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Senate deal finally a bill. Is it as bad as we thought?

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While a small group in the Senate already hammered out the broad strokes of a gun control bill, the details were jamming things up just a bit. For some, it was a hopeful sign that a deal wouldn’t really be struck and there’s be no bill after all.

Well, so much for that hope.

The text of the bill was released Monday night, and shortly afterwards, an initial vote was held and the bill got 64 votes in support.

A bipartisan group of senators overcame some last-minute hurdles and released legislative text Tuesday on a narrow set of provisions to combat gun violence, including state funding to implement “red flag” laws and enhanced background checks.

“Today, we finalized bipartisan, commonsense legislation to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country,” Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a joint statement along with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

“Our legislation will save lives and will not infringe on any law-abiding American’s Second Amendment rights. We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense legislation into law,” they added.

Except that it does.

Among the many measures is an expanded background check process for anyone under the age of 21. It requires the NICS to reach out to juvenile records divisions of whatever state the buyer is from to look for criminal records there. It also provides an additional 10 days of waiting if there is something…off during that search.

This means certain people will be subjected to longer delays. A right delayed is a right denied, an infringement on those individuals’ Second Amendment rights. Not only that, but I don’t see how a check can be “instant” if they’re having to contact individual states and wait for information.

And you’d think members of the Senate would understand that.

Of course, that’s far from everything included. At least some of the healthcare measures look more like things some lawmakers wanted but couldn’t get passed in other bills; things like telemedicine for Medicaid recipients, etc.

The bill also redefines gun dealers, removing language that defines one as someone who sells firearms “with the principal objective of livelihood and profit” and replaces it with “‘to predominantly earn a profit.” How they’ll determine someone’s motivation is beyond me.

Another thing the bill includes is an anti-straw purchase provision, because it’s not like that’s been the law for decades already or anything.

Then, of course, we have the so-called boyfriend loophole, which the bill seeks to close.

One of the big sticking points is defining just who is in a dating relationship and who isn’t. The current definition of domestic violence uses a definition that’s pretty objective, but this would go outside of that. So how does the Senate bill try to define such a relationship?

‘‘(B) Whether a relationship constitutes a dating relationship under subparagraph (A) shall be determined based on consideration of—

‘‘(i) the length of the relationship; ‘

‘(ii) the nature of the relationship; and

‘‘(iii) the frequency and type of interaction between the individuals involved in the relationship.

‘‘(C) A casual acquaintanceship or ordinary fraternization in a business or social context does not constitute a dating relationship under subparagraph (A).’’.

That’s not the worst definition I’ve seen, but it still requires a subjective assessment of a relationship to determine just where it qualifies or not. As I noted on Monday, people don’t “date” like they used to.

The one upside is that this doesn’t try to retroactively punish people for what they did before the law.

Unsurprisingly, this went over about like you’d expect with the NRA.

From the first linked story:

The National Rifle Association quickly announced its opposition to the bill, arguing in a Tuesday statement that the legislation “does little to truly address violent crime while opening the door to unnecessary burdens on the exercise of Second Amendment freedom by law-abiding gun owners.”

And make no mistake. That’s precisely what it will do.

One upside to the bill is that it includes language for a school safety clearing house–the exact same measure that Sen. Chuck Schumer did everything he could to kill. That’s a decent measure that probably should pass.

The problem is that now it’s attached to this travesty of a bill.

Yes, yes, I know, it’s not as bad as it could be. There’s no “assault weapon ban” and while those under 21 may be delayed, they’re still able to buy any category of long gun the rest of us can purchase, so yeah, it could be worse.

But “it could be worse” is hardly the standard any of us should be pleased with. We can acknowledge it, but we should also make sure our respective Senate delegations know how we feel about it.

Senate negotiators say they've got a bill. Do they still have the votes?

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As of the time of posting, we still haven’t seen the text but it’s coming soon, supposedly. And so, apparently, is the first procedural vote in the Senate, as Chuck Schumer is trying to ram through a deal as quickly as possible. I won’t reiterate my argument against rushing the vote, but I will link to it in case you’re interested.

The Washington Post has had a sneak peek at a few details of the legislation; including the “boyfriend loophole” that was one of the last points of agreement.

