of gun violence and working to prevent it.
In 2019, some conservatives warned then-President Donald Trump and Republican leaders that working with Democrats on universal firearms background checks could demoralize GOP voters.
“We’re going to see record-shattering Democratic turnout. The only element missing to ensure Democratic victory is demoralizing conservatives so they stay home. I hope we don’t do that,” Sen. Ted Cruz said at the time of Trump potentially signing gun control legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Tuesday that Democrats now have an “opportunity to act” on background check legislation after years of such bills being dead on arrival to the Senate.
“For years, this bipartisan House-passed background checks bill languished in the Senate under Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. Now, with Senate Democrats in the Majority, we have the opportunity to act on this overwhelmingly popular, lifesaving legislation to protect American communities,” Schumer said in a statement.
Anti-gun violence advocates cheered the background check legislation being reintroduced on Tuesday, saying they are optimistic the bill could actually become law this time.
Max Markham, policy director at March For Our Lives, called the legislation the “bare minimum” and said it is “embarrassing that it’s taken this long in the United States to pass commonsense gun legislation.”