Congressman Ted Deutch backs Senate gun legislation "framework" at Jared Moskowitz panel
Congressman Ted Deutch on Wednesday endorsed the anti-gun violence measures in a U.S. Senate framework announced this week.
It is a legislative structure that many have called a potential landmark initiative, the first set of federal gun safety measures in 30 years, but others say it does not go far enough.
"These are a lot of things we've been talking about doing for a long time," Deutch said in a webinar hosted by Broward County Commissioner Jared Moskowitz. "We need to take action to save lives. And the legislation the Senate is working on will absolutely save lives. It will be a big step forward."
But there are rumblings of disappointment in some quarters of the Democratic majority within the U.S. House that the framework does not include a ban on assault rifles or high-capacity magazines.
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But if the Senate acts, Deutch vowed to argue for passage of that legislation by the House and to send it to the White House for President Joe Biden's signature.
"The next week is really important," said Deutch, who will leave Congress at the end of this year. "But if the Senate can move forward and pass that in a bipartisan way with 60, or hopefully, 70 votes … what I will argue with my colleagues … is we need to take action to save lives."
What's in the framework of the U.S. Senate gun safety legislation?
On Monday, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., detailed the framework for the legislation being crafted by a bipartisan group. The draft proposal is modeled after laws approved in Florida four years ago, said Murphy, whose group includes Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona as well as Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Murphy, who joined the U.S. Senate weeks after a 20-year-old gunman killed 26 people, including 20 6- and 7-year-olds, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Connecticut, said the core of the framework is five points.
These are the five points. Murphy said it would:
- Include federal funding for a nationwide extension of red flag laws, which allow courts and police departments to take firearms away from people temporarily who present a danger.
- Close a so-called "boyfriend loophole" that allows men convicted of assault against their girlfriends to continue to buy weapons.
- Provide "rigorous" background checks for purchases of weapons by people under the age of 21
- Create "criminal prohibition" on trafficking guns.
- Update the federal definition of a firearms dealer so "that everyone who is engaged in the repeated for-profit sale of firearms has to perform background checks,” Murphy said.
But it stops short of preventing those under the age of 21 from buying weapons, including assault rifles. That's why some House members are dissatisfied.
Parkland gun safety advocate says bipartisan support would be 'big deal'
Moskowitz, a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, site of the 2018 mass shooting in which 17 people, including 14 students, were killed, said the U.S. Senate legislation would break a logjam on Capitol Hill that has seen one mass shooting after another repeat a "cycle of outrage, thoughts and prayers and then nothing at the federal level."
Florida, he said, broke that pattern after the mass shooting at Parkland.
"We made tremendous progress. We need to go further," Moskowitz said of calls to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
But he noted that the Texas grade school shooting last month would not have happened in Florida because of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Act in 2018.
"That murderer who was 18 years old would not have been able to walk into a gun store and walk out armed for war," he said.
In addition, Moskowitz said red flag laws have been used 8,000 times in Florida since 2018. If just 0.5% of those cases avoided a mass shooting event, that would mean 45 mass shootings would have been stopped.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was among the murdered in Parkland, said he was in Washington last week for the House approval of the gun violence legislation.
"We were all cheering, but one of the things we were cheering was bipartisan votes," he recalled. "It wasn't just getting Democrats – there were Republicans joining. So it gives me hope."
This week, as the Senate unveiled the outlines for their potential bill, Guttenberg said he has heard unhappiness among some Democrats because of the framework's perceived shortcomings. He said he has been on a "steady" stream of Zoom calls with those lawmakers where they have expressed concern about "language" in the Senate framework, but did not elaborate.
On 'precipice' of breaking 30-year gun safety legislation logjam?
But Guttenberg expressed optimism.
"I think they are going to be on board, but you know what? I also think some Republicans are going to join in on this as well," Guttenberg predicted. "And I think in both chambers you are going to have bipartisan gun safety legislation passing. And that is a big deal."
He added: "We are on the precipice of something significant – a 30-year logjam where nothing got done."
Moskowitz, who is campaigning to replace Deutch, recalled similar pessimism in the Florida Legislature in the wake of the Parkland shooting.
That spring, though, state lawmakers passed significant legislation, including red flag laws and banning sales of firearms to those under the age of 21. Moskowitz, a Florida state representative at the time, said he heard discontent among some fellow Democrats who were unhappy with the legislation, ultimately signed by then-Gov. Rick Scott, didn't ban assault weapons.
"I remember some of my colleagues saying, 'This isn't enough, so let's do nothing and use it against them politically in the next election,' " Moskowitz said on the webinar. "I said, 'Boy, that is going to protect absolutely nobody. Who does that help?' I was never convinced we could make it an election issue that would somehow reverse the tide in Florida. … Isn't protecting kids more important than playing politics?"
Beth DuMond of Moms Demand Action said it is important to "educate" voters, meaning explaining in detail what the legislation is about and defusing knee-jerk rhetoric.
"That sounds trite, but what we have found in our work is that when people understand what we are truly asking for, they understand these are not gun grabs, this is not taking away anyone's rights," she said.
DuMond said when advocates explain the goal is to implement red flag laws or broaden background checks to all gun sales, people respond positively.
"Then they say, 'Oh we should have that,' " she said.
It's the same thing, she said, when Moms Demand Action advocates call for funding community violence programs. Once they show people how those programs work in their communities, the public responds with support.
"It doesn't have to be an us-versus-them thing," DuMond said. "It can be just about the safety of our children and our families and our communities."
afins@pbpost.com