Senators ‘confident’ US gun control deal is within reach

Urgent efforts to pass bipartisan gun control legislation are making some serious strides as Republicans and Democrats seemed more agreeable to reaching a deal, key senators said on Sunday.

But they also acknowledged concerns that the efforts could still collapse, with the delicate talks expected to continue this week while negotiators try to find a common ground to harden the nation’s gun laws.

“I’ve never been part of negotiations as serious as these. There are more Republicans at the table talking about changing our gun laws, investing in mental health than at any time since Sandy Hook,” Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, a lead Democratic negotiator in bipartisan talks on the legislation, said.

“I’ve also been part of many failed negotiations in the past, so I’m sober-minded about our chances.”

He added: “I’m more confident than ever that we’re going to get there, but I’m also more anxious about failure this time around.”

Even if the compromise bill is passed in the Senate, it will fail to meet the standards laid out by US president Joe Biden in his passionate address after the Uvalde elementary school shooting, calling for the renewal of the federal ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004 during the Republican leadership.

He also demanded that the law should require federal background checks for gun buyers, raise the age limit to purchase these weapons from 18 to 21 and remove the firearms industry’s immunity from lawsuits.

Mr Biden also called for national red-flag laws, which give courts the authority to issue an order that a weapon should be temporarily confiscated from an individual who’s deemed to be dangerous. Nineteen states already have red-flag laws.

Pennsylvania senator Patrick J Toomey, a Republican member among the small group discussing the bill, said on CBS’s Face The Nation that they will get “at least half of the Republican conference” to support the gun legislation.

“I certainly can’t guarantee any outcome, but it feels to me like we are closer than we’ve been since I’ve been in the Senate,” he said.

Senator John Cornyn, who is leading the talks for Republicans on the gun laws bill, said they shared a sense of urgency to pass a law.

“I think we need to act, and we need to act relatively quickly,” he told The Washington Post. “We could lose this opportunity to do what we could to save lives, which to me is what this is all about.”

The lawmakers are trying to use growing public outrage over mass shootings to pass a bill to curb gun violence in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans control an equal number of 50 seats, and bills require 60 votes to advance.

Mass shootings have continued to claim lives in the US despite outcry over the attacks at a supermarket in Buffalo and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May.

Shootings in three Americans cities killed nine people and left two dozen more wounded through Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Three people were killed in a shooting in Philadelphia on Saturday night after a confrontational fight between two men escalated into a gunfight. Three were killed in a bar in Chattanooga, Tennessee, while three more people were killed and two were wounded in Saginaw, Michigan.

Last Wednesday, a gunman killed four people in a medical facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The string of shootings has prompted Americans to demand stricter gun control laws.

According to an ABC/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, 70 per cent of Americans want the Senate to enact new gun control laws over laws to protect gun ownership.

More than 250 prominent Texas conservatives signed an open letter that appeared as a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News on Sunday to endorse red flag laws, expanded background checks and raising the age limit to purchase guns.

Mr Murphy said on Sunday that he feels that senators need to come to an agreement by the end of this week. “I think that’s entirely possible,” he added.

Referring to Mr Cornyn, who had said in a tweet that more restrictive gun laws were “not gonna happen”, Mr Murphy said his statement was consistent with his position in negotiations.

He added that there was “agreement amongst negotiators that we’re going to take some commonsense steps that do not compromise Second Amendment rights”.