What the Historic New Gun Safety Law Does
Despite the NRA’s opposition, the new bipartisan law does many of the things gun safety advocates have wanted for decades—without stepping on the Second Amendment.
It’s been a heavy couple of weeks in the news — the Uvalde mass shooting and the fallout from the atrocious response to it, rising COVID cases, monkeypox continuing to spread, several dozen immigrants dying in an overheated truck in San Antonio, and a string of Supreme Court cases that have returned women to second class citizens with the fall of Roe, expanded gun rights even in dense cities, allowed teachers and coaches to lead prayers at public school, and now begun dismantling the regulatory state used to promote public health and safety and fight global warming…
Wouldn’t it be nice to hear some good news for a change? Fortunately, there was some good news — a positive, if surprising and unlikely, development that you may have missed in the onslaught of bad news. Congress managed to pass a bipartisan gun safety bill — yes, actually bipartisan! — with a variety of measures that will likely save lives. I admit I was surprised to learn one of my own senators, the very conservative Texas Senator John Cornyn, played a significant role in getting the legislation passed. It’s the…