According to draft text of the provision obtained by The Washington Post, the bill would bar a misdemeanor domestic violence offender who has a “current or recent former dating relationship with the victim” from owning or buying a gun.

What constitutes a “dating relationship” is not precisely defined in the draft text, which would instead allow courts to make that determination based on the length and nature of the relationship, as well as “the frequency and type of interaction” between the people involved. The text excludes “casual acquaintanceship or ordinary fraternization in a business or social context.”

Those offenders would be automatically entitled to regain their gun rights after five years as long as they do not commit any further violent misdemeanors or other disqualifying offenses.

That last line is very interesting, and yet another sign that Senate Democrats were willing to bend on a lot of these issues in order to say they passed the “most significant new gun restrictions since the 1990s” (as the Washington Post described it today). And if gun owners are rightfully worried about this bill leading to a slippery slope of more restrictive measures, we should at least be mindful of the fact that it could work both ways.

Expanding the category of prohibited persons could lead to even more misdemeanor crimes becoming a disqualifier, for instance, but an automatic restoration of rights for some could open the door for more reform of the categories of prohibited persons; ending the automatic lifetime revocation of those convicted of non-violent felonies, for example, is a much easier argument to make if we’re automatically restoring the rights of some of those convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense.

The Post has a few other details of the agreement, including the grants to states for “red flag” laws.

According to a summary of the draft bill, an existing Justice Department grant program would be expanded to allow funding for state “crisis intervention programs,” including not only red-flag laws but also drug courts and veterans’ courts. The bill provides $750 million in new funding for those programs, the summary said.

So states don’t have to impose “red flag” laws in order to access the federal funds, which means the hardest pill to swallow for Second Amendment activists will likely be the new requirements on background checks for adults under the age of 21.

Negotiators settled on a three-business-day “enhanced search” window for gun buyers under 21 to allow local authorities to scour confidential databases, according to the bill summary, with another seven business days available to complete a review if the initial search raises a potential disqualifying issue.

That structure stands to be especially controversial to gun rights advocates, who have long opposed the prospect of creating a de facto waiting period for purchasing a gun. To quell those concerns, the “enhanced search” provision is to expire after ten years — identical to the “sunset” provision that led to the expiration of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban.

That sunset clause may bring a senator or two on board, but I don’t think it will satisfy most of the 2A organizations out there. Honestly, this has gone from a minor concern of mine to my biggest concern now that the “red flag” laws are even less incentivized. Do waiting periods infringe on someone’s ability to own a firearm? Absolutely they do. I’ve spent the last couple of years reporting on months and even year-long delays in processing Firearms Owner ID cards and other permits required to own or purchase a firearm; a clear deprivation of the rights of tens of thousands of Americans in my opinion.

Ten days is not a year, however, and I’m sure many voters will consider this to be entirely “reasonable”, as much as I hate that word. And if this deal does become law, there is some consolation in the fact that the constitutionality of this portion of the legislation can and will be challenged in court; in fact it would join the many other cases dealing with gun sales and possession of firearms to adults younger than 21 that are already working their way up to the Supreme Court.

But barring any undiscovered poison pill gun control language hidden inside a sub-sub-sub-paragraph of an otherwise innocuous portion of the bill, the ten Republican senators who signed on to the framework of the deal a couple of weeks ago don’t have much to complain about, though at least a few of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress who weren’t a part of the negotiations will have a very different perspective. Democrats like AOC will end up complaining that the bill is too friendly towards having police in schools and not focused nearly enough on imposing new gun control laws, while Republicans can point to the waiting period on young adults purchasing a firearm as an infringement that could never be supported.

As long as those ten Republican senators maintain their position, though, it’s not likely to matter to the final vote. Democrats could tank the bill and complain that that Republicans didn’t go nearly far enough in imposing “commonsense” restrictions on a constitutional right to make it worth passing, or they can sign off on it and use it to drum up a scintilla of enthusiasm from their base by boasting about passing the “most meaningful gun reform legislation in 30 years” (while also complaining that Republicans didn’t go nearly far enough in enacting those “commonsense gun safety reforms”).

