Full Session

Bipartisan House Passes Gun Control Bill Aimed at Requiring Background Checks

February 24, 2023

By Allison Markman

A bipartisan coalition of senators passed the “Increasing Background and Mental Health Checks When Purchasing Guns Act,” in full session Friday morning. This bill will be transformative in ensuring those purchasing a gun are mentally fit for said responsibility, ensuring that America never sees another Michigan State or Colorado Springs shooting among the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S.

According to the Pew Research Center, the amount of gun deaths in the United States is higher than most other countries, averaging 10.6 in 100,000 people in 2016. These numbers are especially stark in comparison to Australia’s 1 in 100,000 or Canada’s two.

In his authorship speech on the house floor Senator Lindsay Graham explained the loophole this bill aimed to close, asserting that private gun owners are currently not required to run background checks on the person they are selling a firearm to, one of the reasons the shooter in the 2015 Charlston shooting was able to obtain a gun. The bill further imposes phycological evaluations on prospective gun buyers.

He further emphasized the bipartisan nature of the bill, not only in the demographics of the authors but also in the legislation’s content. “Something that was big for us Republicans was that it did not restrict what type of guns that people can buy,” Graham emphasized. “An assault weapons ban was not included in this bill.“

Despite its bipartisan nature, the original bill received some pushback from Republicans who argued that the bill failed to address the black market, and would rather fuel it, as those denied guns would look elsewhere for them. “These guns are harder for us to track, as they lack serial numbers and are unregistered,” Senator Rick Scott (FL-JR) said, proposing an amendment to expand anti-arms trafficking programs and encourage collaboration between the CIA, FBI, and local law enforcement agencies. 

He worried that “there'll be an exponential increase in the amount of arms that will be sold illegally.” With the amendment's passage, Scott was able to support the bill.

Another con brought up in debate was the concern that background checks and phycological evaluations would be both costly and timely, Senator Josh Hawly (MO-SR) stated. “The problem is that at the current stage, all we really require is fingerprints and a background check. Adding on several hours of psychiatric evaluations for each applicant will prove detrimental and with the lack of actual funding described in the bill, it will be impossible to implement.”

Even with amendments, senior RNC officials expressed their dissatisfaction with the legislation, seeing it as a stripping of constitutional rights. “To think that our Republican colleagues could actively endorse a bill that completely infringes on our constitutional right to bear arms and is a gross overreach of government power is truly just preposterous,” they said.

Democrat Chris Coons (DE-JR) rejected the RNC’s hardlined stance, stating “this act simply prohibits people who are unfit and should not own guns from being able to own them,” he said. “It has nothing to do with civilians owning guns, it has everything to do to make sure people who have mal intentions do not get their hands on guns.”

Republican Shelly Moore Capito sees the bill as a constitutional violation.  “I think that the bill restricts our Second Amendment rights as a gun owning West Virginian. I think that it is quite frankly, unconstitutional and is a violation of the due process and privacy guaranteed under the 14th amendment. It is important to note, however, that most legal scholars view background checks as facially constitutional, even following the precedent set in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case.

They assert that background checks fall within the category of laws that Heller places beyond the purview of the Second Amendment. Further, the opinion never mentioned anything that should cast doubt on longstanding and popular prohibitions on gun ownership by both people with felon convictions and those suffering from a mental illness. 

Matthew Kotcher of the West Wing applauds the House for taking indispensable action on gun control. “The White House fully supports the bill that the House passed and thinks that this is a necessary first step towards keeping our children safe and keeping our country safe,” he said.

The bill passed overwhelmingly in the house and will be sent to the senate for further debate and is a strong first step in taking decisive action on gun control.