US senators have advanced a bipartisan bill addressing the epidemic of gun violence convulsing the country, approving a narrow package of new firearms restrictions and billions of dollars in mental health and school security funding.
The bill has been hailed as lifesaving.US senators advanced a bipartisan bill late on Thursday addressing the epidemic of gun violence convulsing the country, approving a narrow package of new firearms restrictions and billions of dollars in mental health and school security funding.
And it closes the so-called"boyfriend" loophole, under which domestic abusers could avoid a ban on buying firearms if they were not married to or living with their victim. The National Rifle Association and many Republicans in both chambers of Congress opposed the bill but it is endorsed by advocacy groups working in policing, domestic violence and mental illness.
The lawmakers had been scrambling to finish the negotiations quickly enough to capitalise on the momentum generated by the fatal shooting of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas and of 10 black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, upstate New York, both last month."This will become the most significant piece of anti-gun-violence legislation Congress has passed in three decades," he said on the Senate floor.
Biden had pushed for more substantial reforms, including a reinstatement of the ban on assault rifles - which were used in both the Texas and New York shootings - and high-capacity magazines.
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