The National Rifle Association (NRA) has commented on the comprehensive bipartisan gun proposal announced Sunday, saying it seeks “solutions” to stop violence, but would not support any measures that infringe constitutionally enshrined gun rights.
“The NRA is committed to real solutions to help stop violence in our communities. We encourage our elected officials to provide more resources to secure our schools, fix our severely broken mental health system and support law enforcement,” the gun rights advocacy group said in a statement.
“As is our policy, the NRA does not take positions on ‘frameworks’. We will make our position known when the full text of the bill is available for review,” the group added.
The NRA warned that it would “oppose” any effort to clamp down on the rights to gun ownership, as well as any “initiatives that override constitutional due process protections and efforts to deprive law-abiding citizens” to keep and bear arms.
A bipartisan group of senators led by Democrats Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema and Republicans John Cornyn and Thom Tillis announced an deal on gun violence legislation on Sunday which Murphy dubbed a “breakthrough agreement” – the first of its kind in “30 years.”
Legislators said their plan would tighten restrictions to make it more difficult for criminals, the mentally ill, and those deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others to purchase weapons, increase mental health and telehealth spending, and toughen background checks for the purchase of guns by those under the age of 21, particularly when it comes to semi-automatic rifles. The legislation also proposes more funding for school safety measures, and a requirement for firearms dealers to register with federal authorities.
President Biden expressed support for the proposal, encouraging legislators to quickly pass it so that he could sign it into law. “Obviously, it does not do everything that I think it needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass in decades,” Biden said in a statement put out by the White House.
The new bill does not include measures requested by Democrats in their earlier-presented House bill, such as expanded background checks, and a full-on ban on the sale of military-style assault weapons to civilians. Republicans indicated that they would oppose that proposal, citing Second Amendment rights.
The NRA has long been considered one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States, and been blamed by gun control advocates for being one of the key reasons Congress has not agreed to tough gun control legislation over the decades.
However, its lobbying expenditures have declined significantly in recent years, from over $5 million a year in 2017 and 2018, to $3.22 million in 2019, $2.2 million in 2020, and $3.31 million in 2021. Furthermore, the NRA’s lobbying power is just a fraction of that of the large defence contractors, with a recent report calculating that weapons giants like Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon have spent more than $2.6 billion lobbying politicians over the past two decades.
Sunday’s Senate gun violence legislation comes amid public demand on lawmakers to take action in the aftermath of the deadly back-to-back shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde in May which left a total of 32 people, including 19 9 to 11-year-old children, dead.