As for Republicans (or at least the ones who ultimately end up supporting the measure), they get to tell voters that they took action to address an issue that’s suddenly on a lot of minds, and they get to tell their base that they held the line on gun bans, age restrictions, and (potentially) even the establishment of “red flag” laws by allowing states with other crisis diversion programs to have access to the pool of federal grant money without having to put a “red flag” law on the books. They can even tout the fact that the bill won’t increase government spending, because the money for grants is coming from a one-year delay of a Medicare drug rebate provision, and according to the post the nearly $21-billion saved will be used to fund “more than a dozen new mental health and school security programs.”

The waiting period for young adults will be a non-starter for some 2A activists and gun rights groups, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough of a concern that any of the 10 Republicans pulls away from the deal, particularly when there was discussion at the beginning about raising the age to purchase a firearm to 21. Remember, none of the GOP members who signed on to the framework agreement are up for election this year, and four of them are retiring outright. They don’t have to face angry voters this fall, or angry primary voters this summer.

Honestly, even for those up for election this fall the political environment is so good for Republicans at the moment that some members might roll the dice and risk ticking off single-issue 2A voters in favor of attracting the support of even more non-gun owning independent ones. They might get mad, but are they gonna stay home on Election Day? Vote Libertarian or write-in their own name? In a few cases, yes. But in this political and economic environment I’m not sure how many pure single-issue 2A voters there really are out left out here. Gas at $5 a gallon and fear of a looming recession has a way of expanding your political interests and issues, you know?

Republicans are headed for a red wave election this November, and in order for the wave to get bigger you’ve got to bring voters into the party. Approving this bill allows them to make the pitch to those independents and on-the-fence Republicans that they’ve not only “done something”, but they’ve done something substantial to help ensure that their kids are safe when they’re in school. I suspect that’s enough for at least 65 votes in the Senate, but with final approval coming as soon as the end of this week, we won’t have to wait long to learn the final tally.

In fact, with the Supreme Court set to release more opinions on Thursday, we may see the first “substantial gun measures” in 30 years approved by the Senate and SCOTUS establishing that the right to bear arms includes a right to carry a firearm for self-defense within a few hours of each other. If that convergence actually happens I may just ditch the blog posts and live stream Cam & Co for three hours like the old days. Who’s in?

Are the Senate gun talks about to implode?

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Democrats are pushing to get a bill on the Senate floor ahead of the Independence Day recess next week, but there are serious doubts about whether or not that’s going to happen as negotiators have hit a stumbling block; a portion of the package that would expand the definition of a domestic violence misdemeanor to include “dating partners.” Federal law bars those convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor from legally purchasing or possessing a firearm, but the current federal definition encompasses spouses and family members. Democrats want to broaden that definition to include “dating partners” as well, but both Democrats and Republicans involved in the negotiations say the issue is more complicated than it may appear.

Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., who has been leading the talks, described it as “a complicated question of state statutes and state charging practices.”

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, said the boyfriend question was surprisingly complex.

“The surface explanation seems like it would be fairly simple, but I know that as they try to reduce it to legislative text, I think it’s gotten a little bit more uncomfortable,” said Thune, who is not directly involved in the negotiations.

… The final haggling has centered on the details of closing the boyfriend loophole, including the definition and whether those subject to the gun ban should be able to appeal. Negotiators also spent Thursday debating the red flag law funding and whether states that do not have such laws can receive money.

The impasse on the boyfriend loophole has become so sticky that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and a crucial player in the talks, said that the proposal could be dropped from the package altogether.

“We’re not ready to release any smoke, so we don’t have a deal yet,” Cornyn said, declaring “I’m not frustrated — I’m just done” as he left a private negotiating session that stretched into the afternoon Thursday.

Republicans want to limit the reach of the domestic violence provision, while Democrats want to write it broadly.

“There are many people who committed domestic violence who aren’t actually charged with domestic violence — they are charged with simple assault, but they unquestionably committed an act of domestic violence,” Murphy said. “We are at a pretty critical stage of the negotiation, and so I’m not going to share anything that jeopardizes our ability to land this.”

Senators are trying to find an agreement on how, exactly, to define “dating partner”, but that’s not the only hurdle. Some Republicans have said they also want to see a process to restore the right to own a firearm after a misdemeanor conviction, which opens up a host of new questions that must be resolved before the legislation can take final shape. Among them, how long before someone can apply to have their rights restored and who would be eligible for a restoration?

While Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who’s the lead Republican negotiator on the Senate package, has left Washington for the weekend, other negotiators say the talks will continue and Cornyn himself said he would be available to talk remotely with his colleagues as they try to hammer out an agreement. Still, Cornyn said on Thursday that it’s time to “fish or cut bait”, which suggests that if the talks drag out much longer they may end up collapsing entirely.

One of the other stumbling blocks that had emerged over the past couple of days dealt with the federal grants to states that impose or “improve” their “red flag” firearm seizure laws. Cornyn had suggested on Wednesday that states that don’t have “red flag” laws but do have other crisis intervention programs should be able to access those federal funds without putting the money towards establishing a “red flag” statute, and it sounds like Murphy is willing to give ground in order to get an agreement in place, with him telling the Washington Post on Thursday that “Republicans clearly want to make sure that there’s money available for states that don’t move forward with red-flag laws, and we’re going to find a way to do that in this bill.”

Meanwhile, Axios reports that criticism of the negotiations and the framework itself is growing louder among Senate Republicans.

Several senators feel they’ve been shut out of the negotiating process and kept in the dark about crucial details, and will be asked to take a politically tough vote without enough time to digest the bill.

  • One GOP senator, speaking to Axios on the condition of anonymity to be candid about his concerns, branded Cornyn’s approach: “Shut up, and vote.”
  • “There’s considerable unhappiness in the conference that we seem to be approaching a bill that will unite all the Democrats and divide the Republicans,” said another senior Republican with direct knowledge of the internal talks.
  • The senior Republican mentioned that Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) asked Cornyn during one lunch, “Are we focusing on gang violence and inner-city murders? And the response was, ‘No, we’re not focusing on that’ … And more than a few of us wondered why the hell not?”
  • “It would be prudent, and I think Sen. Cornyn knows this … it would be prudent to give senators plenty of time to read the bill and research the issues,” Kennedy told Axios.

As Axios points out, many of these senators are unlikely to agree to any legislation Cornyn and company manage to produce, and the agreement in principle came with the support of ten Republicans, which is enough to overcome the objections of the rest of the caucus.. as long as all ten sign on to the final text. The “senior Republican” quoted by Axios above is right, however, that whatever emerges is likely to get the full support of Senate Democrats but will be a much more divisive piece of legislation for the GOP, especially if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer rushes the bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote before senators head home for the Fourth of July holiday.

Salon blames “misogyny” for boyfriend loophole friction

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Senators agreed, at least in principle, to close the so-called boyfriend loophole. For any who are unaware, this means that domestic violence charges could be applied to dating partners as opposed to now where the definition involves, basically, people who cohabitate together or have been married at some point.

Now, few people take issue with calling violent boyfriends domestic abusers. Not in and of itself, anyway.

Yet there are serious concerns about closing this supposed loophole.

Unless you’re Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, then it’s really all about what the voices in your head say it’s about.

Mea culpa time. In the latest edition of my newsletter, Standing Room Only, I was quite sour about reports about the bipartisan gun bill being negotiated by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. The reporting I’d read suggested the bill was primarily focused on funding for “red flag” laws and mental health spending, both of which are nice but will do little to actually stem the problem of gun violence, especially in red states. But more fleshed-out details since show that one under-discussed aspect of the bill may end up being the most important: A proposal to finally close the “boyfriend loophole” in the federal background check law.

This is something that both feminists and gun control activists have been demanding for decades, only to have Republicans — no fans of either preventing gendered violence or gun deaths — get in the way.

It’s doubly frustrating for how nonsensical the allowance is. Under the current background check system, a person with a domestic violence conviction should be flagged and prevented from purchasing a gun — but only if they married or lived with the person they assaulted. Someone who attacked a dating partner they hadn’t moved in with yet can buy all the guns they want. Half of domestic violence murders, however, are at the hands of someone who hasn’t lived with their victim. So it’s not like this is a minor problem. The ugly implication has been that the Republican opponents to closing the boyfriend loophole simply see hitting a girlfriend as a lesser crime than hitting a wife.

Except that implication exists only in Marcotte’s heavily biased mind. Why else cite “misogyny” in this piece’s headline?

The problem is that there’s no objective mechanism for determining if someone is a boyfriend or not. The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization bill language basically said it was anyone who had been in an “intimate” relationship with the victim, but also stated that sex wasn’t a requirement to be considered as such a relationship.

