On Thursday, June 2nd, the House Judiciary Committee approved the “Protecting our Kids Act,” a wide-ranging package of gun control legislation, as a response to the tragic shootings in recent weeks.
After a long session in the middle of what was supposed to be a recess, the committee voted along party lines to approve the legislation; Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that the full House will vote on the “Protecting our Kids Act” this week.
The package includes measures that would raise the legal age to buy certain semiautomatic centerfire rifles from 18 to 21 years old, establish new federal offenses for gun trafficking and for selling large-capacity magazines, and allow local governments to compensate individuals who surrender such magazines through a buyback program. It would create a tax incentive for retail sales of safe storage devices and criminal penalties for breaking new requirements regulating firearm storage on residential premises and would also take steps to strengthen existing federal regulations on bump stocks and ghost guns. Read more here.
The legislation is not expected to pass the Senate, where a small bipartisan group led by Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is negotiating a much more moderate proposal.
