Politics

Bipartisan push in Senate on tougher background checks for guns

A bipartisan group of senators on Thursday introduced a bill that would shore up background checks for gun sales in the wake of the mass shooting at a Texas church that killed more than two dozen people.

The legislation drafted by Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Tim Scott of South Carolina and Connecticut Democrats Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal would require federal agencies and states to accurately report criminal information to the FBI national database.

The US Air Force admitted that it did not alert the National Instant Criminal Background Check System database that shooter Devin Kelly has been convicted of domestic violence during a court-martial in 2014 while serving as an airman.

Kelly opened fire with an assault weapon on a church in Sutherland Springs on Nov. 5, killing 26 people.

He was able to skirt federal laws that would have prevented him from buying his weapons because his name was not added to the database.

“Just one record that’s not properly reported can lead to tragedy, as the country saw last week,” ​said ​Cornyn​, the Senate majority whip​. “This bill aims to help fix what’s become a nationwide, systemic problem so we can better prevent criminals and domestic abusers from obtaining firearms.”

Murphy, a strong advocate for stricter gun control measures, said ​the legislation would keep deadly weapons out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
“It represents the strongest update to the background checks system in a decade, and provides the foundation for more compromise in the future,” ​he said.​

The measure would punish federal agencies that do not forward the criminal information to the database by banning bonus pay for political appointees.

It would also publicly report the agencies and states that fail to do so.

​”​This bill aims to help fix what’s become a nationwide, systemic problem so we can better prevent criminals and domestic abusers from obtaining firearms,” Cornyn said in a statement.

S​ens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) have also signed on to the legislation.

The powerful National Rifle Association said they would not oppose it.

The NRA “has long supported the inclusion of all appropriate records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System,” Jennifer Baker, NRA spokeswoman, told NBC News.

With Post wires