Gun-control Legislation
I was not one of the bipartisan school safety and mental health negotiators this week and did not support the final bill. Some portions of the bill will help our communities deal with juvenile and adult mental health. But there are also significant problems with several sections of the bill.
It is clear that something has changed culturally in our nation. Government cannot solve broken families and isolated young men, but we can encourage families and we can help facilitate more mental healthcare in our hurting nation. Social isolation, violent video games, drug use, and fatherlessness are prevalent with mass shooters. We should not underestimate the power that present and loving fathers can have in the lives of their sons. I think it is important to also see the link between violent crime and illegal drug use.
We have a moral responsibility as Americans to respond to this moment while not jeopardizing clear constitutional rights. Once the working group finalized the proposal, Senator Schumer immediately brought it to the floor for a vote. None of us had even had an opportunity to read it before the first procedural vote Tuesday night.
There are some positive steps in this bill including addressing school safety and mental health, increasing penalties for straw purchases of firearms, and increasing penalties for firearm trafficking. But the final bill pushed too far. The bill incentivizes states to adopt red flag laws, which often treat individuals as guilty until proven innocent. The bill actually prevents the use of some federal dollars to arm individuals for school safety and it continued to block schools from using any of the billions of dollars allocated for COVID relief from being used for school safety improvements. However, the bill does expand access to abortion services and abortion counseling on school campuses. The more than $13 billion price tag for the bill is paid for by cancelling a Medicare drug rebate program which was designed to decrease the cost of pharmaceuticals.
There were multiple amendments filed to improve the bill, including an amendment I filed to remove the abortion funding loophole. I also introduced the Safe Schools Act, which could allow schools to use unspent COVID relief dollars for security measures, including locks, panic buttons, individual room security systems, video surveillance, and hiring armed school resource officers. But no amendments were allowed during the 48 hours between when the bill was released and the bill was approved.