The legislation, which will be voted on next week, is similar to a bill authored by Sen. John Cornyn of Texas that Senate Democrats rejected a week ago. It would give the Justice Department three days after a suspected terrorist tries to buy a gun to show that the person should not be allowed to have it. Democrats complain it is onerous and unworkable.
“House Democrats will keep up our efforts to push for the majority to allow a vote on gun violence legislation but bringing up a bill authored by the NRA isn’t going to cut it,” said Drew Hammill, a top aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California.
Despite the Democratic opposition, the GOP majority is expected to pass the bill.
Republicans defended the legislation as an appropriate response to concerns ISIS-inspired attackers have been able to buy guns despite having drawn past scrutiny from the FBI. At the same time, Republicans want to ensure that innocent people who might have been mistakenly put on a watch list don’t lose their constitutional right to buy guns.
The bill will “provide a process for individuals being investigated as known or suspected terrorists who attempt to buy a gun go to be flagged, delayed, and — if the burden of proof is satisfied — denied the purchase,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, said in a statement Friday after posting the bill.
Speaker Paul Ryan announced Thursday in a conference call with his GOP caucus that the House would take up the gun legislation and other counterterrorism proposals.
The decision followed a series of disruptive sit-ins on the House floor by Democrats angry that the GOP majority wouldn’t take up gun control legislation following the mass killing at a nightclub in Orlando. The attacker was an ISIS sympathizer who was investigated twice by the FBI but was still eligible to buy the guns he used in the massacre.