That’s pretty vague and difficult to determine, and that’s a big problem.

Especially in an era where younger generations don’t “date” in quite the same manner as older generations did. Back in my day, you got a boyfriend or girlfriend and you were a couple. Today, many sort of gather in groups where they may sort of pair off, but not in quite the same manner.

It muddies the water as to who is really in a relationship with who.

Then there are concepts like “friend with benefits” or even just a one-night stand between people in the same social circle. Just where do we draw the line?

Of course, speaking of muddied water, Marcotte did that quite well herself. After all, she claims nearly half of all intimate partner homicides were committed by people who didn’t live together, but I actually took a look at that report. It doesn’t actually say any such thing. (She also glossed over the part of the report that noted the percentage killed with guns has been dropping since 1980.)

What it does say is that by 2008, 48.6 percent of all intimate partner homicides were committed by partners who weren’t married to the victim, but it doesn’t make any reference to where the killer was living or not.

Further, it should be noted that it also says that 48.6 percent were boyfriends and girlfriends. Funny how she left that part out when discussing the “boyfriend loophole,” which probably should be called the “boyfriend or girlfriend loophole,” if we’re going to be really accurate.

Back to the main point about the study, though, I find it awful patriarchal of Marcotte to believe that only spouses live with one another in this day and age.

Now, understand, I have no doubt that a fair percentage of that 48.6 percent weren’t cohabitating in any way. It’s probably likely that many weren’t. My point is that the study doesn’t say what she claims it does.

Then again, there are real problems with the so-called boyfriend loophole, which she also seems to be unable to grasp because of her own internal hangups.

Cornyn says “issues” remain in Senate gun deal

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It doesn’t sound like Texas Sen. John Cornyn isn’t ready to throw in the towel on the Senate negotiations, but some hangups are apparently starting to emerge as Democrats and Republicans move from a “framework” to actual legislation.

Wednesday morning Cornyn met with a group of reporters to give them an update on the status of the bill, and Cornyn suggested that a deal might not be done this week because of a couple of “issues” that are popping up, starting with the language around giving

The plan was to have a bill written and ready for a vote before the Senate recesses for the Independence Day holiday next week, but in order to do that the text of the legislation needs to be finalized in the next couple of days.

Is this really an emerging problem, however, or a negotiating tactic?

Over at HotAir, my colleague Allahpundit notes that a lot of conservatives with a lot of influence, including Tucker Carlson at Fox News, have been ripping the red flag provisions in the “framework” announced last weekend, and wonders if this is a case of Cornyn getting cold feet.

I don’t know. According to Punchbowl, yesterday he made a presentation to GOP senators claiming that 84 percent of Americans who live in households with at least one gun support the package as described in the outline last weekend. No Republican official wants to piss off Fox News primetime, but Cornyn’s not up for reelection until 2026. If the numbers are on his side on this, he can certainly shrug Tucker off.

I still think the odds of the Senate doing “something” are greater than 50%, but every line of legislative text is another opportunity for the deal to fall apart. And it is noteworthy that Cornyn is now talking about grants for programs other than “red flag” laws, given that virtually all of the public statements up to this point have revolved around the federal government giving grants to states to implement those laws. Now it sounds like Cornyn wants to inject federal funds at the state level regardless of whether or not they’re used to establish red flag laws or are applied to existing laws in the 19 states that already have them in place.

I would expect that to be a big hangup for Democrats, many of whom are already complaining that the bill doesn’t go nearly far enough in imposing new restrictions on gun owners. Watering down the red flag provisions even further may cause some of them to walk away, but I don’t think either side wants to be seen as the reason why a deal couldn’t be reached.

Democrats want to be able to point to some sort of legislative accomplishment this year, even as they crank up their campaign rhetoric about the unwillingness of Republicans to approve “reasonable” measures like a ban on gun sales to adults younger than 21, bans on “large capacity” magazines, and criminalizing the sale of those dastardly AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles.

Republicans (or at least the ones who haven’t already come out and panned the framework agreement) are also looking towards November and want to reassure voters that they’ve done “something” on an issue that’s become increasingly important to the electorate over the past couple of months. If the talks collapse and no deal is reached, then both sides are going to point fingers at the other. The question on the minds of every one of the politicians taking part in the negotiations is “who are voters most likely to blame?”